FOOTNOTES - ON PEDICATION

[20]. Drawk, from —, I work, execute; for dravicus, as cautus for cavitus, lautus for lavitus.

[21]. Catamite according to Festus, is the same thing as Ganymede, the minion of Jupiter; the Latins, by similar corruption of words, pronounced Proserpina for Persephone, Aesculapius for Asclepios, Carthago for Carchedo, Pollux for Polydeukes, Sybilla for Siobulé, masturbare for manu stuprare.

[22]. 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 VI of another use of these leathern tools.

[23]. According to the author of the Gynaeology (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.

[24]. 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 siphnianize. Suidas: Siphnianize,—to finger the posterior.

[25]. Always, however, excepting the head, for they took great care of their head of hair. Horace, Ode X., book IV., says to Ligurinus:

“When those curls are gone, that now descend to your shoulders....”

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 Capillati (III., 58; II., 57), and of Comati (XII., 99).

[26]. 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.)

[27]. The Greeks did not disdain this strange practice any more than the Romans. Aristophanes, in the Lysistrata (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 Thesmophoriazusae again there is mentioned “a mons Veneris 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 Lysistrata, v. 151, 2, where a smooth pubis is represented as a chief incitement to virile ardour:

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

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

“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.”

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

Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, 545, 6.

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

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, Clouds, 1079:

“What, must you suffer the empalement with the radish, and the hot cinders?”

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.”

[28]. 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 your turn to have them,—you who have ever been so liberal with your own.” (Note of the translator.)

[29]. The following is the passage from Machon, as quoted by Athenaeus; without a knowledge of it Forberg’s allusion remains obscure:

“... 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.)

[30]. Secta, sect (from sequor) may also be derived from secare, to cut, and thus mean: laceration. (Note of the translator.)

[31]. 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).

[32]. Suetonius, Julius Caesar, 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.

“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.”

Catullus (carm. 57):

“How well they go together, those shameless cinedes, Mamurra the patient, and Cæsar.”

[33]. Suetonius, Julius Cæsar, 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:

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

The same author (Julius Cæsar, 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.”

[34]. “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”:

“See you how a cinede governs the world with a finger?” (Suetonius, Augustus, ch. 68.)

A picture representing Augustus playing the part of a patient, is in the Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars, pl. VI., and another of Cæsar and Nicomedes, pl. I.

[35]. “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, Tiberius, ch. 44). The act of this madman is represented on pl. XX. in the work of d’Hancarville, cited on a previous page.

[36]. 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 flammeum 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, Annals, XV., 37). The man called Pythagoras by Tacitus, appears to be the same to whom Suetonius (Nero, 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.

[37]. “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 flammeum 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, Nero, ch. 28). Plate XXXIV in the repeatedly quoted French work, gives a representation of the abominable wedding.

[38]. “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, Hadrian, ch. 2).

[39]. “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, Hadrian, ch. 14). St. Jerome says in the Hegesippus: “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.”

[40]. “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, Heliogabalus, 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” (Ibid., 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.

[41]. Socrates, as is well known, has not been in want of warm defenders; Brucker (Critical History of Philosophy, I., pp. 539, 540), may stand for all of them. Undoubtedly Plato, in Symposium, brought in Alcibiades, who says he recollects, to use the expression of Cornelius Nepos (Alcibiades, 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 (Varide Historiae, 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:

“O you, who have so fiercely burnt my heart with love, you Dion!”

[42]. 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.

[43]. “No less fiercely burned the love of Anacreon of Teos, they say, for the Samian youth Bathyllus” (Horace, Epodes, XIV., 9, 10).

[44]. The actual words of Plautus are:

“I must do the puerile service: I will cower down over a hamper” (Cistellaria 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 (Metam. III., ch. 2), calls “the puerile corollary.” Martial, IX., 68 says simply, “illud puerile.” Conquinescere is according to Nonius, p. 531, Gottfried’s edition, to curve the spine, an expression designating in particular the passive posture as we have seen in the Pseudolus:

“When he curves the spine, then simultaneously wriggle your buttocks.”

Some authors have also used a still more forcible expression, “Ocquinescere,” vis., “to cower low down” (Nonius, p. 567). Pomponius, on word “Prostibulum”: “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 “Pistor”: “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” (Apophras, 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 Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars, pl. XXVII., a patient crouching, and pl. XXXVIII., a patient 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 Priapeia, LXX.:

“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?”

[45]. Pseudolus, IV., sc. VII., 85.

[46]. You might very well, Aloysia, have quoted Horace too (Epodes, XI):

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

And Satires, I., ii, v. 116-119.

“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!”

[47]. Art of Love, II., 683, 684.

[48]. Priapeia, II.

[49]. Epigr. 44, book IX:

“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.

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

“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.”

[50]. Some prostitutes sat (Plautus, Poenulus, I., ii., v. 54), others stood: “Another man will only have the harlot that stands upright in the unclean brothel,” (Horace, Sat. I., ii., v. 30.)

[51]. Juvenal’s Messalina (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.” (Satyr. ch. 7.) Martial, XI., 46:

“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....”

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

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

[52]. Horace, Sat. II., vii, 48, 49:

“... Every woman that naked beneath the bright lamplight endured the thrusts of a swollen member.”

Juvenal, VI., 130, 131.

“Foul with the reek of the lamp, she bore to the Imperial couch the stink of the brothel.”

[53]. 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?” (Of the Maliciousness of Herodotus, p. 857, vol. II of Frankfort edition of 1620). Athenaeus: “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?”

[54]. 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.

[55]. Athenaeus, 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.”

[56]. Pardon me, illustrious Marcus Pullarius, for having almost forgotten you. Ausonius, Epigr. LXX.:

“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’ subulo, his pullipremo.”

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 subulo” (from subula, an awl), wanting to make it understood that with his member he transfixed, like a cobbler with his awl, the anus of cinedes; and pullipremo, from his compressing in his work young lads.

[57]. “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.).

[58]. 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.

[59]. Do not misunderstand what I say. It is not for an honest man to sharpen his wits at the expense of another’s book.

CHAPTER III
OF IRRUMATION[[60]]

TO put the member in erection into another’s mouth is called to irrumate, a word, which in its proper sense means to give the breast; in fact, according to Nonius, p. 579 (Gottfried’s edition), the Ancients called the bosom ruma. 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 fellare meant to suck, also according to Nonius, p. 547. The equivalent to fellare in Greek is ——.

The Lesbians are believed to be the inventors of this particular nastiness. The Scholiast, in verse 1337 of the Wasps 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 irrumants, or as fellators. 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, “Siphnianize,—to Lesbianize, that is to use the mouth abominably.”[[61]] Aristophanes has employed the word in the sense of sucking (Wasps, 1337).

“Look, how cleverly I kept you away, when you wanted to Lesbianize the guests.”

And again in the Frogs 1343:

“Has this Muse never used the Lesbian mode?”[[62]]

But Hesychius has employed it for irrumate: “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 Apophras (ch. 26):

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

What the difference between the two may be is not known. At any rate Timarchus, who is so bitterly attacked by Lucian, was a fellator, 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 (ibid., ch. 26), the mistress of the house upbraiding him in these words 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 (ibid., ch. 21), and who says farther on, “that he had seen him at work”, if this does not apply to a fellator? Besides, what is the meaning of that sore throat contracted by him in Egypt (ibid., 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 (ibid., 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 to a fellator or a cunnilingue (a licker of the vulva). That Timarchus was no stranger to irrumation, 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 cunnilingue[[63]], an expression which we shall dilate upon presently. Needless therefore in this place to give examples of women who allowed their vulvas to be licked.

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

“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.[[64]]”

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 abominable than the Lesbianists. There can therefore be no doubt that he designates the action of the fellators by the word Phœnicianizing, and by Lesbianizing that of the irrumants. 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 cunnilingues 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, Epigr. 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:

“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 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.”

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” (Inst. Orat., X., I). Further Crispa did not fail to allow herself to be irrumated, 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: Clytaemnestram quadrantariam, in triclinio coam, in cubiculo nolam (Instit. Orat., VIII., 6 p. 747), refers to a woman of the name of Nola, she being a fellatrix 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 Coa, because she liked coitus on the open triclinium, and Nola because she refused the same in bed. Spalding evinces surprise at the want of exactitude, which the word quadrantaria 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[[65]] 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):

“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 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?” (Augustus, 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” (Calig., ch. 25). The same author, (Calig., 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 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 (Odes, III., vi, 25-32):

“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!”

Again look at the feast of the Pope, Alexander VI., whom we have already mentioned for your profit and amusement in our Hermaphroditus[[66]].

Is this evidence enough to satisfy you as to these Coae 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 (nolebat); in public on the triclinium, she was willing enough for coition (volebat coire). Hence the jest; she was Coa and Nola. Coelius might have put it still more plainly; on the triclinium she was Vola, in bed Nola.

It was not the inhabitants of Nola only who were addicted to the Lesbian vice, the Oscans[[67]] generally were considered to be very 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:

“In almost all the old treatises the word is written Opicum instead of Oscum; 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.”

The Ancients employed many forms of circumlocution to convey the meaning of their filthy practices. For instance, instead of irrumate, they said: to offend the mouth[[68]], corrupt the mouth[[69]], to attack the head[[70]], to defy to the face[[71]], insult the head, not to spare the head[[72]], to split open the mouth[[73]], gain the heights[[74]], mount to loftier regions[[75]], compress the tongue[[76]], to indulge in abominable intercourse[[77]], and instead of receiving the member into the mouth they said: to lend the mouth in kind complaisance[[78]], work with the mouth[[79]], lick men’s middle parts[[80]], lick simply[[81]], or lastly to be silent[[82]]. Just as Persius has employed the word cevere, to wriggle in the sense of flattering, so Catullus uses irrumate as meaning to treat ignominiously[[83]].

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

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

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 Epigr. X., 12, “Praetor and irrumator.” In Epigr. 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:

“... Your names I shall chalk up all over the tavern’s front.”

Other passages of Catullus, XXI., 12, and LXXIV., 5, are also quoted to prove the various employment of the word irrumate; but they do not seem to me to bear upon the question.

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

“If you come to steal, you will return shameless.”

Cicero, De Oratore, II., 257:

“If you are shameless before and behind....”

Horace, Epistle, I., xvi., 36:

“If he calls me a thief, he denies that I am chaste.”

Lampridius, Commodus, ch. 10:

“Already as a child he was a glutton and shameless, 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.”

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

“You are allowed to be as chaste as Vesta;” The same epithet was given to a wife that was faithful to her husband such a one as is praised by Martial in Epigr. X., 63.

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

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

“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 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 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.)

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

“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, 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.)

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

“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 above, properly in the region of the middle.” (Dial. VII.)

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

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

The prurient ingenuity of Tiberius invented a new species of fellation.

“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, Tiberius, ch. 44).

A representation of this ingenious libertine while tickled by what he called his little fishes, is to be seen on plate XVIII. of the Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars.

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:

“No man is too old to irrumate.”

XI., 47:

“Gain the heights; there your old member will revive.”

And III., 75:

“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.”

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:

“Lupercus loves the beautiful Glycera; he is her lord and master, and he alone. He was complaining bitterly he had not loved her for a month; Aelianus asked the reason,—he replied Glycera had the toothache.”

Lepidinius, in the Hermaphroditus (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;

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

Priapeia, XXX., says:

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

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 Epigram III., 87, quoted before.

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

“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”[[84]].

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

“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.”

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 were ashamed of was fellation. 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 fellators 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.

Fellators were so repugnant to the guests at table, that no cups[[85]] were offered to them, or when they had been offered, they were afterwards broken[[86]], and that it was only with the greatest unwillingness any one would kiss their mouth[[87]], when presented for salute. Thus it was preferable to be taken for a cinede to being taken for a fellator[[88]], like Phœbus in Martial, III., 73:

“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 cinede!”

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

“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.[[89]]”

For the same reason, as Charidemus will not be called a patient, 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 fellator:

“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.”

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

“Informer you are and blackmailer, swindler and trickster, fellator and bully. The wonder is you have no money.”

And again, III., 75:

“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 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.”

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 fellator:

“Saluting raven[[90]], why do they call thee fellator? Never a mentula entered your beak.”

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.” (Natural History, X., 12.)

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

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

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 Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars represents a fellator. 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.