60.You see we follow the same general order as in the Priapeia, VII.

“I warn you, boy, I mean to pedicate you; with you, my girl, I will copulate. The third penalty is kept for the bearded ruffian.”

61.Eustathius, p. 741, is very ambiguous: “Lesbianize,—to commit a shameful action.”

62.I do not quite know whether the following passage from the Thesmophoriazusae (915-917) refers to this or no:

“Now, unhappy girl, you long for pleasure after the Ionian mode. Besides I think you are a Labda, as is the way of the Lesbians.”

A fellatrix seems to have borne the name of Labda, by reason of the first letter of the word Lesbianize: but the passage stands quite isolated, for in that of Varro, preserved by Nonius, and referring to the annotation of Scaliger on the Priapeia LXXVIII., where we find:

“Depsistis, decite. Labdae.”

The reading is doubtful, and the sense not clear. The verse of Ausonius, Epigr. 128:

“When he puts his tongue in, then he is a Labda,” has nothing to do with this question, as we shall show later on.

63.I do not know whether the nickname of RododaphnÉ (rose-laurel), given to Timarchus in Syria (ibid., ch. 27), does not mean cunnilingue, as by rose is understood the female parts, while the laurel leafs means the licking tongue. This surname had no doubt for Lucian an obscene sense which he would not disclose: “In Syria they call you RododaphnÉ, why? I should blush to say it.”

64.Here is the preceding sentence, “which will better elucidate Galen’s meaning: To drink sweat, urine or menses is an abominable and detestable practice; human excrements still more so, in spite of what Xenocrates has written about their beneficial action when applied in lieu of ointment about the mouth or throat, or when swallowed. He has also spoken of the absorption through the mouth of ear-wax. I myself could not make up my mind to eat of them, though it were to cure my sickness right off. Of all abominable things the most abominable, I think, are human excrements.”

65.Tacitus, Annals, XI., 26.

66.We will here reproduce the curious passage of Jean Burchard, to whom we owe this story. It is taken from his Diarium, edited by Leibnitz, in 1696, p. 77:

“On the last Sunday in October the Duke of Valentinois had invited to supper in his chamber” (the chamber of Alexander VI), “in the Apostolical palace, fifty beautiful prostitutes, called courtesans, who, after supper danced with the valets and other persons present, first in their clothes, and then naked. After this the table, chandeliers were placed on the floor here and there, with lighted candles, and chestnuts were thrown about, which the courtesans collected moving on their hands and knees quite naked among the chandeliers, the Pope, the Duke and his sister Lucrezia being present and looking on. Finally presents were brought in: silk mantles, pairs of shoes, head-dresses, and other objects, to be given to those who had copulated with the greatest number of these courtesans: they were publicly enjoyed in the room there, the lookers-on acting as umpires, and awarding the prizes to the victors.”

67.Nola was a city in the territory of the Campanians. It is for this reason that the Campanian malady, mentioned by Horace (Sat. I., V., 62), has been connected with debauchery, but without sufficient reason.

68.Varro, is his Marcipor, according to Nonius: “He introduced afterwards into his gullet the virile verge: he offends the mouth of Volumnus.”

69.Martial, III., 75:

“You make it your work to corrupt pure lips for gold.”

And Again II., 28:

“Not even Vetustilla’s warm mouth give you more pleasure.”

70.“How accustomed he was to assault the heads of the most illustrious women, is plainly evidenced by the adventure of Mallonia, who, debauched by him, refused to submit to him again. He caused her to be accused by his informers, and kept asking her during her trial, whether she had anything to reproach herself with. Without waiting for the verdict, she ran home and transfixed herself with a poniard, upbraiding loudly the foul, hairy dotard for having wanted to abuse her mouth.” (Suetonius, Tiberius, ch. 45).

71.He was so glad to have won Transalpine Gaul that he could not help announcing some days after in the Senate, that he had reached the fulfillment of his wishes, in spite of the hatred and malice of his enemies, and that he defied them to their face. Somebody having said to him offensively that this could not so easily be done with a woman, he replied jokingly, that Semiramis had gained a kingdom, and the Amazons had occupied a great part of Asia (Suetonius, Caesar, ch. 22). Caesar employed the expression: “defying to the face” in the honest sense, while his adversary invested it with an obscene signification, in allusion to his infamous acts in Bithynia.

72.I speak of those whose abominable lasciviousness and execrable lust do not even spare the head. (Lactantius, Instit. Div. VI., 23.) Similarly Juvenal, VI., v. 299, 300:

“For what cares the drunken Venus? She knows not the difference between groin and head.”

73.Martial, II., 72:

“They say Posthumus, that they did to you last night, at supper, what I would not have let them do;—who could approve such doings? They split your mouth! ...”

Then playing upon the words rumour and irrumate he adds:

“... As the author of this crime, the town’s rumour designates Caecilius.”

And again III., 73, ibid.:

“Rumour denies you are a Cinede.”

III., 80:

“Rumour says, you have an evil tongue.”

And III., 87:

“Rumour says, ChionÉ, that your vulva is intact, that nothing could be purer than it. Yet you bathe without covering the thing that should be covered; if you have any shame, then put your drawers upon your face.”

Percidere employed alone means to pedicate. Martial IV., 48; VII., 61; IX., 48; XI., 29; XII., 35; and Priapeia, XII., XIV. Some copies have praecidere for percidere, but this seems to be an untenable reading.

74.Martial, XI., 47:

“Why do you plague in vain unhappy vulvas and posteriors; gain but the heights, for there any old member revives.”

Priapeia LXXV.:

“Through the middle of boys and girls travels the member; when it meets bearded chins then it aspires to the heights.”

75.Priapeia XXVII.:

“A footlong amulet will pedicate you; if that will not cure you, I go higher.”

76.Plautus, in the Amphytrion, I sc. 1, 192:

“I shall compress to-day the wicked tongue.”

The Latins employed the verb “compress” for irrumate, as if it were a form of fornication; and similarly “split open”, as if it were a form of pedication.

77.Plutarch: “It is reported that in the night before the passing of the Rubicon, Caesar had a frightful dream; he dreamt that he was indulging in abominable intercourse with his mother.” (Lives, Julius CÆsar, XXXII.) Hesychius’ interpretation refers to this:—to perform abominable acts.”

78.Suetonius: “A picture of Parrhasius, representing Atalanta in the act of complacently lending her mouth to Meleager was bequeathed to him with the alternative that he might have a million sesterces instead, if the subject offended him. He not only preferred the picture, but had it solemnly hung in his bedroom.” (Tiberius, ch. 44.)

79.Horace, Epode VIII., 17-20:

“The member of the uneducated is it less rigid? does it not long, like those of lettered men? To make it stand superbly from the groin, you need but to work it with your mouth.”

80.Martial, II., 62:

“A doubtful down did scarcely deck your cheek, when your tongue already licked men’s middle parts.” The same III., 81:

“Baeticus, you, a Gaul, what have you to do with the female pit? that tongue of yours should lick men’s middles.”

Ausonius, Epigr. CXX:

“When Castor longed in vain to lick men’s middles, but could take no one home with him, he found means not to lose all pleasure of the sort, fellator as he was; he started to lick his own wife’s organs.” In other words from being a fellator Castor became a cunnilingue.

81.Martial, III., 88:

“They are twin brothers, but they suck different teats: tell me are they more unlike or like?”

The one was a fellator, the other a cunnilingue.

Again, VII., 54:

“You shall suck not mine, which is honest and small, but a member escaped from the fire of Solyma’s city and condemned to tribute.”

I do not know whence Scioppius (Priap. X), has it, that Martial was well furnished; the latter avows in that passage, that his mentula was quite small. To affront Chrestus, he orders him to lick, not his, but the mentula of a Jewish slave. He has mentioned this Jewish slave already in Epigr. 34 of the same book:

“My slave carries a heavy Jewish parcel without skin to cover it.” That means his member is circumcized, the gland being uncovered, without prepuce, in one word, “recutitus.” So, I think, is to be understood the recutitorum inguine virorum of Martial, VII., 29: he means, “the virile parts of circumcized men,” the skin of whose glands is drawn back. Recutitus stands for recinctus, regelatus, reseratus. Many other words, e.g. revincire, similarly admit of two meanings, and thus, no doubt should arise about Martial’s expression: recutita colla mulae (IX., 58), which refers to the mules having a new skin covering their necks. I differ from those who think that those were called recutiti whose prepuce began to grow again; a recutitus was to the Romans an object of contempt. Petronius: “He has two faults, else he would be like any other man recutitus est et sertit. He is circumcized and snores” (Satyr., ch. 28). It is impossible to suppose the glans could have been thought more disgusting covered by a new prepuce than with none at all.

82.A man that is being irrumated cannot speak, his mouth being obstructed by the mentula, thus: he is silent. Martial, III., 96 says to Gargilius, a cunnilingue, menacing him with the third punishment, if he should catch him in the fact:

“If I should catch thee at it, Gargilius, I’ll make thee silent.”

Married men were in the habit of pedicating beardless adults, and of irrumating the bearded ones. For which reason Martial warns Gallus (II., 47) to shun the seductions of a famous rakish lady, as he was running the risk, if taken by the husband in flagrante delicto, of being irrumated by him:

“Your buttocks you rely on? But the husband is no pederast; he likes but two ways, either mouth or vulva.”

And for the same reason he consents to marry Thelesina (II., 49):

“No Thelesina for me as my wife! Why?—She is a prostitute. Nay! but she pays young lads. Then I consent.”

Then there is a complaint for having been deceived with respect to the lover of Polla, his mistress (X., 40):

“Constantly was I told that my Polla was on intimate terms with an unknown cinede. Well, I surprise them, Lupus; no cinede was he.”

Instead of a lad, whom he would have pedicated, he finds a cool, experienced gallant, not at all likely to expiate his crime by means of his buttocks. Martial might, however, have punished him more cruelly by forcing into his fundament, either a mullet (Juvenal, X., 317):

“There are adulterers whom the mullet pierces”; or a radish. “In Armenia, taken in the act of adultery, he ran away plugged with a radish in his posteriors.” (Lucian, De Morte Peregrini,—Works, vol. VII., p. 425.) Catullus XV., 18, 19:

“Drawing your feet asunder, your postern wide open, they will insert into you radish and mullet.”

Martial also has used the expression of being silent, in the above stated sense but, somewhat more obscurely, IX., 5:

“If in two apertures you can work, Galla, and can do more than double work in both, why, Aeschylus, does she get tenfold pay? She fellates, but that is not a matter of such price surely. Nay! it is because she must be silent!”

It is not her infamy that Galla sells so dear; it is the inconvenience of having to be silent during the process, which, for a prattler, “is a very serious matter,” as Martial says, IV., 81. Book XII., Epigr. 35, quoted later on, also refers to this.

83.It is the same with the word stuprum. Festus: The ancients employed the word stuprum for turpitude, as appears in the Song of Neleus.

“Foede stupreque castigor cotidie.” (I am foully and disgracefully beaten every day.)

Naevius: “They would rather die than return to their co-citizens cum stupro.”

84.First the rogue lends her vulva, then her buttocks, and lastly her mouth. Some suppose the full-bosomed SpatalÉ of Martial, II., 52 was just as prodigal:

“Dasius was astute at counting the bathers; he asked full-bosomed SpatalÉ the fee of three women, and she paid.”

But I believe they wrong the good SpatalÉ. Dasius, the bathing man, wanted only that SpatalÉ, whose charms were ample and buxom, she taking up as much room as three other women, should pay for three.

The Phyllis of Martial, XII., 65, showed herself liberal in every way:

“The beautiful Phyllis, who throughout the whole night had proved herself right liberal in every way....”

From this you will understand what Martial means by “refusing nothing” (XI., 50):

“I will not deny you anything, Phyllis; for you deny me nothing.”

And similarly, IV. 12:

“You refuse no one, ThaÏs. If you know no shame for this, blush at least that you refuse nothing, ThaÏs!”

And again, XII., 72:

“There is nothing, Lygdus, that you do not now deny me; there was a time when there was nothing you did deny!”

And he says (XII., 81) right out:

“Whoso refuses nothing, Atticilla, sucks.”

It is in this sense that Mallonia refused to be entirely at the mercy of Tiberius; she had already admitted him to her vulva and anus, but when it came to the mouth the poor girl could not overcome her disgust. We have before quoted the passage of Suetonius. Of a woman who refuses nothing, Arnobius (II., 42) says: “That she is ready to undergo anything,” and of a woman that is drunk, “so much so as not to able to refuse anything.” Ovid says (Art of Love, III., v. 766):

“She is meet to undergo all kinds of assaults.”

85.Martial, II., 15:

“You do not offer your cup to any man; it is discretion, Hermus, forbids, not pride.”

And VI., 44:

“No one, Calliodorus may drink from your cup.”

Seneca: When Caius Caesar accepted sums of money for the expense of the games from friends who brought them to him, he refused to take a large amount from Fabius Persicus. His friends not looking at the character of the sender, but at the value of the sum sent, reproached him for having refused. “What!” said he, “am I to accept the service of a man from whose cup I should decline to drink?” (De Beneficiis, II., 21.) Fabius Persicus was a fellator not a cunnilingue; this is apparent from the controversy in which Seneca engaged about him, viz: what a prisoner should do whom a man promised to buy off, at the price of having his body prostituted, and his mouth sullied.

86.Martial, XII., 75:

“It is no little matter, Flaccus if you drink with them; and then have to break the cup they touched.”

And Macedonius in the Analecta of Brunck, III., 116:

“There drank a woman with me yesterday, whose fame is anything but good;—go break the cups, my lads!”

87.Martial, XI., 96:

“Every time you happen to meet a fellator’s kisses, I can fancy, O Flaccus, how you plunge your head in water.”

And I., 95:

“You sung but badly, AgelÉ, when you were loved per vulvam. Now no one kisses you, and you sing well.”

And I., 84:

“Your lap-dog, Manneia, licks your mouth and lips I am not a bit surprised; dogs like dirt.”

Seneca: “And mark! he made that Fabius Persicus, whose kisses are shunned even by people who know no shame, a priest only the other day.” (De Beneficiis, IV., 30.)

88.It appears from Martial’s Epigram (XI., 99), that the kiss on the mouth was the regular thing with the Romans; fellators, therefore, could not be surprised at their kisses being avoided. The poet of Bilbilis makes yet another mock at their expense (II., 42):

“Zoilus, why spoil the bath by bathing your bottom in it? If you would make it still dirtier, plunge your head in.”

And VI., 81:

“You bathe, Charidemus, as though you had a grudge against mankind, entirely submerging in the bath your privates. I should not like you to wash your head that way, Charidemus; and now look! you are washing your head. I had rather it were your privates!”

89.In the last verse there are two furtive stings; the first is about not telling (tacet,—is silent), an expression, which was used as denoting a fellator; the second is the word “tell,” (narrat), the honourable use of the mouth being put for the dishonourable, as in Epistle III., 84:

“What tells (narrat) your harlot.—No! I don’t mean your girl, Tongilion!—What then?—Your tongue!”

90.You will find in Macrobius (Saturnalia, II., 4), why he was called saluting. Augustus returned as victor from Actium; amongst those who came to congratulate him was a man holding a raven, which he had taught to cry: “I salute thee, Caesar Victor and Emperor!” Caesar, admiring this flattering bird, bought it for 20,000 sesterces.