"Tell me, clasp! frankly, of what advantage are you to actresses and lute-players? To enhance their favours."
"Menophili, penem tam grandis fibula vestit Ut sit comœdis omnibus, una satis Hunc ego credideram (nam sæpe lavamur in unum) Sollicitum voci parcere, Flacce, suæ; Dum ludit media populo spectante palæstra, Delapsa est misero, fibula; verpus erat."[212]
"Una si gran fibula copre il membro di Menofila, che sola basterebbe a tutti i commenianti. Io O Flacco, avevo creduto (imperocche si siamo sovente lavati insiême) che esso sollecito avesse cura delle sua voce; lotta in mezzo la palestra a vista del popolo, la fibula cascó sventvrato; era un' inciso."
Nor were dancers and gladiators exempted from the same operation, especially the latter, in order that they might preserve all the vigour required in their horrible and degrading occupation.
The best description of the fibula is that given by Holiday: "The fibula," says he, "does not strictly signifie a button, but also a buckle or clasp, or such like stay. In this place, the poet expresses by it the instrument of servilitie applied to those that were employed to sing upon the stage; the Prætor who set forth playes for the delight of the people, buying youths for that purpose, and that they might not, by lust, spoil their voice, their overseers closed their shame with a case of metal having a sharp spike of the same metal passing by the side of it, and sometimes used one of another form; or by a nearer crueltie, they thrust a brazen or silver wire thought that part which the Jew did lose in circumcision.
"The form of the first, and also another fashion, the curious reader may here see (being without any immodestie) as they are represented by Pignerius, de servis, p. 82. But whatsoever the fashion or invention was, the trust was but fond that was committed to them, seeing that the art of lust and gold could make them as vain as the Italian engines of jealousy in this day. Thus, 'O Lentulus,' says the poet, speaking figuratively to some nobleman, 'it is that thou art married; but it is some musician's or fencer's bastard that is born under thy lordly canopie.'"[213]
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Plate
VII.
PHALLIC FIBULÆ. |
Winkleman furnishes us with a description of an infibulated musician,[214] it being a small bronze statue representing a naked deformed individual, as thin as a skeleton, and carrying a ring in his enormi mentula. Martial, who laughs at everything, speaks of these singers sometimes breaking their ring, and says that it becomes necessary to send them to the fibula-makers in order to have the damage repaired:[215]
"Et cujus refibulavit turgidum, faber, penem, Il di cui turgido membro abbia fabro fibbiato."
The practice of infibulation was very common in India, from religious motives. As a proof of their sanctity, many of the Santons, or Mohammedan saints, as well as other devout persons, bonzes, fakirs, and the like, devoted themselves to perpetual virginity. Whether it was with the intention of placing themselves beyond the possibility of breaking their vow, or of giving evidence of their constancy, certain it is that they loaded their prepuce with an enormous fibula, or ring; and, in their warm climate, where nudity does not shock ideas of propriety or decency, devout women not unfrequently repaired to these soi-disant saints, to admire and venerate such efforts of virtue and self-denial; they are even reported to have knelt down, and, in that humiliating posture, to have kissed the preputial ring, no doubt with the vain hope of thereby obtaining indulgences. In some places, these martyrs fasten their fibula with a lock, the key which they deposit with the magistrate of the town or village. But, nature insisting upon her rights, is often too strong for this self-violence, nor can desire, or the not-to-be-mistaken symptom of it, be opposed, or even prevented, from being gratified; and since the lock, which obstructs the extremity of the prepuce only, cannot hinder a kind of erection, nor, indeed, of effusion of the seminal fluid, it cannot do more than oppose the introduction of the male organ into the receptacle destined for it.