.dt Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris),\
by Friedrich Karl Forberg-A Project\
Gutenberg eBook
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MANUAL||<s>OF</s>||<xxl>Classical Erotology</xxl>||(<I>De figuris Veneris</I>)
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<s>BY</s>
<l>FRED. CHAS. FORBERG</l>
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<s>LITERAL ENGLISH VERSION.</s>
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[Illustration: Decoration]
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MANCHESTER
One Hundred Copies
<s>PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR VISCOUNT</s>
<l>JULIAN SMITHSON M. A., AND FRIENDS</l>
1884
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NOTE
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One Hundred Copies only of this volume have been
printed (all on the same paper and the type distributed)
for Viscount Julian Smithson M. A., the Translator,
and his Friends. None of these Copies are for Sale.
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<B><l>Foreword</l></B>
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It is perhaps well to state at once that the
“Manual of Classical Erotology” is intended
only for Students of the Classics, Lawyers,
Psychologists and Medical Men. Those persons,
we think, who may peruse it as a means
of awakening voluptuous sensations will be
severely disappointed. Never did a work
more serious issue from the press. Here we
have no curious erotic story born of a diseased
mind, but a cold, relentless analysis of those
human passions which it is ever the object of
Science to wrestle with and overthrow.

As a basis also for the correct interpretation
of the drama of the ancient world, Forberg’s
.bn 004.png
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studies are most valuable. Apart from that
extraordinary book, Rosenbaum’s <i>History of
the Esoteric Habits, Beliefs and Customs of
Antiquity</i>, we know of no other compilation
which casts so intense a search-light upon
those Crimes, Follies and Perversions of the
“Sixth Sense” which transformed the olden
glory of Greece and Rome into a by-word and
a reproach amongst the nations.

The present English translation now offered
to Scholars is entirely new and strictly exact.
No liberties have been taken with the text. It
was felt that any attempt to add more colour,
or to increase the effect,—involving a departure
from the lines of stern simplicity laid
down by Forberg,—would have detracted
from the scientific value and character of the
work.

The late Isidore Liseux issued in 1882 a
French version with Latin text <i>imprimé à cent
exemplaires</i> “for himself and friends.” This
work is now very seldom to be met with because
the whole edition was privately subscribed
by Scholars and Bibliophiles before
its appearance. The thieving copyists went of
course immediately to work and some wretched
.bn 005.png
.pn +1
penny-a-liner, utterly ignorant of both
Latin and Greek, produced an English transcript
full of faults, based only on the French
text.

There is no need to add that such a book as
this is of no value to the Student as a work of
reference, for the faulty and forceless renderings
often to be met with in Liseux’ version
are reproduced with charming exactness,
while the absence of the original text makes it
all the more perilous to accept the work as a
guide. Having said this much concerning the
only two translations known to us, we proceed
to give some account of good master Forberg
and what is known of the inception and building
up of his chef-d’œuvre.

The eminent Author of this book never became
famous. His name is mentioned occasionally
in connexion with the “Hermaphroditus”
of Antonio Beccadelli, known by the
surname of Panormitanus, which he edited.
Brunet, Charles Nodier, and the <i>Bibliographie
des Ouvrages relatifs aux Femmes, à
l’Amour et au Mariage</i>, speak of him in this
connexion; while a list of his works appears
moreover in the <i>Index Locupletissimus Librorum</i>
.bn 006.png
.pn +1
or <i>Bücher-Lexicon</i> (Bibliographical
Lexicon) of Christian Gottlob Kayser, Leipzig,
1834. But with the exception of the <i>Allgemeine
Deutsche Biographie</i>, the publication
of which was commenced in 1878 by the
Historical Commission of the Munich Academy,
and which has devoted a short notice to
him, all Dictionaries and Collections whether
of Ancient or of Modern Biography are mute
with respect to him. The <i>Conversations-Lexicon</i>
and the vast Encyclopaedia of Ersch and
Gruber do not contain a single line about him,
while Michaud, Didot, Bachelet and Dezobry,
Bouillet, Vapereau, utterly ignore his existence.
For all that he well deserves a word
or two.

Friedrich Karl Forberg was born in the
year 1770 at Meuselwitz, in the Duchy of
Saxe-Altenburg, and died in 1848 at Hildburghausen.
He was a philosopher and a collaborator
with Fichte, while he devoted a part
of his attention to religious exegesis: but above
all he was a philologian, and a humanist,—at
once learned and inquisitive. He followed first
the career of a University-teacher; <i>Privat-docent</i>
in 1792, Assistant Professor in the Faculty
.bn 007.png
.pn +1
of Philosophy at Jena (1793), he was
installed in 1796 as Co-Rector at Saalfeld. His
inaugural thesis: “Dissertatio inauguralis de
aesthetica transcendentali”, is dated 1792
(Jena, 8vo.); this was followed by a “Treatise
on the Original Conditions and Formal
Limitations of Free Will” in German and an
“Extract from my Occasional Writings” also
in German (1795). From 1796 to 1800 he
wrote extensively in defence of the teachings
of Fichte in Journals, Reviews, particularly
in the Philosophical Magazine of Schmidt,
and in sundry publications emanating from
Fichte himself. He published moreover:
“Animadversiones in loca selecta Novi Testamenti”
(Saalfeld, 1798, 4to.), “an Apology
for his pretended Atheism”, in German
(Gotha, 1799, 8vo.). “Obligations of Learned
Men”, in German (Gotha, 1801, 8vo.), etc.

The second part of his life seems to have
been devoted entirely to Literature. In 1807
he was appointed as Conservator of the Aulic
Library at Coburg, and having had enough of
philosophy, he turned his whole attention to
the study of Latin and Greek antiquity. Previously
to this his tastes had already been revealed
.bn 008.png
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by the publication of several pretty
editions of the minor Latin erotic poets; these
form a collection of six or eight volumes in
16mo., with red margin-lines, and are now
very difficult to procure. The discovery he
made in the Coburg library of a manuscript
of the “Hermaphroditus” of Panormitanus,
offering important new readings and variants
from the received text, suggested the idea to
him of producing a definitive edition of the
work, with copious commentaries.

The said “Hermaphroditus” so called, “because”,
says La Monnoye, “all the filth in connection
with both sexes forms the theme of the
volume”, is a collection of Latin Epigrams
filled out with a patchwork of quotations from
Virgil, Ovid and Martial, in which memory
has a much larger share than imagination, and
which has never appeared to us to possess any
great literary value. But the mishaps the book
has had to encounter, its having been publicly
burnt in manuscript in the market places of
Bologna, Ferrara and Milan, the anathemas
hurled against it by some savants, and the
favour with which it was received by others,
who were glad to awaken by its perusal old
.bn 009.png
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reminiscences, have given it a kind of reputation.
The Abbé Mercier de Saint-Léger was
the first to publish it in Paris, together with
the works of four other poets of the same sort:
Ramusius de Rimini, Pacificus Maximus, Jovianus
Pontanus, and Joannes Secundus[#].
But Forberg, whilst fully appreciating the
work and particularly the courage of the
learned Frenchman, found much to find fault
with; the Epigrams of Panormitanus were
not numbered, which made citations from
them troublesome, a great number of readings
were faulty, and, thanks to his manuscript, he
could correct them; lastly, Mercier de Saint-Léger
had omitted to give any running commentary
on his author, to explain his text by
means of notes and the comparison of parallel
passages, whereas, according to Forberg a
book of this character required notes by tens
and hundreds, each verse, each hemistich,
each word, offering matter for philosophical
.bn 010.png
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reflections and highly interesting comparisons.
He therefore took the book in hand and began
to collect with inquisitive care everything
the Ancients had written upon the delicate
subjects treated in the “Hermaphroditus.”

.pm fn-start
<i>Quinque illustrium Poetarum, Antonii Panormitae;
Ramusii Ariminensis; Pacifici Maximi Asculani;
Io. Joviani Pontani; Io. Secundi Hagiensis, Lusus in
Venerem, partim ex codicibus manuscriptis, nunc primum
editi Parisiis, prostat ad Pristrinum, in Vico suavi</i>, (<i>at
Paris, at Molini’s, Rue Mignon</i>), 1791, 8vo.
.pm fn-end

But having come to the end of his task, he
found that his commentary would drown the
book, that hardly would he be able to get in a
verse of it every two or three pages, all the
remainder of the book being taken up by his
notes, and that the result would be chaos.
Dividing his work into two parts, he left the
smaller one in the shape of annotations, reduced
to the merest indispensable explanations,
to the “Hermaphroditus”, while of the
second and more copious harvest of his erudite
researches he composed a special treatise,
which he had printed as a supplement under
the title, “Apophoreta”, or “Second Course”;
this treatise being in his eyes only a kind of
dessert, following upon the substantial repast
furnished by the Latin Poet of the XVIth.
century. The whole forms a volume much
sought after by amateurs: “Antonii Panormitae
<i>Hermaphroditus;</i> primus in Germania
edidit et Aphoreta adjecit Frider. Carol. Forbergius.
.bn 011.png
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Coburgi, sumtibus Meuseliorum,
1824, 8vo.”[#].

.pm fn-start
To certain copies are added some thirty engravings
representing the principal erotic postures; these engravings are taken
from the <i>Monuments de la Vie Privée des douze Césars</i>, and from
the <i>Monuments du Culte Secret des Dames Romaines</i>, two works,
now becoming every day rarer.
.pm fn-end

Forberg, good, simple man, was mistaken,
owing to his too great modesty; the true feast,
at once substantial, nourishing and savoury, is
his own work, the work which he elaborated
from his own resources, from his inexhaustible
memory and from his astonishing knowledge
of the Greek and Latin authors down to
their minutest details. On reprinting this excellent
work, which undoubtedly deserved to
be translated, we have given it a new title, one
that is much more suitable than the old, “The
Manual of Classical Erotology.” In virtue
of the charm, the abundance, the variety of the
citations, it is a priceless erotic Anthology; in
virtue of the methodical classification of the
contents Forberg has adopted, it is a didactic
work,—a veritable Manual. He began with
collecting from the Greek and Latin writers
the largest number possible of scattered notices,
.bn 012.png
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which might serve for points of comparison
with the Epigrams of Beccadelli; having
possessed himself of a large accumulation of
these, it occurred to him to set them out in
order, arranging them in conformity with the
similarity of their contents, deciding finally
upon a division into eight chapters, corresponding
with the same number of special
manifestations of the amorous fancy and its
depravities:

.ta r:6 l:30
   I.|—#Of Copulation:ch01#.
  II.|—#Of Pedication:ch02#.
 III.|—#Of Irrumation:ch03#.
  IV.|—#Of Masturbation:ch04#.
   V.|—#Of Cunnilingues:ch05#.
  VI.|—#Of Tribads:ch06#.
 VII.|—#Of Intercourse with Animals:ch07#.
VIII.|—#Of Spintrian Postures:ch08#.
.ta-

He found that he had to make subdivisions
in each class according to the nature of the
subject, to note particularities, individualities;
and the contrast between this scientific apparatus,
and the facetious matters subjected to
the rigorous laws of deduction and demonstration
is not the least amusing feature of the
.bn 013.png
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book. Probably no one but a German savant
could have conceived the idea of thus classifying
by categories, groups, genera, variations,
species and sub-species all known forms of
natural and unnatural lusts, according to the
most trustworthy authors. But Forberg pursued
another aim besides. In the course of his
researches he had noticed how reticent the
annotators and expounders generally are in
clearing up matters which would seem to require
it the most, some in consequence of a
false reserve, others for fear of appearing too
knowing, and others again from ignorance;
also how many mistakes and gross blunders
they have fallen into, by reason of their not
understanding the language of erotics and
failing to grasp its infinite shades of meaning.

It is precisely on those obscure and difficult
passages of the Ancient poets, on those expressions
purposely chosen for their ambiguity,
which have been the torment of the critics and
the puzzle of the most erudite commentators,
that our learned Humanist has concentrated
his most convincing observations.

The number of authors, Greek, Latin,
French, German, English, Dutch, whom he
.bn 014.png
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has laid under contribution in order to formulate
his exact and judicious classifications,
mounts up to a formidable total. There are
to be found in the <i>Manual of Erotology</i> something
like five hundred passages, culled from
more than one hundred and fifty works, all
classified, explained, commented upon, and in
most cases, enveloped in darkness as they had
been, made plain as light itself by the mere
fact of juxtaposition. With Forberg for a
guide no one need henceforth fear to go astray,—to
believe, for instance, like M. Leconte de
Lisle, that the woman of whom Horace says
that she changes neither dress nor place, “<i>peccatve
superne</i>” “has not erred beyond measure”;
what a mistake!—or with M. Nisard
to translate Suetonius expression, “<i>illudere
caput alicuius</i>” “to attempt some ones life”[#]!

.pm fn-start
See below pp. ?? and ??? respectively.
.pm fn-end

Forberg, a philosopher, has treated these
delicate subjects like a philosopher, namely,
in a purely speculative manner, as a man quite
above and beyond terrestrial matters, and particularly
so with respect to the lubricities
.bn 015.png
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which he has made it his task to examine so
closely. He declares he knows nothing of
them personally, has never thought of making
experimental investigations on them, but derives
all his knowledge, from books. His candour
is beyond suspicion. He has not escaped
censure; but having a reply ready for every
objection and authorities to quote on every
point, he found an answer to his detractors
ready made in the phrase of Justus Lipsius,
who had been reproached with taking pleasure
in the abominations of Petronius: “The
wines you set upon the table excite the drunkard
and leave the sober man perfectly calm;
in the same way, these kinds of reading <i>may</i>
very likely inflame an imagination already
depraved, but they make no impression upon
a mind that is chaste and disciplined.”
.bn 016.png
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FOOTNOTES - FORWARD
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THE||Metamorphoses of Venus
.dc 0.25 0.65
WE propose to pass in review the different
metamorphoses of Venus,—though
truly not all of them. For
how is it possible to specify the
thousand modes[#], the thousand forms of
.bn 017.png
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Love, on which the inventive satiety of pleasure
ventures? But at any rate such as fall into
distinct and definite kinds admit of being
easily and methodically classified. Do not,
inquisitive reader, hope for more than this.
We are not of those who seek after a petty
personal glory by unveiling the results of their
own experience or by describing novel <i>tours
de force</i> in the wrestling-school; we are not
so much as raw recruits at this game. Nor yet
is it our intention to reveal things we have seen
or heard in this connexion. If we <i>would</i>, we
could not,—to your satisfaction, for books are
our only authorities. We are solely and entirely
bookmen, and scarce frequent our fellow
creatures at all.

.pm fn-start
Ovid, <i>Art of Love</i>, I., 435, 36: “To fully expose
the ungodly wiles of harlots, ten mouths, and as many
tongues to boot would not suffice.”

Aloysia Sigaea: “The body in sacrificing to Venus can
take as many postures as there are ways in which it can
bend and curve. It is equally impossible to enumerate all
these, as it is to say which is best fitted to give pleasure.
Each acts in this respect according to his own caprice,
according to place, time, and so on, choosing the one he
prefers. Love is not identical for each and all.” (Dialogue
VI.)
.pm fn-end

These trifles engaged our attention first as
a mere pastime. We were led to them accidentally,
as we roamed from subject to subject
for Philosophy, the garden we had hoped to
set up our tent in for life, lies desolate. How
<i>can</i> Philosophy flourish in times like ours,
when almost every new day sees new systems
sprout forth, to die down again tomorrow;
when there are as many philosophers as philosophies,
when schools have ceased to exist,
.bn 018.png
.pn +1
when instead of groups only individuals are
to be met with? Our second motive was to
provide some satisfaction, however little, to
the claims of those readers who very often find
themselves disconcerted by the unconventional
raciness of Ancient authors and their
out-spoken witticisms, and justly complain of
the prudish brevity or entire silence of the
Commentators who leave their difficulties unexplained.
Of course these latter wrote for
the young; and no one can blame them under
the circumstances for not having dwelt carefully
and curiously on shameful secrets.

If we have fallen into any mistakes, lay the
fault, we beg, first on our insufficient intellectual
furniture, secondly on our ignorance as to
the more uncommon forms of lust, an ignorance
prevalent in small towns, and lastly, if
you please, put it down to the honest simplicity
of our Coburg citizens’ <i>members</i>.

We only follow others’ example. We have
predecessors in Astyanassa, who according to
Suidas[#] first wrote “of Erotic Postures”;
.bn 019.png
.pn +1
and in Philaenis of Samos[#], or rather, to
deprive no one of his due, Polycrates, an Athenian
sophist, who brought out under the name
of an honourable matron a book “On the various
Postures of Love.” Then there was Elephantis[#]
or Elephantiné, a Greek girl,
.bn 020.png
.pn +1
whose licentious writings Tiberius is said to
have furnished his sleeping-room with; also
Paxamus[#] who composed the <i>Dodecatechnon</i>
.bn 021.png
.pn +1
on lascivious postures; and Sotades[#]
.bn 022.png
.pn +1
of Maroneia, surnamed the Cinaedologue,
from whose name a whole class of literature,
remarkable for its excessive lubricity, is
known as the Sotadic; and Sabellus, of whom
Martial speaks: “Copious verses, only too copious,
on scandalous subjects you have read
me, O Sabellus, such as neither the maids of
Didymus[#] know, nor yet the wanton treatises
of Elephantis. Therein are new postures
of Love that the desperate fornicator tries, and
what debauchees use, but never tell of,—how
grouped in a series five copulate at once, how
a greater number still can make a chain. It
was hardly worth the pains to be erudite.”

.pm fn-start
Suidas under <i>Astyanassa</i>: “Astyanassa, maid of
Helen the wife of Menelaus, who was the first to invent
the different positions in the act of love. She wrote “Of
Erotic Postures”; and was followed and imitated by Philaenis
and Elephantine, who carried further the series of
suchlike obscenities.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Priapeia</i>, LXIII: “To her a certain girl (I very
nearly gave her name) is wont to come with her paramour;
and if she fails to discover as many postures as
Philaenis describes, she goes away again still itching with
desire.”

Philaenis has found a champion of her good name in
Aeschrion, who wrote an epitaph for her that is still extant
in <i>Athenaeus</i>, bk. VIII. ch. 13: The last lines read:
“I was not lustful for men nor a gad-about; but Polycrates,
by race an Athenian, a mill clapper of talk, a foul-tongued
sophist, wrote—what he wrote; I know nought
of it all.”

Her works were familiar to Timarchus in Lucian (<i>Apophras</i>,
p. 158,—vol. VII., of Works of Lucian, edit. J.
P. Schmid): “Tell me where you find these words and
expressions,—in what books? is it in the volumes of
Philaenis, that are always in your hands?”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Suetonius, <i>Tiberius</i>, ch. 43: “He decorated his
various and variously arranged sleeping-chambers with
pictures and bas-reliefs of the most licentious character,
and furnished them with the works of Philaenis, that
no one in performing should want a model of the posture
required.”

<i>Priapeia</i>, III: “Taking pictures from the licentious
treatises of Elephantis, Lalagé presents them an offering
to the stiff-standing god, and begs you prove if she performs
agreeably to the pictured postures.”

It would seem then that artists depicted the postures
described by Elephantis, she herself possibly setting the
example. Paintings of the sort Lalagé dedicates to Priapus,
and asks her lover to have her and see if she is a docile
pupil in faithfully imitating all the modes of connection
depicted in them. No doubt such representations
of licentious postures, taken from the works of Elephantis
or Philaenis or elsewhere stimulated the ingenuity of
Artists to work out in emulation these enticing <i>motifs</i> to
the highest degree of finish. <i>Ovid</i> alludes to such works
of art in his <i>Art of Love</i>, II., 680: “They unite in Love
in a thousand postures; no picture could suggest any fresh
ones ...”; as also the author of an ancient Epigram quoted
by <i>Joseph Scaliger</i> in his Commentary on the <i>Priapeia</i>,
III.; “And when she has thrown herself into every posture
in imitation of the seductive pictures, she may go:
but let the picture be left hanging over my bed.” Nothing
was commoner with the Romans than to decorate the wall
and partitions of rooms with licentious paintings, as may
be gathered from Propertius II., vi, 27 sqq.: “The hand
that first painted filthy pictures, and exposed foul sights
in an honest home, corrupted the pure eyes of young
maids, and chose to make them accomplices of his own
lubricity. In old days our walls were not daubed with
fancies of this vile sort, when never a partition was
adorned with a vicious subject.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Suidas</i>: “Paxamus wrote the <i>Dodecatechnon</i>; the
subject is the obscene postures.” But I think he has no
good reason to connect with this the epithet <i>Dodecamechanos</i>
given to a certain Cyrené. The said wanton damsel
seems to have practised rather than described the
twelve postures of Venus. <i>Suidas</i> under <i>Dodecamechanon</i>:
“There was a famous <i>hetaera</i>, Cyrené by name, further
known as <i>Dodecamechanos</i>, because she practised twelve
different postures in making love.”

<i>Aristophanes</i> says in the <i>Frogs</i>, 1361-63: “Do you dare
to criticize my songs, you that modulate your cadences
on the twelve-fold postures of Cyrené?” Her name
occurs also in the <i>Thesmophoriazusae</i> (104), but merely
her name. (Our invariable rule is to quote from Burmann’s
edition of Aristophanes.) I am doubtful as to
whether Musaeus should be counted among writers on the
Erotic postures. Martial, XII., 97 recommends Instantius
Rufus to read his (Musaeus’) books, as being of
the most advanced lasciviousness, vying with those of the
Sybarites in obscenity and full of the most suggestive and
spicy wit; warning him at the same time to have his
girl ready to hand, if he did not want his hands to perform
the wedding-march and consummate the marriage
without a woman at all.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Athenaeus</i>, XIV., 13: “Also the Ionic dialect has
to show the poems of Sotades and the “Ionic” poems
preceding his, those of Alexander the Aetolian, and Pyres
of Miletus, and Alexis, and others of the same class. The
last mentioned is known as the Cinaedologue. But in
this <i>genre</i> the most eminent writer is Sotades, of Maroneia,
as is stated by Carystius of Pergamus in his work on
Sotades, and by Apollonius, Sotades’ son, who also wrote
a work on his father’s poems. “His end was a miserable
one. Having assailed Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of
Egypt, with witticisms too independent for the sensitive
ears of princes, the king caused him to be enclosed in a
leaden casket, and thrown into the sea.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Who were these “maids of Didymus.” Nobody
knows. Failing any more plausible supposition, it may
very well be conjectured that among the four thousand
works written according to Seneca (Letter LXXX.-VIII.)
by the Grammarian Didymus, there was one on the
postures of lascivious girls, worthy to be named side by
side with the treatises of Elephantis. Undoubtedly a man
who devoted himself to such subtile questions as whether
Anacreon was more libertine than drunkard, whether
Sappho was a public woman or not, was quite likely to
discuss the Erotic postures.
.pm fn-end

.tb

Moreover amongst our predecessors was
.bn 023.png
.pn +1
the famous Pietro Aretino[#], a man of an
almost divine genius, whom ill-natured report
represents as having illustrated sixteen plates
painted by Julio Romano and engraved on
copper by Marc-Antonio with verses indecent
beyond all expression; Lorenzo Veniero again[#],
a Venetian nobleman, author of a little
.bn 024.png
.pn +1
work in Italian, bearing the title <i>La Puttana
Errante</i> (The Wandering Whore), in which
he has undertaken to specify no less than thirty-five
modes of loving. Lastly there was Nicolas
Chorier, a French lawyer, who under the
name of Aloysia Sigaea, a young Spanish lady,
has given us the <i>Satirae Sotadicae de arcanis
Amoris et Veneris</i> (Sotadic Satires on the
Secret Rites of Love and Venus); though the
book also appears under the name of Joannes
Meursius with the title <i>Elegantiae Latini Sermonis</i>
(Graces of Latin Prose). In this book
you do not know which to admire most, the
style at once elegant, correct and careful, yet
free from pedantry, the wit equally gay and
graceful, the brilliant sparks of Latin erudition
that glitter everywhere, the rich and copious
eloquence graced as with jewels by polished
and luminous words and phrases of a
pleasant antique flavour, or lastly the pre-eminent
.bn 025.png
.pn +1
skill displayed in varying with such
manifold versatility one simple theme. The
others we need not mention further.

.pm fn-start
See <i>Bayle’s</i> Dictionary, article: <i>Pierre Arétin</i>; also
Murr’s <i>Journal zur Kunstgeschichte</i> (Year-Book of the
History of Art), vol. XIV., pp. 1-72.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Pierre Bayle</i>, in his Dictionary, under <i>Pierre Arétin</i>:
“There is a <i>Dialogue between Maddalena and Giulia</i>,
entitled <i>La Puttana Errante</i> (The wandering whore), in
which are exhaustively treated <i>i diversi congiungimenti</i>
(the different modes of intercourse), to the number of
thirty-five. Aretino, though the book has always been
printed under his name, disowns it, declaring it to be the
work of one of his pupils named Veniero.” <i>Brunet</i>, Manual
du Libraire (Book dealer’s Handbook). “The <i>Puttana
errante</i>, a little book, very rare, quite worthy of Aretino
in view of the obscenities it contains, but which has
been erroneously attributed to him. Lorenzo Veniero, a
Venetian nobleman, is the real author. He published it
to avenge himself on a Venetian courtesan named Angela,
whom he designates under the insulting name of Zaffetta,
that is to say, in the Venetian dialect, daughter of a police-spy.”

[<i>Bayle</i>, <i>Forberg</i> and many other writers have confused
the <i>Puttana errante</i>, a poem by Lorenzo Veniero and a
burlesque parody of the Romances of chivalry, with the
<i>Dialogue between Maddalena and Giulia</i>, a prose work
to which the Elzevirs gave the title properly belonging to
the poem. Neither one nor the other is the work of
Pietro Aretino. See note at end of vol. VI. of the <i>Dialogues
du divin Pietro Aretino</i> (Dialogues of the divine
Pietro Aretino), Paris, Liseux, 1879, 3 vols. 18°, and
London, 1880, 3 vols. 18°. [Note of French Translation
of Forberg, <i>Manuel d’Erotologie classique</i>, Paris, Liseux,
1882.]]
.pm fn-end

Our predecessors, whether the more modern,
or those of Antiquity whom we have
cited, and all whose works alas! envious time
has robbed us of, did not lack severe critics,
nor yet studious readers. And our own treatise
will no doubt in its turn meet with both these
classes. It is a man’s book; we have written it,
fearless of censure, for men,—not for such as
are wont with growning brow “to pitchfork
nature out of doors”, but rather for such as
have once for all dared to live their lives, who
neither wish to lurk in darkness nor yet to defy
the open day with effrontery, in one word for
those who think that in Love as in all else the
golden mean is the course to choose. Let
others go their way, and arrogate to themselves
the title of sages!
.bn 026.png
.pn +1

.tb
.dc 0.25 0.65
THE work of Venus may be accomplished
with or without the help of
the <i>mentula</i> (virile member). If
with the mentula, the friction of
this organ, in which friction the whole pleasure
consists, can be effected either in the <i>vulva</i>
(female organ), in the <i>anus</i> (arse-hole), in
the mouth, by the hand or in any cavity of the
body. If without the mentula, the vulva may
be worked either with the tongue, with the
clitoris, or with any object resembling the
virile organ.
.bn 027.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - THE Metamorphoses Of Venus
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch01
CHAPTER I||<s>OF COPULATION</s>
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
AND first of all let us consider what is
accomplished by means of the mentula
introduced into the vulva.
This is, properly speaking, to effect copulation;
but there are various ways of doing it.
As a matter of fact copulation can be effected:—the
man face downwards with the woman
on her back, the man on his back with the
woman face down, the man on his back with
the woman turning her back to him; the man
sitting with the woman turning her face towards
him, sitting with the woman turning
her back to him; the man standing or kneeling
with the woman turning her face towards
him, standing or kneeling with the woman
turning her back to him. Let us examine each
of these methods separately.
.bn 028.png
.pn +1

Coition with the man face down on the woman
who lies on her back is the ordinary
method, and the most natural.

Aloysia Sigaea says:
.pm quote-start
“For my own part I like the usual custom
and the ordinary method best: the man should
lie upon the woman, who is on her back,
breast to breast, stomach to stomach, pubis to
pubis, piercing her tender cleft with his rigid
spear. Indeed what can be imagined sweeter
than for the woman to lie extended on her
back, bearing the welcome weight of her
lovers’ body, and exciting him to the tender
transports of a restless but delicious voluptuousness?
What more pleasant than to feast on
her lovers’ face, his kisses, his sighs, and the
fire of his wanton eyes? What better than to
press the loved one in her arms and so awake
new fires of desire, to participate in amorous
sensations unblunted by any taint of age or
infirmity? What more favorable to the delight
and enjoyment of both than such lascivious
movements given and received? What
more opportune at the instant of dying a
voluptuous death than to recover again under
the revivifying vigour of burning kisses? He
.bn 029.png
.pn +1
who plies Venus on the reverse side, satisfies
but one of his senses, he who does the same
face to face satisfied them all.” (Dialogue VI.)
.pm quote-end

Ovid, the Master of Loves’ Mysteries, invites
pretty women to take this posture by
preference:

.pm quote-start
“See you reckon up each of your charms,
and take your posture according to your
beauty. One and the same mode does not become
every woman. You are especially attractive
of face; then lie on your back.” (<i>Art
of Love</i>, III., 771-773.)
.pm quote-end

This posture is by no means limited to one
mode. The woman lying on her back, the
rider may clasp her between his legs, or she
may receive him between hers. Yet another
position may be adopted, according as the
woman lie back with legs stretched wide
apart or with the knees raised.

It is this position,—lying on her back with
legs wide apart, that Caviceo asks Olympia
to assume for making Love:

.pm quote-start
“I do not wish you”, he says, “to work
your buttocks, or to respond with corresponding
movements to my efforts. Neither do I
.bn 030.png
.pn +1
wish you to lift your legs up, whether both at
once, or one after the other, when I have
mounted you. What I do wish you to do is
this: First stretch your thighs as far apart,
open them as wide as a woman well can. Offer
your vulva to the member which is going
to pierce it, and without altering this position,
let <i>me</i> complete the work.... Count my thrusts
one by one, and see you make no mistake in
the total” (Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue V.).
.pm quote-end

Would you see a representation of this?
Take the tale <i>Félicia ou mes fredaines</i>, part
II., ch. xxv, and look at the plate facing the
text.

The other position, in which the woman is
lying with her knees raised, is the one which
Callias makes Tullia take:

.pm quote-start
“After I am lying upon your dear body”,
he says, “press me fast in your arms, and hold
me thus embraced. Draw your legs back as
far as you can, so that your pretty feet touch
your buttocks, smooth as marble” (Aloysia
Sigaea, Dialogue VI.).
.pm quote-end

If you would enter the woman lying on
her back with her legs in the air, it may be
done in yet another way than Tullia’s mode,
.bn 031.png
.pn +1
and one perhaps still more delicious, by placing
your mistress so that she rests her legs
crossed over the loins of her rider. A representation
of this very pleasant posture, which
would rouse the numbed tool of a Hippolytus,
is to be found in part IV. of the <i>Félicia</i> mentioned
above. There is another similar plate
in ch. xxi, not without charm. Doris, in the
epigram of Sosipator, vol. I. of the <i>Analecta</i>
of Brunck (p. 584), seems also to have made
a trial of this figure:

.pm quote-start
“When I stretched Doris with the rosy buttocks
on the bed, I felt immortal in my youthful
vigour; for she clipped me round the middle
with her strong legs, and unswervingly
rode out the long-course of Love.”
.pm quote-end

Doris did not bestride him; the expression,
“When I stretched” shows this; she was lying
on her back, and with her feet lifted up
clasped her rider.

But again the feet of the woman lying on
her back may also be held up by others. In
this way Aloysio enjoyed Tullia with the help
of Fabrizio, in the VI. Dialogue of Aloysia
Sigaea, where Tullia expresses herself as follows:
.bn 032.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“Aloysio and Fabrizio come running towards
me. “Lift up your legs”, says Aloysio
to me, threatening me with his cutlass. I lifted
them up. Then down he lies on my bosom,
and plunges his cutlass in my ever open
wound. Fabrizio raised my two legs in the
air, and slipping a hand under each of my
hams, moves my loins for me without any
trouble on my part. What a singular and
pleasant mode of making you move! I declared
I was on fire, but before I could end
my sentence, the overflowing foam of Venus
quenched the fire”[#].
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
This method was not unknown at the time of
Aristophanes, as we see from the following passage of
the <i>Peace</i>:

.pm quote-start
“So that you may straightway, lifting up the girl’s
legs, accomplish high in air the mysteries” (v. 889,
890).
.pm quote-end

And in the <i>Birds</i> he says:

.pm quote-start
“For this girl, your first messenger, why! I will lift
up her legs and will in between her thighs” (v. 1254,
55).
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

So too was it with feet in air, whether of
her own accord or seconded by another, that
Leda gave herself, with her husband’s consent,
to the doctors who had been called in,
as Martial describes the scene:
.bn 033.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“To her old spouse Leda had declared herself
to be hysterical, and complains she must
needs be f...cked; yet with tears and groans
avers she will not buy health at such a price,
and swears she had rather die. The husband
beseeches her to live, not to die in her youth
and beauty; and permits others to do what he
cannot effect himself. Straightway the doctors
arrive, the matrons retire; and up go the
wife’s legs in air; oh! medicine grave and
stern!” (XI., 72.)
.pm quote-end

Face downwards to her the man may do
the woman’s business, while she is half reclining,
either obliquely in bed, or on a chair,
or lying sideways.

The latter position is recommended by
Ovid to the woman with rounded thighs and
faultless figure:

.pm quote-start
“She that has young rounded thigh and
flawless bosom, should ever lie reclined sideways
on the couch”[#] (<i>Art of Love</i>, II., v. 781, 782).
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Readers will find another figure given in some of
the books: “The man should be standing, while the
woman reclines sideways on the bed.”
.pm fn-end
.bn 034.png
.pn +1

Copulation face to face with the woman
sitting obliquely is described by Aloysia
Sigaea with her usual elegance and vivacity:

.pm quote-start
“Caviceo came on, blithe and joyous” (it is
Olympia speaking). “He despoils me of my
chemise, and his libertine hand touches my
parts. He tells me to sit down again as I was
seated before, and places a chair under either
foot in a way that my legs were lifted high
in air, and the gate of my garden was wide
open to the assaults I was expecting. He then
slides his right hand under my buttocks and
draws me a little closer to him. With his left
he supported the weight of his spear. Then
he laid himself down on me ... put his battering-ram
to my gate, inserted the head of his
member into the outermost fissure, opening
the lips of it with his fingers. But there he
stopped, and for awhile made no further attack.
“Octavia sweetest”, he says, “clasp me
tightly, raise your right thigh and rest it on
my side.”—“I do not know what you want”,
I said. Hearing this he lifted my thigh with
his own hand, and guided it round his loin,
as he wished; finally he forced his arrow into
the target of Venus. In the beginning he
.bn 035.png
.pn +1
pushes in with gentle blows, then quicker,
and at last with such force I could not doubt
that I was in great danger. His member was
hard as horn, and he forced it in so cruelly,
that I cried out, “You will tear me to pieces.”
He stopped a moment from his work. “I implore
you to be quiet, my dear”, he said, “it
can only be done this way; endure it without
flinching.” Again his hand slid under my
buttocks, drawing me nearer, for I had made
a feint to draw back, and without more delay
plied me with such fast and furious blows that
I was near fainting away. With a violent effort
he forced his spear right in, and the point
fixed itself in the depths of the wound. I cry
out.... Caviceo spirted out his venerean exudation,
and I felt irrigated by a burning rain....
Just as Caviceo slackened, I experienced a
sort of voluptuous itch as though I were making
water; involuntarily I draw my buttocks
back a little, and in an instant I felt with supreme
pleasure something flowing from me
which tickled me deliciously. My eyes failed
me, my breath came thick, my face was
on fire, and I felt my whole body melting.
“Ah! ah! ah! my Caviceo, I shall faint
.bn 036.png
.pn +1
away”, I cried; “hold my soul—it is escaping
from my body” (Dialogue V.).
.pm quote-end

Finally the conjunction with the woman
lying on her side, particularly on her right
side, is deemed by Ovid the most simple, calling
for the least effort:

.pm quote-start
“A thousand modes of Love are there; the
simplest and least laborious of all is when the
woman lies reclined on her right side” (<i>Art
of Love</i>, III., 787, 88).
.pm quote-end

Above all this position is the most convenient
for tall women:

.pm quote-start
“Let her press the bed with her knees, with
the neck slightly bowed, she whose chief
beauty is her long shapely flank” (<i>Art of
Love</i>, III., v. 779, 80).
.pm quote-end

It seems that the Phyllis of Martial allowed
herself to be done in that way:

.pm quote-start
“Two arrived in the morning, who wanted
to lie with Phyllis, and each was fain to be
first to hold her naked body in his arms;
Phyllis promised to satisfy them both together,
and she did it; one lifted her leg, the
other her tunic” (X., 81).
.pm quote-end

She was lying on her side; the f... lifted her
leg; the pederast her tunic.
.bn 037.png
.pn +1

We now come to the manner, in which the
man lying on his back has connection with
the woman face downwards. The parts are
interchanged; the woman plays the rider and
the man the horse. This figure was called the
horse of Hector.

Martial says:

.pm quote-start
“Behind the doors the Phrygian slaves
would be masturbating, every time Andromaché
mounted her Hector horse fashion” (XI., 105).
.pm quote-end

Ovid, however, with much sagacity denies
that this posture could have pleased Andromaché;
her figure was too tall, for this to have
been agreeable or even possible for her. It is
for little women, that it is pleasant to be thus
placed:

.pm quote-start
“A little woman may very well get astride
on her horse; but tall and majestic as she was,
the Theban bride never mounted the Hectorean
horse” (<i>Art of Love</i>, III., v. 777, 778).
.pm quote-end

It is no business of ours to decide the question.

At any rate Sempronia takes this posture
with Crisogono.

.pm quote-start
“He could wait no longer: “Are you undressed”,
.bn 038.png
.pn +1
said Crisogono. “Now, my Sempronia,
take the position, which gives me so
much pleasure, you know which.” He
stretches himself down on his back, she gets
upon him astride, with her face towards him,
and with her own hand guides his burning
arrow between her thighs” (Aloysia Sigaea,
Dial. VII).
.pm quote-end

This is the same attitude, which in Horace
is imposed by the slave upon the little harlot,
who:

.pm quote-start
“... naked in the light of the lantern, plied
with wanton wiles and moving buttocks the
horse beneath her” (Sat. II. vii, v. 50).
.pm quote-end

As to the matron spoken of v. 64 of the same
satire as “never having sinned <i>above</i>”, no
doubt this posture did not suit her. Women
have not all the same taste.

Evidently, it was as little to the taste of the
girl whom Xanthias in Aristophanes’ <i>Wasps</i>
(v. 499) asked to ride him; for she asks him
indignantly, and playing on the double meaning
of the word (Hippias and ——, a horse),
if he was for re-establishing Hippias’
tyranny: “Irritated she asked me if I wanted
to revive the tyranny of Hippias.”
.bn 039.png
.pn +1

Again in his <i>Lysistrata</i> (v. 678) this master
of wanton wit points to the same thing, declaring
the female sex to be very good at riding
and fond of driving: “Woman loves to
get on horseback and to stick there.”

Aristophanes mocks similarly those, of
whom he says, in verse 60 of the same play,
that “They are aboard their barks.” “They
are mounted on their chargers.” For —— signifies
both a ship and a horse. Plango in
Asclepiades, Brunck’s <i>Analecta</i>, vol. I., 217,
affects the same figure.

.pm quote-start
“When she in horsemanship vanquished the
ardent Philaenis, whilst her Hesperian
coursers foamed under her reins.”
.pm quote-end

Yet more expert in this kind of amorous
riding than Philaenis herself, this ardent votary
of pleasure thanks Venus in this epigram,
that she has been able so to exhaust certain
Hesperian gallants, whom she had mounted,
that they had left her with wanton members
all drooping, and feeling no desire left in
them. To bestride men was also the favourite
pastime of Lysidicé, who was never tired in
the service of Venus, of whom the following
epigram of Asclepiades treats:
.bn 040.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“Many a horse has she ridden beneath her,
yet never galled her thigh with all her nimble
movements.”
.pm quote-end

Courtesans consecrated to Venus a whip, a
bit, a spur, in order to signify, that with their
clients they like best to pose themselves in that
way, and that they preferred riding themselves
to being ridden,—nothing more.

It is the same when in Apuleius, Fotis
satiated her Lucius with the pleasures of the
undulating Venus:

.pm quote-start
“Saying this she leaped upon the couch
and, seated upon me backwards, plying her
hips, vibrating her lithe spine lasciviously,
she satiated me with the delights of the undulating
Venus, till both of us exhausted,
powerless and with useless limbs, sunk down,
exhaling our souls in mutual embraces”
(<i>Metamorph.</i>, II., ch. <sc>II</sc>).
.pm quote-end

The next figure,—the man lying supine and
the woman turning her back to him, is executed
by Rangoni with Ottavia, under the direction
of Tullia:

.pm quote-start
<sc>Rangoni</sc>: Look how stiff I stand! But I
want to try the bliss in a new way.

<sc>Tullia</sc>: In a new way? No! I swear by
.bn 041.png
.pn +1
my wanton soul you shall not. You shall not
take a new way.

<sc>Rangoni</sc>: It was a slip of the tongue; I
meant to say a new posture.

<sc>Tullia</sc>: And what sort of one? I have an
idea ... what they call the horse of Hector.
Lie down on your back, Rangoni; let your
puissant spear stand firm to the enemy, who
is to be pierced, Well done!

<sc>Ottavia</sc>: What must I do, Tullia?

<sc>Tullia:</sc> Clip Rangoni between your
thighs, mounting him a-straddle. His cutlass
as he lies should meet your sheath poised over
it. Why! you’ve taken the position admirably.
Excellent!

<sc>Rangoni</sc>: Oh! what a back, worthy of Venus!
Oh! the ivory sides! Oh! the inviting
buttocks!

<sc>Tullia</sc>: No naughty words! He who
praises the buttocks, slanders the vulva! You
know better, Ottavia! Her greedy vulva has
swallowed your bristling member whole,
Rangoni.

<sc>Ottavia</sc>: Quick, Rangoni, it is coming!...
quick, quick, help me!

<sc>Rangoni</sc>: I am coming, Ottavia,—I am
.bn 042.png
.pn +1
come! Are you?—Are you, darling!

<sc>Tullia</sc>: How now? Are you so quickly
done up, you two? (Aloysia Sigaea, Dial.
VI).
.pm quote-end

The pygiacic[#] mysteries, to which Eumolpus
in Petronius (Satires, ch. cxl), invites
a young girl, refer to the posture practised
by the man lying on his back, with the
woman upon him, her back turned towards
him.

.pm fn-start
From —— buttock.
.pm fn-end

.pm quote-start
“Eumolpus did not hesitate to invite the
young girl to the pygiacic mysteries, but
begged of her to seat herself upon the goodness
known to her (that being himself, to
whose goodness the mother had recommended
her daughter), and ordered Corax to get on
his stomach under the bed on which he was,
so that with his hands pressed against the
floor, he might assist with his movements
those of his master. Corax obeyed, beginning
with slow undulations responding to those of
the young girl. When the crisis was approaching,
Eumolpus exhorted Corax with a
loud voice to quicken up his movements.
Thus placed between his servant and his mistress,
.bn 043.png
.pn +1
the old man took his pleasure as in a
swing.”
.pm quote-end

Would it be surprising, if in these posterior
mysteries, Eumolpus’ member had perchance
gone wrong, and taken by mistake one orifice
for the other?

You will find this figure represented in a
copper-plate engraving in the very elegant
book of d’Hancarville, <i>Monuments du culte
secret des dames romaines</i>, ch. xxv, and you
will be glad to know the note, with which the
learned annotator accompanies the same.

.pm quote-start
“This attitude is to the taste of many men,
and even the ladies find an increase of pleasure
in practising it. It is supposed, that
Priapus penetrates farther in, and that the
fair one by her movements procures for herself
a more voluptuous delight, and a more
abundant libation.”
.pm quote-end

Is it possible for the man, conveniently, to
manage the business while turning his back
to the woman lying on her back? Experts
must decide. Aloysia Sigaea says with good
common sense:

.pm quote-start
“There are many postures it is impossible
to execute, even supposing the joints and loins
.bn 044.png
.pn +1
of the candidates for the sacred joys of Venus
more flexible than can be believed. By dint of
pondering and reflection more ideas occur to
the fancy than it is practicable to realize:
Nothing is inconceivable to the longings of
an unbridled will; nothing difficult to a furious
and unregulated imagination. Love will
find out a way; and an ardent fancy level
mountains. Only the body is unable to
comply with everything the mind, good or
bad, suggests.”
.pm quote-end

In another work of d’Hancarville’s, <i>Monuments
de la vie privée des douze Césars</i>, plate
XXVII., you find represented men seated and
copulating with women, who are facing
them; plate XV., in the same book presents to
your curiosity a man sitting and working a
woman, who turns her back on him. Augustus
is seated: he is attacking backwards, with
true imperial audacity, Terentia[#], the
.bn 045.png
.pn +1
wife of Maecenas, after drawing her onto his
lap; Maecenas is present, asleep—asleep of
course only for the Emperor. You may see a
similar posture in the <i>Contes et Nouvelles en
vers</i> by Jean de la Fontaine: it is on the plate
appended to the tale, called <i>Le Tableau</i>, p.
223, vol. II., Amsterdam, 1762.

.pm fn-start
Dio Cassius, LIV., 19: “He was so fond of her,
that one day he matched her against Livia, as to which
of them was the most beautiful.” It was no bad idea
to engage them in such a match, but think you he suffered
them to fight this out in any costume but that in
which the Goddesses three presented themselves before
the dazed eyes of Paris?
.pm fn-end

Nothing is more frequent than conjunction
whilst standing, the woman with her back to
the man; it is indeed very easy to do it that
way in any place, as you have only to lift up
the fair one’s petticoats, and out with your
weapon; it is, therefore, the best manner for
those who have to make instantaneous use of
an opportunity, when it is important to be
sharp about it, as may happen, when you take
your pleasure in secret. Thus Priapus complains
of the wives and daughters of his
neighbors, who came incessantly to him burning
with ticklish desires.

.pm quote-start
“Cut off my genital member, which every
night and all night long my neighbours’ wives
and daughters, for ever and for ever in heat,
more wanton than sparrows in springtide, tire
to death,—or I shall burst!...” (<i>Priapeia</i>, XXV).
.pm quote-end
.bn 046.png
.pn +1

I remember a medical man of our time, one
of the most celebrated professors, (I had
nearly uttered his name), who to emphasize
this, called his daughter, and pointing to the
blushing girl, while his hearers could not help
smiling said: “This girl I fabricated standing.”
A representation of this position is to
be found in the <i>Monuments de la vie privée
de douze Césars</i>, pl. XLVI., and another in
the <i>Monuments du culte secrets des dames
romaines</i>, pl. XIII.

But further, a man may join himself to a
woman standing face to face by supporting
her in such a way, that her whole body is
lifted up, her thighs resting on the man’s hips,
or else by lifting up the lower part of her
body, whilst the upper part is resting on a
couch. Will you feast your eyes with a representation
of this not ungraceful position? If
so you will not omit to look at plate XXIV of
the <i>Monuments du culte secret des dames
romaines</i>, and plate XL of the <i>Monuments de
la vie privée des douze Césars</i>; Ovid, if I am
not mistaken, had his eyes on one or the other
of these figures:

.pm quote-start
“Milanion was supporting Atalanta’s legs
.bn 047.png
.pn +1
on his shoulders; if they are fine legs this is
how they should be held” (<i>Art of Love</i>, III.,
vv. 775, 776). The former of these modes is
no doubt that described by Aloysia Sigaea,
Past Mistress of these naughtinesses, and with
a vivacity, a grace, and elegance that leaves
nothing to be desired:

“La Tour came forward instantly.... I had
thrown myself on the foot of the bed”—(Tullia
is speaking)—“I was naked; his
member was erect. Without more ado he
grasps in either hand one of my breasts, and
brandishing his hard and inflamed lance between
my thighs, exclaims “Look Madam,
how this weapon is darting at you, not to
kill you, but to give you the greatest possible
pleasure. Pray, guide this blind applicant
into the dark recess, so that it may not miss
its destination; I will not remove my hands
from where they are, I would not deprive
them of the bliss they enjoy.” I do as he
wishes, I introduce myself the flaming dart
into the burning centre; he feels it, drives in,
pushes home.... After one or two strokes I felt
myself melting away with incredible titillation,
and my knees all but gave way. “Stop”,
.bn 048.png
.pn +1
I cried—“stop my soul, it is escaping!” “I
know”, he replied, laughing, “from where.
No doubt your soul wants to escape through
this lower orifice, of which I have possession;
but I keep it well stoppered.” Whilst speaking
he endeavoured, by holding his breath,
still further to increase the already enormous
size of his swollen member. “I am going to
thrust back your escaping soul”, he added,
poking me more and more violently. His
sword pierced yet deeper into the quick. Redoubling
his delicious blows, he filled me with
transports of pleasure,—working so forcefully
that, albeit he could not get his whole
body into me, he impregnated me with all his
passion, all his lascivious desires, his very
thoughts, his whole delirious soul by his voluptuous
embraces. At last feeling the approach
of the ecstasy and the boiling over of
the liquid, he slips his hands under my buttocks,
and lifts me up bodily. I do my part;
I twine my arms closely round his form, my
thighs and legs being at the same time inter-twisted
and entangled with his, so that I found
myself suspended on his neck in the air, lifted
clean off the ground; I was thus hanging, as
.bn 049.png
.pn +1
it were, fixed on a peg. I had not the patience
to wait for him, as he was going on, and again
I swooned with pleasure. In the most violent
raptures I could not help crying out—“I feel
all ... I feel all the delights of Juno lying with
Jupiter. I am in heaven.” At this moment
La Tour, pushed by Venus and Cupido to the
acmé of voluptuousness, poured a plenteous
flood of his well into the genial hold, burning
like fire. The creeper does not cling more
closely round the walnut tree than I hold fast
to La Tour with my arms and legs” (Dial. VI).
.pm quote-end

As to the last manner by means of which
copulation may be achieved, the man standing
with the woman half lifted up, Conrad
practises it with slight modifications.

.pm quote-start
(<sc>Tullia</sc> speaking): “He opened my
thighs—I do not dislike Conrad, though I am
not particularly partial to him. I neither consented,
nor refused. As to him, he fancied a
novel posture, and not at all a bad one. I was
lying on my back; he raised my right thigh
on his shoulder, and in this position he transfixed
me, while I was awaiting the event,
without greatly desiring it. He had at the
.bn 050.png
.pn +1
same time extended my left thigh along his
right thigh. His tool plunged into the root,
he began to push and poke, quicker and
quicker. What need to say more? Picture the
conclusion for yourself” (Dial. VI).
.pm quote-end

Last of all, a man can get into a woman
turning her back to him after the manner of
the quadrupeds, who can have no connection
with their females otherwise than by mounting
upon them from behind[#]. Some authorities
have held that a woman conceives
easier while on all fours. Lucretius says:

.pm quote-start
“... Women are said to conceive more readily
when down after the manner of beasts, as
the organs can absorb the seed best so, when
the bosom is depressed and the loins lifted”
(<i>Of the Nature of Things</i>, IV., vv. 1259-1262).
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Pliny has treated this at great length in his
<i>Natural History</i> (Book X., ch. 63).
.pm fn-end

Also Aloysia Sigaea:

.pm quote-start
“Some people pretend that the fashion to
make love indicated by Nature is that one
where the woman offers herself for copulation
after the manner of the animals, bent down
with the hips raised; the virile ploughshare
.bn 051.png
.pn +1
penetrates thus more conveniently into the female
furrow, and the seminal flow waters the
field of love.... The doctors, however, are
against this posture; they say it is incompatible
with the conformation of the parts
destined for generation.” (Dial. VI.)
.pm quote-end

However this may be, it happens frequently,
that women cannot be managed in any
other way. Given an obese man and a woman
likewise obese or with child, how are they to
do the thing otherwise? This is the reason
why, so they say, Augustus having married
Livia Drusilla, divorced wife of Tiberius
Nero and already six months gone in pregnancy,
had connection with her after the manner
of animals. Plate VII of the <i>Monuments
de la vie privée des douze Césars</i> will give
you an idea of the posture assumed by both
of them. But why should we not give you
the annotations whereby the learned editor
has elucidated the plate? Here they are:

.pm quote-start
“This Drusilla was the famous Livia, the
wife of Tiberius Nero, who had been one of
Anthony’s friends. Augustus fell violently in
love with her, and Tiberius gave her up to
him, although she was at the time six months
.bn 052.png
.pn +1
with child. A good many jokes were made
about the eagerness of the Emperor, and one
day, while they were all at table, and Livia
was reclining by Augustus, one of those naked
children, whom matrons used to educate for
their pleasures, going up to Livia said:
“What are you doing here? yonder is your
husband”, pointing to Nero, “there he is”[#].
Soon afterwards Livia was confined,
and the Romans said openly, that lucky people
get children three months after being
married, which passed into a proverb. One
historian says that Augustus was obliged to
caress his wife “after the manner of beasts”
on account of her pregnancy, and it was to
this luxurious attitude that the cameo of
Apollonius, the celebrated gem-cutter of the
time of Augustus, makes allusion. True that
the state in which Livia was may have made
this posture necessary: but it seems that it
was at all times to the taste of the Ancients,
either because they considered this attitude
favorable for procreation, as Lucretius
maintains, or because they found it to be a
refinement of voluptuousness. The most extraordinary
.bn 053.png
.pn +1
and least natural postures have
always appeared to rakes as enhancing the
pleasure of the conjunction. But it must be
admitted that imagination still outruns actual
possibilities.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Compare Dio Cassius, bk. XLVIII., ch. 44.
.pm fn-end

A singular reason for the necessity of encountering
a woman backwards is given by
Aloysia Sigaea, with her usual sagacity:

.pm quote-start
“For pleasure, one likes a vulva which is
not placed too far back, so as to be entirely
hidden by the thighs; it should not be more
than nine or ten inches from the navel. With
the greater number of girls the pubis goes so
far down, that it may easily be taken as the
other way of pleasure. With such coition is
difficult. Theodora Aspilqueta could not be
deflowered, till she placed herself prone on
her stomach, with her knees drawn up to her
sides. Vainly had her husband tried to manage
her, while lying on her back, he only
lost his oil” (Dialogue VII).
.pm quote-end

Ovid recommends this way with women
who begin to be wrinkled:

.pm quote-start
“Likewise you, whose stomach Lucina has
marked with wrinkles, mount from behind,
.bn 054.png
.pn +1
like the flying Parthian with his steed” (<i>Art
of Love</i>, III., v. 785, 86).
.pm quote-end

The same advice also seems to be given by
him a little before:

.pm quote-start
“Let them be seen from behind whose backs are sightly” (v. 774).
.pm quote-end

But besides necessity, it is a fact that
women are worked in this way out of mere
caprice, variety offering the greatest pleasure.
It is simply for this reason that Tullia suffers
Fabrizio to do her that way, in Aloysia
Sigaea:

.pm quote-start
“As Aloysio got up” (Tullia speaks)
“Fabrizio makes ready for another attack.
His member is swollen up, red and threatening.
“I beg of you “Madam”, he says, “turn
over on your face.” I did as he wished.
When he saw my buttocks, whiter than ivory
and snow, “How beautiful you are!” he
cried. “But raise yourself on your knees
and bend your head down.” I bow my head
and bosom, and lift my buttocks. He thrust
his swift-moving and fiery dart to the bottom
of my vulva, and took one of my nipples in
either hand. Then he began to work in and
out, and soon sent a sweet rivulet into the
.bn 055.png
.pn +1
cavity of Venus. I also felt unspeakable delight,
and had nearly fainted with lust. A
surprising quantity of seed secreted by Fabrizio’s
loins filled and delighted me; a similar
flow of my own exhausted my forces. In
that single assault I lost more vigour than in
the three preceding ones” (Dialogue VI.)[#].
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
The thing itself is very old; Aristophanes alludes
to it in the <i>Peace</i>:

.pm quote-start
“To wrestle on the ground, to stand on all fours” (v. 896).
.pm quote-end

And in the <i>Lysistrata</i>:

.pm quote-start
“I will not squat down like a lioness carved on a
knife-handle” (v. 231).
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

This copulation from the back is practicable
in another very pleasant fashion, an excellent
reproduction of which can be seen
in the <i>Monument du culte secret des dames
romaines</i>, plate XXVIII. A woman is
represented with her hands placed on the
ground, while the lower part of the body
is lifted up and suspended by cords; she is
turning her back to the man who stands.
This seems to be much the same position as
was taken up by the wife of the artisan Apuleius
.bn 056.png
.pn +1
speaks of in his <i>Metamorphoses</i> (book
IX), whom “bending over her, the lover
planed with his adze, while she leant forward
over a cask.” An engraving showing this ingenious
attitude is appended to the story of
<i>The Tub</i> in the <i>Contes et Nouvelles en vers</i>
of Jean de La Fontaine, vol. II., p. 215.
.bn 057.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - <s>OF COPULATION</s>
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch02
CHAPTER II||<s>ON PEDICATION</s>
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
SO much for copulation in the normal
way. We will now discuss
another mode of pleasure,—that
due to introduction of the member into the
anus. A man who exercises his member in
the anus, be it of a man or a woman, pedicates;
he is called a pederast, pedicon,
drawk[#], and the other party, who allows
himself to be invaded in that way, is called
the patient, cinaedus, catamite[#], minion,
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
effeminate; if adult or worn out, he is named
exolete. The masculine pleasure (so called
because women allowed themselves much
more rarely to be pedicated than men) is appreciated
equally by the active party, the
pedicon, as by the passive party, the patient.
The pleasure of the pedicon is easy to understand,
as the enjoyment of the virile member
consists in the intensity of the friction; the
pleasure felt by the patient by the introduction
of the member in his entrails is more
difficult to make out,—at least for my feeble
intelligence, for such practices are quite
strange to me. Do not believe, however, that
the pleasure of the patient is only secondary,
nor yet that he prostitutes himself only in
order to do the same afterwards himself, nor
that he remedies in this way the sluggishness
of his own member by the vigorous working
of another man’s nerve causing a pleasurable
titillation of the posterior, analogous to that
which Antonius Panormitanus (<i>Hermaphroditus</i>,
I., 20), tells us may be produced by
inserting the fingers in the anus[#], or still
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
better, by beating the same locality with rods,
according to Aloysia Sigaea:

.pm quote-start
“Amongst the men of our acquaintance, I
have heard the Marquis Alfonso say that rods
act as spurs to the amorous battle; without
them he would be sluggish and impotent. He
has his buttocks flogged with rods vigorously,
his wife being present lying ready on the bed.
During the flagellation his tool begins to
stiffen, and the more violent the strokes are,
the stronger is the tension. When he feels
himself in proper condition, he precipitates
himself upon his wife, works her with rapid
movement, and inundates her with the heavenly
gifts of Venus and wins all the delights
a man may find in Love”[#] (Dialogue
V).
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Drawk</i>, from —, I work, execute; for <i>dravicus</i>,
as <i>cautus</i> for <i>cavitus</i>, <i>lautus</i> for <i>lavitus</i>.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Catamite according to Festus, is the same thing
as Ganymede, the minion of Jupiter; the Latins, by similar
corruption of words, pronounced <i>Proserpina</i> for
<i>Persephone</i>, <i>Aesculapius</i> for <i>Asclepios</i>, <i>Carthago</i> for
<i>Carchedo</i>, <i>Pollux</i> for <i>Polydeukes</i>, <i>Sybilla</i> for <i>Siobulé</i>,
<i>masturbare</i> for <i>manu stuprare</i>.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Thus Oenothea, to excite the lad’s feeble nerve,
pushes a leathern mentula (member) into Eucolpius’
anus (Petronius, 138): “Oenothea fetches a leathern contrivance;
this she first oiled and sprinkled with pepper
and crushed nettle-seeds, and then proceeded to push
little by little up my anus.” We shall have to speak in
chapter <sc>VI</sc> of another use of these leathern tools.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
According to the author of the <i>Gynaeology</i>
(German edition, vol. III., p. 392) there are to be
found at this day in the London brothels women who
make it their business to flagellate customers who desire
it.
.pm fn-end
.bn 060.png
.pn +1

What else was it but this that so stirred
Rousseau, the precocious genius of Geneva,
and his boyish member, and brought such
ideas into his head, when on one occasion
Mlle. Lambercier, cracking the whip upon
the buttocks of the child, inflicted that punishment,
which he afterwards was longing for
all the rest of his life? Hear him relate the
circumstance himself in his merry way and
with his habitual charm of style, in the first
book of the <i>Confessions</i>; we only omit small
matters, added by the immortal author for
the amplification of the narrative:

.pm quote-start
“As Mlle. Lambercier had for us the affection
of a mother, so she had the authority of
one, and she carried the latter so far as to
inflict upon us the punishment of children
when we had deserved it. For a long time
she only used threats, and such a threat of a
novel punishment seemed very dreadful to
me; but after the execution I found the experience
less terrible than the expectation, and
the oddest thing was, the punishment made
me more partial to her, who had inflicted it,
than I had been previously. I stood in fact
in need of all this affection for her and of all
.bn 061.png
.pn +1
my natural mildness, in order to hold back
from provoking the same punishment by acting
so as to deserve it, for I had found in the
pain, and even in the shame, a mixed feeling,
in which sensuality predominated, and which
left me with more desire than apprehension
of experiencing the same treatment over
again from the same hand. Who would believe
that this chastisement of a child eight
years old by the hand of a maiden of thirty
should have influenced my tastes, my longings,
my passions for the remainder of my
life? Tormented by I know not what, my
eye feasted ardently upon good-looking
females; they constantly came into my mind
doing to me as Mlle. Lambercier had done.
Imagining only what I had experienced, my
desires did not pass beyond the sort of voluptuous
feeling I had known already. In my
foolish fancies, in my erotic fury, in the extravagant
acts to which they incited me sometimes,
I borrowed in imagination the help of
the other sex, without ever dreaming it was
good for any other use than that which I
wanted to make of it. When in the course of
time I had grown up to manhood, my old taste
.bn 062.png
.pn +1
of childhood associated itself so much with
the other, that I never could divert the desires
which fired my senses; and this absurdity,
joined to my natural timidity, made me always
anything but enterprising with women,
as I dared not say all or could not do all I
wanted; the sort of enjoyment, of which the
other was for me but the last stage, could
neither be initiated by the one who longed
for it, nor guessed by the other who might
have granted it. Thus I have passed through
life coveting, yet not daring to tell the persons
I loved most what it was I coveted. Never
bold enough to declare my inclination, I
amused it as least by ideas in connection with
it. One may judge what such avowals must
have cost me, considering that all through my
life, seized in the presence of those I loved by
the fury of a passion which bereft me of voice,
hearing and sense, and made me tremble all
over convulsively, I never could venture to tell
them my folly, and ask them to add the one
familiarity which I wanted to the other ones.
I only got to it once in my childhood, with another
child of my age, and the proposal came
from her.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 063.png
.pn +1

However to return to our proper subject,
from which we have strayed. If pleasure felt
by the passive party cannot be conceived to be
of a kind, which through the anus is communicated
to the mentula (member), we must come
to the conclusion that the <i>patient</i> experiences
in the anus the same kind of irritation which
the other party feels in his genital parts; that,
therefore, the <i>patient</i> feels in that place a real
pleasure unknown to those who have not tried
it[#]. Martial at any rate speaks out without
any circumlocution of this rut of the anus:

.pm quote-start
“Of his anus, split to the naval, not a vestige
is left to Carinus; for all that he is in rut to the
very navel. Oh! the scurvy lot of the wretch!
Bottom he has none,—but he <i>will</i> be a cinede”
(VI., 37).
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
In order to appease the ardours of the anus, the
Siphnians (Siphnos, one of the Cyclades) were in the
habit of introducing a finger up the anus. The Greeks
called this proceeding to <i>siphnianize</i>. Suidas: <i>Siphnianize</i>,—to
finger the posterior.
.pm fn-end

An ardour of this strange sort even affected
Tullia, as she confesses herself in the pages of
Aloysia Sigaea:

.pm quote-start
“Seeing resistance was in vain, I yielded to
.bn 064.png
.pn +1
the madmen. Aloysio bends forward over my
buttocks, brings his javelin to the back-door,
knocks, pushes, finally with a mighty effort
bursts in. I gave a groan. Instantly he withdraws
his weapon from the wound, plunges it
in the vulva and spurts a flood of semen into
the wanton furrow of my womb. When all
was over, Fabrizio attacks me in the same
fashion. With one rapid thrust he introduced
his spear, and in less than no time made it disappear
in my entrails; for a little time he plays
at come and go, and scarce credible as it may
sound, I found myself invaded by a prurient
fury to such an extent that I have no doubt,
that I should get accustomed to it very well, if
I chose” (Dialogue VI).
.pm quote-end

Coelius Rhodiginus confirms this pruriency
of the anus in ch. 10. of XV. book of his
<i>Lectiones antiquae</i>.

.pm quote-start
“We know”, he says, “that the minions experience
a very great pleasure in undergoing
this shameful act.”
.pm quote-end

And he gives a reason for it, whether good
or bad the doctors may decide: “With people
whose seminal ducts are not in normal condition,
be it that those leading to the mentula are
.bn 065.png
.pn +1
paralysed, as is the case with eunuchs and the
like, or for any other reason, the seminal fluid
flows back to its source. If this fluid is very
abundant with them, it accumulates in great
quantities, and then the part where the secretion
is accumulated longs for friction. People
thus situated like above everything to play the
part of <i>patients</i>.”

Be this as it may, nothing is more certain
than the fact of such enjoyment on the part of
the <i>patient</i>. So highly did the Roman cinedes
prize a stiff member between their buttocks,
that they could not see a big mentula without
their mouths watering; they were ready to
give their last penny to enjoy the favours of a
man extraordinarily gifted in that way.

Juvenal, IX., v. 32-36:

.pm quote-start
“Destiny governs man; it influences the
parts, which the toga covers. If your star
pales, useless will be the length and strength
of your member to you,—even though Virro
shall have seen you naked with lips that
water.”
.pm quote-end

Martial, I., 97:

.pm quote-start
“He wants to know why I think he is a minion?
We bathe together; he never raises his
.bn 066.png
.pn +1
eyes, but gazes with devouring looks at the
sodomites; and cannot behold their members
without his lips trembling.”
.pm quote-end

And again, II., 51:

.pm quote-start
“Oftentimes you have no more than a single
penny in your box, and that penny more
worn than your anus, Hyllus; yet neither baker
nor wine shop will have it, but some man
who sports an enormous member. Your unfortunate
belly must starve for your anus;
while the latter devours, the former is famished.”
.pm quote-end

It is therefore not astonishing that the public
baths resounded with plaudits, when men
with extraordinary members entered them.

Martial, IX., 34:

.pm quote-start
“If you hear clapping of hands in the bathing
hall, Flaccus, you may be sure some deformed
person’s enormous member is there.”
.pm quote-end

Juvenal, VI., v. 373, 374:

.pm quote-start
“Far seen, pointed at by all men’s fingers,
he enters the baths.”
.pm quote-end

It was not without some art that the patients
performed their functions. But their business
was made up of these two chief requirements:
.bn 067.png
.pn +1
depilation and knowing how to use the
haunches.

<i>Patients</i> took care in the first place to remove
the hair carefully from all parts of their
body[#]; from the lips, arms, chest, legs, the
virile parts, and in particular from the altar
of passive lust, the anus: Martial, II., 62:

.pm quote-start
“Pluck out the hair from breast and legs
and arms; keep your member cropped and
ringed with short hair; all this, we know, you
do for your mistress’ sake, Labienus. But for
whom do you depilate your posteriors?”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Always, however, excepting the head, for they
took great care of their head of hair. Horace, Ode X.,
book IV., says to Ligurinus:

.pm quote-start
“When those curls are gone, that now descend to
your shoulders....”
.pm quote-end

And (Epode XI., v. 40-43): “Nothing”, he says,
“will take away his love for Lyciscus, save another love
for a plump youth, tying up his long hair.” In the same
sense Martial speaks of <i>Capillati</i> (III., 58; II., 57), and
of <i>Comati</i> (XII., 99).
.pm fn-end

And IX., 28:

.pm quote-start
“While you, Chrestus, appear thus with
your parts all hairless, with a mentula like a
vulture’s neck, and a head as shining as a prostitute’s
buttocks with never a hair appearing
on your leg, and with your pallid lips all shorn
.bn 068.png
.pn +1
and bare, you talk of Curius, Camillus,
Numa, Ancus, of all the hairy heroes we have
ever read of in history, and spout big words
and threatenings against theatres and the
times. Let but some big-limbed man come
into sight, you call him with a nod, and take
him off....”
.pm quote-end

And he says, IX., 58:

.pm quote-start
“Nought is worse worn than Hedylus’ rags,
save one thing only (he cannot deny it himself),
his anus;—this is worse worn than his
rags.”
.pm quote-end

In a similar way he has spoken before of the
anus of Hyllus as more worn by friction than
a poor man’s last penny (II., 51), and Suetonius
(<i>Life of Otho</i>, ch. xii) speaks similarly of
the body of Otho, given to the habits of a catamite,
and Catullus (Carm. 33) reproaches
the younger Vibennius: “You could not sell
your hairy buttocks for a doit.”

For the same reason <i>Galba</i> requested Icelus
to get depilated before he was to take him
aside. Suetonius, Galba, ch. xxii:

.pm quote-start
“He was very much given to the intercourse
between men, and amongst such he preferred
men of ripe age, exolets. It is said that when
.bn 069.png
.pn +1
Icelus, one of his old bedfellows, came to
Spain, to inform him of Nero’s death, he, not
content with kissing him closely before everyone
present, asked him to get at once depilated,
and then took him aside with him quite
alone.”
.pm quote-end

Moreover even those depilated their anus,
who by dint of a rough head of hair and a
bristly beard, tried hard to simulate the gravity
of the ancient Philosophers. Martial, IX.,
48:

.pm quote-start
“Democritus and Zeno and ambiguous
Plato,—all the sages whose portraits we see
decked with bristling hair,—you prate of;
you might well be Pythagoras’ heir and successor;
while from your own chin hangs no
less imposing a beard. But as bearded man it
is a shame for you to receive a rigid member
between your smooth posteriors.”
.pm quote-end

Juvenal, II., v. 8-13:

.pm quote-start
“Put not your trust in faces; everywhere is
debauchery rampant! Thou wouldst whip the
vicious; Thou! thou!—the most notorious of
all Socratic minions! Hair-covered limbs and
coarse hair along the arms bespeak a fiery
soul; but on your smooth anus the surgeon cuts
.bn 070.png
.pn +1
away the swollen tumours, a grin on his face
the while.”
.pm quote-end

Persius, IV., v. 37, 38:

.pm quote-start
“Tell me, when you comb a scented beard
upon your cheeks, why does a shaven member
stand forth from your groin?”
.pm quote-end

This is why Martial, VI., 56 advised Charidemus
to get his buttocks depilated, so that
he might be taken for a <i>patient</i> rather than
for a <i>fellator</i>:

.pm quote-start
“Because your thighs bristle with coarse
hair, and your chest is shaggy, you think, Charidemus,
to leave your words to posterity.”

“Take my word, and pluck out the hairs all
over your body, and get it certified you depilate
your buttocks. What for? you ask. You
know they tell many tales about you; make
them believe, Charidemus, that you are acting
the <i>patient</i>.”
.pm quote-end

It was not <i>patients</i> only that had themselves
depilated; men leading an idle, careless life
followed the same practice[#].

.pm fn-start
To depilate one’s armpits was, however considered
as being necessary to the cleanliness of the body:
“One man keeps himself tidy, another neglects himself
more than is right; one man depilates his legs, another
does not depilate even his armpits.” (Seneca, letter CXIV.)
.pm fn-end
.bn 071.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“To be depilated, to have the hair dressed
in tiers of ringlets, to tipple to excess in the
baths,—these practices prevail in the city; still
they cannot be said to be customary, for nothing
of all this is exempt from blame” (Quintilian,
<i>Instit. orat.</i>, I., 6).
.pm quote-end

It is rather surprising that the same Quintilian,
whose bile is stirred by curled hair, has
let it pass by patiently, that women should
bathe together with men:

.pm quote-start
“If it is a sure sign of adultery for a woman
to bathe with men, why! it will be adultery to
dine with young friends of the male sex, to
have a male friend. You might as reasonably
say a depilated body, a languid gait, a womanish
robe, are certain signs of effeminacy, of
want of virility; for such will seem to many
to reveal immorality of character” (<i>Ibid.</i>, V., 9).
.pm quote-end

Martial, II., 39 has also noticed, and not
once only, the habits of those men who practised
feminine arts of the toilette, and looked
just as if they had come out of a band-box:

.pm quote-start
“Rufus, see you that man there on the first
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
benches ... whose oiled curls exhale the whole
shop of Marcelianus, and whose polished arms
shine without a hair to be seen?”
.pm quote-end

Again, he says, V., 62:

.pm quote-start
“... Who is this Crispulus, who has legs
undisfigured by a single hair?”
.pm quote-end

Even the great Caesar did not disdain this
coquetry, Suetonius, ch. 45:

.pm quote-start
“He took too much care of his appearance,
to the point of not only having his beard removed
with nippers, and shaved with a razor,
but even of being depilated, for which things
he was blamed.”
.pm quote-end

This custom is connected with those Samnite
vases, filled with rosin and pitch to be
heated for depilation, and for softening the
pitch, found amongst the properties of Commodus,
and which by the orders of Pertinax
were sold by public auction. Julius Capitolinus
speaks of them (<i>Pertinax</i>, 8). For removing
the hair there were used in fact either
tweezers or an unguent called dropax or psilothrum.
Martial mentions the use of tweezers
in the Epigram (IX., 28) quoted before;
of dropax or psilothrum he speaks in Book
III., 74:
.bn 073.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“You depilate your face with psilothrum
and your head with dropax.”
.pm quote-end

And again VI., 93:

.pm quote-start
“She revives her youth with psilothrum.”
.pm quote-end


And X., 65:

.pm quote-start
“You rub yourself every day with dropax.”
.pm quote-end

The dropax or psilothrum was obtained by
melting rosin in oil (Pliny, <i>Natural History</i>,
XIV. 20):

.pm quote-start
“Rosin dissolves in oil, and I am ashamed to
say, that the most honest use made of this mixture
is to serve people as a depilatory.”
.pm quote-end

Aëtius also mentions it in Book III., ch. cxc,
of his <i>Opus Medicum</i>:

.pm quote-start
“The simplest dropax is the one called
pitchplaster. Dry pitch is diluted with oil; it
is applied hot to the skin, which must first be
cleanly shaved, under which circumstances it
adheres closely. Before the plaster is quite
cold, it is taken off, warmed again, and put on
afresh; again it is removed before being cold,
and this process is repeated several times.”
.pm quote-end

Hence Juvenal’s, “Youthfulness by pitch”,
(VIII., 114), and

.pm quote-start
“The thighs neglected and dirty with tufts
of hair” of Nævolus, to whom he says:
.bn 074.png
.pn +1

“Your skin has none of the gloss, that of old
the well-smeared plaster of hot pitch gave it”
(Sat. IX., 13-15).
.pm quote-end

What else does Martial, mean when (III.,
74), he speaks of “Gargilanus’ nails,—that
cannot be trimmed with pitch?”

Persius (IV., 37-41) has, I presume, joined
together both modes of depilation:

.pm quote-start
“Tell me, when you comb a scented beard
upon your cheeks, why does a shaven member
stand forth from your groin? Though five
strong men weed your plantation and work
your parboiled buttocks with the hooked
tweezers, I tell you there is no plough will
tame that stubborn field!”
.pm quote-end

Here <i>forceps</i> is the same thing as <i>volsella</i>
(tweezers); while the “parboiled buttocks”
would seem to refer to the hot <i>dropax</i>. After
the application of such a plaster the skin
could not but have a boiled look.

Ausonius (<i>Epigr.</i> CXXXI.) alludes to this
passage of Persius:

.pm quote-start
“The reason you smooth your groin with
hot dropax is that a skin soft and smooth entices
the whores, plucked smooth themselves.
But that you pluck out the herbage from your
.bn 075.png
.pn +1
parboiled bottom, and polish up with pumice
your battered Clazomenae, what means this,—if
not that the vice of man with man works in
you, and you are a woman behind, a man in
front.”
.pm quote-end

The <i>Clazomenae</i> are without a doubt the
man’s buttock, limp and cracked, as those of
<i>patients</i> will be, as those of Carinus were,
whom Martial, XI., 37 blames for “his lacerated
anus.” Ausonius calls them so from
the Greek, in Latin “frango” (I break), thus
playing with the name of a city. Gonzalvo the
Cordevan makes a similar pun, when, desiring
to pedicate, he says, he wishes to go to Aversa;
also when he wishes to irrumate the mouth,
he says: “I go to the Orient”, or when he is
about to lick the vulva, in Latin <i>ligurire</i>, “I
go to Liguria.” By calling the Clazomenae
hammered (battered) Ausonius means to imply
that they were as if polished with a hammer,
by having served as an anvil. It is as if
my fellow-countrymen were to say in joke of
a bald man (in German <i>Kahl</i>), “he scratches
his polished Kehl.” What could be clearer or
wittier? Forcellini is therefore wrong in saying
this passage of Ausonius has no sense.
.bn 076.png
.pn +1
Other editors have <i>inclusas</i> instead of <i>incusas</i>,
indicating the fissure which separates the buttocks,
by the rotundities of which it is on both
sides closed in. But in the first place the Clazomenae
may well be the buttocks, they being
cleft, though not indeed themselves a cleft; in
the second place, who could imagine this miserable
man depilated the cleft of the buttocks
rather than the buttocks themselves?

Some persons, by a refinement of luxury,
employed women to depilate them. Such women
called themselves <i>ustriculae</i> (from <i>urere</i>,
to burn), as they made use of a sticky plaster
of boiling dropax to burn the hair on the legs
and other parts of the body. Tertullian (<i>De
Pallio</i>, ch. 4), says: “So effeminate as to employ
<i>ustriculae</i>”; while Salmasius, commenting
playfully on the passage, p. 284, declares:
“Once upon a time <i>ustriculae</i> served to depilate
the legs; now they serve to harass our
minds.” Augustus, who according to Suetonius,
“was in the habit of singeing his legs with
burning nutshells, to make the hair grow more
silky” (<i>Augustus</i>, ch. 68), no doubt made use
of the nimble hands of these <i>ustriculae</i>.

Women likewise resorted to depilation[#],
.bn 077.png
.pn +1
looking upon the fleece of the pubis as
something disgusting. Martial:
.bn 078.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“... Nor yet one of your mother’s pots full
of foul rosin, such as the women of the outer
suburbs use to depilate themselves withal” (XII., 32).
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
The Greeks did not disdain this strange practice
any more than the Romans. Aristophanes, in the
<i>Lysistrata</i> (v. 89).

“My affair will be tidy with the couchgrass pluck’d
off.” In the “Frogs” he speaks of dancing girls barely
arrived at puberty beginning to tear off the fur” (v.
519); in the <i>Thesmophoriazusae</i> again there is mentioned
“a <i>mons Veneris</i> plucked clean” (v. 719). That
the Greeks preferred a bare pubis to a furred one, though
we may be of a different opinion, is apparent from another
passage of Aristophanes, in the <i>Lysistrata</i>, v. 151,
2, where a smooth pubis is represented as a chief incitement
to virile ardour:

.pm quote-start
“If we were to go naked with a smooth pubis, our
husband’s members would stand, and they would be
fain to have us.”
.pm quote-end

As to old women, they likewise denuded their pubis
of the bristles in order to appear less decrepit. Martial,
X., 90.

.pm quote-start
“Ligella, do you pluck your old affair, and stir the
ashes of your burnt-out fire?”

Refinements such as those are for young maidens; you
are in error if you think that thing a vulva that a man’s
member will no longer recognize.”
.pm quote-end

The depilation of the vulva was also used as a punishment.

Aristophanes, <i>Thesmophoriazusae</i>, 545, 6.

.pm quote-start
“We will pluck her pubis, and teach her so, woman
as she is, not to speak ill of women.”
.pm quote-end

The same punishment was inflicted upon adulterous
women taken in the act; a black radish or a mullet was
introduced into her anus, which was then depilated, as
well as her pubis, with burning cinders. Aristophanes,
<i>Clouds</i>, 1079:

.pm quote-start
“What, must you suffer the empalement with the radish,
and the hot cinders?”
.pm quote-end

Suetonius, under the word ——: “Thus they
treated adulteresses who had been caught in the act:
they took black radishes and planted them in their anus,
which they rubbed with hot cinders, after having torn
out the hair.”
.pm fn-end

As men employed women to free them of
hair, so women offered their pubis without
shame to men for the same office. Pliny’s bile
rises at this (<i>Nat. Hist.</i>, XXIX., 8): “Women
are not afraid to show their pubis. It is but too
true, nothing corrupts manners more than the
art of the medical man.”

The emperors themselves condescended to
undertake this office for their concubines.

Suetonius, <i>Domitian</i>, ch. 22:

.pm quote-start
“It was rumoured, that he was fond of depilating
his concubines himself, and would
bathe amid a crowd of the most infamous
courtesans.”
.pm quote-end

Lampridius, <i>Heliogabalus</i>, ch. 31:

.pm quote-start
“In his baths he was always together with
the women, and he made their toilets with
psilothrum: he used psilothrum likewise for
his beard, and, disgusting to relate, the same
which the women had just been using. With
.bn 079.png
.pn +1
his own hand he shaved off the fleece from
the virile part of his pedicons, and then
shaved his own beard.”
.pm quote-end

What Lampridius finds so repugnant, is
that the emperor did not hesitate to use upon
his beard the same ointment, which the women
had just been applying as a plaster upon
the pubis, and which he used at once and before
the bad smell had evaporated.

But to return to our <i>patients</i>, they also were
not in want of illustrious lovers, who took
care to depilate them; an example of this we
find in the emperor Hadrian, according to
Spartianus, who says, ch. 4:

.pm quote-start
“That he corrupted the freedmen of Trajan,
made the toilet of his minions, and often depilated
them, while he was attached to the
Court, is generally believed.”
.pm quote-end

In what other way can we believe Hadrian
to have made the toilet of these minions, if not
in the same way in which Heliogabalus made
.bn 080.png
.pn +1
the toilet of his females, with psilothrum, particularly
as it is added that he depilated them
frequently? We may take it for granted that
he used that ointment, or that he rubbed their
faces with moistened bread, either to improve
their skin or to hinder the beard growing too
soon. Suetonius, <i>Otho</i>, ch. 12:

.pm quote-start
“He shaved his face every day, and rubbed
it with damp bread, a habit which he had
contracted when the first down began to appear,
so as not to get bearded.”
.pm quote-end

Juvenal, II., 107 has aimed an arrow of
the same sort at Otho:

.pm quote-start
“It surely is the duty of a mighty Captain
... to keep his skin right smooth ... and
knead bread with his fingers to make a plaster
for his face.”
.pm quote-end

What wonder then if the women cherished
similar artifices? Who can help thinking of
the woman depicted with such marvellous art
by Juvenal, from verse 460 to verse 472 of that
Sixth Satire, to which Salmasius gave the epithet,
of “divine”? “Her face is all puffy with
bread crumbs, where the lips of the poor husband
keep sticking”, to such an extent, that
one doubts:
.bn 081.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“... Whether her countenance, plastered
and <i>massaged</i> with so many preparations,
overlaid with poultices of boiled and moistened
flour, should be called a face at all,—or a
sore.... At last she peels her face, removes the
outermost layers. For the first time she may
be recognized for herself. Then she treats her
skin with asses’ milk, for which she drags
about in her train a herd of asses,—and would
take them with her, if she were exiled to the
North Pole.”
.pm quote-end

For painting the face it seems that a coating
of chalk was used, as in the case of the
Pederast mentioned in Petronius, who perspired
so violently in working vainly the groin
of Eucolpus:

.pm quote-start
“From his perspiring forehead flowed rivulets
of acacia juice, and in the wrinkles of his
cheeks there was such a mass of chalk that you
might have believed you saw a wall exposed
to the wind and washed by the rain” (<i>Satyricon</i>,
ch. 23).
.pm quote-end

But let us leave all these nasty preparations,
before we find ourselves stuck fast in them.

We have said that another branch of this
business, on the part of the <i>patient</i>, consists in
.bn 082.png
.pn +1
<i>cevere</i>. A <i>patient cevet</i>, who during the action
wriggles and moves his haunches up and
down, so as to enjoy more pleasure himself
and give more pleasure to the pedicon. Women,
doing the same in copulation, are said to
<i>crissare</i>. Martial, III., 95:

.pm quote-start
“Nay! you pedicate finely, Naevolus; you
ply your haunches right well.”
.pm quote-end

Juvenal, II., 20-23:

.pm quote-start
“... Virtue on their lips, they ply their buttocks.—‘Shall
I honour you, in the act of your
back-play, Sextus?’ says the infamous Varillus....”
.pm quote-end

The same author, IX., 40:

.pm quote-start
“With calculated art moves his haunches.”
.pm quote-end

Plautus, in the <i>Pseudolus</i>, III., 75:

.pm quote-start
“Soon as ever the fellow cowers down, ply
your haunches in time to him.”
.pm quote-end

For this reason some authorities hold, I do
not know whether rightly or wrongly, the
word <i>cinede</i> to come from the fact that the
wretches known by that name are in the habit
of <i>wriggling the private parts</i>. Undoubtedly
the suppleness of the thighs, the agility of the
buttocks are counted amongst the particular
talents of cinedes in Petronius, ch. 23:
.bn 083.png
.pn +1

Enter a Cinede reciting these verses:

.pm quote-start
“Hither, come hither, cinede wantons,—stretch
the foot and take your course, fly with
soles in the air, with supple thighs, and nimble
buttocks, and libertine hands,—all ye old,
emasculated minions of Delos, come!”
.pm quote-end

To this subject also refers <i>Epigr.</i> XXXVI
of the 1st Book of the <i>Hermaphroditus</i>, edited
by us; which consult, reader, if worth your
while. As he who wriggles with his haunches
does it to please somebody, people use the
word <i>cevere</i> also to convey the meaning of
sycophancy or adulation. Thus: “An, Romule,
ceves” (What Romulus, you fawn too?)
in Persius (I., 87); in the same way <i>irrumate</i>
is used in the sense of an outrage, affront.

That women <i>can</i> be pedicated, exactly the
same as men, is indicated by nature; that they
<i>have</i> consented, is proved by numerous testimonies
in Antiquity.—Apuleius, <i>Metamorphoses</i>,
III., p. 138:

.pm quote-start
“While we were thus prattling, a mutual
desire invaded our minds and roused our
limbs; having undressed entirely we gave ourselves
up to the transports of Venus. I soon
.bn 084.png
.pn +1
felt tired. Fotis of her own good will offered
me the catamite corollary.”
.pm quote-end

Martial, IX., 68:

.pm quote-start
“All night long I possessed a lewd young
maiden, whose complaisant demeanor it were
impossible to excel. Exhausted with a thousand
modes of love, I asked for the puerile
service, which she granted at once before I
had finished my asking.”
.pm quote-end

The same, XI., 105, reproaches his wife as
follows:

.pm quote-start
“You refuse to pedicate; yet Cornelia allowed
it to Gracchus, Julia to Pompey, and
Portia did it for Brutus. Ere the Derdanian
Cupbearer served the wine, Juno herself acted
Ganymede for Jupiter.”
.pm quote-end

Tullia permitted the same to Aloysio and
Fabrizio, in Aloysia Sigaea; we have quoted
the passage. Crispa tastes the same variety of
pleasure, in Epigram LXXI of Ausonius:

.pm quote-start
“She lets herself be done in either orifice.”
.pm quote-end

The ancient Greeks took great delight in
the posterior Venus. One can scarcely express
what fervent admirers they were of beautiful
buttocks; it went so far, that young girls competed
in public, before an assemblage sitting
.bn 085.png
.pn +1
as it were in another “Judgment of Paris” to
pronounce which of them was the most gifted
in that respect. Athenaeus (XII., 80) informs
us that in the environs of Syracuse a villager
had two daughters who often quarrelled as to
which of them had the finest posteriors; one
day they showed them on the highway to a
young man from Syracuse, who chanced to be
passing, and asked him to adjudicate between
them. He decided in favour of the elder sister,
fell at once violently in love with her, and
on his return home he told his younger brother
what had befallen him. The latter went
forthwith to see the two girls, and became enamoured
of the younger. Soon they got married
to the two youths, who were opulent, and
they were called by their fellow-citizens the
<i>Callipygi</i>, because, although of lowly birth,
their posteriors served them for a dowry. Full
of gratitude, they dedicated a temple to Venus,
under the title of Venus Callipygos (Venus of
the beauteous buttocks).

It will not surprise you, that any young
girl remarkable for her beautiful posteriors
amongst her companions was all the more in
request for the puerile office, and all the more
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
disposed to lend herself to it. Mania consented
to it in favour of Demetrius, as testified by
Machon, in Athenaeus (XIII., 42), when the
king wanting to enjoy her buttocks, she accepts
his gift, and says:

.pm quote-start
“Son of Agamemnon, it is now <i>your</i> turn to
have them.[#]”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
To understand this, the sentence must be complete;
the worthy Forberg takes his readers far too
learned; Mania, in the poem of Machon, says to Demetrius,
offering her buttocks:
“Son of Agamemnon, it is now <i>your</i> turn to have
them,—you who have ever been so liberal with your
own.” (Note of the translator.)
.pm fn-end

A certain young man, Ponticus by name,
exacted the same corollary in the morning
from Gnathena, whom he had possessed all
night; it is again Machon who tells us the
story (<i>ibid.</i>, XIII., 43). Demophon, the minion
of Sophocles, asked the same favour of
Nico[#] who being famed for the beauty of
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
her buttocks,—“she is said to have had an exceedingly
beautiful bottom”—was afraid he
might lend them to Sophocles (<i>ibid.</i>, XII.,
45). Gnathaenion (<i>ibid.</i>, XIII., 44) made an
ingenious excuse for having been similarly
complaisant. A certain tinker having ungenerously
boasted he had five times running
mounted that little courtesan in that way, Andronicus,
whom she preferred to everybody
else, got to hear it, and reproached her bitterly
for having allowed such a blackguard to enjoy
her so abundantly in a posture which his
prayers never obtained from her. Gnathaenion
replied that, not caring to have her breasts
handled by a fellow black with dirt and soot,
it had appeared to her better to take that posture,
so as to receive the least possible fraction
of the wretched creature’s body. Plate
XXVII of the <i>Monuments du culte secret des
dames romaines</i> presents the picture of a man
pedicating a woman.

.pm fn-start
The following is the passage from Machon, as
quoted by Athenaeus; without a knowledge of it Forberg’s
allusion remains obscure:

.pm quote-start
“... Demophon, Sophocles’ minion, when still a youth
had Nico, already old and surnamed the she-goat; they
say she had very fine buttocks. One day, he begged of
her to lend them to him. ‘Very well,’ she said with a
smile,—‘Take from me, dear, what you give to Sophocles.’”
(Note of the translator.)
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

It is, however, not without some inconvenience,
or even danger, that one lends oneself
to the passive part. Aloysia Sigaea, Past-Mistress
in the Sciences of Love, enlightens us on
this point:
.bn 088.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“In the first place intolerable sufferings are
inflicted upon the <i>patient</i>, for in most cases he
is invaded by too large a stake; hence frightful
infirmities, incurable by all the art of Aesculapius.
The confining muscles are ruptured,
and consequently the excrements cannot be
held back and escape. What could be more
disgusting? I have known noble ladies afflicted
with cruel maladies to such a degree by eruptions
and ulcers, that it took them two or three
years to recover their health. I myself (Tullia)
have not escaped scot free from the accursed
embraces of Aloysio and Fabrizio.
When they first forced their darts in, I endured
atrocious pain, but soon the feeling of
slight titillation consoled me.... When however
I reached home again, I felt a burning
pain at the place they had lacerated: I felt
myself consumed by an itching as if I were
on fire, and in spite of the nursing of Donna
Orsini, it cost much trouble to extinguish that
confounded fire. If my lacerations had been
neglected, I should have died a miserable
death” (Dial. VI).
.pm quote-end

You understand now why the young slave
of Naevolus (Martial, III., 71) had pain at
.bn 089.png
.pn +1
the anus; why the same Martial, VI., 37
says Carinus’ posteriors had to be cut; and
where the sting lies in the following distich:

.pm quote-start
“You, who know all the reasons and weighty
arguments of the sects,—come tell me,
what dogma is it bids you be perforated”
(IX., 48).
.pm quote-end

This effeminate philosopher, who affected
to speak as though he had been the successor
and heir of Pythagoras, was indeed bound, if
anyone was, to know the reasons of lacerations[#]
of the anus, and the weights of
men’s members. He was accustomed to the
passive part, of whom Ausonius says in mockery,
as we saw a little above, that his <i>clazomenae</i>
served as an anvil.

Men preferred to be supposed <i>pedicators</i>
rather than <i>patients</i>; hence Martial’s witty
epigram:

.pm quote-start
“It is now many a long day, Lupus, that
Charisianus has been saying he cannot pedicate.
But whenever his friends asked him
why, he said his bowels were relaxed” (XI., 89).
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Secta</i>, sect (from <i>sequor</i>) may also be derived
from <i>secare</i>, to cut, and thus mean: laceration. (Note of
the translator.)
.pm fn-end
.bn 090.png
.pn +1

Would you see the picture of a man engaged
in pedication? he is being interrupted
in the midst of his business, but the drawing
is not the less pleasant for that. The engraving
belonging to chapter III. of the third
part of <i>Félicia</i>, presents this position.

Who does not know that the Greeks and
Roman were intrepid pedicons and determined
cinedes? In the Greek and Latin authors,
to the indignation of the pedagogues,
the male Venus parades on every page:

.pm quote-start
“All burnt with the same fire”—we are
quoting Aloysia Sigaea, and we could not express
ourselves better or more elegantly. We
are, however, going to make annotation to
this extract,—“all burnt with the same fire,
the common people, the higher classes, the
King. This depravity cost Philip, King of
Macedon, his life[#]; he died by the hand
.bn 091.png
.pn +1
of Pausanias, whom he had outraged.” It subjected
Julius Caesar to the passion of King
Nicomedes[#],—Caesar, “wife of all men,
and husband of all women”[#].
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Justinus tells the tale somewhat differently:
“Pausanias had had to undergo since his puberty the
violence of Attalus, who added to this indignity a crying
outrage: having invited him to a feast and made him
drunk, he not only satisfied upon him, when full of wine,
his brutal lust, but allowed him to be used by all the
guests like a vile courtesan, and made him the laughing
stock of his equals. Unable to bear this infamy, Pausanias
carried his complaint before Philip many and many a
time, but the King always put him off with illusory
promises. When Pausanias however saw Attalus elevated
to the rank of the Chief of the Army, his fury
turned against Philip, and the vengeance which he
could not take upon his enemy, he took upon the iniquitous
judge.” (IX., 6).
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Suetonius, <i>Julius Caesar</i>, ch. 48: “Not content
with having written in some of his letters that Cæsar
was conducted by the guards to the bed-chamber of the
King, slept there in a golden bed hung with purple, and
that he allowed the bloom of his youth to be blighted
in Bithynia, Cicero said to him one day in the midst of
the Senate, where Cæsar was defending the case of Nysa,
the daughter of King Nicomedes, and spoke of his obligations
to that King: Pray, let us pass over all this; it
is only too well known what you have received, and what
you have given.”

On the day of his triumph over the Gauls, the soldiers
sung the following verses, amongst those which are
usually sung behind the triumphal car, and they are well
known.

.pm quote-start
“Cæsar has subdued the Gauls, and Nicomedes Cæsar:
this day is Cæsar triumphant for having subdued
the Gauls, and Nicomedes, who subdued Cæsar, has no
triumph.”
.pm quote-end

Catullus (<i>carm.</i> 57):

.pm quote-start
“How well they go together, those shameless cinedes,
Mamurra the <i>patient</i>, and Cæsar.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start // 30
Suetonius, <i>Julius Cæsar</i>, ch. 51: Nor yet did he
respect the conjugal bed in the provinces; this appears
from the distich, also sung by the soldiers at the triumphal
entry:

.pm quote-start
“Citizens mind your wives; we bring you the bald-headed
adulterer. You expended gold in Gaul; here you
are taking your change.”
.pm quote-end

The same author (<i>Julius Cæsar</i>, ch. 52) says: “Helvius
Cinna, tribune of the people, admitted to many
people, that he had drawn up and kept ready a law by
the instructions of Cæsar, to bring it forward during his
absence, by which he would be at liberty, with a view
to leaving offspring, to marry whom he would and as
many wives as he wished. So that nobody should be in
any doubt about the notoriety of his lewdness and infamy,
Curio, the elder, in one of his pleadings, calls
him the husband of all women, and the wife of all husbands.”
.pm fn-end
.bn 092.png
.pn +1

Augustus did not escape this shame[#],
Tiberius[#] and Nero gloried in it. Nero
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
married Tigellinus[#], and was himself
espoused by Sporus[#], Trajan[#], the
.bn 094.png
.pn +1
best of rulers, was accompanied by a <i>paedagogium</i>,
while he marched from victory
through the Orient. What he named his <i>paegogium</i>,
while he marched from victory to
victory through the Orient. What he named
his <i>paedagogium</i> was a troop of pretty lads,
well developed, whom he called day and night
to come to his arms. Antinous served as
mistress to Hadrian,—a rival to Plotina, but
more fortunate than she was[#]. The emperor
.bn 095.png
.pn +1
mourned over his death, and placing
the dead man amongst the Gods, he raised altars
and temples in his honour. Antonius
Heliogabalus, nephew of Severus, was accustomed,
an old author says[#], to have pleasures
.bn 096.png
.pn +1
administered to him through all the orifices
in his body; his contemporaries looked
upon him as a monster. Before this Venus
grave philosophers danced in company with
pederasts. Alcibiades and Phaedo slept with
Socrates[#], when they wanted to get their
tutor into good humour. It is from this kind
of amours practised by the venerable man,
that is derived the erotic phrase: to love <i>Socratically</i>.
Every action and every word of
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
Socrates were held as sacred by all sects of
philosophers; they built a temple and erected
an altar in his honour; all his actions had
legal force, and his words the authority of an
oracle. The philosophers did not turn away
from the example set by their Hero (for Socrates
took rank with the Heroes) and new
national divinity. Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator,
living some centuries before Socrates,
refused the title of a good and deserving citizen
to any man who had not a friend that
served him as a concubine. He willed it that
virgins should perform naked on the stage,
so that the view of their charms freely exposed,
should dull in men that sensual longing
which by the aid of nature draws them
to women, that they might thus reserve all
their passion for their friends and companions.
For what men see every day loses half
its effect.

.pm fn-start
“Sextus Pompeius reproached him for being effeminate,
and Marc Anthony says he bought his adoption
from his uncle (or rather his great-uncle) by
prostituting himself to him. On a day of public games
all the world understood and applied to him very demonstratively
the following verses, spoken of a Priest of
Cybelé, Mother of the Gods, playing the tambourine”:

.pm quote-start
“See you how a cinede governs the world with a
finger?” (Suetonius, <i>Augustus</i>, ch. 68.)
.pm quote-end

A picture representing Augustus playing the part of
a <i>patient</i>, is in the <i>Monuments de la vie privée des douze
Césars</i>, pl. VI., and another of Cæsar and Nicomedes,
pl. I.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“It is even said, that during a sacrifice, he could
not restrain himself, smitten with the pretty face of the
incense-bearer; the divine service barely finished, he took
the youth aside, and debauched him, and then did as
much for his brother, who played the flute. Soon afterwards
he ordered their legs to be broken, because they
reproached each other with their infamy.” (Suetonius,
<i>Tiberius</i>, ch. 44). The act of this madman is represented
on pl. XX. in the work of d’Hancarville, cited on
a previous page.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
And also Pythagoras. “One would have thought
that nothing was left for him in the way of debauchery,
and that he had reached the limits of depravity, if he
had not a few days later chosen out of this infamous
herd a certain Pythagoras, whom he took for his husband
with all the solemnity of a marriage. The <i>flammeum</i>
was put on the Emperor’s head, the auspices were
consulted, neither dowry nor nuptial torches were forgotten;
all was done openly, even those things, which, if
done with a woman, are hidden by the night.” (Tacitus,
<i>Annals</i>, XV., 37). The man called Pythagoras by Tacitus,
appears to be the same to whom Suetonius (<i>Nero</i>,
ch. 29), gives the name of Doryphorus, either on account
of his services, or by mistake. “He took for husband the
freedman Doryphorus in the same way in which Sporus
had taken him himself for husband, and he counterfeited
the cries and sobbings of virgins when losing their
maidenhead.” Plate XXXVIII of the above quoted
work shows an illustration of this anecdote.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“He went so far as to try to change a young man
into a woman; his name was Sporus, and he had him
castrated; having given him a dowry, he caused him to
be brought to him with the <i>flammeum</i> on his head, and
married him with all the nuptial solemnities. There has
come down to us an appropriate saying on somebody’s
part, namely, whether it might not have been better
for human kind if Domitian, his father, had married a
woman of that sort. He made Sporus dress himself in
the costume of the Empresses, and had him carried in
his litter; he travelled with him in that way, taking him
through the meetings and markets in Greece, and soon
after in Rome, about the time of the Sigillarian festivities,
kissing him from time to time.” (Suetonius, <i>Nero</i>,
ch. 28). Plate XXXIV in the repeatedly quoted
French work, gives a representation of the abominable
wedding.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“He (Hadrian) enjoyed the affection of Trajan,
but this did not save him from the malevolence of the
pedagogues of the young boys Trajan loved so ardently”
(Spartianus, <i>Hadrian</i>, ch. 2).
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“He lost, during his navigation of the Nile, his
dear Antinous, and wept for him like a woman. There
are sundry allegations about this Antinous; some say he
was devoted to Hadrian, others point to the beauty of his
shape, and to the pleasure Hadrian experienced with
him. At the instance of Hadrian the Greeks placed him
in the ranks of the Gods, and affirmed that he gave
oracular decisions; those oracles, it is said, were composed
by Hadrian himself” (Spartianus, <i>Hadrian</i>, ch. 14).
St. Jerome says in the <i>Hegesippus</i>: “Antinous, a
slave of the Emperor Hadrian, after whom a circus was
named the Antinoian, founded also a town bearing his
name (Antinoia), and established an Oracle in the
temple.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“Who, indeed, could put up with a ruler who
imbibed pleasure through all the cavities in his body?
Not even a beast would be suffered to do so. At Rome
his only care was to send out emissaries, who had to look
out for and to bring to the court the best shaped men for
his enjoyment. He had a performance of the comedy of
“Paris” in his palace, played the part of Venus himself,
and suddenly dropping his clothes, he appeared naked
with one hand on his chest and the other covering his
pudenda; he then knelt down and offered his raised
buttocks to his pedicon” (Lampridius, <i>Heliogabalus</i>, ch.
5). And a little farther on: “He loved Hierocles to such
a degree as to kiss his virile parts, a thing I blush to report;
he said that he thus celebrated the Floralia” (<i>Ibid.</i>,
ch. 6). He did not hesitate to repeat the infamous wedding
of Nero with Pythagoras: “Zoticus had such a
power over him that the principal officials of the state
treated him as though he really were the husband of the
Emperor. He married him, and made him consummate
the marriage in the presence of the giver away of the
bride, telling him, “Push in, Magira!” And this was
done at a time when Zoticus was ill” (Lampridius, ch.
10). Zoticus was called Magira on account of the profession
of his father, who had been a cook.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Socrates, as is well known, has not been in want
of warm defenders; Brucker (<i>Critical History of Philosophy</i>,
I., pp. 539, 540), may stand for all of them.
Undoubtedly Plato, in <i>Symposium</i>, brought in Alcibiades,
who says he recollects, to use the expression of
Cornelius Nepos (<i>Alcibiades</i>, ch. 2.) “to have passed a
night with Socrates, but not otherwise than a son might
with his father.” But Xantippe, and it is not surprising,
was indignant that her husband should be on such
familiar terms with a good-looking youth like Alcibiades;
and Aelian (<i>Varide Historiae</i>, XI., 12), relates that she
stamped upon a cake sent by Alcibiades, which made
Socrates laugh and cry out: “What are you doing? You
cannot eat it now. I do not care for it at all!” But,
Socrates! good morals and such friends are incompatible.
Enough to name amongst the disciples of Socrates Plato,
whom Diogenes Laërtius (III., 23), declares to have
loved Aster, Phaedrus, Alexis, and before all Dion; he
quotes an epigram of Plato on Dion, ending thus:

.pm quote-start
“O you, who have so fiercely burnt my heart with
love, you Dion!”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end


Again, why speak of the Poets?[#] Anacreon[#],
.bn 098.png
.pn +1
was hotly in love with Bathyllus;
almost all pleasantries of Plautus have this
subject for their aim; they are of this kind:

.pm quote-start
“I shall do like the lads, I will cower down
over a hamper.”[#]
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Valerius Maximus (IX., 12) relates of Pindar:
“One day, at the Gymnasium, Pindar, leaning his head
against the breast of a young lad, whom he loved above
all (Suidas says his name was Theoxenes), fell asleep;
no sooner had the head of the establishment seen him
asleep than he ordered all the doors to be closed, for fear
of the poet being awakened.” Athenaeus on his part
(XIII., 81) tells us of Sophocles: “Sophocles loved boys
to the same degree as Euripides loved women”; and a
little farther on (ch. 82) he relates the story of a youth
whom Sophocles enjoyed, but at the price of his mantle,
which the rogue abstracted. Euripides, having been informed
of this adventure, mocked the poet for having
been thus done: “I also”, he said, “have had him, but
he got nothing else out of me.” I am surprised that this
passage of Athenaeus should have appeared doubtful to
the celebrated Casaubon, on account of the expression
“got out of me” which is quite correct and applicable.
Sophocles and Euripides had both lavished their white
fluids upon the little rogue; but from one of them he got
besides a mantle, from the other nothing else.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“No less fiercely burned the love of Anacreon of
Teos, they say, for the Samian youth Bathyllus” (Horace,
<i>Epodes</i>, XIV., 9, 10).
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
The actual words of Plautus are:

.pm quote-start
“I must do the puerile service: I will cower down
over a hamper” (<i>Cistellaria</i> IV., sc. I., v. 5),—which
means, I will bend down to the hamper, raising the
buttocks, and thus present them to the pedicon. This is,
in fact, what is called, the “puerile office”, and which
Apuleius (<i>Metam.</i> III., ch. 2), calls “the puerile corollary.”
Martial, IX., 68 says simply, “<i>illud puerile</i>.”
<i>Conquinescere</i> is according to Nonius, p. 531, Gottfried’s
edition, to curve the spine, an expression designating
.bn 099.png
.pn +1
in particular the passive posture as we have seen
in the <i>Pseudolus</i>:

“When he curves the spine, then simultaneously wriggle
your buttocks.”
.pm quote-end

Some authors have also used a still more forcible expression,
“<i>Ocquinescere</i>,” vis., “to cower low down”
(Nonius, p. 567). Pomponius, on word “<i>Prostibulum</i>”:
“I have never forced pedication upon any citizen; I have
always abstained, unless the patient had asked me and
cowered down of his own free will.” And on word
“<i>Pistor</i>”: “Unless somebody anticipated my desires, willingly
crouching down so that I could do the thing securely.”
This position of the patient cowering down is very
rarely alluded to; the question generally turns upon his
kneeling. “Thus,” says Lampridius of Heliogabalus, he
offered himself with the buttocks raised to the pedicon”
(ch. 5). Heliogabalus was kneeling, and not crouching.
The same is the case with Timarchus in Lucian: “All
that were near you remember it; they have seen you on
your knees, while your accomplice did you know what”
(<i>Apophras</i>, p. 152, vol. VII.—Works of Lucian edit.
by J.-P. Schmid). If you would like to see these two
postures, you will find them in the <i>Monuments de la vie
privée des douze Césars</i>, pl. XXVII., a <i>patient</i> crouching,
and pl. XXXVIII., a <i>patient</i> kneeling.

From the fact that men wanting to void their excrement
when out of doors cower down, it has come about
that passive pederasts were said to sh...t,—in fact to
sh...t the active party’s member as it goes in and out of
the anus. Hence in the <i>Priapeia</i>, LXX.:

.pm quote-start
“Look at me, thief, and realize the weight of the member
you will have to sh...t.” Martial, IX., 70 also plays
on the word:

“When you love a woman, Polycharmus, you always
sh...t before you have done. Tell me, Polycharmus, what
you do, when you pedicate?”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 100.png
.pn +1

Or again:

.pm quote-start
“The soldier’s poniard did it fit your
sheath?”[#]
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Pseudolus</i>, IV., sc. VII., 85.
.pm fn-end

That grand master of the art of poetry,
Maro, who won the surname of Parthenias
by his ingenuousness and innate modesty,
cherished a certain Alexander, whom Pollio
had given to him as a present, and he has
celebrated him under the name of Alexis[#].
Ovid suffered from the same malady;
he however preferred young girls to lads, because
in his amusement he wanted reciprocal
pleasure, and not a selfish enjoyment. He said
he loved the pleasure “of the simultaneous
ejaculation of both parties”[#], and for
this reason he was less given to the love of
boys.

.pm fn-start
You might very well, Aloysia, have quoted Horace
too (<i>Epodes</i>, XI):

.pm quote-start
“Now Lyciscus holds me in love-bonds, from which
neither friendly advice, nor humiliating affronts avail
to liberate me.”
.pm quote-end

And <i>Satires</i>, I., ii, v. 116-119.

.pm quote-start
“When your privates are swelling, if some maid-servant
or slave-boy is at hand for you to assail forthwith,
do you choose rather to burst with desire? Nay! not I!”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Art of Love</i>, II., 683, 684.
.pm fn-end

Young girls and wives finding themselves
.bn 101.png
.pn +1
neglected, the first by those they loved, the
other ones by their husbands, instead of offering
their services only as females, resolved
to play the part of the lads. The depravity
became so great that this complaisance was
actually extorted from brides, as it was before
from married women; in fact the husband
went at the young wife pederastically,
and the two sexes were joined in one and the
same body. In the facetious poems of the ancients,
Priapus[#] threatens every thief of
vegetables from his garden that comes near
his weapon, to make him sacrifice what in the
first night the bride accords to her ardent
husband, for fear that he may wound another
part.

.pm fn-start
<i>Priapeia</i>, II.
.pm fn-end

Making use of his imagination with the
licence ever granted both to painters and
poets, Valerius Martial[#] pretends to
hear is wife grumble that she also had buttocks,
and that he had not need of boys.
“Juno” she says, “also pleased Jupiter from
that side.” The poet is not to be convinced,
he answers her that the part taken by a boy is
one thing, and that of the wife another, and
that she ought to be satisfied with hers.

.pm fn-start
<i>Epigr.</i> 44, book IX:

.pm quote-start
“Catching me with a boy, you harass me with your
cries, and you tell me, my wife, that you have posteriors
too.”

Many and many a time did Juno say the same to Jupiter
the Thunderer; yet he continued to sleep with
slender Ganymede.

He of Tyrius, laying his bow aside, bent Hylas under
him; think you therefore that Megara was without buttocks?
Dephné, by her flight, vexed Phœbus, but his
love’s ardour found relief in the end in the boy Oebalius.
Although Briseis slept, often with her backs turned
upon him, his smooth-skinned friend Patroclus was more
to the taste of the son of Aeacus.

Cease then, wife, to call your affairs by masculine
names; better consider you have two vulvas.
.pm quote-end

His Epigram XII., 98, treats of the same matter:

.pm quote-start
“Knowing as you do the honest walk and fidelity of
your husband, and that he never misuses your bed with
concubines, why, foolish woman, torment yourself about
those venal boy lovers,—brief and fugitive is the pleasure
from their complaisance!

They are more useful to you than to their master, I
tell you, for they make him think that one wife is better
than they all. They give what you will not give;—But
I will, you say, so that the volatile husband stray not
from the conjugal bed.

But it is not the same thing, I want a fig not an orange,
and you must know theirs is a fig, yours an orange;
Look! a matron, a woman like you, must know what belongs
to her. Leave to boys what is theirs, and do you
make the best of what is yours.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 103.png
.pn +1

Under the name-boards[#] and the lamps[#]
in the brothels sat[#] boys as well as
girls, the first dressed in the feminine stola,
the latter in the manly tunic, and with their
hair dressed like boys. Under the guise of
one sex was found the other. Asia[#] was
.bn 104.png
.pn +1
the original home of this pest, then Africa got
infected, and soon the scourge invaded Greece
and the adjoining countries of Europe[#].
In Thrace Orpheus was the importer and
supporter of this unclean pleasure. The Thracian
women, finding themselves held in contempt....

.pm fn-start
Some prostitutes sat (Plautus, <i>Poenulus</i>, I., ii.,
v. 54), others stood: “Another man will only have the
harlot that stands upright in the unclean brothel,”
(Horace, <i>Sat.</i> I., ii., v. 30.)
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Juvenal’s <i>Messalina</i> (VI., v. 123) prostitutes
herself “under the fictitious name-board of Lycisca.”
Petronius: “I see men gliding in stealthily between the
name-boards and the naked prostitutes; I understood,
alas, too late, that I had been introduced into a bad place.”
(<i>Satyr.</i> ch. 7.) Martial, XI., 46:

.pm quote-start
“When you pass the threshold of a chamber with
name-board over the door, whether it be a boy or a girl
that greeted you with a smile....”
.pm quote-end

That the prostitutes changed their names is apparent
from a passage in Plautus (<i>Poenulus</i>, V., iii, 20, 21):

.pm quote-start
“For to-day they were to change their names, and
will lend their bodies for infamous traffic.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Horace, <i>Sat. II.</i>, vii, 48, 49:

.pm quote-start
“... Every woman that naked beneath the bright
lamplight endured the thrusts of a swollen member.”
.pm quote-end

Juvenal, VI., 130, 131.

.pm quote-start
“Foul with the reek of the lamp, she bore to the Imperial
couch the stink of the brothel.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Authors vary on this point. Herodotus: “The
Persians pollute young boys; they have learned it from
the Greeks,” (I., 135). Plutarch refutes the assertion:
“How can the Persians be indebted to the Greeks for
these impurities, when all historians are agreed upon
the fact that they had eunuchs before they had ever come
near to the Grecian seas?” (<i>Of the Maliciousness of
Herodotus</i>, p. 857, vol. II of Frankfort edition of 1620).
<i>Athenaeus</i>: “Pederastia was first introduced in Greece
by the Cretans, as is related by Timaeus; other authors
however have asserted that the man who first imported
that sort of love was Laius, who, having been hospitably
received by Pelops, fell in love with Chrysippus, the son
of his host, carried him off in his chariot, and fled to
Thebes.” (XIII., 79.) And who has not heard of the
incontinence of the inhabitants of Sodom?”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Particularly in Euboea, whence the expression,
“Chalcidize”, meaning, according to Hesychius, to pedicate,
because masculine loves flourished among the
Chalcidians. “Phicidize” is another expression for the
same thing from the name of a town now unknown;
Suidas: “Phicidize, to be a Pederast”, and similarly,
“Siphnianize” from Siphnos, an island in the Ægean;
Hesychius says: “Siphnianize, that is to finger the anus;
the inhabitants of Siphnos are, in fact, given to the
practice of pederastia.” We have seen above that the
meaning of Siphnianize has been perverted.
.pm fn-end

.pm quote-start
“During the sacred feasts and the nocturnal
orgies of Bacchus, tore the youth to pieces,
.bn 105.png
.pn +1
and bestrewed the wide plains with his limbs.”
(Virgil, <i>Georg.</i> IV., 521, 522.)
.pm quote-end

It is alleged that in those ancient times the
Celts[#] ridiculed those amongst them who
kept aloof from this practice; such could expect
neither civil employment nor honours.
Those, that preserved the purity of their
morals were shunned as impure. “In a town
where everyone is mad, it is not good to be
alone sane, and by reason of its not being
good it is not advisable.” (Dialogue VI.)

.pm fn-start
<i>Athenaeus</i>, XIII., 79: “Of all the barbarians
the Celts, although their women are most beautiful—it
is, therefore, not surprising that an ardent amateur of
“fine women,” such as Julius Caesar is described to us,
should in the Gallic Provinces have been not over respectful
to the conjugal bed—the Celts take more pleasure
in pederastia than any other Nation, to such a degree
that amongst them it is no rarity to find a man lying
between two minions.”
.pm fn-end

This ends our brilliant extract from Aloysia
Sigaea.

Even in our own days[#] the taste for the
.bn 106.png
.pn +1
male Venus has not disappeared, witness the
Persians, who are very much addicted to this
kind of pleasure, as is related by those who
have travelled in their country. Amongst
others there is Adam Lhuilier, chapter 15,
book V., of his <i>Itinerary</i>. If we may trust to
Aloysia Sigaea, the Italians and Spaniards
did it; also the Dutchmen, with whom towards
the middle of the XVIIIth. Century,
as J. David Michaëlides tells us in his <i>Treatise
on the Law of Moses</i> (in Dutch), §258,
this habit was so much in vogue, that the punishment
of death was hardly of avail against
it; also the Parisians, according to the Author
of the <i>Gynaeology</i> (in German, vol. II., p.
427), a fully competent authority, who adds
that in almost all the great cities of Europe
there are to be found plenty of people who,
either being satiated with the ordinary pleasure,
or afraid of infectious diseases, prefer the
.bn 107.png
.pn +1
posterior to the anterior Venus,—the English
always excepted, who abominate this practice.
Not to be for ever talking generalities
and never giving definite instances, the cases
of Gonzalvo of Cordova[#] and of Vendôme[#],
both of them excellent Generals,
have been made notorious enough by historical
documents; to these we could add other
still more illustrious examples, taken from
our own time and made known by a heedless
fame; that of a great author, of a great king,
the father of his country, and of a man, who
during his life gained general admiration by
the penetration of his intellect, and the splendour
of his language, and whose knowledge
.bn 108.png
.pn +1
embraces all branches of knowledge, not only
the ordinary ones, but the profoundest and
most abstruse[#],—a man that might well
propose the riddle of the Sphinx to his eminent
confrère in whom we delight to admire
the power of a truly Ciceronian eloquence,
unknown in Germany since the death of the
great Ernesti. These examples, I say, we
could easily allege, were we not apprehensive
of raising, quite contrary to our purpose and
intention, a feeling of odium against the pious
memory of most distinguished men.

.pm fn-start
Pardon me, illustrious Marcus Pullarius, for
having almost forgotten you. Ausonius, <i>Epigr.</i> LXX.:

.pm quote-start
“Which Marcus? The one they call the “cat that
catches boys”, he who tarnishes all the purity of childhood,
who plies with his back-door tool the rearward
Venus, the poet Lucilius’ <i>subulo</i>, his <i>pullipremo</i>.”
.pm quote-end

Ausonius calls him the pullarian cat, because he hunted
after young lads (puelli) as the cat gives chase to
birds; he calls him, applying to him the same epithets as
“Lucilius, who Satires he had the opportunity of reading,—more
fortunate in this than we,—a <i>subulo</i>” (from
<i>subula</i>, an awl), wanting to make it understood that
with his member he transfixed, like a cobbler with his
awl, the anus of cinedes; and <i>pullipremo</i>, from his compressing
in his work young lads.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“Menacing with his couched lance some youth
(he was a determined pedicon), he would say he intended
to go to Aversa, a famous town” (Aloysia Sigaea,
Dialogue VII.).
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
See the “History of the Eighteenth Century”,
by Christ. Dan. Voss (in German, Part V., p. 364). As
to pedicons of less exalted position, of whom mention is
made by the widow of Philip, first Duke of Orleans, (in
her amusing letters, pp. 74, 284, 350), which appeared
about thirty years ago, there are: the Cardinal de Bouillon,
the Chevalier de Lorraine, the Comte de Marsan,
François Louis, Prince de Conti. These together with
the Comte de Varmandois, a cinede this last, must rest
content to appear in a mere foot-note.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Do not misunderstand what I say. It is not for
an honest man to sharpen his wits at the expense of
another’s book.
.pm fn-end

Do you wish for any more? Pacificus Maximus
offers a goodly number, both of the active
and the passive parties. <i>Elegy</i> I., p. 107.
of the Paris edition:

.pm quote-start
“The sole cause of my badness was my master,—the
man my father and mother incautiously
entrusted me to. He was the king of
pedicons; not one escaped his lust, so artful
and winning was he. Many a thing I learned,
I had better have left unknown; much did I
absorb through my rectum, much through
my lips.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 109.png
.pn +1

<i>Elegy</i> II., to Ptolemy (p. 110):

.pm quote-start
“For you, ungrateful boy, I keep my treasures
all, and no one shall enjoy them but yourself;
my mentula is growing: while it used
to measure seven inches, now it measures
ten.”
.pm quote-end

<i>Elegy</i> IV., to Marcus (p. 113):

.pm quote-start
“You could not, Marcus, find a better, a
more convenient, place, in which to meet me;
not a spy is here nor witness, neither man nor
woman can tell tales. Let’s do it under the
willows in this verdant meadow; the drooping
boughs will hide us with their foliage.
The rivulet will lull us to sleep with its pleasant
murmur, and the bird that warbles mid
the boughs. Hither come, and glide into my
lap, thou that art torment at once and remedy
of my desires!”
.pm quote-end

<i>Elegy</i> XIV (p. 128):

.pm quote-start
“One day Etruscus brought to me a youth,
so fair as is seldom seen at Jupiter’s board:
“I give him up to you”, he said, “lay hold of
him, that he may cling to you both day and
night. May the gods grant you love him
well; he will be wise if you but pedicate
him.”
.bn 110.png
.pn +1

And I: “I like this liberty conceded to my
passion; I shall always be obliged to you. Be
sure this child, good as he is, will be better
still in future; he will suck my wisdom in
through many places.”

Joyful he goes, joyful I seize hold of my
prey; delay, however short, seems long to me.
Oh, father proved in virtue! the one blameless
man, the one sage in this great town! The
master lays hands upon the lad’s posteriors,
the lad grasps the master’s member. Think
you, ye unlearned, he will learn in this fashion?
Oh, lucky boy, to have me for a teacher!
oh lucky fate, that gave you such a father!”
.pm quote-end

<i>Elegy</i> XV (p. 131):

.pm quote-start
“If the member is dead, the voluptuous
wish is still alive; if the old man can no longer
pedicate, he still wants to.”
.pm quote-end

<i>Elegy</i> XX (p. 139):

.pm quote-start
“My member is so little, this part of me
so dwindled, I almost think I never had one,
or that it has disappeared; my finger cannot
feel, my eye cannot see it,—fate has been but
niggardly to me. I could be your attendant,
Cybelé, without operation, I need no shard
of glass, I am a castrated priest already. And
.bn 111.png
.pn +1
still—it is a shame, but must be confessed;
there is no worser lad than I in all the world.
As soon as ever I could, I served the filthy
Venus, for the hand of Pederasts had drawn
me to it; a thousand members and big ones,
churned in my inside, and day and night my
anus was in quest. If only my passive action
could have profited my member, when erect
it would have touched my head, when limp
my feet; but nothing did it good, it never
grew. And what I did, perhaps only made
it worse. Every boy likes to see his member
grow, get big enough to amply fill his hand.”
.pm quote-end

But enough of pedication; irrumation is
our next business.
.bn 112.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - <s>ON PEDICATION</s>
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch03
CHAPTER III||<s>OF IRRUMATION[#]</s>
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
TO put the member in erection into
another’s mouth is called to <i>irrumate</i>,
a word, which in its proper
sense means to give the breast; in
fact, according to <i>Nonius</i>, p. 579 (Gottfried’s
edition), the Ancients called the bosom <i>ruma</i>.
The verge, introduced into the mouth, wants
to be tickled either by the lips or the tongue,
and sucked; the party who does this service
to the penis is a fellator or sucker, for with
the Ancients <i>fellare</i> meant to suck, also according
to <i>Nonius</i>, p. 547. The equivalent to
<i>fellare</i> in Greek is ——.

.pm fn-start
You see we follow the same general order as in
the <i>Priapeia</i>, VII.

.pm quote-start
“<i>I</i> warn you, boy, I mean to pedicate you; with you,
my girl, I will copulate. The <i>third</i> penalty is kept for
the bearded ruffian.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

The Lesbians are believed to be the inventors
.bn 113.png
.pn +1
of this particular nastiness. The Scholiast,
in verse 1337 of the <i>Wasps</i> of Aristophanes,
cites Theopompus as vouching for
the fact.

This is the reason why the Greeks apply
the expression “Lesbianize” or “Lesbize” to
those who imitated the Lesbian usages, either
as <i>irrumants</i>, or as <i>fellators</i>. Suidas: “Lesbianize—to
defile the mouth; the Lesbians are
in fact believed to give themselves to these
shameful acts.” The same author says under
the word, “<i>Siphnianize</i>,—to <i>Lesbianize</i>, that
is to use the mouth abominably.”[#] Aristophanes
has employed the word in the sense
of <i>sucking</i> (<i>Wasps</i>, 1337).

.pm fn-start
Eustathius, p. 741, is very ambiguous: “Lesbianize,—to
commit a shameful action.”
.pm fn-end

.pm quote-start
“Look, how cleverly I kept you away, when
you wanted to Lesbianize the guests.”
.pm quote-end

And again in the <i>Frogs</i> 1343:

.pm quote-start
“Has this Muse never used the Lesbian mode?”[#]
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
I do not quite know whether the following passage
from the <i>Thesmophoriazusae</i> (915-917) refers to
this or no:

.pm quote-start
“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.”
.pm quote-end

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 <i>Priapeia</i> LXXVIII., where we find:

.pm quote-start
“Depsistis, decite. Labdae.”
.pm quote-end

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

.pm quote-start
“When he puts his tongue in, then he is a Labda,”
has nothing to do with this question, as we shall show
later on.
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 114.png
.pn +1

But Hesychius has employed it for <i>irrumate</i>:
“Lesbianize, to defile a man’s mouth.”

Lesbianize and Phœnicianize are generally
used conjointly, as though this practice had
been equally common among the Phœnicians.
Lucian says in his <i>Apophras</i> (ch. 26):

.pm quote-start
“In the name of the Gods tell me what you
are thinking of, when it is bruited about publicly
that you Lesbianize and Phœnicianize?”
.pm quote-end

What the difference between the two may
be is not known. At any rate Timarchus, who
is so bitterly attacked by Lucian, was a <i>fellator</i>,
as may be readily gathered from the following.
Timarchus, having arrived at Cyzicus
to be present at a wedding feast, was turned
out of doors (<i>ibid.</i>, ch. 26), the mistress
of the house upbraiding him in these words
.bn 115.png
.pn +1
for the impurity of his mouth: “I would not
have in my house a man who must have a man
himself!” The passage preceding the above
is still plainer and more to the point: What
does the man reproach Timarchus with, who
has surprised him kneeling before a young lad
(<i>ibid.</i>, ch. 21), and who says farther on,
“that he had seen him at work”, if this does
not apply to a <i>fellator</i>? Besides, what is the
meaning of that sore throat contracted by him
in Egypt (<i>ibid.</i>, ch. 27), where according to
rumour, he had been nearly suffocated by a
sailor, who fell upon him and stopped his
mouth? Whence that nickname of the Cyclops
(<i>ibid.</i>, ch. 28), which was given to him, because
one day, when he was lying drunk on
the ground, a young man, “with an upstanding
stake exceeding well sharpened”, threw himself
upon him, to force it into his mouth, as
Ulysses did with the eye of the Cyclops, “A
new Cyclops, with the mouth open at full
stretch, you let him burst your cheeks.” It is
useless to add to this the passages with respect
to those who repel his kisses (ch. 23), or as to
the use to which he puts his tongue (ch. 25),
for it is doubtful whether they are addressed
.bn 116.png
.pn +1
to a <i>fellator</i> or a <i>cunnilingue</i> (a licker of the
vulva). That Timarchus was no stranger to
<i>irrumation</i>, seems implied (ch. 17) by the
apostrophe, “Are you not all that?” the more
so as previously Lucian’s saying: “If any one
sees a cinede do or suffer the shameful act...”
makes it apparent that the active part was also
one of the vices of Timarchus. Lucian could
therefore justly say of this Timarchus, that he
Lesbianized and Phœnicianized, if he wanted
to imply by one of these words, “sucking”, and
by the other, “irrumating.” But it is uncertain
which of these words means “to suck”, and
which “to irrumate.” But what does this matter?
There is no doubt that Lucian intended
to make this distinction. Phœnicianize might
even be applied to a <i>cunnilingue</i>[#], an expression
which we shall dilate upon presently.
Needless therefore in this place to give examples
.bn 117.png
.pn +1
of women who allowed their vulvas to
be licked.

.pm fn-start
I do not know whether the nickname of Rododaphné
(rose-laurel), given to Timarchus in Syria (<i>ibid.</i>,
ch. 27), does not mean <i>cunnilingue</i>, 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.”
.pm fn-end

Very remarkable is a passage of Galen in
book X., <i>De vi simplicium</i>, in which he makes
a distinction between Lesbianize and Phœnicianize,
demonstrating that the one is more
shameful than the other:

.pm quote-start
“It is worse for an honest man to be spoken
of as an eater of excrements than as being a defiler
or a cinede; and amongst the defilers we
execrate such as Phœnicianize more than
those who Lesbianize. The latter I consider
to be doing what is as bad as the habit of
drinking menstrual discharge.[#]”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
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.”
.pm fn-end

Galen means by this that the man who uses
human excrements as medicine is considered
worse than a fellator or a cinede; that amongst
the fellators the Phœnicianists are more
.bn 118.png
.pn +1
abominable than the Lesbianists. There can
therefore be no doubt that he designates the
action of the <i>fellators</i> by the word Phœnicianizing,
and by Lesbianizing that of the <i>irrumants</i>.
In fact, as he judges those the worst
who come nearest to the eaters of excrements,
he could not detest less those who defile their
mouths by fellation than those who defile the
mouths of other people by irrumation; similarly
he could not help holding in abhorrence
the <i>cunnilingues</i> and the drinkers of menses,
of whom more later on.

But the Lesbians found imitators. The inhabitants
of Nola were in bad repute amongst
the Ancients in that respect; in Ausonius,
<i>Epigr.</i> LXXI., Crispa, a fellatrix, is said to
practice the business “with which an unprecedented
effeminacy inspired the people of
Nola.” However, here is this spirited epigram
in its entirety:

.pm quote-start
“Over and above the intimate joys of legitimate
love, hateful lust has found out other
foul modes of pleasure, of the sort the loneliness
of Lesbos taught Hercules’ heir, of the
sort smooth tongued Afranius in his actor’s
gown displayed upon the stage, of the sort an
.bn 119.png
.pn +1
unprecedented effeminacy inspired the men of
Nola with. Crispa, with but one body, yet
practises them all: masturbates, fellates, works
by either orifice,—dreading to die in vain before
she has tried every mode.”
.pm quote-end

To explain,—of course Crispa did not neglect
to have herself entered in the usual way;
these are “the intimate joys of legitimate love.”
Then she allowed herself to be pedicated; this
is the vice of Philoctetes, the inheritor of the
arrows of Hercules, as also Afranius, of whom
Quintilian says: “He excelled in the Roman
comedy; a pity that he polluted his plays with
infamous masculine amours! He thus bore
witness against his own morals” (<i>Inst. Orat.</i>,
X., I). Further Crispa did not fail to allow
herself to be <i>irrumated</i>, this is, “the vice their
unprecedented effeminacy instilled into the
men of Nola.” Lastly the whole is recapitulated
quite plainly in the last line but one; to
masturbate is the genus, while to fellate, and to
work by one and the other orifices are so
many species, three altogether.

There are authors who think that the celebrated
riddle of Coelius in Quintilian: <i>Clytaemnestram
quadrantariam, in triclinio coam,
.bn 120.png
.pn +1
in cubiculo nolam</i> (<i>Instit. Orat.</i>, VIII., 6 p.
747), refers to a woman of the name of Nola,
she being a <i>fellatrix</i> after the fashion of the
Nolans. But I prefer the interpretation of Alciatus;
he believes that the woman in question
was Clodia, the notorious sister of Clodius,
and wife of Metellus, called <i>Coa</i>, because she
liked coitus on the open triclinium, and <i>Nola</i>
because she refused the same in bed. Spalding
evinces surprise at the want of exactitude,
which the word <i>quadrantaria</i> would have in
that case. To me that appears like looking for
knots in a rush. Why should we not suppose
Clodia, disgusted, like Messalina, by the facility
of her adulteries, to have been drawn into
extraordinary excesses[#] to such a point
that she would no longer have commerce with
men in the dark, but only in the glare of lighted
torches, as Martial confesses in speaking of
himself (XI., 104):

.pm fn-start
Tacitus, <i>Annals</i>, XI., 26.
.pm fn-end

“You love the game in the dark, I like it by
lamp-light; my delight is to make my entry
with light to see by,”—and in the presence of
living witness, that she might be seen, if not
.bn 121.png
.pn +1
actually on her back, at any rate going away
for it or just coming back afterwards. Do you
think that indecency could not possibly go so
far? What did Augustus do, whom Marc Anthony,
according to Suetonius, “reproached
for having at a festival taken the wife of a
Consular from the triclinium to a bedroom, in
the presence of her husband, and afterwards
conducted her back to the table with her face
all on fire and her hair in disorder?” (<i>Augustus</i>,
ch. 69). And Caligula, according to the
same Suetonius, “when a guest at a wedding-feast
said to Piso, who was sitting close by
him: “Do not push up so close to my wife!”
and immediately after made her rise from the
table and took her away with him” (<i>Calig.</i>,
ch. 25). The same author, (<i>Calig.</i>, ch. 36),
speaking of the most illustrious Roman ladies,
tells us that Caligula “invited them to dinner
with their husbands, passing them in review
before him, he examined them with the minute
attention of a slave dealer, lifting their heads
up if any of them bowed them down with
shame. As often as he felt inclined, he left the
triclinium and took the chosen fair one aside
with him; then after returning to the room
.bn 122.png
.pn +1
with the traces of his doing still upon him, he
would praise or criticize these ladies openly,
speaking of the beauties or blemishes of their
bodies, and even how often he had repeated
the enjoyment.” Horace again speaks of an
adulterous woman (<i>Odes</i>, III., vi, 25-32):

.pm quote-start
“Soon she looks out for fresher adulterous
pleasures, while the husband is drunk; and
does not care to whom she grants the furtive
forbidden pleasures, which with the torches
extinguished, she is ready to give and take.
Nay! she does not care for her very husband’s
presence, and with his knowledge she rises to
meet whosoever may call, say a merchant, say
the commander of a Spanish ship in harbour,
who buys her favours by tariff!”
.pm quote-end

Again look at the feast of the Pope, Alexander
VI., whom we have already mentioned for
your profit and amusement in our <i>Hermaphroditus</i>[#].

.pm fn-start
We will here reproduce the curious passage of
Jean Burchard, to whom we owe this story. It is taken
from his <i>Diarium</i>, edited by Leibnitz, in 1696, p. 77:

.pm quote-start
“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.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 123.png
.pn +1

Is this evidence enough to satisfy you as to
these <i>Coae</i> of the triclinium? Well! it was
after this fashion Clodia preferred to be had.
Alone with a solitary lover in bed and no one
by, she refused (<i>nolebat</i>); in public on the triclinium,
she was willing enough for coition
(<i>volebat coire</i>). Hence the jest; she was <i>Coa</i>
and <i>Nola</i>. Coelius might have put it still more
plainly; on the triclinium she was <i>Vola</i>, in
bed <i>Nola</i>.

It was not the inhabitants of Nola only who
were addicted to the Lesbian vice, the Oscans[#]
generally were considered to be very
.bn 124.png
.pn +1
much given that way, so much so that certain
authors trace to them (the Osci), in earlier
times called the Opsci or Opici, the etymology
of the word “Obscene”, Festus, p. 553:

.pm quote-start
“In almost all the old treatises the word
is written <i>Opicum</i> instead of <i>Oscum</i>; it is
from the name of this people that shameless
and impudent expressions are called obscene,
because indulgence in filthy debauchery was
very common among the Oscans.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Nola was a city in the territory of the Campanians.
It is for this reason that the <i>Campanian malady</i>,
mentioned by Horace (<i>Sat. I.</i>, V., 62), has been connected
with debauchery, but without sufficient reason.
.pm fn-end

The Ancients employed many forms of circumlocution
to convey the meaning of their
filthy practices. For instance, instead of <i>irrumate</i>,
they said: to offend the mouth[#], corrupt
the mouth[#], to attack the head[#],
to defy to the face[#], insult the head, not to
spare the head[#], to split open the mouth[#],
.bn 125.png
.pn +1
gain the heights[#], mount to loftier
.bn 126.png
.pn +1
regions[#], compress the tongue[#], to indulge
.bn 127.png
.pn +1
in abominable intercourse[#], and instead
of receiving the member into the mouth
they said: to lend the mouth in kind complaisance[#],
work with the mouth[#], lick
.bn 128.png
.pn +1
men’s middle parts[#], lick simply[#], or
.bn 129.png
.pn +1
lastly to be silent[#]. Just as Persius has
.bn 130.png
.pn +1
employed the word <i>cevere</i>, to wriggle in the
sense of flattering, so Catullus uses <i>irrumate</i>
as meaning to treat ignominiously[#].

.pm fn-start
Varro, is his <i>Marcipor</i>, according to Nonius:
“He introduced afterwards into his gullet the virile
verge: he offends the mouth of Volumnus.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Martial, III., 75:

.pm quote-start
“You make it your work to corrupt pure lips for
gold.”
.pm quote-end

And Again II., 28:

.pm quote-start
“Not even Vetustilla’s warm mouth give you more
pleasure.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“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, <i>Tiberius</i>, ch. 45).
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
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, <i>Caesar</i>, 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.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
I speak of those whose abominable lasciviousness
and execrable lust do not even spare the head. (Lactantius,
<i>Instit. Div.</i> VI., 23.) Similarly Juvenal, VI., v.
299, 300:

.pm quote-start
“For what cares the drunken Venus? She knows not
the difference between groin and head.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Martial, II., 72:

.pm quote-start
“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! ...”
.pm quote-end

Then playing upon the words rumour and irrumate
he adds:

.pm quote-start
“... As the author of this crime, the town’s rumour
designates Caecilius.”
.pm quote-end

And again III., 73, <i>ibid.</i>:

.pm quote-start
“Rumour denies you are a Cinede.”
.pm quote-end

III., 80:

.pm quote-start
“Rumour says, you have an evil tongue.”
.pm quote-end

And III., 87:

.pm quote-start
“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.”
.pm quote-end

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

.pm fn-start
<i>Martial</i>, XI., 47:

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

<i>Priapeia</i> LXXV.:

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

.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Priapeia</i> XXVII.:

.pm quote-start
“A footlong amulet will pedicate you; if that will not
cure you, I go higher.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Plautus, in the <i>Amphytrion</i>, I sc. 1, 192:

.pm quote-start
“I shall compress to-day the wicked tongue.”
.pm quote-end

The Latins employed the verb “compress” for <i>irrumate</i>,
as if it were a form of fornication; and similarly
“split open”, as if it were a form of pedication.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
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.” (<i>Lives</i>, <i>Julius Cæsar</i>,
XXXII.) Hesychius’ interpretation refers to this:—to
perform abominable acts.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
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.” (<i>Tiberius</i>,
ch. 44.)
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Horace, <i>Epode</i> VIII., 17-20:

.pm quote-start
“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.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Martial, II., 62:

.pm quote-start
“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.”
.pm quote-end

Ausonius, <i>Epigr.</i> CXX:

.pm quote-start
“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 <i>fellator</i> Castor became a <i>cunnilingue</i>.
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Martial, III., 88:

.pm quote-start
“They are twin brothers, but they suck different teats:
tell me are they more unlike or like?”
.pm quote-end

The one was a <i>fellator</i>, the other a <i>cunnilingue</i>.

Again, VII., 54:

.pm quote-start
“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.”
.pm quote-end

I do not know whence Scioppius (<i>Priap.</i> 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 <i>Epigr.</i> 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
<i>recutitorum inguine virorum</i> of Martial, VII., 29: he
means, “the virile parts of circumcized men,” the skin
of whose glands is drawn back. <i>Recutitus</i> stands for <i>recinctus</i>,
<i>regelatus</i>, <i>reseratus</i>. Many other words, <i>e.g.</i>
revincire, similarly admit of two meanings, and thus, no
doubt should arise about Martial’s expression: <i>recutita
colla mulae</i> (IX., 58), which refers to the mules having a
new skin covering their necks. I differ from those who
think that those were called <i>recutiti</i> whose prepuce began
to grow again; a <i>recutitus</i> was to the Romans an
object of contempt. Petronius: “He has two faults, else
he would be like any other man <i>recutitus est et sertit</i>. He
is circumcized and snores” (<i>Satyr.</i>, ch. 28). It is impossible
to suppose the <i>glans</i> could have been thought more
disgusting covered by a new prepuce than with none at
all.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
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 <i>cunnilingue</i>,
menacing him with the third punishment, if he should
catch him in the fact:

.pm quote-start
“If I should catch thee at it, Gargilius, I’ll make thee
silent.”
.pm quote-end

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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,
<i>De Morte Peregrini</i>,—Works, vol. VII., p. 425.) Catullus
XV., 18, 19:

.pm quote-start
“Drawing your feet asunder, your postern wide open,
they will insert into you radish and mullet.”
.pm quote-end

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

.pm quote-start
“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!”
.pm quote-end

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., <i>Epigr.</i> 35, quoted later on,
also refers to this.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
It is the same with the word <i>stuprum</i>. Festus:
The ancients employed the word stuprum for turpitude,
as appears in the Song of Neleus.

.pm quote-start
“Foede stupreque castigor cotidie.”
(I am foully and disgracefully beaten every day.)
.pm quote-end

Naevius: “They would rather die than return to their
co-citizens <i>cum stupro</i>.”
.pm fn-end
.bn 131.png
.pn +1

It is thus he complains of having been irrumated
by Memmius XXVIII., 9, 10:

.pm quote-start
“Oh, Memmius, well and long and leisurely,
laid on my back all the length of that beam,
you irrumated me.”
.pm quote-end

He had, in fact, experienced in Bithynia the
meanness and avarice of this Praetor, Memmius,
who had not cared a rap for his comrades’
honour, and who is alluded to in <i>Epigr.</i>
X., 12, “Praetor and irrumator.” In <i>Epigr.</i>
XXXVII., he threatens his boon companions
in debauchery, with whom his mistress has
taken refuge:

“... Do you think I dare not irrumate
alone, as I stand here, two hundred pothouse-heroes?”
And he adds that he would write on
the front of the tavern the infamy of these
blackguards:

.pm quote-start
“... Your names I shall chalk up all over
the tavern’s front.”
.pm quote-end

Other passages of Catullus, XXI., 12, and
LXXIV., 5, are also quoted to prove the various
employment of the word <i>irrumate</i>; but
.bn 132.png
.pn +1
they do not seem to me to bear upon the question.

The epithet <i>shameless</i> was especially given
to the man who allowed himself to be pedicated
or irrumated. <i>Priapeia</i> LIX.:

.pm quote-start
“If you come to steal, you will return
<i>shameless</i>.”
.pm quote-end

Cicero, <i>De Oratore</i>, II., 257:

.pm quote-start
“If you are <i>shameless</i> before and behind....”
.pm quote-end

Horace, <i>Epistle</i>, I., xvi., 36:

.pm quote-start
“If he calls me a thief, he denies that I am
chaste.”
.pm quote-end

Lampridius, <i>Commodus</i>, ch. 10:

.pm quote-start
“Already as a child he was a glutton and
<i>shameless</i>, which is explained by what he says
in ch. 5: “He gave himself up to the infamous
abuses of young men and to their assaults”,
and ch. i: “From his tenderest age he was
depraved, mischievous, cruel, a libertine; he
allowed his mouth to be soiled and defiled.”
.pm quote-end

On the other hand, a woman who had never
submitted to a man, was called <i>chaste</i> (<i>Priapeia</i>
XXXI.):

“You are allowed to be as chaste as Vesta;”
The same epithet was given to a wife that was
.bn 133.png
.pn +1
faithful to her husband such a one as is praised
by Martial in <i>Epigr.</i> X., 63.

.pm quote-start
“My couch is lighted by the rarest glory,—one
member, one mentula alone has known
my chastity.”
.pm quote-end

To the preceding examples of <i>fellators</i> and
<i>fellatrices</i> we will now add, from Aloysia
Sigaea’s book, that of Crisogono, who cleverly
persuades Sempronia to lend him her mouth:

.pm quote-start
“The day before yesterday (it is Ottavia
speaking), Crisogono came to see my mother
in the afternoon. All was quiet and silent. He
had scarcely begun to wanton a little with her,
when he became very importunate. “Yesterday
morning”, he said, “I learned a new kind of
pleasure. One of our grand personages, who
had certainly tasted it, says that there is nothing
so disgusting and repulsive as those parts
of his wife which stamp her as a woman,—and
he has a very pretty wife, mind! In that sink
every thing is foul, while in this (kissing my
mother on the mouth), dwells the true Venus.
He therefore abominates that illfavoured cavern,
and adores that pure mouth, that charming
head. He looks to nothing else, his member
rises for nothing else. His wife is as spirited
.bn 134.png
.pn +1
as she is beautiful, and even more obliging.
She knows no other pleasure than her husband’s;
what he thinks right she thinks proper,
and abets all the caprices of her husband; so
she lends him the service of her mouth. What
would you do, Sempronia, if I asked you? If
you were to refuse I should say that you have
forgotten all your promises and your pledged
faith. You know that Socrates said, the beautiful
body of a pretty woman is nothing but a
living treasure chamber of voluptuousness, the
storehouse whereto men resort to find their
pleasures, whereto they direct the burning
floods of their lubricity. What matter whether
you fulfil your duty through that pure canal
(kissing her mouth), or through that other
(touching below), which is infect?” He persuaded
her to what she was willing to do without
persuasion. “Oh!” she said, smiling,
“what an air you want me to play, and upon
what a flute, in our concert!” taking in her
hand his member, which began to rise. She
seized the point of his dart between her lips
and turning her tongue around it, caused novel
transports of delight to the member that slid
into its new receptacle. But feeling that the
.bn 135.png
.pn +1
fountains of the brine of Venus were on the
point of bursting forth, she recoiled with horror.
“You would not degrade me so far”, said
my mother, “as to make me drink a man in a
liquid form?” She had scarcely spoken, when
an abundant shower fell upon her robe. He
showed some anger, “How could you be so
foolish,” he cried, “as to spoil such good
work!” She replied: “Forgive me, the next
time you will find me more obedient.” She kept
her word, and actually drank men in a liquid
state,—a spicy thing, for indeed the seed is
spicy with salt!” (Dial. VII.)
.pm quote-end

Mancia also proved complaisant in that way
to Marino; Eleanor tells it in Aloysia Sigaea:

.pm quote-start
“My cousin, Mancia, has married a Neapolitan
of the name of Marino. Marino is
burning all over with debauchery. The libertine
looks for the woman in Mancia even
above the breasts; he wants her mouth, as
though the vulva of the young wife had taken
refuge there, or as if the mouth had made a
bargain with the vulva to participate in the
games of Venus. I blamed her for allowing so
unnatural an act. “What would you have?” she
said. “Marino’s instrument occupies my mouth,
.bn 136.png
.pn +1
so I cannot complain. We please our husbands
only by reason of being women. Never mind
where she is taken, if a woman only proves
that she is a woman, she will please.”” (Dial. VII.)
.pm quote-end

So too Alfonso tries to engage Eleanor herself
in the same fashion:

.pm quote-start
“Look you! Ottavia”, added Eleanor, “how
passionately loving Alfonso is. Some days ago,
after having several times plied his javelin in
the legitimate way, he presented it to my
mouth. “Your catapult, my Alfonso”, said I,
“is not made for breaching this door; you are
mad, and you want to make me the same.”
“No! I would fain have you mad, not myself;
for that you love me, I owe to your madness,
not to any merits of my own. If I get delirious,
I may forget the respect which I owe you, and
I would rather die than cease to live for you
alone.” These words softened my heart, and
decided me to assist him in that game. I seized
his inflamed dart with a good heart between
my lips. But that was all, his member returned
voluntarily to the place it had left, and finished
its exploits, which it had impudently begun
.bn 137.png
.pn +1
above, properly in the region of the middle.”
(Dial. VII.)
.pm quote-end

Gonzalvo of Cordova was another amateur
of this mode. Aloysia Sigaea:

.pm quote-start
“Gonzalvo of Cordova, a celebrated general,
is said to have taken very much to this
kind of voluptuousness in his old age.” (Dial. VII.)
.pm quote-end

The prurient ingenuity of Tiberius invented
a new species of <i>fellation</i>.

.pm quote-start
“His turpitude went still farther, to such infamous
excesses, that it is as difficult to relate
them as to listen to them; they are scarcely
credible. He caused little children, of the tenderest
age to be taught to play between his legs,
while he was swimming in his bath, calling
them his little fishes, to touch him lightly with
tongue and teeth, and like babies of some little
strength and growth, though not yet weaned,
to suck his privates as they would their mother’s
breast. His age and his inclination predisposed
him for this sort of pleasure before all
others.” (Suetonius, <i>Tiberius</i>, ch. 44).
.pm quote-end

A representation of this ingenious libertine
while tickled by what he called his little fishes,
.bn 138.png
.pn +1
is to be seen on plate XVIII. of the <i>Monuments
de la vie privée des douze Césars</i>.

Men advanced in age, whose member will
no longer obey their will, are more inclined to
irrumate than others. To this circumstance
the passage in Martial, IV., 50, refers:

.pm quote-start
“No man is too old to irrumate.”
.pm quote-end

XI., 47:

.pm quote-start
“Gain the heights; there your old member will revive.”
.pm quote-end

And III., 75:

.pm quote-start
“Your mentula, Lupercus, has long ceased
to stiffen; nevertheless, in your folly you strive
to make it rise. You are fain now to corrupt
pure lips for gold; but even so your Venus is
stimulated in vain.”
.pm quote-end

For this reason irrumators are less feared by
married men. Thus Martial dealt more lightly
with Lupus, whom he had surprised while
irrumating his Polla, in the passage (X., 40)
quoted previously. The husband of Glycera,
if so be that she had one, also need not have
feared that Lupercus would do duty for him,
Martial, XI., 41:

.pm quote-start
“Lupercus loves the beautiful Glycera; he
is her lord and master, and he alone. He was
.bn 139.png
.pn +1
complaining bitterly he had not loved her for
a month; Aelianus asked the reason,—he replied
Glycera had the toothache.”
.pm quote-end

Lepidinius, in the <i>Hermaphroditus</i> (I.,
13), is of opinion, that anyone who has once
irrumated can never get rid or renounce the
habit. I must leave it to experts to decide upon
this. So also thinks Aloysia Sigaea: “Such as
have once tasted it, are mad after this pleasure.”
(Dial. VII.)

No wonder that after fellation, the mouth
has to be washed out with water. Martial alludes
to this, II., 50;

.pm quote-start
“You lend your mouth, and then drink water,
Lesbia; quite right,—where your work
is, there you take water.”
.pm quote-end

<i>Priapeia</i>, XXX., says:

.pm quote-start
“Walk in the vineyards, and if you steal any
of the grapes, you shall have water, stranger,
to take in another way.”
.pm quote-end

Priapus means: “You came to get water to
drink; but if you pluck any grapes, I shall irrumate
you, and then you will want water to
rinse your mouth rather than to drink.” Martial
says as much to Chioné in <i>Epigram</i> III.,
87, quoted before.
.bn 140.png
.pn +1

To ask for the loan of the mouth is to demand
a thing much more shameful than the
other two orifices. Martial, IX., 68:

.pm quote-start
“All the night long I possessed a lewd
young girl; I never knew anyone more naughty.
Tired of a thousand postures, I asked for
the puerile service; before I had done asking,
she turned at once in compliance. Laughing
and blushing, I asked something worse than
that,—the wanton consented instantly”[#].
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
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:

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

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:

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

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

.pm quote-start
“I will not deny you anything, Phyllis; for you deny
me nothing.”
.pm quote-end

And similarly, IV. 12:

.pm quote-start
“You refuse no one, Thaïs. If you know no shame for
this, blush at least that you refuse nothing, Thaïs!”
.pm quote-end

And again, XII., 72:

.pm quote-start
“There is nothing, Lygdus, that you do not now deny
me; there was a time when there was nothing you did
deny!”
.pm quote-end

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

.pm quote-start
“Whoso refuses nothing, Atticilla, sucks.”
.pm quote-end

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 (<i>Art of Love</i>, III., v. 766):

.pm quote-start
“She is meet to undergo all kinds of assaults.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 141.png
.pn +1

Those that found themselves thus situated
took good care not to be surprised; Martial,
XI., 46:

.pm quote-start
“When you have crossed the threshold of a
chamber with name on signboard, whether it
be boy or girl that smiled on you in welcome,
doors and hangings and locks do not content
you, and you want to be yet more certain you
are not watched. Mystery is what you want;
you look suspiciously on the smallest crack
in the door and stop it; the same with the tiniest
pinhole made by some inquisitive hand.
Nobody can be more modest or circumspect
in his doings, Cantharus, than the man who
wants to pedicate or copulate.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 142.png
.pn +1

However, the old Romans did not blush to
irrumate, as is evident by the use Catullus
makes of that word, contemptuous though it
be. What they <i>were</i> ashamed of was <i>fellation</i>.
Indeed there is a certain bold audacity in playing
the active part, but none in the passive one,
particularly when the mouth, the noblest organ
of the body, has to perform such vile offices.
Add to this that a fetid breath was acquired
by this habit, which <i>fellators</i> took
every means to hide, afraid of putting to flight
fellow-guests at table and acquaintances who
should greet them with a kiss in the street.

<i>Fellators</i> were so repugnant to the guests at
table, that no cups[#] were offered to them,
.bn 143.png
.pn +1
or when they had been offered, they were afterwards
broken[#], and that it was only
with the greatest unwillingness any one would
kiss their mouth[#], when presented for salute.
Thus it was preferable to be taken for a
<i>cinede</i> to being taken for a <i>fellator</i>[#], like
Phœbus in Martial, III., 73:
.bn 144.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“You sleep with youths whose members are
full size, and what rises with them, will not
rise with you. Pray, Phœbus, tell me, what
must I suspect? If I could think that you were
but effeminate! But rumour says, you are not
a <i>cinede</i>!”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Martial, II., 15:

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

And VI., 44:

.pm quote-start
“No one, Calliodorus may drink from your cup.”
.pm quote-end

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?” (<i>De Beneficiis</i>, II., 21.) Fabius Persicus
was a <i>fellator</i> not a <i>cunnilingue</i>; 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.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Martial, XII., 75:

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

And Macedonius in the <i>Analecta</i> of Brunck, III., 116:

.pm quote-start
“There drank a woman with me yesterday, whose
fame is anything but good;—go break the cups, my lads!”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Martial, XI., 96:

.pm quote-start
“Every time you happen to meet a <i>fellator’s</i> kisses, I
can fancy, O Flaccus, how you plunge your head in water.”
.pm quote-end

And I., 95:

.pm quote-start
“You sung but badly, Agelé, when you were loved <i>per
vulvam</i>. Now no one kisses you, and you sing well.”
.pm quote-end

And I., 84:

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

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.” (<i>De Beneficiis</i>, IV., 30.)
.pm fn-end

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

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

And VI., 81:

.pm quote-start
“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!”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

The case of Callistratus, in XII., 35 of our
author, is a similar one:

.pm quote-start
“You are very frank, Callistratus, with me,
and you tell me that they often do it to you.
You are not quite so simple, as you would appear;
the man that tells such things does not
tell of others worse.[#]”
.pm quote-end

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

.pm quote-start
“What tells (<i>narrat</i>) your harlot.—No! I don’t mean
your girl, Tongilion!—What then?—Your tongue!”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 145.png
.pn +1

For the same reason, as Charidemus will not
be called a <i>patient</i>, and shows his legs and
chest covered with hair. Martial tells him
(VI., 56), to arrange himself in such a way as
to appear a minion rather than a <i>fellator</i>:

.pm quote-start
“Because your legs are covered with bristles,
your chest with hair, you think, Charidemus,
to hand down your words to posterity;
take my advice, and pluck the hair from all
over your body, and get it certified you depilate
your buttocks. Why so? you ask.—You
know the world tells many tales; try to make
them believe you are merely pedicated.”
.pm quote-end

<i>Fellation</i>, as was but fair, received payment,
and high payment. Martial, XI., 67 shows
this:

.pm quote-start
“Informer you are and blackmailer, swindler
and trickster, <i>fellator</i> and bully. The wonder
is you have no money.”
.pm quote-end

And again, III., 75:

.pm quote-start
“Your member, Lupercus, has long ceased
to stiffen; nevertheless in your folly, you
strive to make it rise. Of no avail is cole-wort
or salacious onions, of no use to you the provocative
.bn 146.png
.pn +1
savory. You are fain now to corrupt
pure lips for gold; but even so your Venus is
stimulated in vain. But,—a thing to be marvelled
at and scarce believed,—what will not
rise, Lupercus, does rise if you pay a heavy
fee.”
.pm quote-end

But when on the subject of fellation, we
must not pass over in silence the raven, whom
our standing authority (Martial, XIV., 74),
calls a <i>fellator</i>:

.pm quote-start
“Saluting raven[#], why do they call thee
<i>fellator</i>? Never a mentula entered your beak.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
You will find in Macrobius (<i>Saturnalia</i>, 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.
.pm fn-end

The fact is ignorant people believed the
raven fulfilled the coitus with his beak:

Pliny says: “The vulgar herd believes that
it operates the coitus and procreates with its
beak. Aristotle denied this, saying that ravens
merely exchange kisses in the same way, familiar
to everybody, that pigeons do.” (<i>Natural History</i>, X., 12.)
.bn 147.png
.pn +1

Erasmus denies in his <i>Adagia</i>, under the
word <i>Lesbiari</i> (p. 409 of the Frankfort edition,
1670), that in his time the obscene practice
of irrumation was still known:

.pm quote-start
“A**** (to lick), if I am not mistaken,
is with the Greeks the same thing as <i>fellare</i>
with the Latins. The word indeed remains;
but the thing itself has been, I think, long done
away with.”
.pm quote-end

I fear this is not really the case. At any rate
I am informed that this practice is not entirely
opposed to the habits of libertines of the
present day; those must decide whose opportunities
take them to great cities. Plate XXI.,
in the <i>Monuments de la vie privée des douze
Césars</i> represents a <i>fellator</i>. However the
graceful picture in question really belongs
more properly to the category of “spintrian
postures”, of which more anon, than to the
present chapter.
.bn 148.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - <s>OF IRRUMATION</s>
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.nf c
<xl>MANUAL

<i>OF CLASSICAL EROTOLOGY</i></xl>



SECOND VOLUME
.nf-

.bn 149.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV||<s>OF MASTURBATION</s>
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
TO excite the member by friction with
the hand until the sperm comes
spirting out of it is what the Ancients
call masturbation, from <i>masturbare</i>,
that is <i>manu stuprare</i>,—to pollute
with the hand. This may be done by one’s
own hand, or by borrowing someone else’s.
If by one’s own, it is generally the left hand
that is employed, hence the expression, “left-hand
whore” in Martial, IX., 42:

.pm quote-start
“You never, Ponticus, enter a woman, but
use your left-hand whore, making your hand
the mistress for your pleasure; think you this
is nothing? Believe me, it’s a crime, yes! a
crime, and worse than you can imagine. Old
Horatius copulated once at any rate to beget
his three sons; Mars once to get chaste Ilia
with twins. Neither of them could have
done it, if by masturbation they had procured
.bn 150.png
.pn +1
by the use of their own hand pleasures
so shameful. Believe me, that nature’s voice
confirms it,—what escapes ’twixt your fingers,
Ponticus, is a human being.”
.pm quote-end

To the same subject also <i>Epigr.</i>, XI., 74 refers:

.pm quote-start
“Oftentimes, Lygdé, you swear you will
grant my prayer, even appointing the place,
even appointing the hour. Longtime I lay
consumed with longing, till often my left
hand comes to help in your stead.”
.pm quote-end

And this passage of the VIth. book of Ramusius,
p. 62 of the Paris edition:

.pm quote-start
“What are you to do? Is your left hand
safe and sound? Well use it, then you will
not want a whore. Why pay for what your
left hand gives you gratis?”
.pm quote-end

There were of course also people who used
their right hand; the same Ramusius of
Rimini, book IV., p. 61, tells us:

.pm quote-start
“I suffer, dear Donatus, from so frightful
an erection, I am fearful for my member,
if you do not help me. My right hand, being
wounded, can do nothing; I have no money;
Hylas is not here; no vulva opens for me—no
chance of fornication, appease my desire,
.bn 151.png
.pn +1
that I may live, and you can do it cheaply.”
.pm quote-end

Pacificus Maximus, <i>Elegy</i> XII., p. 126,
Paris edition:

.pm quote-start
“What shall I do? I am so stiff—I’m
bursting, and I could easily fill three or four
large bottles. It is long since my member
has known a vulva, long since it has stirred
the entrails of a man. It is stiff day and
night, and will never relax,—night and day
it lifts its head. No youth, no girl will listen
to my prayer, no help—my right hand must
then do the service!”
.pm quote-end

We have seen just above, with what severity
Martial reproached Ponticus, a masturbator,
for losing between his fingers the
substance of a man. Nevertheless this fine
moralist did not hesitate to put his own
hand to similar use under the pressure of
erection, <i>Epigr.</i> 43, book II.:

.pm quote-start
“Another Ganymede, my hand assisted me.”
.pm quote-end

and XI., 74:

.pm quote-start
“Often my left hand comes to my help in
your stead.”
.pm quote-end

Nor was his severity given to whining
when he exhorted (XI., 59), the cinede
Telesphorus:
.bn 152.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“Soon as ever you see I want it, and
know that I am in erection, Telesphorus,
then you demand a heavy price,—can I say
nay?[#] If I will not swear to pay you, you
will withdraw those posteriors of yours,
which are so precious to me. If with his
razor set to my throat my barber, whilst
shaving me, demands my liberty and fortune,
I promise all; ’tis not the barber asks, but a
cut-throat, and fear compels me to say
‘Yes.’ But once I see the razor returned
to its curved case and harmless, why! I
will break every limb of the fellow. Not
that I will harm you, but my left hand once
washed, my member will say “Go hang!” to
your grasping avarice.”[#]
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Martial had made use of the same interrogative
phrase with the verb in the infinitive and <i>puta</i> put instead
of <i>scilicet</i> also in Epigram III., 26. <i>Hoc me puta velle
negare?</i> (Can I say nay to this?) Scholars have found
occasion for a pile of annotations on the two passages:
these need not detain us.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Martial’s meaning is: My left hand will console
my suffering mentula; the business done, my hand covered
with the ejaculation of the sperm, like the fleece on
the pubis of Ravola in Juvenal, IX., 4,—if indeed it is
the fleece of his pubis that is intended:

.pm quote-start
“Whilst Ravola with wet beard rubs the groin of
Rhodopé” ... the greedy cinede will be told to go to the
deuce, to slink off with drooping head, like the man in
Horace (<i>Satires</i> II., 69), who finds:

“Nothing is left to him and his but to weep.”
.pm quote-end

This moist hand reminds us of the adulterous woman
in Juvenal, XI., 186, who:

.pm quote-start
“Show humid traces in the doubtful pleats of her
tunic.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 153.png
.pn +1

The same when his wife surprised him
engaged with a youth (XI., 44),—a witty
epigram quoted above, as also when he intended
to marry Thelesina (II., 49):

.pm quote-start
“Thelesina makes presents to young lads;
all the better.”
.pm quote-end

The same when he recommends somebody,
I do not know who (XI., 23), to make use of
the posteriors of Galesius only, as the part
that would suit him;

.pm quote-start
“Youths are divided by nature; one part is
reserved for girls, and the other for men—use
your own portion.”
.pm quote-end

Is what the pedicon loses in the anus of
the cinede anything else but the substance
of a man, which the masturbator wastes between
his fingers?

As it is in the nature of the virile member
to rise at the mere sight of a pretty woman’s
naked body, the amorous desire in that state
.bn 154.png
.pn +1
often craves imperiously for relief, for “man
in erection is not overwise.”[#] This is
why, when the fair one’s heavy coverlets
have been thrown back:

.pm quote-start
“Meantime the adulterer she has sent for
lurks in furtive concealment, and impatient
of the delay, yet says never a word, but pulls
his foreskin.”[#]—Juvenal, VI., 236, 7.
and why:
.bn 155.png
.pn +1

“The Phrygian slaves would be masturbating
behind the doors, each time his bride
mounted the Hectorean horse.”—Martial,
XI., 105.
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Suidas under the word *****, after Aelius Dionysius
apparently.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
It was not out of voluptuousness, but for decency’s
sake that Jews, who had renounced their nation, had
their prepuce redressed over the gland, as they did not
wish it to be seen that they had been circumcized, so
they took means to get their bare gland recovered. “And
they made for themselves new prepuces” (<i>Maccabees</i>, I.,
1., 15), “Is there anyone that has been brought to believe,
circumcized? Let him not recover his gland” (<i>Corinthians</i>,
I., vii., 18). Celsus, <i>De Medicina</i>, VII., ch. 25:
“If the gland is bare, and it is desired for convenience sake
to recover it, this can be effected, but more easily with a
child, than with a grown man, more easily with the man
born so, than with the man who has been circumcized
after the custom of certain people. After having explained
the method of cure applicable to men, with whom
it is a natural accident,” Celsus continues: “With people
that have been circumcized, the skin must be detached
behind the crown of the gland. This operation is not
very painful as the prepuce being loosened, you can draw
it with the hand back to the pubis without any loss of
blood.

Then the loosened integument is drawn once more
over and beyond the gland. This done the verge is dipped
frequently into cold water, and then covered with a
plaster, which has a strong tendency to minimize inflammation.
As soon as it is quite free from inflammation,
the verge is to be bandaged from the pubis to the annular
incision; the skin is then drawn over the gland, but kept
separate from it by a plaster. In this way the lower part
of the skin grows on again, while the upper part heals
without adhering.” From this passage it would appear
that at the time of Celsus the method of laying bare the
gland which afterwards prevailed with the Jews was not
discovered yet, by which, according to Buxtorf (Dictionnaire
Talmudique), after the prepuce has been cut away,
the circumcisor takes hold of the remaining skin between
the thin edges of his thumb nails, and draws it forcibly
back. If this practice had been customary it would have
been superfluous to separate the prepuce with the scalpel.
I conjecture from this, that the Jews were called <i>recutiti</i>
from having this skin of the gland drawn back, which, not
being done, the circumcision was not considered complete;
but Celsus makes me doubt this.
.pm fn-end

This is why during the dances of the young
Gaditanian girls, which were without doubt
very like the dances that are still so much
appreciated by the Spaniards[#], the limp
.bn 156.png
.pn +1
appendages of even grey-haired spectators
begin to move visibly, as many authors tell
us. Martial, VI., 71:

.pm quote-start
“Cunning in the wanton gestures that go
with the Baetician castanets, skilled in dancing
to the Gaditanian measures, she might
well stiffen trembling Pelias, and excite
Hecuba’s husband to emulate vigorous Hector.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Julius Caesar Scaliger, <i>Poetica</i>, book I., p. 64:

.pm quote-start
“One of these infamous dances was the * *** **
meaning wriggling the haunches and thighs, the <i>crissare</i>
of the Romans. In Spain this abominable practice is still
performed in public.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

Juvenal, XI., 162-165:
.pm quote-start
“Perhaps you may wait while the Gaditanian
dancer begins to feel the wanton stimulus
of the loud strains of her accompanying
band, and the girls, fired by the applause
sink to the ground with quivering buttocks,—a
sight to sting languid senses to love.”[#]
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Do not miss, reader, the motive of this dance, with
their buttocks wriggling the girls finally sunk to the
ground, reclining on their backs, ready for the amorous
contest. Different from this was the Lacedæmonian
dance * ** * ** when the girls in their leaps touched
their buttocks with their heels. Aristophanes in the
<i>Lysistrata</i>, 82:

.pm quote-start
“Naked I dance, and beat my buttocks with my heels.”
Pollux, IV., ch. 24: “As to the * ** * **, this was a Laconian
dance. There were prizes competed for, not only
amongst the young men, but also amongst the young
girls; the essence of these dances was to jump and touch
the buttocks with the heels. The jumps were counted
and credited to the dancers. They rose to a thousand in
the ** *** * ! !”
.pm quote-end

Yet more difficult was that kind of dance which was
called ****, in which the feet had to touch the shoulders.
Pollux, <i>ibid.</i>: “The **** were dances for women: they
had to throw their feet higher than their shoulders.”

This kind of dance is not unknown in more modern
times. J. C. Scaliger, <i>Poetica</i>, book I., p. 651: “To this
day the Spaniards touch the occiput and other parts of the
body with their feet.”
.pm fn-end
.bn 157.png
.pn +1

But it is not only by the sight of a beautiful
naked female the member is excited; who
does not know that it is also roused merely
by images called up by the imagination, particularly
in the night. And the power of
such fancies is such as to provoke a pleasurable
ejaculation of sperm. Priapus himself
has experienced this. <i>Priapeia</i> XLVIII:

.pm quote-start
“You see this organ after which I am
called by my name Priapus, is wet; this
moisture is not dew, nor yet hoar-frost. It
is the outcome given of its own sweet will,
on recalling memories of a complaisant
maid.”
.pm quote-end

It is said that Diogenes, the cynic, was a
masturbator; once caught in the act of handling
.bn 158.png
.pn +1
his mentula, he said: “I wish to heaven
I could in the same way satisfy my stomach
with friction when it barks for food.”[#]

.pm fn-start
Diogenes Laërtius, VI., 2, 46: “One day, whilst
masturbating himself in the middle of the market he said:
“I wish to heaven that I could prevent my stomach from
being hungry by rubbing it.” Plutarch, <i>De Stoicorum
repugnantiis</i>, 1044, vol. II., of his works: “Chrysippus
praised Diogenes for masturbating himself in public, and
for saying to the bystanders: “Would to heaven by rubbing
my stomach in the same fashion, I could satisfy my
hunger.”
.pm fn-end

When the masturbation is done by the loan
of another person’s hand, it is possible that
the pleasure is participated on the part of
the agent.

It forms part of the business of a courtesan
to be clever with her fingers; a languid member
may by their use be invigorated. The
inertness of the virile member may be caused
by the inconveniences of age, and this either
on the part of the woman, as in Martial,
VI., 23:

.pm quote-start
“You require my penis, Lesbia, to be ever
in erection for you; believe me a man’s member
is not like a finger. True, you strive to
excite me with hands and tender words, but
.bn 159.png
.pn +1
your face is a stubborn fact and counteracts
all your efforts.”
.pm quote-end

and again in the same author, XI., 30:

.pm quote-start
“When you set your old hand the task of
rousing my member, your thumb, my Phyllis,
will but strangle me.”
.pm quote-end

or of the man, Martial, XI., 47:

.pm quote-start
“Only in dreams you get stiff[#], Maevius,
and your verge begins to make water
right onto your own feet; in vain your
wearied fingers ply your wrinkled member,—rouse
it as you may, it will not raise its
drooping head.”[#]
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Mark with what minuteness the Ancients scrutinized
nature; with what ingenuity they gave expression
to all their sentiments! Who dares nowadays write such
a verse describing as a natural thing what might be but a
solecism of his mentula.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Bassus, who was in the habit of taking his pleasures
with young minions, longhaired and slim, set the
hands of his wife to work to excite his mentula, when he
came back to the conjugal couch fatigued and languid.
Martial, XII., 99:

.pm quote-start
“You tire yourself, oh Bassus, but with minions, paying
them from the dowry of your wife; thus when you return
to her side, that member bought at the price of many
million sesterces, lies languid. In vain her tender thumb
tries to excite it, vain are her tender words, it will not
stand.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

Aristophanes in the <i>Wasps</i>, 735-38:
.bn 160.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“Yes, I will nurse him and get him all that
is wanted for an old man: beef broth to lap,
soft wool, and a rug to keep him warm, and
a courtesan to rub his member and his
loins...”
.pm quote-end

The same author, <i>ibid.</i>, v. 1334, 35:

.pm quote-start
“... The cable is rotted away, yet is it
still fond of being rubbed.”
.pm quote-end

Nor is it unwelcome to men in the vigor of
life, and who are fit to caress young girls, to
have mistresses whose hands are not lazy in
bed, and whose fingers know how to act in
the dark regions where the arrow of love
is hidden. Martial, XI., 105, complains
about the unseemly gravity of his wife, which
forbade her to render him that service:

.pm quote-start
“You will not help me on by movement or
by word, nor yet with your fingers, as though
you were preparing the incense and the wine
for sacrifice.”[#]
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-start
The women of Aristophanes (<i>Lysistrata</i>, v. 227)
threatened their husbands with a similar rigidity of body:

.pm quote-start
“Though you may have your way, I shall be crabbed
and never move.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

Penelopé, on the other hand, contented
.bn 161.png
.pn +1
Ulysses well that way, as Martial has it in
the same epigram:

.pm quote-start
“Chaste though she was, when the king
of Ithaca lay snoring, Penelopé liked to
have her hand always on it.”
.pm quote-end

Ovid’s mistress did him the same service,
but all in vain one miserable night, when a
hostile divinity seemed to have smitten to
death that most pitiful part of him, to use
his own expression, and the girl, in order
that the servants might not think that she
had remained untouched, pretended to make
her ablutions all the same (<i>Amores</i>, III.,
viii., 73, 74):

.pm quote-start
“My darling did not disdain even to put
her hand to it and gently try to rouse it.”
.pm quote-end

This virtue of the fingers in procuring
erection is alluded to by Juvenal, VI., 195,
96:

.pm quote-start
“... How well a soft and libertine voice
will erect your member; it is as good as
fingers!”
.pm quote-end

The author of the <i>Priapeia</i> was also well
aware of the fact; LXXX.:

.pm quote-start
“My member is not very long nor very
thick,—handle it, and you’ll see it grow apace.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 162.png
.pn +1

And so was Janus Dousa, quoted by Scioppius
á propos of this same <i>Priapeia</i>, cleverly
scenting out the man’s character:

.pm quote-start
“Dousa, commenting upon Petronius, informs
us that he knows <i>by home experience</i>
how this object grows in thickness and length
when shampooed by a woman.”
.pm quote-end

You can estimate the importance of this
function by the value set by the Ancients, as
in our days by the Turks, upon shampooers,
men and women, who are employed for manipulating
the joints with artistic expertness,
their fingers softly pressing and turning them,
and their hands kept soft by the constant
use of gloves, kneading tenderly all the limbs.
Seneca, <i>Letter</i> LXVI.:

.pm quote-start
“Would I rather offer my limbs for shampooing
to my superannuated minions? or to
some little woman, or some weakling man,
more woman than man, to draw and crack
my fingers? Should I not rather envy yonder
Mucius, who put his hand in the fire with
the same equanimity as though he tendered
it to a shampooer.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 163.png
.pn +1

Martial, III., 82:

.pm quote-start
“A woman shampoos your body all over
with nimble skill; her trained hand manipulates
<i>all</i> your members.”[#]
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
He had a hand of no less experience (Juvenal,
VI., 422-23), that cunning shampooer who put his fingers
to the lady’s clitoris.

.pm quote-start
“And made his mistress’s thigh resound beneath his
hand high up.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

John of Salisbury states in his <i>Policraticus</i>,
book III., ch. 13, after some ancient author,
perhaps Clearchus, as Lipsius thinks:

.pm quote-start
“When a rich libertine turns in his luxurious
ways to effeminacy, a youth with frizzled
hair takes before all the world his feet while
he is lying on his couch, and shampoos them
and his legs, not to go further, with his delicate
hands. That youth is always wearing
gloves, so as to preserve them white and soft
for the benefit of rich people. Then, using
his hands more licentiously, he runs them
over all the body with impudent touchings
and ticklings, raising the desires and stirring
the amatory flames of his employer.”
.pm quote-end

I may very well describe here, for I could
not find a better place, a performance for
which the friendly hand of a woman is in
.bn 164.png
.pn +1
request, but of a woman that is an expert,
which will gently press your testicles and
stroke your thighs; it is said that nothing
can be pleasanter or more voluptuous. Aloysia
Sigaea describes, with her inexhaustible
ingenuity, such a scene, executed by Ottavia
and Roberto, with the assistance of Manilia;
the fullness, variety and richness of the description,
placed in the mouth of Ottavia,
are admirable:

.pm quote-start
“Manilia then conducted us to the trysting
place; she undressed me, and placed me
naked on the couch. Roberto jumped on to
the couch. “Now,” he said, “I shall enjoy
the most supreme unalloyed bliss. Carried
on your chariot, Olympia, I shall take my
way through this dark thoroughfare (he was
pinching my pubis the while), I shall take
my way to glory.” His hands were straying
over my belly, my thighs, examining everything.
His member was swelling. “Permit
me, my Venus!” he said, giving me a kiss.
“Willingly,” I answered, “you shall have me
in any way you like.” Manilia interposed,
“Why so much talk! Do not talk but act!
I will assist both of you, and add new delights
.bn 165.png
.pn +1
to your voluptuous sensations. You
are in excellent trim, Roberto! Come, down
with you upon Ottavia’s snowy bosom, and
have your fill!” Roberto precipitates himself
upon me, and his engine strikes against
my belly. Manilia’s soft hand intercepts the
erring tool. “Come,” she says, “you vagrant,
enter the lovely prison, and do the task
set to you by your mistress.” With her other
hand she pushes the young man’s back, and
I take him in, entirely in. Manilia tells me
not to move. “Raise your left thigh, Ottavia,”
she says, “and stretch out the other one.”
I obey. “You, Roberto, you now push gently
and quickly; As to you, Ottavia, kiss him
but without moving!” We do so. She added,
“When you both feel the boiling foam
running over, you, Ottavia, give a sigh, and
you, Roberto, gently bite Ottavia’s lips!”
He then begins to poke vigorously, but without
haste or violence, in and out; I press him
on to me, kissing him but not moving. I
feel it coming. I sigh, “Now! now, Roberto!”
cries Manilia, “help Ottavia! Work
away!” He shakes me and pounds me. Soon
I feel a slight bite on my neck. I heave a
.bn 166.png
.pn +1
sigh. “And now, Ottavia,” cries Manilia,
“you assist Roberto; move your buttocks
briskly, raise up your loins, quick! quick!
Well done, my child! Laïs herself, I think,
could not have shown more flexibility nor
agility!” The sweet youth begins to ejaculate,
and I feel my inside inundated by the
fiery spring of love. I moved with body and
soul. I never arrived more quickly at the
acmé of voluptuousness. Manilia caressed
with one hand my buttocks, and with the
other hand Roberto’s; at the same time she
pressed with the points of her fingers the lips
of my vulva and his testicles, which were
close up. The youth swooned, and our nurse
withdrew, and clapped her hands applauding!”
(Dialogue VII.)
.pm quote-end

Plates IV. and XII., in the <i>Monuments de
la vie privée des douze Césars</i>, show you
Cleopatra titillating with a delicate hand the
virile parts of Julius Cæsar and Mark Anthony,
while in the <i>Monuments du culte
secret des dames romaines</i>; plate XVI., represents
Livia bestowing the same caresses on
Augustus; plate V., a Bacchante doing it to
a Faun; plate IV., a masturbator—expressly
.bn 167.png
.pn +1
so called. In plate XLIV. of the <i>Monuments
de la vie privée des douze Césars</i>,
again, is a picture of a girl helping Tiberius
with her benevolent hand in pedicating Otho.

Again it sometimes happened that lewd
men found pleasure in handling the genital
parts of other men. Martial knew nothing
more infamous (XI., 23):

.pm quote-start
“That your coarse lips should receive the
delicate kisses of fair-skinned Galesus, that
you should sleep with your naked Ganymede—is
not this enough yet? It ought to be!
Cease at any rate to touch the privates with
provocative hand. With boys of tender age
this does more harm than the member does.
The fingers hasten virility and make them
prematurely men. Hence the goaty smell,
the quick-coming hairs, and the beard that
make the mother wonder, while they no more
love to bathe in the open light of day.
Nature has divided boys; one part is reserved
for girls, the other for men. Keep to the
part which is yours.”
.pm quote-end

Martial means to say that the member was
given to boys for the purpose of using it with
girls, while their buttocks were for the service
.bn 168.png
.pn +1
of men, and that this pedicon should
therefore make use of Galesus’ buttocks
rather than play with his mentula. Of similar
import is also <i>Epigram</i> XI., 71, directed
against Tucca, who wanted to sell young
lads:

.pm quote-start
“Oh, for shame! there is the groin with
the tunic all open, and a member appears
fashioned and trained by your hand.”
.pm quote-end

He says it is a crime to put up for sale
those lads whom the infamous Tucca has
trained for debauchery, and to let the buyers
see their fully formed mentulas, accustomed
to rise under the provocative hand of the
master. Eumolpus subjects in the same way
the verge of Encolpus to friction, Petronius,
ch. 140:

.pm quote-start
“After these words” (Encolpus speaking)
“I lifted up my tunic, and exhibited myself
in full vigor to Eumolpus. He first recoiled
as if horror-struck; but, like a man who expected
worse, he got hold with his two hands
of God’s gift, viz.: the verge in erection.”
.pm quote-end

I have still to treat, in order to complete
my task, of other pleasures belonging to this
category, meaning those which can be taken
.bn 169.png
.pn +1
in any interstice of the body. A few words
will suffice. Taking in the first place the
breasts, I have recourse to Aloysia Sigaea:

.pm quote-start
“By the twin conch-shells of Venus!” (Dialogue
VII., Ottavia speaking.) “I am
ashamed. I blush to think, that the valley
between my breasts has done duty as the
avenue of Venus. You know there is in
our house a gallery giving on the garden-parterres,
which are full of all sorts of flowers.
There Caviceo and I were promenading;
he embraced me, kissed me, bit my lips....
He put his left hand in my bosom. ‘I
am after trying a naughty trick,’ he said.
‘Undress, my darling!’ What was I to do?
I undressed. His eyes rested on my bare
bosom. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘Venus sleeping between
your breasts. May I waken her!’
While he was talking he had thrown me on
my back in the bed, and being in a noble
state of erection, slides his hot, burning member
between my breasts. How could I escape
his blind passion. I had no choice but
to bear it. His hands softly pressed my
breasts together, so as to narrow the space,
in which his mentula had to travel towards
.bn 170.png
.pn +1
a new experience. Why make a long story?
Stupefied as I was at this vain ridiculous
imitation of Love, he inundated me with a
burning libation: he had his will.”
.pm quote-end

As to other interstices of the body, <i>e.g.</i> the
armpits, between the thighs, the calves, the
buttocks (mind, I do not say the anus, but
between the buttocks), be it enough to mention
Heliogabalus; Lampridius, ch. 5:

.pm quote-start
“How put up with a Prince who sought
for pleasure in every cavity of the body,
when you would not suffer a brute beast to
do as much?”
.pm quote-end

Also Commodus, according to the same
Lampridius, ch. 5:

.pm quote-start
“He gave himself up to the infamous assaults
of young men, polluting every part of
his body, even his mouth, and that with either
sex,”—<i>i.e.</i> he was both a <i>fellator</i> and a <i>cunnilingue</i>.
.pm quote-end

Is it necessary to speak here of the debauchery
of those who assault the corpses of females,
or statues? This is not real coitus,
there being no two parties to the act. Nevertheless,
according to Herodotus (II., 89), in
.bn 171.png
.pn +1
Egypt a man was taken in the act of abusing
the corpse of a woman just dead:

.pm quote-start
“It is said that a man was surprised in
the act of working in the fresh corpse of a
woman, and denounced by a fellow-workman.”
.pm quote-end

In consequence of this a law was promulgated
forbidding the corpses of noble and
beautiful women to be given into the hands
of the embalmer until three or four days
after their decease. And who does not know
the story of the Venus of Cnidos, the work
of Praxiteles, as related by Pliny, <i>Historia
Naturalis</i>, XXXVI., ch. 5:

.pm quote-start
“It is related how a certain youth fell in
love with her, and having hidden himself
one night in the temple, cohabited with the
statue, leaving a stain as the mark of the
gratification of his passion upon the marble.”
.pm quote-end

There is a similarity in this with the mistake
made by a bull which, according to
Valerius Maximum, VIII., ch. II., fell in
love with a bronze cow, and copulated with
the same at Syracuse, being deceived by the
perfection of the resemblance.
.bn 172.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - <s>OF MASTURBATION</s>
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V||<s>CUNNILINGUES</s>
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
WE have now said enough about the
work of Venus performed by the
virile member; it remains for us to
explain how a sacrifice may be
offered to Venus without one. This may be
done by means of the tongue or of the clitoris.
We have accordingly first to treat of the
cunnilingues, those who lick women’s privates
and then of the tribads.

As it is the office of the <i>fellator</i> or <i>fellatrix</i>
to suck the virile parts, so it is the business of
cunnilingues to lick the female. The cunnilingue
operates by introducing his tongue into
the vulva. Martial, XI., 62 has described
his monstrous act very clearly:

.pm quote-start
“Manneius, husband with his tongue, adulterer
with his mouth,—more foul than the
mouths of harlots of the Summoenium;
whom seeing, as he stood naked, from a window,
.bn 173.png
.pn +1
the filthy procuress closed her brothel;
whose middle she had rather kiss than his
head. He who of old knew all the channels
of the inwards, and could declare with a sure
and certain voice, whether ’twas a boy or
girl in the mother’s belly (be glad, all vulvas,
for your part is done), can no longer erect
his fornicating tongue. For lo! as he lurks
with tongue plunged in the swelling vulva
and hears the babes wailing inside their
mother, a shocking malady paralyses his
greedy mouth,—and now he can no more be
either clean or unclean.”
.pm quote-end

By the same paralysis of the tongue Zoilus
was struck; Martial, XI., 86:

.pm quote-start
“An evil star, Zoilus, has struck your
tongue of a sudden, even while licking a
vulva. Of a surety, Zoilus, you must now
use your member.”
.pm quote-end

Bæticus, the castrated priest of Cybelé,
against whom Martial has directed <i>Epigram</i>
III., 81, was a cunnilingue:

.pm quote-start
“What have you, Bæticus, a priest of Cybelé
to do with the female pit? That tongue
of yours by rights should lick men’s middles.
For what was your member amputated with
.bn 174.png
.pn +1
a Samian potsherd, if the woman’s parts had
so much charm for you? You must have
your <i>head</i> castrated; true, you are a castrated
Gallus in your secret parts, but none the
less you violate the rites of Cybelé; you are
a man so far as concerns your <i>mouth</i>.”
.pm quote-end

If this passage were in the least doubtful,
<i>Epigram</i> 77 of the same book might offer
difficulties, not otherwise:

.pm quote-start
“Some latent sickness of your stomach I
suspect. Why, I wonder, Bæticus, are you
an <i>eater of filth</i>?”
.pm quote-end

In fact the <i>fellator</i> as well as the <i>cunnilingue</i>
may be called eaters of filth, as in the
passage of Galen quoted previously, where
both of them are called <i>coprophagi</i> (dung-eaters).
Bæticus however has only to do with
the female pit; he is a <i>cunnilingue</i>, not a
<i>fellator</i>. On the contrary, the lewd tongue
of Tongilion (III., 84) is that of a <i>fellator</i>,
not of a <i>cunnilingue</i>; for the tongue of a
<i>cunnilingue</i> plays the part of a lover, being
active; while that of a <i>fellator</i> acts the part of
a prostitute, remaining passive. Sometimes
for want of attention the most learned commentators
are at fault in elucidating these
.bn 175.png
.pn +1
playful passages. One of the twin brothers,
who in our friend of Bilbilis (the poet Martial)
(III., 88), are licking different groins,
was a <i>cunnilingue</i>. The neighbor of Priapus,
“by whose fault it is unhappy Landacé
swears she can hardly walk, she is so enlarged,”
is covertly designated as a <i>cunnilingue</i>
(<i>Priapeia</i> LXXVIII.); yet for all
that Scioppius maintains he was only a fornicator;
but why should we turn away from the
proper sense of the word on account of the
enlarged aperture? As if the vulva could not
be enlarged, or relaxed by the tongue of the
<i>cunnilingue</i> equally as much as by active co-habitation!

.tb

Tiberius Cæsar in his retreat at Capri does
not seem to have disdained the voluptuousness
of the <i>cunnilingue</i>. Blasted by every other
kind of abomination, of what else is the Emperor
accused in the Atellanian song, mentioned
by Suetonius (<i>Tiberius</i>, ch. 45), which
was so much applauded:

.pm quote-start
“An old buck licking the vulvas of goats,”
but this of being a <i>cunnilingue</i>? Do you
want to see Tiberius employed at his licking?
.pm quote-end
.bn 176.png
.pn +1
Plate XXII., in <i>Monuments de la vie privée des
douze Césars</i>, represents it.

So also Sextus Clodius, whom Cicero frequently
reproaches with the impurity of his
mouth and the obscenity of his tongue (<i>Pro
Domo</i>, chs. 10 and 18; <i>Pro Coelio</i>, ch. 32),
appears to us to have been a <i>cunnilingue</i>.
Hence, that hit of Cicero, in his <i>Pro domo</i>,
ch. 18:

.pm quote-start
“My good Sextus, allow me to tell you, as
you are already a good dialectician, you are
also a good licker.”
.pm quote-end

Certainly if he was one, he was bound to
lick Clodia, the sister of Publius Clodius[#],
the wife of Metellus, the woman that
was intimate with all the world. Cicero,
<i>Pro domo</i>, ch. 31:

.pm quote-start
“Ask Sextus Clodius as to this, cite him to
appear; he is keeping quite in the background.
But if you will have him looked
for, he will be found near your sister (he is
.bn 177.png
.pn +1
addressing Publius Clodius), lurking somewhere
with his head low.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
But Clodia was something more than a sister for
Publius Clodius; this would appear from the spirited
pleasantry of Cicero, <i>Pro Coelio</i>, ch. 13:

.pm quote-start
“If there had not arisen differences between me and
that lady’s husband, ... brother, I would say; I always
make that mistake.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

Pay attention, pray, to this expression: “the
head low,” it will soon re-appear, when we
speak of the Greeks.

The Greeks, in fact, felt no repugnance to
the pleasure in question. <i>Epigrams</i> LXXIV.,
LXXV., and LXXVI., in the <i>Analecta</i> of
Brunck, vol. III., p. 165, allude to this:

.nf c
LXXIV.
.nf-

.pm quote-start
“Homer taught you to call voice ****; but
who taught you to have the tongue **** (in
a slit)?”
.pm quote-end

The unknown poet plays upon the ambiguity
of the word ****, which is used with
respect to the tongue in an honest sense, when
derived from ****, I speak, but as a vile
usage when derived from ***, a slit.

.nf c
LXXV.
.nf-

.pm quote-start
“Avoid Alpheus’ mouth, he loves Arethusa’s
bosom, plunging head-first into the
salty sea.”
.pm quote-end

In this epigram also the poet draws upon
the ambiguity of the words mouth, bosom
(bay), head-first, salt sea, which may refer
.bn 178.png
.pn +1
to the river Alpheus in Arcadia and to Arethusa,
a spring near Syracuse, but also to the
mouth of a <i>cunnilingue</i>, that goes and plunges
into the vulva of a woman; not to mention
yet another idea connected with this, to
which we shall return presently.

.nf c
LXXVI.
.nf-
.pm quote-start
“Cheilon and **** have the same letters,
and why? It is because Cheilon will lick
things that are like and unlike.”
.pm quote-end

This mockery is addressed to the cunnilingue
Cheilon. The epigram tells him that
he has somehow a right of licking, as his
name, composed of the same letters as ****,
announces at once the licker, whether he may
lick the lips of a mouth, similar to his own,
or those of a vulva, which are very dissimilar.

The distich of Meleager upon Phavorinus,
published by Huschkius in his <i>Analecta critica</i>
(p. 245), seems to bear upon the same
subject:

.pm quote-start
“You doubt whether Phavorinus does the
thing. Doubt no more; he told me himself
he did,—<i>with his own mouth</i>.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 179.png
.pn +1

As Martial uses often very happily the
word <i>narrat</i> (III., 84), when he speaks of
the abuse of the tongue for <i>fellation</i>, and
Horace the same, so Meleager says **** (he
told) of the man, who employs his for licking
the vulva.

The following epigram of Ammanius from
the <i>Analecta</i> of Brunck, vol. II., p. 386, is
somewhat more obscure:

.pm quote-start
“It is not because you suck your pen that
I dislike you; ’tis because you do so,—without
a pen.”
.pm quote-end

The scholiast imagined by author wanted
to upbraid a lazy pupil who passed his time
sucking his pen, as do others biting their
nails, and to scold him at the same time for
sucking without a pen, meaning for being
a <i>cunnilingue</i>. But it may be taken to refer,
and I think with more reason, to a man who
is in the habit of putting out his tongue for
the obscene act of the <i>cunnilingue</i>, and who
is so accustomed to it that he puts it out in
the ordinary intercourse of life.

This monstrous practice was pushed to such
lengths that, it is almost incredible, there
were people who, not content to lick vulvas
.bn 180.png
.pn +1
which were dry, did it when they were humid
with the menses or any other secretion. Aristophanes
says of Ariphrades in the <i>Knights</i>,
v. 1280-83:

.pm quote-start
“He is not only lewd; his fancy goes
astray; he pollutes his tongue with shameful
pleasures, licking up in his orgies the abominable
dew, fouling his beard and tormenting
women’s privates.”
.pm quote-end

Tormenting women’s privates, licking the
dews, staining the beard, there you have the
man whom humid vulvas do not disgust!
there you have a beard like that of the Ravola
of Juvenal, IX., 4, “when he with beard
all moist was rubbing against the groin of
Rhodopé.” However, not to be dogmatic,
it may be admitted that Ravola’s moist beard
may have been intended merely the wet hair
of a fornicator’s pubis. From the above passage
of Aristophanes we may deduce surely
enough that the expression “working with
the tongue,” which he also uses, rather ambiguously,
with respect to the same Ariphrades,
applies to a <i>cunnilingue</i> rather than
to a <i>fellator</i>, <i>Wasps</i>, 1847-77:

.pm quote-start
“Then Ariphrades, the best endowed of all,
.bn 181.png
.pn +1
of whom his father said once, he never had a
teacher, but prompted by nature, of his own
free will, learned how to work his tongue,
visiting every brothel!”
.pm quote-end

The same personage re-appears in the
<i>Peace</i>, 885, where he is described without any
circumlocution as imbibing the feminine secretion
by way of a sauce:

.pm quote-start
“And throwing himself on her he will
drink up all her juice.”
.pm quote-end

The Greeks, however, had in this kind of
voluptuousness a host of imitators amongst
the Romans. Mamercus Scaurus is known
to us through Seneca (<i>De Beneficiis</i>, IV., ch.
31), in this light:

.pm quote-start
“Did you not know when you appointed
Mamercus Scaurus as Consul, that he swallowed
the menses of his servant girls by the
mouthful? Did he make a secret of it? Did
he pretend to be a blameless man?”
.pm quote-end

Similarly with Natalis, letter LXXXVII.:

.pm quote-start
“Lately Natalis, that man with a tongue
as malicious as it is impure, in whose mouth
women used to eject their monthly purgation....”
.pm quote-end

Both of them were consequently “imbibers
.bn 182.png
.pn +1
of menses,” an appellation which, as we have
seen in chapter III., Galen applies to <i>cunnilingues</i>.

Now too we can clearly understand the
meaning of Nicharchus’ epigram against
Demonax, vol. III., p. 334 of Brunck’s <i>Analecta</i>:

.pm quote-start
“Do not, Demonax, regard all things with
downcast head, and do not spoil your tongue
with over-gratification; the sow has threatening
bristles. You live amongst us, but
you sleep in Phœnicia, and though no son of
Semelé, you are thigh-reared.”
.pm quote-end

He never looks up, exactly like the Cinede
Maternus of Martial, I., 97; he gratifies his
tongue, which likes erection; whether the
vulva be covered with hair or depilated, he
does not mind; during the day he lives in
Greece, but sleeps in Phœnicia, because he
stains his mouth with the monthly flux, which
is, as every one knows, of the Phœnician dye,
viz., purplish red[#]; like another Bacchus,
.bn 183.png
.pn +1
he draws his nourishment from a thigh.[#]
This scarcely needs an explanation. You
can picture the <i>cunnilingue</i>, with his mouth
glued between the thighs, at work.

.pm fn-start
Gonzalvo of Cordova, according to Aloysia
Sigaea (Dialogue VIII.), made similar jokes: “He also,
I am sure, in spite of his age, was a great tongue-player
(linguist). A pretty girl of some twenty years had to
amuse him. When he wanted to put his tongue to her
<i>juste milieu</i>, he declared he wanted to go to Liguria.” He
could play with words upon the same matter, always implying
the idea of a humid vulva, saying that he was going
to Phœnicia, or to the Red Sea, or to the Salt Lake;
you now understand what is meant by the Salt Lake or
Salt Sea, into which Alpheus threw himself according to
the epigram in the <i>Anthology</i>. Nearly related to this
are the salgamas of Ausonius, of which we shall speak
shortly, and the “onions swimming in putrid brine,”
which the Bæticus of Martial, III., 77 devours. As
it was said of the fellators that they “Phœnicized”, because
they followed the example set by the Phœnicians, so
probably the same word was applied to the <i>cunnilingues</i>
as loving to swim in a certain sea of Phœnician red; and,
in fact, this was the case. Hesychius: “Scylax, an Erotic
posture, like that assumed by Phœnicizers.” The Phœnicians
assumed a certain posture, called Scylax, or <i>the dog</i>.
There could be nothing better for describing the depraved
action of a <i>cunnilingue</i> than this canine epithet with regard
to the posture taken for irrumating or fellation; dogs
are <i>cunnilingues</i> as anybody knows, and have been so ever
since their abominable adventure which their ambassadors
met with (allusion to Phaedrus’ fable).
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Ovid, <i>Metamorphoses</i>, III., 308-12:

.pm quote-start
“... Mortal woman could not survive the celestial
fire; she was consumed by her spouse’s favours. The infant
but half formed is torn from the mother’s womb, and,
if we may believe the tale, is sown still immature in the
father’s thigh, and there completes the period of gestation.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 184.png
.pn +1

This strange depravity was still in favor in
succeeding centuries. Ausonius, in his <i>Epigrams</i>
CXX., CXXIII., CXXV., CXXVI.,
CXXVII., and CXXVIII., has bequeathed a
very unenviable notoriety to the names of
Castor and of Eunus:

Epigram CXX.:

.pm quote-start
“Castor[#] wanted to lick the middle
part of men, but he could not persuade any
one to go with him; however the <i>fellator</i>
did not miss his treat; he went and licked
his own wife’s privates.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
This Castor is perhaps the same who, according
to the statement of Ausonius (Epigram in <i>Professoribus
Burdegalensibus</i>, XXII., 7) had published a book with
the title <i>Cunctis de Regibus ambiguis</i>.
.pm fn-end

Epigram CXXIII., entitled <i>In Eunum liguritorem</i>.—On
Eunus the Licker:

.pm quote-start
“Eunus, why do you pay court to Phyllis,
the perfume seller? Men say your tongue
knows her parts, but not your member!
Mind you make no mistakes in the names of
her scents and perfumes, and that Seplasia’s
atmosphere play you no tricks; think not
costus and cysthus have the same odor,—that
sardines and nard exhale the same savor.
.bn 185.png
.pn +1
Poor Eunus! the things that he tastes and
smells are very different; his mouth and his
nose have tastes widely dissimilar!”
.pm quote-end

He says mockingly: think not the sundry
wares in the shop of Phyllis your little perfume
seller of Capua (Seplasia is in fact a
street of the town of Capua, where perfumes
were sold), are all of the same odor and
savor. The costus[#] does not smell like
the cysthus[#], the nard[#] has a different
flavor from the sardines,—a sort of little
fish preserved in salt. By this salty condiment
Ausonius means to imply precisely the
same as the author of the Greek epigram
signifies, when he speaks of the Salt Sea, and
which he himself has called salgama, meaning
the secretion of the humid vulva. But
Eunus shows no discrimination between what
he licks and what he smells; the two have
.bn 186.png
.pn +1
nothing in common. He inhales perfumes
which smell beautifully, and licks the vulva,
which smells abominably. His nose obeys
one law, his tongue another.

.pm fn-start
Pliny, <i>Nat. Hist.</i>, XII., ch. 12: “The Costus-root
has a burning taste and an exquisite smell; its berries
are otherwise useless.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
The Cysthus, Greek **** is the private parts
of a woman. Aristophanes, <i>Lysistrata</i>, v. 1160: “And
a more beautiful cysthus I never saw.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Pliny <i>Nat. Hist.</i>, XII., ch. 12: “The leaves of
the nard must be considered more minutely, for they are
a principal ingredient in perfumery.”
.pm fn-end

Epigram CXXV., directed against the same
Eunus:

.pm quote-start
“The salgamas are no balmy odors; give
place, all other perfumes. I would rather
not smell at all, either good or bad.”
.pm quote-end

Here again the poet plays with the words.
The perfumes which Phyllis sells he calls
balms, and salgamas those which her vulva
exhales. Properly speaking, salgamas are
roots and greens, which are preserved in salt
for winter use, and the odor of which is not
pleasant to every one’s nose. His saying that
he would rather smell nothing at all than
smell something bad is borrowed from Martial
VI., <i>Epigr.</i> 55, against Coracinus, who
was a <i>cunnilingue</i>:

.pm quote-start
“Rather than smell bad scents I would not
smell at all.”
.pm quote-end

Epigram CXXVI.:

.pm quote-start
“Lais, Eros and Itys, Chiron and Eros,
Itys once again,—if you write the names, and
take the initial letters, they make a word,
.bn 187.png
.pn +1
and that word is what you do, Eunus. What
that word is and means, decency lets me not
say in plain Latin.”
.pm quote-end

The initial letters of the six Greek names
form the word ****, he licks. The phallic
poet (<i>Priapeia</i> LXVII) plays in the same
way upon the word <i>paedicare</i> (to pedicate):

.pm quote-start
“Take the first syllable of <i>Pe</i>nelopé; add
to it the first of <i>Di</i>do; then to the first of
<i>Ca</i>nis append the first of <i>Re</i>mus: what they
make, I will do to you, thief, if I catch you
in my garden. This is the penalty your crime
will meet.”
.pm quote-end

Ausonius plays on the words <i>doing</i> and
<i>making</i>. The initials of the Greek words
<i>make</i> a word he cannot say in Latin,—it is
too indecent. Yet Eunus has no hesitation
in <i>doing</i> it,—putting it in action.

Epigram CXXVII.:

.pm quote-start
“Eunus, when you lick the groins of your
wife, she being with child; ’tis because you
would be betimes in <i>teaching the tongues</i>
to your babes yet unborn.”
.pm quote-end

You seem, he says, to send out your tongue
to meet your unborn children, and fulfilling
your duty as a Grammarian, to teach them
.bn 188.png
.pn +1
lessons of tongue, and the interpretation of
obscure terms.[#] The Manneius of Martial,
whom we have spoken of above, was
also in the habit of licking pregnant women’s
privates.

.pm fn-start
Quintilian, <i>Instit. orat</i>., I., ch. 1: “He can
learn the interpretation of the occult languages, what the
Greeks call ****** Alcuin, <i>Grammatica</i>, p. 2086, in
Putschius’ <i>Collection</i>: <i>Glossa</i> is the interpretation of
a verb or a noun; <i>e.g.</i> <i>catus</i> is the same thing as <i>doctus</i>.”
On this occasion it may be permitted to the Director of
the Court-Library at Coburg to state, that this library
contains a remarkable copy of the collection of Putschius,
by the hand of John Scheffer, who died at Upsala in
1679, beginning thus: “The notes to be found in this volume,
on the margin of books IV. and V., of Priscian, have
been made after a very ancient and most beautifully
written manuscript, in which a number of traces of primitive
Latin orthography are found, as for instance: <i>dirivare</i>
for <i>derivare</i>, <i>peneultimus</i> and <i>antepeneultimus</i> for <i>penultimus</i>
and <i>antepenultimus</i>, <i>Oratius</i> for <i>Horatius</i>, etc.”
.pm fn-end

Epigram CXXVIII., entitled <i>On the same
Eunus, the Learned Licker</i>:

.pm quote-start
“Eunus, the little Syrian pedagogue, licker
of privates, Opican doctor (’tis Phyllis he
owes his knowledge to), beholds the feminine
engine in fourfold different fashions: Opening
it triangularly, he makes it the letter
Delta (Δ); seeing the pair of folds side by
side along the valley of the thighs with the
.bn 189.png
.pn +1
line in the middle where the slit of the vagina
opens, he says it is a Psi (Ⲯ); in fact its shape
is triple-cloven then. Then when he has put
his tongue in, it is a Lambda (Λ), and he
makes out therein the true design of a Phi
(Φ). Why! ignoramus, do you think you
see a Rho (Ρ) written, where merely a long
Iota (Ι) should be put? Contemptible
doctor, foul pedant, you deserve the Tau (Τ)
yourself; the crossed Theta (ϴ) should by
rights be put against your name.”

Ausonius calls Eunus an Opican, because
these filthy practices were, according to Festus,
most common among the Osci or Opici.
He then indulges in a series of jests, or rather
represents Eunus as doing so, on the shape of
the female organ[#]. He says it seems
.bn 190.png
.pn +1
to him either quadrangular, or triangular,
in the latter case corresponding to the Greek
[Greek: D] (similarly Aristophanes called it a Delta,—“their
delta plucked clean of hair,” <i>Lysistrata</i>,
151), and also likens it to the letter **,
owing to the folds which surround the vulva
on either side[#], and form the outer lips,
the lane in the middle being the opening of
the vulva, and so together form the trifid
letter **; in the <i>Technopaegnium</i>, 140, he
calls it a three-pronged fork, the slit being
the middle and the lips the outer prongs.
Then he says that Eunus is a Lambda when
he is licking, on account of the first letter of
.bn 191.png
.pn +1
the word ****. All this is clear enough,
and I do not understand how the very learned
Vinet can complain of its obscurity. Neither
has it given me much trouble to make out
what Ausonius means by the letters Rho and
Iota. The solution seems to me to be as
follows: “Do not tell us, Eunus, that your
pike in action resembles the letter (Ρ) of the
Greeks, a letter which evidently looks like
a lance with balls; in your amorous diversions
you use no other lance than your tongue,
which, as you will not deny, looks more like
a javelin without balls, something like the
letter Iota; you cannot deceive me, who well
know that you would rather be taken for a
fornicator than for a <i>cunnilingue</i>, like that
Gargilius, of whom Martial, III., 96, says:

.pm quote-start
“You do not enter, only lick my mistress;
yet you boast yourself adulterer and copulator!”
.pm quote-end
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
As we are on the subject of the shape of the female
organ, it will not be amiss to enumerate in this place
all the various names by which it was known in Latin;
the greater part of them we have gathered from the
treasure-house of Aloysia Sigaea: “The field, the ring,
the furrow, the cavern, the clitoris, the conch-shell, the
cunnus, the little boat, the cysthus, the pit, the garden,
the between-thighs, the barque, the swine, the wicket,
the slit, the precipice, the hole, the trench, the sheath,
the virginal, the vulva. And what should hinder us from
giving at the time the names of the virile member:
The armature of the belly, the catapult, the tail, the stem,
the parcel, the column, the pole, the lance with balls,
the amulet, the pike, the groin, the hanger, the mentula,
the mutinus, the muto, the nerve, the virile sign, the
stake, the peculia, the penis, the stopper, the phallus, the
javelin, the tree, the obelisk, the shaft, the spectre, the
seminal member, the awl, the bull, the dart, the balista,
the beam, the thyrsus, the vessel, the little vessel, the
vein, the private, the verpa and verpus, the verge, the
ploughshare.” Here you have more than enough.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
<i>Altrinsecus</i>, in Ausonius, is equivalent to <i>utrinsecus</i>,
meaning, from either side. Lactantius employs
that word in <i>De Opificio Dei</i>, ch. 8: “It is incredible
how the fact of their being double (the ears) adds to their
beauty, as much on account of the symmetry thus produced,
as because the sounds which arise on all sides, can
more easily be received on both sides (altrinsecus).”
.pm fn-end

Lastly and finally by the Tau he threatens
his man with the gallows, and by the
Theta with death. Of this there can be
little doubt; it is a proved fact that the letter
Theta, the initial of the word ****, signified
.bn 192.png
.pn +1
with the Greeks condemnation to death[#].
With regard to Tau, there is room for doubt;
instead of Tau some of the copies of Ausonius
give (δ), and although this sign may, according
to Scaliger, very well signify the
rope for hanging, the difficulty I feel is this,
that a composite letter, a small letter, an abbreviation
of doubtful antiquity, thus placed
amongst simple, capital, unabbreviated letters
seems to come in very inappropriately.
It may be that Ausonius originally wrote
****; then * having been left out by an inadvertence
of the copyist, the ** might easily
have been turned into **. The Tau, as the
reader will see at once, represents a gallows.
Tertullian, <i>Adversus Maricionem</i>: “This letter
Tau of the Greeks is with us the T, a sort
of cross.”

.pm fn-start
Persius, VI., 13: “And you may mark the crime
with a black Theta.” See also Martial, VII., 36.
.pm fn-end

As was the case with irrumation, so with
even more reason the licking of women’s
privates was particularly adopted by old men,
whose tool will not raise its head[#].

.bn 193.png
.pn +1
Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue VII., says: “He
(Gonzalvo of Cordova), was likewise a
mighty <i>cunnilingue</i> by reason of his great
age.”

.pm fn-start
I say it was adopted by them particularly; that
there were also young men, who by a singular depravity
licked the vulvas they might have entered legitimately,
Martial tells us, XI., 86:

.pm quote-start
“An evil star, Zoilus, has struck your tongue of a
sudden, even while licking a vulva. Of a surety, Zoilus,
you must now use your member.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm quote-start
“Why does Blatara lick? because he cannot manage otherwise.”
.pm quote-end

The same author, VI., 26:

.pm quote-start
“Lotades has lost the power of stiffening;
so licks.”
.pm quote-end

And again, XII., 88:

.pm quote-start
“Thirty young boys you have at command,
and as many girls; yet you have only one
member, and that will not rise. What then
will you do?”
.pm quote-end

Lick, no doubt, as we are told Linus did,
in <i>Epigr.</i> XI., 25:

.pm quote-start
“This too frisky mentula, Linus, so well
known to girls in plenty, will longer stand;
so mind your tongue.”
.pm quote-end

Sextillus (Martial, II., 28), was in all probability
also a <i>cunnilingue</i>:

.pm quote-start
“Have your laugh at those, Sextillus, that
.bn 194.png
.pn +1
call you cinede, and show them your middle
finger[#]. You are not, Sextillus, a pedicon
nor yet a fornicator, nor does Vetustilla’s
burning mouth tempt you.—You are none of
these, I allow, Sextillus; then what are you?
I know not, but remember! there are two
sorts yet.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
When the middle-finger is pointing, the other
fingers are turned inside, representing thus a mentula
with its accessories; for which reason it was thus pointedly
shown to Cinedes (the Greeks expressed this in a single
word: ******), either by way of invitation or to tease
them. Martial, I., 93: “Cestus has often complained
to me, Mamurianus, that you tease him with your finger.”
It was also pointed at people held in contempt. The same
author, VI., 70:

.pm quote-start
“He points with the finger and that the impudent
finger” (that is Martianus, who is never ill, does to the
doctors). Thence this unlucky finger had the epithet “infamous.”
Persius says without any obscene afterthought,
II., 33: “The grandmother cleanses the babe with the
infamous (middle) finger.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

Two sorts are still left for Sextillus, to
suck the virile member and to lick the vulva,
while he is neither a fornicator, nor a cinede,
nor a pedicon, nor an irrumator. Which
did he choose to be? This we are not told.
Eunuchs, just as impotent as aged men, adopt
.bn 195.png
.pn +1
the practice for the same reason.[#] Gregory
Nazianzen says in his funeral sermon on
Basil the Great:

.pm fn-start
Nevertheless, Eunuchs who have been deprived
of their testicles, but not of their mentula, are by no
means wanting in lubricity: they can do the business
without any danger for a woman, inasmuch as they cannot
generate children. The Roman matrons were well
aware of the fact: Martial, VI., 67:

.pm quote-start
“You ask me, Pannicus, why Gallia keeps so many
Eunuchs; she loves to be enjoyed, but wants no children.”
.pm quote-end

Juvenal, VI., 365-67:

.pm quote-start
“There are women who like feeble eunuchs, and kisses
that are ever harmless, and the absence, nay! the impossibility,
of a beard, for they need use no abortive.”
.pm quote-end

St. Jerome, in the <i>Life of Hilarion</i>: “A steward with
curled locks, castrated for the sake of longer pleasure
and perfect safety....” To make more sure of their
enjoyment, experienced dames did not allow the testicles
of the Eunuchs to be cut off until the member had attained
full proportions, apprehensive that it might remain
puny and inactive if the operation were made earlier.
They wanted their Eunuchs well furnished, capable of
challenging Priapus himself. By such they liked to be
worked, being sure of not becoming enceinte. Juvenal,
VI., 367-77:

.pm quote-start
“With those however is love’s pleasure most exquisite,
whose testicles, when they are lusty and fully matured,
are delivered to the surgeons, the pubis being already
black with hair. The organs are spared till they are full
and ready; then at last, when they have reached two
pounds in weight, Heliodorus cuts them, to the prejudice
of the barber. The observed of all observers, stared
at by all, see him enter the baths and challenge the god
of vineyard and garden, castrated thus by his lady’s order.
He may sleep now with his mistress; still beware,
Josthumus, how you trust him with your Bromius, now
fully developed and ready for the razor.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end
.bn 196.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“They of the gynaeceum, those men, who
amongst women are men, and amongst men
women; who have nothing virile about them
but their impiety; those that cannot give
themselves up to voluptuousness in the natural
way, have recourse to their tongue as
their only alternative.”
.pm quote-end

The <i>cunnilingues</i> exhaled an evil smell
from the mouth, and their kisses were as
much shunned as those of <i>fellators</i>. Martial,
XII., 87:

.pm quote-start
“You say the mouths of pedicons smell
badly; if this is true, Fabullus, as you say,
tell me! what think you of the breath of
<i>cunnilingues</i>?”
.pm quote-end

And the same, XII., 59:

.pm quote-start
“The neighbors kiss you every one, from
the bearded cowherd, whose kisses have flavor
of the he-goat, down to the <i>fellator</i> and the
<i>cunnilingue</i> fresh from his business.”
.pm quote-end

<i>Cunnilingues</i> and <i>fellators</i> are compared to
.bn 197.png
.pn +1
he-goats by Catullus (XXXVII.), on account
of their fetid breath:

.pm quote-start
“Think you you alone have members, that
you alone are entitled to satisfy women, and
may consider all other men he-goats?”
.pm quote-end

Do not suppose for a moment that Catullus
is speaking here of castrated he-goats, which
would be against the sense of the word, one
invariably used to designate entire he-goats.
The sense is the same, but got at in another
way. He says: “Do you believe that you
alone have members fit to do the girls’ business?
that all the others betray by their goatish
breath their vile trade as <i>cunnilingues</i> or
<i>fellators</i>, and consequently the inertness of
their mentulas, their feebleness, their inability
for erection? You will better appreciate
the sting of Atellane verse respecting Tiberius
Cæsar: “An old buck licking the she-goats’
parts.”

It was thought better to be taken for a
fornicator than for a <i>cunnilingue</i>; in the first
place, because your friends would not kiss
you; Martial, VII., 94:

.pm quote-start
“I had rather confront a hundred <i>cunnilingues</i>.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 198.png
.pn +1

Suetonius, <i>De Illustribus Grammaticis</i>, ch.
23:
.pm quote-start
“He (Remmius Palaemon) was passionately
fond of women, so much so as to prostitute
his mouth to please them, and it is
said that he was one day rebuked in the
following way by a man who in the throng
could not contrive to avoid one of his kisses:
“Master,” he said, “if you see a man in a
hurry to get away, will you lick him off?”
.pm quote-end

In the second place for fear of scaring
away your guests. Aristophanes says of Ariphrades,
in the <i>Knights</i>, 1285, 86:

“Whoever does not execrate that man, may
he never drink from the same cup with us”—lastly,
for fear of letting it be plainly known
how shrunken one was, and how miserable
one’s member. Martial, III., 96:

.pm quote-start
“You lick my mistress, but you do not
enter her; yet you boast yourself adulterer
and copulator!”
.pm quote-end

Hence the <i>cunnilingues</i> took no less care
than the <i>fellators</i> to hide the fetidness of their
breath by means of essences and perfumes,
Martial, VI., 55:

.pm quote-start
“Always scented with cassia and cinnamon,
.bn 199.png
.pn +1
and your skin darkened with perfumes from
the Phœnix’ nest, you reek of the leaden jars
of Nicerotus’ shop. You mock at us, Coracinus,
because we are unscented. Rather than
smell sweet like you, I’d not smell at all.”
.pm quote-end

To remove every doubt as to Coracinus
being a <i>fellator</i> or a <i>cunnilingue</i>, we will
quote <i>Epigr.</i> IV., 43, where he is expressly
called a <i>cunnilingue</i>:

.pm quote-start
“I did not say you were a cinede, Coracinus;
I am not so rash and reckless. What
I did say in a light, insignificant matter, one
perfectly well known, that you will not deny
yourself,—I said, Coracinus, you were a <i>cunnilingue</i>.”
.pm quote-end

It was believed that Venus revenged injuries
done to herself or to hers, not only
by condemning the guilty to submit to be the
passive party, but by turning them into <i>cunnilingues</i>.
Hence the pathic tastes of Philoctetes:

.pm quote-start
“With which the destitution of Lemnos
inspired the heir of Heracles.”
.pm quote-end

To use the very words of Ausonius, <i>Epigr.</i>
LXXI; and by inflicting these tastes Venus
.bn 200.png
.pn +1
is said to have avenged the wounds of Paris,
Martial, II., 84:

.pm quote-start
“The sons of Poeas was effeminate and
prone to man-love; thus they say did Venus
avenge Paris’ wounds.”
.pm quote-end

In the same epigram Martial rallies Sertorius
on being <i>cunnilingue</i>, giving as a possible
reason his having killed Eryx, the son
of Venus:

.pm quote-start
“Why does Sicilian Sertorius lick women’s
privates; because, Rufus, it would seem it
was he killed Eryx.”
.pm quote-end

<i>Cunnilingues</i> appear to have been generally
pale-faced; it is for medical men to say
why. This may help you to discern the
salt in Martial’s epigram on Charinus, I., 78:

.pm quote-start
“Charinus is well and strong, and still he is pale;

Charinus drinks with moderation, and still he is pale;

Charinus digests well, and still he is pale;

Charinus loves the open air and sun, and still he is pale;

Charinus dyes his skin, and still he is pale;

Charinus licks a woman’s privates, and still pale is he.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 201.png
.pn +1

That is to say, amongst the causes that
should prevent paleness the one last enumerated
is the veritable cause of his paleness.
<i>Fellators</i> would also seem to have had pale
faces, <i>Catullus</i>, LXXX:

.pm quote-start
“How is it, Gellius, that those rosy lips of
yours grow whiter than the winter’s snow,
when at morn you leave your house, and the
eighth hour calls you from your long-protracted
soft repose? I know not what to
think. Can it be true what rumor whispers,
that you devour the middle parts of men?
This at any rate is evidenced by wretched
Virro’s sunken flanks and your own lips
masked with the milky juice sucked from
him.”
.pm quote-end

The withered flanks are those of Virro, the
<i>irrumator</i>, the lips those of Gellius; the passage
is somewhat ambiguous, and only thus
to be explained. One Virro, accustomed to
take the passive part, has been already mentioned
by us, in quoting Juvenal, IX., 35. I
do not know whether it is the same:

.pm quote-start
“Though Virro has caught sight of you all
naked, and the foam has come to his lips.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 202.png
.pn +1

<i>Pathics</i>, too, no less than <i>fellators</i>, appear
to have pallid faces. Juvenal, II., 50:

.pm quote-start
“Hispo submits to young men; he is pale
with either kind of infamy.”
.pm quote-end

He served as <i>patient</i> to young men, and
was moreover a <i>fellator</i>, as is shown by the
difference which the poet institutes between
him and women, who do not lick each other’s
secret parts:
.pm quote-start
“Taedia does not lick Cluvia, nor Flora
Catulla.”
.pm quote-end

Women, in fact, are rarely <i>cunnilingues</i>,
although there <i>are</i> examples. Martial only
mentions one woman as belonging to that
category; we shall come across her again in
the next chapter.
.bn 203.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - <s>CUNNILINGUES</s>
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI||<s>OF TRIBADS</s>
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
THE tribads, also called frictionists[#]
from the Greek ****, I rub,
are women, with whom that part
of the genital apparatus which is
called the clitoris, attains such proportions,
that they can use it as a mentula, either for
fornication or pedication. The clitoris,[#]
which is a very sensitive caruncle (a small
.bn 204.png
.pn +1
fleshy cone), capable of movement and resembling
the verge, gets into erection with
all women, not only during the coitus, the
delights of which it is said to enhance immensely
by increased titillation, but also in
consequence of mere amorous longing; with
tribads, either by a freak of nature or in consequence
of frequent use, it attains immoderate
dimensions[#]. The tribad can get
.bn 205.png
.pn +1
it in erection, enter a vulva or anus, enjoy a
delicious voluptuousness, and procure if not
.bn 206.png
.pn +1
a complete realization of cohabitation, at
least something very near to it, to the woman
who plays the passive part. What more is
there to say? She plays the man’s part with
the omission of the ejaculation of the semen,
not that this sort of coitus is an altogether
dry affair, as women are in the habit
of emitting their liquid during the joys of
love[#].

.pm fn-start
They were also called hetairistriae:—Hesychius:
“Hetairistriae tribads”—and likewise dietairistriae, according
to the same author: “Dietairistriae, women who
go after prostitutes (hetairae) for carnal intercourse, just
as men do; same as tribads.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue III.: “But I forgot
(Tullia speaking) to tell you of the clitoris. This is a
membranous body, situated at the bottom of the pubis,
and representing in a reduced form the virile verge. As is
the case with the verge, the amorous desire excites it to
erection, and in certain women of an ardent temperament
it inflames them with pruriency to such a degree that by
the mere caressing of it with the hand they very often
discharge their fluid without the help of a rider at all.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
If that woman whom Plater saw, according to
Venette in his <i>Tableau de l’amour conjugal</i>, vol. I., ch. 1,
3, was not a tribad, she might well have been one; her
clitoris, which with other women attains in its utmost
erection the length of the half of the little finger or thereabouts,
was as long as the neck of a goose. Is it surprising
that women furnished with such an implement
should wish to get rid of it? Amputation is however
dangerous. Plater did not venture to finish an amputation
which he had commenced, and Rodohamides, an
Egyptian physician of the XIth century, had not courage
to even undertake one, although commanded by a queen
to perform the operation (Venette, IV., 2). Those whom
Adramytes, the king of the Lydians, order to castrate
women, were they more courageous? Athenæus, XII.,
2: “Xanthus states in the second book of his Lydiacs, that
Adramytes, king of the Lydians, was the first to have
women castrated and employ them as eunuchs.” However
that may be, these female eunuchs have very much
exercised the commentators. Some suppose that straps
and buckles did in their case the same service as the chastity-belts,
which, it is said, Spaniards and Italians to this
day compel their wives to wear if they think they have
reason to be jealous: others believe that it was a question
of suture, as is the case with the natives of Angola and
the Congo, who stitch the vulvas of young girls for the
protection of their maidenheads; but I believe that nobody
knows anything certain in this respect. Nor does it appear
that these women had to submit to an operation,
which is certainly practised upon the young girls by the
Arabs, Copts, Ethiopians, in some parts of Persia and
Nigritia, and which consists in cutting off the prepuce of
the clitoris; this is proved by abundant evidence, and reported
in the Encyclopedia of Ersch and Gruber under
the word: “Beschneidung” (Circumcision); how indeed
could Athenæus describe as <i>Eunuchize</i> that which is calculated
to increase the fecundity of women. I thought
first that these women were tribads changed into eunuchs
by the removal of their immoderately large clitoris; I am
now inclined to believe that the king caused that to be
done to these women, which according to Aristotle, <i>Nat.
Hist.</i> IX., 50, was done to sows: “Sows are castrated,
so that they shall no longer desire the coitus and get
quickly fattened. They are castrated, suspended by their
hind legs, after fasting two days, by an incision in that
place where with a man the testicles are situated, in fact in
the female matrix.” Pliny, <i>Nat. Hist.</i>, VIII., 51: “Sows
are castrated in the same way as female camels, after a
fast of two days, suspended by their hind legs, by an incision
in the vulva; they thus fatten much quicker.”
Columella, VII., IX. 5: “Sows are also castrated by incision
in the vulva; the wounds cicatrics, and they cannot
conceive any more.” This practice has by no means disappeared;
Schneider notes it in the passage of Columella;
sows, cows, mares, sheep, are still castrated by excising
their ovarium. Why should we not believe that Adramytes
wanted the same process to be applied to the fair sex,
in order to make women sterile? However the ancient
Egyptians, who (see Strabo, book XVII., p. 824) undoubtedly
circumcized themselves, and also their women,
appear to me to have had in view not so much ovariotomy
as the circumcision of the prepuce of the clitoris, a practice
still in use with them, as stated above; cutting the
female parts being thus something like circumcision, it is
to be assumed that a similar operation was intended rather
than any other one.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Let us consult again Aloysia Sigæa, Dialogue
III.: “It has happened sometimes to myself (Tullia),
when Callias tries on me his lubricities, when he tickles
me and excites me. Then I sometimes water his too
libertine hands with an abundant dew from my pleasure
grounds. And that gives him an opportunity for letting
off a whole sheaf of sarcasms and jokes. But what can I
do? I begin to laugh, and so does he; I tell him he is
too impudent, he tells me I am too lewd; we call each
other names right and left, and in the midst of our mutual
recrimination he will throw himself upon me, turn
me on my back, and force me to submit to his assault,
saying he will give me his dewdrops for those he has
drawn from me, so that I may not be a loser.” Further
on, Dial., IV.: “Callias, pressing me more closely to him,
buried his weapon deeper into my belly, almost as though
he were trying to get himself in altogether. Soon a delicious
stream spirted into me, and at the same time I
felt my liquid boiling over, causing me such delight that
I forgot all reticence, and myself excited Callias more
and more, pressing him against me and begging him to
quicken his pace. Thus we expired both together with
our muscles relaxing at one and the same instant.” You
will understand by this the meaning of the epigram to
Sosipator in the <i>Analecta</i> of Brunck, I., p. 504:

.pm quote-start
“Until the white liquor ran over with both of them,
and Doras unwound her wearied limbs.”
.pm quote-end

Reiske thought the “white liquor” in this passage meant
drops of perspiration. Nonsense! it means the virus secreted
by both sexes, and liberated in the last spasms of
lust. Aloysia Sigæa, Dialogue IV.: “As I finished speaking”
(it is still Tullia that speaks), “he got upon me,
and collecting all his strength he pushed the arrow into
me, he filled my womb with his fecundating dew, and I
also shed the rivulet of white liquid. Incapable of enduring
any longer so intense a voluptuous feeling, we sank
back exhausted in each other’s arms.” We have quoted
besides on different occasions extracts from the rich treasures
of Aloysia Sigæa, on this subject.
.pm fn-end
.bn 207.png
.pn +1

This depravity of voluptuousness, whether
caused by the warmth of the climate, or by a
peculiarity of the soil or waters, or other reasons
unknown to us, was especially common
with the women of Lesbos; this is attested by
all the old writers. Lucian, in his “Dialogues
of courtesans,” No. V. (Works, vol.
.bn 208.png
.pn +1
VII., p. 349.): “This is one of those tribads,
as they are to be found in Lesbos, who will
have nothing to do with men, and do the
men’s business with women.” If such things
were an every day occurrence with the Lesbian
women, we must believe that they were
pushed to them by natural instigation[#],
and to allay an intolerable pruriency. Who
has not heard of that most celebrated queen
of all tribads, Sappho, herself a Lesbian?
Some authors, Maximum of Tyre the first
among them, have with the best intention
tried to exonerate her from his infamous vice;
but hear her in Ovid (and he represents the
Ancients in sentiment and feeling), repudiating
her would be apologists, <i>Heroides</i>,
XV., 15-20:

.pm quote-start
“Neither the maidens of Pyrrha, nor those
of Methymna[#], nor all the host of Lesbian
.bn 209.png
.pn +1
beauties please me. Vile to me seems
Anactoria, vile the fair Cydno, Atthis is no
more so dear to my eyes as once she was, nor
yet a hundred others I loved not innocently[#].
Villain! yours is now what belonged
to many women....”
.pm quote-end

and verse 201:

.pm quote-start
“Lesbian women, beloved, who made me infamous!”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Women, whose clitoris is too prominent, are thus
prevented from having intercourse with men, so that
when they are seized with amorous designs they cannot
well find any other way of satisfying their desires than
by playing tribadism. (Venette IV., ii, 4.)
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Pyrrha and Methymna are towns in Lesbos.
Pomponius Mela, II., 7: “In the Troad is Lesbos, and in
Lesbos there were formerly five cities, viz.: Antissa,
Pyrrha, Eresos, Methymna, Mytilene.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Not innocently, or rather, “not without crime”;
some read “which I loved not without crime” others,
“which I loved here without crime,” but the difference
is not great. If you prefer “which I loved here,” the
excuse itself is a confession. All we want is the admission
that the tribad-tastes of Sappho are no modern invention,
but originated, how we know not, and prevailed in very
early times. The love of woman for woman was never
known under any other name than the notorious one of
tribadism.
.pm fn-end

Sappho speaks first in general of those that
have submitted to her caresses, the maidens
of Pyrrha and Methymna; then she mentions
by name Anactoria, Cydno and Atthis,—to
whom Suidas adds Telesippa and Megara:

.pm quote-start
“Her favorites, whom she loved well, were
three in number, Atthis, Telesippa, Megara,
and for those she burnt in impure passion.”
.pm quote-end

These passages from the Ancients are clear
.bn 210.png
.pn +1
enough, and do not admit of any doubt; they
even assist us in explaining other sentences,
which otherwise seem obscure or ambiguous;
for instance the “masculine Sappho” of Horace
(<i>Epistles</i> I., XIX., 28); “making plaint
against the maids of her country” (<i>Odes</i> II.,
XIII., 25); also Ovid, <i>Art of Love</i>, III., 331.

.pm quote-start
“Sappho should be well known, too; what
more wanton than she?” <i>Tristia</i>, II., 363:
.pm quote-end

.pm quote-start
“What was the lore Lesbian Sappho taught,
but to love maids?”
.pm quote-end
.ni
and Martial, VII., 68[#].
.pi
.pm quote-start
“Sappho, the amorous, praised our poetess;
the latter was more pure, the former not
more perfect in art.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
See whether it is with good reason or no that the
succeeding epigram, no. 69, calls Philaenis the tribad of
tribads.
.pm fn-end

Lucian’s witty and licentious pen has made
famous another tribad, Megilla, in the above
quoted Dialogue. This Dialogue is not outrageously
obscene, for it breaks off just at
the moment when things would have had to
be said very plainly; nevertheless, the virginal
modesty of our Wieland has not dared
to translate it into German. The philosopher
.bn 211.png
.pn +1
of Samosata brings Leaena upon the scene,
and makes her disclose by what artifices Megilla
gained her consent. Leaena asks Megilla:

“Are you then made like a man, and do
with Demonassa (whom Megilla used after
the manner of tribads), as men do?” “I have
not got exactly all that, my Leaena,” answers
Megilla, “but I am not entirely without it.
However, you will see me at work, and in a
very pleasant manner. I have been born like
all of you, but I have the tastes, the desires
and something else of a man. Let me do it
to you, if you do not believe me, and you
will see that I have everything that men have.
Give me leave to work you, and you will
see.” Leaena confesses that she at last consented,
moved by her solicitations and promises,
and no doubt also by the novelty of
the thing. “I let her have her way,” she
says, “yielding to her entreaties, seconded by
a magnificent necklet and a robe of fine linen.
I took her in my arms like a man; she went
to work caressing me, panting with excitement
and evidently experiencing the extreme
of pleasure.” Clonarion asks her inquisitively:
.bn 212.png
.pn +1

“But what did she do to you Leaena,
and how did she manage?” But Leaena
eludes the question. “Do not ask me anything
more; these are nasty doings; by Urania,
I shall not breathe a word more!” she
answers, to the great regret of the reader,
who would like to penetrate further this
mystery.

Amongst the tribads is still to be named
Philaenis, the same, no doubt, who according
to Lucian (<i>Amores</i>, ch. 28—Works vol. V.,
p. 88), wrote about erotic postures: “Let our
women’s apartments be filled by women like
Philaenis, dishonored by androgynic[#]
loves!”—Sophoclidisca in Plautus, to whom
Paegnion says: “Do not caress me, subagitatrix!”
(<i>Persa</i>, act II., 41);—and Folia of
Ariminum, who according to Horace (<i>Epodes</i>,
V., 41) was “of masculine lubricity.” However
writers as a rule touch upon these points more
lightly than is agreeable to the curiosity of
the reader. For the same reason the too
great reserve of Seneca (<i>Controversia</i>, II)
is to be regretted, where he says at the end:
.bn 213.png
.pn +1
.pm quote-start
“Hybreas having to plead in favor of a
man who had surprised and killed a tribad,
described the grief of the husband; on such
a subject one must not ask for a too particular
investigation.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
To make yourselves quite sure about what the
author means by androgynic loves, look at the passage
as a whole: “Come, you man of the new age, you lawgiver
of unknown amours, if you open out new ways to
the lubricity of men, you may grant to the women equal
license. Let them cohabit together as the men do; let
woman lie with woman, and simulate with their lascivious
organs conjunctions, sterile though they be, as man lies
with man! Let the word one hears so very rarely, and
which I am ashamed to pronounce, let the lubricity of our
tribads triumph without blushing.” Observe in the first
place how tribads were seldom spoken of, and that they
kept themselves in the dark; in the second place how the
immoderate clitoris of the tribad is said to simulate lascivious
organs in conjunction. Seneca, <i>Controversia Secunda</i>,
in a similar sense, calls such a monstrosity *****,
an <i>artificial man</i>; lastly the epithet “sterile” is applied
to the clitoris, and points to the dry unproductiveness of
the tribadic coitus.
.pm fn-end

Much more complete, full and explicit is
our good friend of Bilbilis (Martial). Hear
him! he is disclosing the tribadic doings of
Balba, so clearly that it could not be done
better; I., 91:

.pm quote-start
“As no one, Bassa, ever saw you go with
men; as rumor never assigned you a lover,
as every office about you was fulfilled by
.bn 214.png
.pn +1
a troop of women, no man ever coming nigh
you, you seemed to us, I admit, a very
Lucretia. But, oh! shame on you, Bassa, you
were a fornicator all the time! You dare to
conjoin the private parts of two women together,
and your monstrous organ of love
feigns the absent male. You have contrived
a miracle to match the Thebian riddle: that
where no man is, there adultery should be!”
.pm quote-end

Surely it is clear enough what Bassa did,
in conjoining the privates of two women together.
By no means! There are expounders,
and very good ones, too, who have quite
misunderstood this very easy passage, and
have imagined that Bassa misused women by
introducing into their vagina a leathern contrivance,
an olisbos, a <i>godemiche</i>; we shall
speak at the end of this chapter of this kind
of pleasure, but it was quite unknown to
Bassa, who simulated the man in her own
person.

Nothing could be more monstrous than the
libertine passion of Philaenis; she did not
content herself with introducing her stiff
clitoris in the vulva of tribads, Martial, VII.,
69:
.bn 215.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“Tribad of tribads, you, Philaenis, you are
well justified in calling her your mistress
whom you work;” or in those of other young
girls, and to get a dozen of them under her
in a day; but she even pedicated boys; Martial,
VII., 67:
.pm quote-end

.pm quote-start
“Philaenis the tribad pedicates boys[#],
and stiffer than a man in one day works
eleven girls.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Instead of “pedicating boys,” Martial might have
said, if the metre had allowed it, “entering boys.” Seneca’s
expression (Letter XCV), “<i>viros ineunt</i>,” which
was a source of great trouble to the great Justus Lipsius,
signifies nothing else: “The women will contest for the
crown of lubricity with the men. May the gods confound
them! one of their refined lubricities reverses the laws
of Nature: they have connection with men!” There you
have in plain words the turpitude which Justus Lipsius
considered worthy of the infernal regions: tribads pedicating.
.pm fn-end

In order to leave nothing untasted in the
way of virile lusts she was also a <i>cunnilingue</i>;
same epigram, at the end:

.pm quote-start
“After all that, when she is in good feather,—she
does not suck, that is too feminine; she
devours right out girls’ middle parts. May
all the gods confound you, Philaenis, who
think it manly work to lick the vulva.”
.pm quote-end
.bn 216.png
.pn +1

Philaenis, when overmuch in rut, caused
herself also to be served by <i>cunnilingues</i>;
this is clear enough from Martial, IX., 41:

.pm quote-start
“When Diodorus, wanting the Tarpeian
crowns, left Pharos behind and sailed for
Rome, Philaenis vowed that to celebrate her
mate’s return an innocent maid should lick
her, such a one as the chaste Sabine women
still cherish.”
.pm quote-end

She vowed if her husband returned to have
her vulva licked by a young girl, well-known
for her innocence and chastity; to have it
done by prostitutes was for Philaenis nothing
new; she wanted on that occasion to experiment
with a virgin, exactly like men, who
always want something new and strange to
spur their lust. How rare it was for women
to use other women for that purpose appears
from Juvenal II., 47-49:

.pm quote-start
“... There will no other instance be
found so abominable in our sex; Taedia does
not lick Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla.”
.pm quote-end

But what could you find stronger, more
energetic and plainer to enlighten the reader
completely on this subject than the following
verses in <i>Satire</i> VI., 308-333, where Juvenal’s
.bn 217.png
.pn +1
ire against the tribadic orgies in
Rome breaks out in words of fire?

.pm quote-start
“At night they stop their litters here, make
water here, and flood with long syphons the
Goddess’ statue, and ride turn and turn about
and go through the motions under the eye of
the conscious moon; then they make for
home. When the morning light returns, you
walk through your wife’s piss, to visit your
great friends. Known are the secret rites
of the <i>Bona Dea</i>, when the flute excite their
wanton loins, when drunk with music and
with wine they rush along, whirling their
locks and howling, these Maenads of Priapus!
How they yearn for instant copulation!
how their voice trembles with passionate
longing! what floods of old wine gush down
their dripping thighs! A prize is offered,
and Laufeia challenges the brothel-master’s
girls, and wins the first place for nimble
hips; while herself is mad for the pleasure
Medullina’s artful movements give her.
Amongst these dames merit carries off the
palm from noble blood. There nothing must
be feigned, all must be done in very truth
and deed,—enough to set on fire, however
.bn 218.png
.pn +1
chilled with age, Laomedon’s son and old
Nestor with his rupture! Then is seen mere
lust that will brook not a moment’s more
delay, women in her bare brutality, while
from every corner of the subterranean hall
rises the reiterated cry: “The hour is come,
admit the men.” Is the lover asleep? she
bids the first young man to hand snatch up
his hood and come at once. Is none to be
found? resort is had to slaves. No hope of
slaves? a water-carrier will be hired to come.
If he comes not, and men there are none,
she will not wait an instant more but get
an ass to mount her from behind.”
.pm quote-end

The tribadic orgies were divided into two
kinds; in one of them the Roman dames,
giving free course to their lust, defiled the
altar of chastity; in the other they celebrated
the mysteries of the <i>Bona Dea</i>. You see in
the first place the tribads go at night in litters
to the altar of chastity, there pass their
water[#] against the statue of the Goddess,
.bn 219.png
.pn +1
and having perhaps spirted their urine up to
her face[#] they at all events wet the area
all about, (their husbands walking right
through it in the morning, when they go to
see their patrons), and then they ride or
allow themselves to be ridden alternately;
.bn 220.png
.pn +1
here we have more than one Philaenis, tribad
of tribads! Other ladies go to celebrate the
mysteries of the <i>Bona Dea</i>, well known to
the public since the adventures of Clodius[#].
You observe them rousing themselves
with the sounds of flutes and trumpets, as
also with fumes of wine, to undergo valiantly
the jousts of mutual love; you see their amorous
frenzy, their hair flying in the wind;
you note their sighs of longing, and how they
piss with excitement. A prize is set, as in
the feast of Pope Alexander VI., to be given
to the most intrepid tribad: Laufeia calls
upon the brothel-girls to let her ride them,
and carries off the crown[#]; there is none
there of better heart than Medullina, expert
in plying her loins and buttocks; there all
.bn 221.png
.pn +1
etiquette ceases, mistresses and servants alike
contest for the palm of obscenity; there is
no sham, all is tribadic reality[#]; but,
after all, finally nature got the upper hand
again, the tribad disappeared, and the woman
became again a woman, leaving alone
tribadism, as a phantom only of pleasure, and
.bn 222.png
.pn +1
not satisfying them; from all parts a cry is
raised: “Now is the time for the men to
come in: go and find young men; if you
cannot find any, then slaves will do; if they
are lacking, bring the first men you can
find in the streets.” And if all fails, in their
shameless wantonness, they will offer their
buttocks to an ass[#]. On the origin of
tribads[#] Phaedrus has a fable, IV., 14:

.pm quote-start
“Another asked the reason why tribads and
cinedes were created. The old man thus explained:
The same Prometheus, modeller
of the human clay, that if it knock against
Fortune is shivered in pieces, once when he
had been fashioning all day long separately
those parts that modesty keeps hidden beneath
.bn 223.png
.pn +1
a garment, to fit them presently to the
bodies he had made, was unexpectedly invited
to supper by Bacchus. There he imbibed
the nectar in large drafts, and returned
late home with unsteady foot; then what
with fumes of wine and sleepiness, he joined
the female parts to male bodies, and fixed
male members on to the women. Thus it is
we find lust indulging in depraved pleasures.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
When women are in rut they pass their water,
nature wills it so, Juvenal, VI., 63-65: “Let lewd Bathyllus
dance the pantomime of Leda” (representing Leda
receiving Jupiter in a dance with wanton gestures:

.pm quote-start
“Tuscia cannot command her bladder, Appula is sighing
as if in amorous trance....”)
.pm quote-end

The same XI., 166-168:
.pm quote-start
“The other sex however feels more pleasure, is much
sooner fired, and lets the water off, excited through eyes
and ears.”
.pm quote-end

(What Juvenal says here as to this greater enjoyment
on the part of the opposite sex is connected with his general
opinion that women experience more pleasure in Love
than men do. So his words in VI., 254: “For how insignificant
is our pleasure!” Tiresias, called upon to
arbitrate on this point in Lucian (<i>Amores</i>, p. 85), declared
women’s enjoyment to be double that of men: “Unless
indeed we are to agree with Tiresias’ arbitrement,
that the woman’s pleasure is twice that of the man”).

Martial, XI., 17:

.pm quote-start
“How often will your rigid nerve lift up your tunic,
though you be as stern as Curius or Fabricius! You too
have to read our pages, be they ever so lascivious, young
maiden, though you come from Padua.”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
There is some ambiguity about the “long syphons.”
They are rivulets of urine passed near the statue,
or perhaps Juvenal means, to use the expression of
Grangé, “Urine spirted right up into the Goddess’ face,
which may be done by impudent women compressing with
the hands their parts, and thus retaining for some time
the water; thus collected it will spurt out with greater
force.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Verse 335-339.

.pm quote-start
“But all the Moors and Indians well know the flute-girl
who showed a bigger penis than great Caesar’s two
anti-Catos, in that place from which a rat will fly, conscious
of possessing testicles....”
.pm quote-end
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
The “nimble hips” are those of the tribad, who
is riding another in the posture of Apuleius’ Fotis, <i>Metamorph.</i>
II., p. 122, when she gratified Lucius with the
joys of a superincumbent Venus.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
All this was actually represented in Paris, 1791,
on the stage of a theatre, where, according to the author
of the <i>Gynaeology</i> III., 423, a man completely naked had
connection with a woman as naked as himself, both
representing savages, accompanied by the plaudits of both
sexes. There is however nothing new under the sun.
With the Romans it had long been customary, after the
public games were finished, to bring prostitutes into the
arena, and set them to work, so that the spectators might
have an opportunity to perform what they had been
looking at with greedy eyes; a herald proclaimed what
was to come. Tertullian, <i>De Spectaculis</i>, ch. 17: “Prostitutes,
the victims of public incontinence, are brought
upon the stage, shamefaced with respect to the women
only; to the men they were known; they are exposed to
the laughter of all, high and low; their dwellings, their
prices, even their recommendations were proclaimed by
the crier.” Isidorus, <i>Origines</i>, XVIII., 42: “The theatre
is like a brothel; when the games are over, public women
are prostituted there.” The rape of the Sabines described
in Livy (II., 18) would seem to have been a not dissimilar
form of amusement: “In this year young Sabines in Rome
having, in the midst of the games, abducted some prostitutes,
the tumult ensuing thereupon degenerated into a
riot, in fact nearly into a battle.”
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Observe the subtlety of the expression adopted by
the poet: “offers her buttocks to an ass to get on them.”
Juvenal knows that a woman has no chance to have an
ass’s mentula in her except by turning her back to the
beast.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
Plato, <i>Symposium</i> (Works, Zweibrücken edition,
vol. X., p. 205) imagines another origin; in the passage
where he relates the celebrated fable, according to which
Jupiter had cut the men in halves, he says: “As to those
women who are halves of women, they are not much
harassed by desires after men; but are much more given
to amuse themselves with women; the hetairistriae descend
from their category.”
.pm fn-end

The masculine member applied to women
is evidently that clitoris of such proportions
in erection, that the tribads can use it like a
penis; the female apparatus fitted on to man
is nothing else but the posterior orifice,
which itches in the case of cinedes, just as
the vulva titillates women. Tribads were not
wanting in the times of Tertullian; he calls
them frictrices. <i>De Pallio</i>, ch. 4:

.pm quote-start
“Look at those she-wolves who make their
bread by the general incontinence; amongst
themselves they are also frictrices.”
.pm quote-end

The same author says in the <i>De Resurrectione
Carnis</i>, ch. 16: “I do not call a cup
poisoned which has received the last sigh of
a dying man; I give that name to one that
.bn 224.png
.pn +1
has been infected by the breath of a frictrix,
of a high-priest of Cybelé, of a gladiator,
of an executioner, and I ask if you will not
refuse it as you would such persons’ actual
kisses.”

Nor was the trade of tribad out of date
in the time of Aloysia Sigaea:

.pm quote-start
“Nay! do not think me”, says Tullia, Dialogue
II., “worse than others. This taste is
spread almost over the universe. Italians,
Spaniards, French, are all alike as to the
tribadism of their women; if they were not
ashamed, they would always be rutting in
each other’s arms.”
.pm quote-end

More, she quotes herself some examples of
the hot transports of tribads, Dialogue VII.:

.pm quote-start
“Enemunda, the sister of Fernando Porcio,
was very beautiful, and not less so was a
friend of hers, Francisca Bellina. They frequently
slept together in Fernando’s house.
Fernando laid secret snares for Francisca;
the latter knew that he desired to have her,
and was proud of it. One morning the young
man, stung by his desires, rose with the sun,
and stepped out upon the balcony to cool his
hot blood. He heard the bed of his sister
.bn 225.png
.pn +1
in the next room cracking and shaking. The
door stood open; Venus had been kind to
him and had made the girls careless. He
enters; they do not see him, blinded and
deafened by pleasure. Francisca was riding
Enemunda, both naked, full gallop. ‘The
noblest and most powerful mentulas are every
day after my maidenhead,’ said Francisca, ‘I
should select the finest, dear, but for you; so
fain am I to gratify your tastes and mine.’
Whilst speaking she was jogging her vigorously.
Fernando threw himself naked into
the bed; the two girls, almost frightened to
death, dared not stir. He draws Francisca,
exhausted by her ride, into his arms and
kisses her: ‘How dare you, abandoned girl,’
he says, ‘violate my sister, who is so pure
and chaste? You shall pay me for this; I
will revenge the injury done to our house;
answer now to my flames as she has answered
to yours.’ ‘My brother! my brother!’ cries
Enemunda, ‘pardon two lovers, and do not
betray us to slander!’ ‘No one shall know
anything,’ he answered, ‘let Francisca make
me a present of her treasure, and I will make
you both a present of my silence.’”
.pm quote-end
.bn 226.png
.pn +1

The conversation of Ottavia with Tullia,
acting as tribad, in the same work (Dialogue
II) is still bolder and more to the point:

<sc>Tullia</sc>: Pray do not draw back; open your
thighs.

<sc>Ottavia</sc>: Very well! Now you cover me
entirely, your mouth against mine, your
breast against mine, your belly against mine;
I will clasp you as you are clasping me.

<sc>Tullia</sc>: Raise your legs, cross your thighs
over mine, I will show you a new Venus; to
you quite new. How nicely you obey! I
wish I could command as well as you execute!

<sc>Ottavia</sc>: Ah! ah! my dear Tullia, my
queen! how you push! how you wriggle! I
wish those candles were out; I am ashamed
there should be light to see how submissive
I am.

<sc>Tullia</sc>: Now mind what you are doing!
when I push, do you rise to meet me; move
your buttocks vigorously, as I move mine, and
lift up as high as ever you can! Is your
breath coming short?

<sc>Ottavia</sc>: You dislocate me with your violent
pushing; you stifle me; I would not do
it for any one but you.
.bn 227.png
.pn +1

<sc>Tullia</sc>: Press me tightly, Ottavia, take
... there! I am all melting and burning, ah!
ah! ah!

<sc>Ottavia</sc>: Your affair is setting fire to mine—draw
back!

<sc>Tullia</sc>: At last, my darling, I have served
you as a husband; you are my wife now!

<sc>Ottavia</sc>: I wish to heaven you were my
husband! What a loving wife I should make!
What a husband I should have! But you
have inundated my garden; I am all bedewed!
What have you been doing, Tullia?

<sc>Tullia</sc>: I have done everything up to the
end, and from the dark recesses of my vessel
love in blind transports has shot the liquor of
Venus into your maiden barque.

Leo Africanus, in his <i>Description of Africa</i>,
p. 336 (edition Elzevir, of 1632), mentions
the tribads of Fez:

.pm quote-start
“But those who have more common sense,
call these women (he is speaking of witches)
“Sahacat,” a word which corresponds with
the Latin <i>fricatrices</i>, because they take their
pleasure with each other. I cannot speak
more plainly without offending decency.
When good-looking women visit them, these
.bn 228.png
.pn +1
witches fall at once in hot love with them,
not less hot than the love of young men for
girls, and they ask them in the guise of the
devil to pay them by suffering their embraces.
So it happens that very often when
they think they have been obeying the behests
of demons, they have really only had to
do with witches. Many, too, pleased with
the game they have played, seek of their own
impulse to enjoy intercourse again with the
witches, and under pretence of being ill,
summon one of them or send their unfortunate
husbands to fetch her. Then the
witches, seeing how matters stand, asseverate
that the wife is possessed by a demon, and
can only be liberated by joining their association.”
.pm quote-end

You ask whether tribads are still to be
found in our days? If there are none now,
there certainly were some in existence in
Paris only a short time before the Great
Revolution, if we are to trust the author of
<i>Gynaeology</i>, III., p. 428. There was a veritable
college of tribads in Paris, who went
by the names of Vestals, holding regular
meetings in particular localities. There were
.bn 229.png
.pn +1
a great many members, and of the highest
classes; they had their statutes with respect
to admission; the affiliated were divided into
three degrees: aspirants, postulants, the initiated.
Before the postulant could be admitted
to the secret of the order, she had to
undergo for three days a difficult probation:
shut up in a cell tapestried with lewd pictures,
and ornamented with carved Priapi of
magnificent proportions, she had to keep up a
fire with I do not know how many ingredients,
and arranged in such a manner that
it would go out if there was taken too much
or too little of any of the materials; on the
four altars of the temple, which was adorned
with statues of Sappho, of the Lesbians she
had loved, and of the Chevalier d’Eon, who
for so many years successfully dissimulated
his sex, and with splendid hangings, perpetual
fires were burning. Kept English
women, too, did not recoil at tribadism, as
the same author states, III., p. 394. He
affirms that not long before the close of the
last century, confederacies of tribads, called
Alexandrine confederacies, were still in existence
.bn 230.png
.pn +1
in London, though in a small number
only.

Enough now of those who are, strictly
speaking, included under the name of tribads;
but the word has a more extended
signification. The term is also applied to
those women who in default of a real mentula,
make use of their finger or of a leathern
contrivance, which they introduce into their
vulva, and so attain a fictitious enjoyment.
Germany, I have lately heard, has been ringing
with complaints about this abuse. As
regards the leathern engine[#], called by
the Greeks olisbos, the women of Miletus,
above all others, made it their instrument of
pleasure. Aristophanes, in the <i>Lysistrata</i>,
108-110:

.pm quote-start
“For since the day the Milesians left us
in the lurch, not an olisbos have I set eyes
on, eight inches long,—that might give us its
leathern aid....”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Another use of these leathern engines has been
noted in ch. II.
.pm fn-end

Suidas under the word “****”:

.pm quote-start
“A virile member made of leather which
was used by Milesian women, as being tribads
.bn 231.png
.pn +1
and immodest. It was also made use of by widows.”
.pm quote-end

The same author under the word “****”:

.pm quote-start
“Cratinus also says on this head: <i>Lewd</i>
women will be using the olisbos.”
.pm quote-end

Hesychius quotes the same passage.

If you ask whether modern women, who
have suffered the wrong of seeing their beauty
slighted, actually have recourse to this
leathern substitute, Aloysia Sigaea (Dialogue
II) shall answer you:

.pm quote-start
“The Milesian women made for themselves
imitations in leather, eight inches long
and thick in proportion. Aristophanes tells
us that the women of his day habitually made
use of such. And to this very day Italian,
Spanish and Asiatic women honor this instrument
with a place in their toilet apparatus;
it is their most precious possession, and
one very highly appreciated.”
.pm quote-end

It is an undoubted fact that the Roman
matrons cherished a species of inoffensive
snake[#], the cold skin of which served
.bn 232.png
.pn +1
as a refrigerator in summer, Martial, VII., 86:

.pm quote-start
“If Glacilla winds an icy serpent round
her neck....”
.pm quote-end

Lucian <i>Alexander</i> (Works, vol. IV., p. 259):

.pm quote-start
“In that country one sees serpents of an
enormous size, but so quiet and mild that they
are fondled by women, sleep with the children,
do not get angry on being trodden on
or handled, and suck the nipples of the breast
like a nursling.”
.pm quote-end

This being so, our eminent Bottiger was
probably right, when he wrote page 454 of
his <i>Sabina</i>[#] a profoundly scientific work
in German, that very likely snakes were used
.bn 233.png
.pn +1
as instruments to satisfy the lubricity of
amorous women. You may understand now
what happened, or what might have happened
to Atia, the mother of Augustus, of
whom Suetonius (<i>Augustus</i>, ch. 94) wrote:

.pm quote-start
“I read in the treatise of Asclepiades of
Mendé called the <i>Theologumena</i>, how Atia
the mother of Augustus, having gone at midnight
to the temple of Apollo, to assist at a
solemn sacrifice, fell asleep, and so did the
other women present; how a serpent suddenly
glided close to her, and after some
little time withdrew again, and how on
waking she purified herself, as though she
had left the arms of her husband.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
This sort of snake served also to amuse men.
Suetonius, <i>Tiberius</i>, ch. 72: “He kept for amusement a
snake; one day, when he went as usual to feed it, he
found it devoured entirely by ants, which he took as a
warning to guard against being attacked by a mob.”
Pliny, <i>Nat. Hist.</i> XXIX., ch. 4: “The Aesculapian serpent
was brought to Rome from Epidaurus; it was kept
in the public edifices, and also in private houses.” Seneca,
in the <i>De Ira</i>, II., ch. 31, speaks of: “Those snakes that
glide harmlessly amid the cups and into the bosoms of
the guests.” They were not of a small size; this appears
from what Philostratus says in his <i>Heroics</i>, VIII., 1:
“Ajax had a tame snake of five cubits length, which kept
close to him, guided him on his way, and followed him
about like a dog.” This kind of snake was very common
at Pella, in Macedonia, as Lucian says in a passage quoted
in the text: “There are many such in their country.”
They are still to be found in Italy, according to Justus
Lipsius in his Notes to Seneca.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start
“Sabina, or the Morning Toilette of a Roman
Lady at the end of the First Century,” translated into
French by Clapier, 1813, 8vo.
.pm fn-end

There would be nothing surprising in the
fact that a serpent of that sort should have
investigated even without incitation on Atia’s
part, a certain locality which was well known
to it by the lubricity of other women, and
that Atia felt on awakening the very same
sensation as though she had undergone a real
coitus.
.bn 234.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - <s>OF TRIBADS</s>
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch07
CHAPTER VII||<s>OF INTERCOURSE WITH ANIMALS</s>
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
IT will not be out of place to say
something here of the incontinence
of those who have carried out carnal
intercourse with animals. It
appears that in Egypt the Mendesians, who
paid divine honors to a he-goat[#], prostituted
to him publicly women, even against
his inclination, in celebrating his rites. Herotodus
II., 46:

.pm quote-start
“A monstrous affair was connected with
this district (viz., the Mendesian) in my
time; a he-goat covered a woman in public.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Plutarch, <i>Of Animals that have Reason</i>, p. 989,
vol. II., of his works: “It is reported in Egypt the he-goat
Mendes, shut up with a great number of women,
all of them beautiful, refused to have anything to do
with them, and prefers goats by far.”
.pm fn-end

Strabo, XVII., p. 802:

.pm quote-start
“Mendes, where they worship Pan, and a
.bn 235.png
.pn +1
live he-goat; the latter in that place have
intercourse with women[#].”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
If we may believe Venette (II., iv. 3), there is
nothing more common in Egypt at the present day than
for young women to have intercourse with he-goats.
.pm fn-end

The Jews also knew something of the practice;
as we know from the law of Moses,
Leviticus xx., 15-16:

.pm quote-start
“And if a man lie with a beast, he shall
surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the
beast. And if a woman approach unto any
beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill
the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be
put to death” ...
.pm quote-end

How should Juvenal have come to tell us,
Satire VI., 332-33:

.pm quote-start
“... no more delay is there; she hastens
to make a donkey ride her from behind,”
if it had not been known that women sometimes
submitted themselves to asses? Would
Apuleius have thought of describing to us
with no less minuteness than wit the scene in
which Lucius, changed into an ass by a mistake
of Fotis, effects intercourse with a matron?
<i>Metamorphoses</i>, book X., p. 249:
.pm quote-end

.pm quote-start
“But I was a prey to grave apprehensions;
.bn 236.png
.pn +1
I asked myself how I, with my long and
coarse legs, could mount a delicate woman,
clasp with my hard hoofs her soft and tender
limbs that looked like milk and honey; how
could I with my enormous mouth, furnished
with teeth as big as tomb-stones, kiss those
small, rosy, scented lips; how lastly this lady,
although in rut to her very finger nails, could
take in such a big genital verge.... She,
however, doubled her tender allurements, her
endless kisses, her sweet murmurings, interspersed
with sweet glances like stings: ‘I
hold you at last,’ she cried, ‘I hold my dove,
my sparrow!’ and having said this, she
showed me how vain my fears had been for
embracing me as closely as she could, she
received me inside entirely, out and out.
Even more than that, whenever I drew back
in order to spare her, she pushed closer to
me, and clasping my backbone like mad, she
clung to me so closely that, by Hercules, I
began to think that I was not well enough
furnished to assuage her passion completely.”
.pm quote-end

A young girl of Tuscany got herself covered
by a dog in the time of Pius V., the
Roman Pope, as reported by Venette II., iv.,
.bn 237.png
.pn +1
ch. 3; and according to a note of Elmenhorst
on the above quoted passage of Apuleius, a
woman was discovered in Paris, in October,
1601, to have had connection with a dog. The
law was appealed to, and in conformity with
the unanimous verdict pronounced by the parliament,
the adulterous woman and the dog
were both burnt alive. Nay! more, a woman
has been known to submit to a crocodile, if
we may believe Plutarch, who reports in his
treatise <i>On the Sagacity of Animals</i> (p. 976,
vol. II., of the complete Works):

.pm quote-start
“Quite lately our excellent Philinus, on returning
from a long voyage to Egypt, told
me that he had seen at Antaeopolis an old
woman sleeping with a crocodile stretched
comfortably beside her on her pallet.”
.pm quote-end

Nor have men despised the vulva of animals.
Plate III of the <i>Monuments du Culte
Secret des Dames Romaines</i>, shows the picture
of a man working away in a goat, though
the annotator ought not to have quoted in
illustration of it a passage of Virgil (<i>Bucolics</i>
III., 8.), which has nothing whatever to
do with this matter:
.bn 238.png
.pn +1

.pm quote-start
“We know who (pedicated) you, while the
he-goats looked at you askance.”
.pm quote-end

In our countries legal cases show that not
only goats, but also sheep, cows, and mares,
have sometimes charmed shepherds and other
people of low breeding.
.bn 239.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - <s>OF INTERCOURSE WITH ANIMALS</s>
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch08
CHAPTER VIII||<s>OF SPINTRIAN POSTURES</s>
.sp 2
.dc 0.6 0.7
IN the sundry kinds of voluptuous
enjoyment which we have studied
so far, there are almost always
only two persons in action. It
happens, nevertheless, that more than two,
three or even more, may enjoy themselves
together; this is what we call after Tiberius,
the spintrian kind. Suetonius, <i>Tiberius</i>, ch.
43:

.pm quote-start
“In his retreat at Capri he had a <i>sellaria</i>,
the scene of his secret debaucheries, in which
chosen groups of young girls and worn-out
voluptuaries, the inventors of monstrous conjunctions,
called by him <i>spintries</i>, formed a
triple chain, surrendered themselves to mutual defilements
in his presence, so as to reanimate
by this spectacle his languishing desires.”
.pm quote-end

This <i>sellaria</i>, by the etymology of the word,
.bn 240.png
.pn +1
was evidently a room furnished with seats;
those who prostituted each other on these
seats were called “<i>sellarii</i>,” from the place,
and “<i>spintriae</i>,” from the chain they formed.
Spinter, according to Festus, p. 443, signified,
“a kind of bracelet worn by women on
the upper part of the left arm.” The word
is probably a corruption of <i>sphincter</i>, the
Greek **** from ****, “I clasp,” as for instance,
a band surrounding the arm. Tacitus,
<i>Annals</i>, VI., ch. 1:

.pm quote-start
“Then there were invented names never
known before, as for instance, <i>sellarii</i> and
<i>spintriae</i>, names taken from the turpitude of
the place or from the complicated infamies
undergone.”
.pm quote-end

Spintries then are those who, linked like
the rings of a bracelet, thus accomplish the
pleasures of Venus. Three can link themselves
thus, two and two, in such a way that
while the middle one is a fornicator or a
pedicon, in front is a woman or a cinede,
behind a pedicon. Such was the chain formed
.bn 241.png
.pn +1
by those Ausonius (<i>Epigram</i> CXXIX.) describes[#]:

.pm quote-start
“Three in one bed; two submit to the infamous
act, two perform it.—Four there are,
I suppose.—Wrong! to the outermost ones
give a villainy apiece; count the man in the
middle twice, for he both acts and submits.”
.pm quote-end

.pm fn-start
Translation by Ausonius of a Greek Epigram of
Strata, to be found in Brunck’s <i>Analecta</i>, II., 380.
.pm fn-end

Do you want to see the one in the middle
working a woman? Plate XL. of the <i>Monuments
de la Vie Privée des douze Césars</i>
shows you an example. Do you wish to see
the middle one pedicating? Look at plate
XXVII.

There is, however, no need that the middle
actor should fornicate or pedicate. He may
be placed between his two companions in
such a way that while he is enduring the
assault of a pederast behind, he may in front
irrumate, suck a member or lick a vulva.
Hostius whose mind was so fertile in inventing
obscenities that he was held up as an example
to future ages, has tried all these postures
and even added fresh variations. Seneca
(<i>Nat. Quaest.</i>, I., 16) has inveighed against
.bn 242.png
.pn +1
him more vehemently than is perhaps fit for
a philosopher. It seems to me as though some
secret voluptuousness has been acting here
on the sense of this rigid guardian of virtue;
he says:

.pm quote-start
“I will tell you here a story which will
show you that lust will not disdain any artifice
which is calculated to rouse desires, and
to stimulate its own fury. The lasciviousness
of Hostius was of the extremest kind.
It was this rich miser, this slave of a hundred
million sesterces, whose death, when he had
been assassinated by his slaves, Augustus
would not avenge, although he would not
say that they were right to kill him. His
lewdness was not contented with one sex;
he was as passionate for men as for women.
He had mirrors made which magnified the
reflections so much that a finger appeared
as big as an arm. These mirrors were placed
in such a manner that when he had a man
under him he could watch every movement
of his accomplice, and enjoy as it were the
fictitious size of his member. He chose his
men carefully, the measuring tape in hand,
and still had to deceive his insatiable passion.
.bn 243.png
.pn +1
It would be too outrageous to report everything
which this monster, that ought to have
been torn into pieces, dared to say and do
with his mouth; when surrounded on all sides
by his mirrors he was the spectator of his
own turpitudes, and those secret infamies
which every man would deny, if accused of
them, of such he took his fill not with his
mouth only, but also with eyes. And, by
Hercules, generally speaking crimes shun
their own reflection; men who are bare of
every feeling of honor and exposed to every
insult, still have some sense of shame, and
do not appear as they are. But he feasted
his eyes on unheard of and unknown infamies,
and, not content to see simply how he dishonored
himself, he surrounded himself with
mirrors, for the sake of multiplying and
grouping his lubricities. As he could not
see unaided everything distinctly when, pedicated
by one man, he had his head between
the thighs of another, he saw by his mirrors
what he was doing and how. He saw the
lewd work of his mouth, and watched himself
absorbing men by every orifice. Sometimes
placed between a man and a woman,
.bn 244.png
.pn +1
playing both ways the passive part, he was
able to see the greatest abominations. Darkness
was not for him! So far from being
afraid of the light of day, he wanted it for
his monstrous copulations, and was proud to
have them illuminated by it. Nay, more, he
even wanted to be painted in these attitudes.
Even prostitutes have a certain reserve, and
those that abandon themselves to the outrages
of all, veil to some extent their poor
complaisances, and the very brothel keeps
some relics of decency; but this monster
turned his obscenities into a spectacle for
himself.

“Yes,” he said, “I submit myself to a man
and a woman at the same time; but nevertheless
with the organs which are left free to
me I am still able to commit a worse ignominy.
All my limbs are polluted; then
shall my eyes also take part in my enjoyments,
they shall be witnesses and judges.
What I cannot see in a natural way let me
see by the help of art, so that I may not be
ignorant of what I am doing. No matter
to me that Nature has provided man with
such insignificant organs of voluptuousness,
.bn 245.png
.pn +1
the same nature which has furnished animals
so well; I find means to deceive my passion,
and to satisfy myself. Where is the harm,
if I try to imitate nature? I will have mirrors
which shall reflect images of incredible
dimensions. If I could, I would make these
images real; as I cannot, I must be satisfied
with phantoms. Let me see these objects of
obscenity larger than they are in reality, and
surprise myself by the sight of them!”
.pm quote-end

Plate XXI. of the <i>Monuments de la Vie
Privée des douze Césars</i> shows the picture of
Tiberius in a very strange spintrian posture,
which, however, is not without charm; the
emperor, half reclining on his back, licks one
girl’s privates who is kneeling over him,
while he offers his penis to be sucked by
another.

There are also arrangements where more
than three can join, making thus a longer
chain. Let a man put his member into a
woman while both of them are being pedicated
at the same time, and you have four
people forming a triple chain, like those of
Tiberius in the passage of Suetonius quoted
above. Suppose then another pedicon on
.bn 246.png
.pn +1
each end, and then you have a group of five,
forming a quadruple interweaving. Martial,
XII., 43:

.pm quote-start
“There are to be found novel figures of
Love, such as the impassioned fornicator may
try, such as experienced libertines perform
and keep the secret of; how five can copulate
in a group, how more still may be connected
in a chain.”
.pm quote-end

Look at Plate XXXVI. of the <i>Monuments
de la Vie privée des douze Césars</i>, with a
group of five copulators artistically diversified.
Nero, lying face downwards, enters one
girl who is on her back, at the same time
licking the privates of another who is standing;
he himself is being pedicated, while the
girl standing also submits her behind to a
pedicon. That such a chain may be extended
infinitely, is self evident.
.bn 247.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.sp 4
.h2
FOOTNOTES - <s>OF SPINTRIAN POSTURES</s>
.sp 2
.fm lz=th
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2
ENUMERATION||OF THE||<xl>EROTIC POSTURES</xl>
.sp 2
.in 6
.ti -6
1. The man face downwards taking between
his thighs the woman, who lies
on her back with her legs stretched
out straight.
.ti -6
2. The man face downwards taken between
her thighs by the woman, who lies on
her back with the legs apart.
.ti -6
3. The woman lying on her back taking
only one leg of her cavalier between
her thighs.
.ti -6
4. The woman lying on her back with her
feet crossed over the loins of the man.
.ti -6
5. The woman lying on her back with one
of her legs stretched out, and the other
over the man’s loins.
.ti -6
6. The woman lying on her back with the
cavalier mounted on her with his back
towards her face.
.bn 248.png
.pn +1
.ti -6
7. The woman lying on her back, with the
cavalier mounted athwart her.
.ti -6
8. The man lying with the woman half
couched on her side with the legs
stretched out.
.ti -6
9. The man lying with the woman half
couched on her side, one leg stretched
out, the other one over the man’s
loins.
.ti -6
10. The woman half couched, the man
mounted with his back to her.
.ti -6
11. The man on his knees, the woman on
her back with her legs open.
.ti -6
12. The woman on her back with her legs
resting on the man’s loins, who is
kneeling.
.ti -6
13. The woman on her back, one leg
stretched out, the other one resting
on the loins of the man, who is kneeling.
.ti -6
14. The woman on her back with her legs
on the shoulders of the man, who is
kneeling.
.ti -6
15. The woman on her back with one leg
resting on the loins of the man, who
.bn 249.png
.pn +1
is on his knees, and the other one
on his shoulder.
.ti -6
17. The man kneeling gets into the woman,
who is in a sitting position with her
thighs open.
.ti -6
18. The woman sitting with one leg stretched
out, and the other resting on the loins
of the man, who is kneeling.
.ti -6
19. The woman sitting, with her two legs
resting on the loins of the kneeling
man.
.ti -6
20. The woman sitting with one leg stretched
out, and the other on the shoulder of
her cavalier on his knees.
.ti -6
21. The woman sitting with her two legs on
the shoulders of her cavalier on his
knees.
.ti -6
22. The woman sitting, one of her legs on
the shoulder of the man on his knees,
the other one stretched out.
.ti -6
23. The man on his knees, the woman with her back to him.
.ti -6
24. The man on his back, the woman facing him.
.ti -6
25. The man on his back with the woman
turning her back to him.
.bn 250.png
.pn +1
.ti -6
26. The man on his back, the woman athwart him.
.ti -6
27. The man on his back, with the woman lifted up.
.ti -6
28. The man sitting with the woman facing
him.
.ti -6
29. The man sitting, the woman facing him, with her legs in the air.
.ti -6
30. The man sitting with the woman turning her back upon him.
.ti -6
31. Man and woman standing.
.ti -6
32. Man and woman standing, with one leg of man or the woman lifted up.
.ti -6
33. The man standing, with the woman on her back, her legs open.
.ti -6
34. The woman lying on her back, with her legs lifted on the loins of
the man, who is standing.
.ti -6
35. The woman lying on her back, one leg stretched out and the other
lifted on the loins of the man, who is standing.
.ti -6
36. The woman on her back, with her two legs on the shoulders of the
man, who is standing.
.bn 251.png
.pn +1
.ti -6
37. The woman on her back, one leg stretched out and the other one on
the shoulder of the man, who is standing.
.ti -6
38. The woman on her back, with one of her legs on the shoulder of the
man, who is standing, the other over his loins.
.ti -6
39. The man standing, the woman half lying
on her side.
.ti -6
40. The man standing, getting into the woman who is sitting with her
legs open.
.ti -6
41. The man standing, getting into the woman
sitting with her legs in the air.
.ti -6
42. The man standing, the woman sitting with one leg stretched out and
the other one lifted up.
.ti -6
43. The man standing and the woman lifted up.
.ti -6
44. The woman lifted up, with her legs on the shoulders of the man, who
is standing.
.ti -6
45. The man standing, the woman on her knees, with her back towards him.
.ti -6
46. The man standing, the woman crouching down, with her back towards
him.
.bn 252.png
.pn +1
.ti -6
47. The man standing, the woman with her back towards him, the lower
part of the body elevated, and the upper part resting on the bed.
.ti -6
48. The man standing, the woman turning
her back to him with the lower part
of the body artificially raised.
.ti -6
49. A man lying down and being pedicated.
.ti -6
50. A man pedicated standing.
.ti -6
51. A man on his knees being pedicated.
.ti -6
52. A man pedicated crouching down.
.ti -6
53. Irrumator lying down.
.ti -6
54. Irrumator sitting.
.ti -6
55. Irrumator standing.
.ti -6
56. Irrumator kneeling.
.ti -6
57. Irrumator crouching.
.ti -6
58. Cunnilingue lying down.
.ti -6
59. Cunnilingue sitting.
.ti -6
60. Cunnilingue standing.
.ti -6
61. Cunnilingue kneeling.
.ti -6
62. Cunnilingue crouching.
.ti -6
63. Fellatrix and cunnilingue.
.ti -6
64. Masturbator.
.ti -6
65. The helping hand.
.ti -6
66. A third hand helping.
.ti -6
67. The finger helping.
.bn 253.png
.pn +1
.ti -6
68. The assistance of a leathern <i>godemiche</i>.
.ti -6
69. Coitus with a male animal.
.ti -6
70. Coitus with a female animal.
.ti -6
71. Tribad at work on a woman.
.ti -6
72. Tribad pedicating.
.ti -6
73. Three spintries: a fornicator pedicated.
.ti -6
74. Three spintries: a pederast pedicated.
.ti -6
75. Three spintries: a fellator being pedicated.
.ti -6
76. Three spintries: a fellator entering a woman.
.ti -6
77. Three spintries: a fellator pedicating.
.ti -6
78. Three spintries: a fellator irrumating.
.ti -6
79. Three spintries: a fellatrix entered by a man.
.ti -6
80. Three spintries: a fellatrix pedicated.
.ti -6
81. Three spintries: a fellatrix offers her vulva for licking.
.ti -6
82. Three spintries: a cunnilingue fornicating.
.ti -6
83. Three spintries: a cunnilingue pedicating.
.ti -6
84. Three spintries: a cunnilingue irrumates.
.ti -6
85. Three spintries: a cunnilingue being pedicated.
.bn 254.png
.pn +1
.ti -6
86. Three spintries: a female cunnilingue is entered by a man.
.ti -6
87. Three spintries: a female cunnilingue is pedicated.
.ti -6
88. Four spintries forming a double chain.
.ti -6
89. Four spintries forming a triple chain.
.ti -6
90. Group of five copulators.
.sp 2
.nf c
THE END
.nf-
.sp 2
.pb
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.dv class=tnbox // TN box start
.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
.ul indent=1
.it Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
.it There are numerous places where text is missing (marked with “*”)\
and unresolved page references (see p. ?) which are not corrected.
.it Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a\
predominant form was found in this book.
.if t
.it Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
.if-
.ul-
.ul-
.dv-      // TN box end