(A certain girl, if it please you to listen, Priapus, is playing with me. Most sorely afflicted is she with swellings; and she will not give herself to me, yet does not say she never will, and ever finds excuses for putting off and putting off. Now if ever she shall be mine to enjoy, I and my comrades with me, will wreath all thy penis, Priapus, with garlands). The girl, who was badly affected with these swellings, and that presumably in the secret parts, refuses her lover coition. The latter does not insist, but prays to Priapus, as was habitually done in all cases of affections of the genitals (see p. 74 above) and vows to deck his penis with garlands. It follows that the lover was aware these swellings would be injurious to him, if he should constrain the girl, of whom the poet says, nec negat daturam (yet does not say she will not give herself), to lie with him. Still clearer evidence of this may be found in the following Epigram of Martial, where a whole family is affected with these swellings or tumours:
De familia ficosa.[275]
Ficosa est uxor, ficosus et ipse maritus,
Filia ficosa est, et gener atque nepos.
Nec dispensator, nec villicus, ulcere turpi,
Nec rigidus fossor, sed nec arator eget.
Cum sint ficosi pariter iuvenesque senesque,
Res mira est, ficus non habet unus ager.
(On a tumourous household.—The goodwife is tumourous, tumourous the goodman her husband, tumourous the daughter of the house, and the son-in-law and the grandson. Neither house-steward nor factor is free of the foul ulcer, nor the rugged ditcher, nor yet the ploughman. Now when all alike, young and old have tumours (ficos, ficus), the strange thing is, not a single field has fig-trees (ficus)). For the rest the words ulcere turpi (foul ulcer) show that ficus, like σύκος and σύκωσις (fig, fig-like swelling) in Greek, signifies not only a fig-shaped swelling, but also an ulcer with granulous surface, like a fig cut in two. Or possibly it would be better to understand here swellings that have passed into the ulcerated stage[276].
Seeing how plainly the passages just quoted from non-medical Writers point to these swellings being a consequence of paederastia, it is surprising that not one of the Ancient physicians, spite of Juvenal’s medico ridente (the doctor grinning the while), ever so far as we know, alleges this form of licentiousness as cause of affections of the sort. On the other hand we cannot help remarking that the frequency of these swellings in the time of Martial and Juvenal can hardly be explained as arising solely from the general prevalence of paederastia. More probably, then as now, the Genius epidemicus (Epidemic influences) bore no unimportant share in bringing about the result, just as was the case (see later) with Mentagra (Eruption of the chin).