Et voce certa consciaque dicebat:
Puer, an puella matris esset in ventre;
(Gaudete cunni, vestra namque res acta est!)
Arrigere linguam non potest fututricem
Nam, dum tumenti mersus haeret in vulva[80]
Et vagientes intus audit infantes,
Partem gulosam solvit indecens morbus;
Nec purus esse nunc potest, nec impurus.
(Manneius was a husband with his tongue, a fornicator with his mouth, a more polluted wretch than the big-cheeked wenches of the suburbs. When a vile bawd saw him naked from a window in the Suburra, she shuts her brothel up, and had rather kiss his middle than his head. The man who but now could penetrate every vessel of the inwards, and say with assured voice and certain knowledge whether it were a boy or a girl in the mother’s belly,—rejoice, rejoice, organs of women, for your business is done for you,—the same cannot erect a fornicating tongue. For at the very moment he is plunged tight in the swollen vulva, and hears the babes whimpering within, lo! a shocking disease paralyses his greedy tongue. Now can he be neither clean, nor yet unclean).
The Commentators, in particular Farnabius, refer the complaint spoken of in the passage just quoted to paralysis of the tongue. Farnabius says in fact: “Paralysisne ἀπὸ τῆς ἀφέδρου καὶ τῶν ἐμμηνιῶν, quorum malefico humore marcescunt segetes, apes moriuntur etc., Plin. c. 15 Lib. V., an sideratio?” (Is paralysis intended, resulting from the menstruation and menstrual discharges, the poisonous humour of which will wither up crops, kill bees, etc.—Pliny ch. 15. Bk. V., or a sudden stroke?) Even supposing us willing to admit the possibility of menstrual blood bringing on paralysis of the tongue, there can at any rate be no question of such a thing here, inasmuch as it was with a pregnant woman Manneius carried out his vicious practises, and women in pregnancy do not usually menstruate,—a fact about which the Philologist naturally enough was only imperfectly posted. Of course the possibility is always there, although the Poet says nothing about it; and the expression vulva tumens (swollen organ) evidently stands here, as is clearly shown by what follows, for uterus gravidus (pregnant womb)[81]. The solvere (to loose, destroy) points in any case to a destruction, a dwindling, of the part, brought about by the indecens morbus (shocking disease),—which disease might very likely find its explanation in the scelerata lues (noxious contagion) mentioned on page 258 above. As a result of this, naturally enough not only did arrigere (to erect—the tongue) become impossible, but the impurus (Cunnilingus) (unclean cunnilingue) grew generally incapable of practising his vice. Nor yet was he purus (clean)[82] altogether, for was he not a cunnilingue?—and now he was even less purus, because he suffered from the indecens morbus (shocking disease), which even Farnabius has so far rightly understood, that he explains nec purus (nor yet clean) by morbo illo contaminatus (because contaminated by the said disease).