What has here been said of the Circumcision of men, holds good also in the main of that of maids and women. This consists in the removal of the praeputium clitoridis; but neither the amputation of the Clitoris itself in so-called Tribads must be confounded with it, nor yet the operation on the exaggerated nymphae or inner labia, of women. The Arabs, among whom this practice,—female circumcision,—is especially rife at the present day as it was of old,[234] call the part that is subjected to circumcision
نوي (nava), the circumcision itself خفض (battar)
or خفض (chaphad), and what is cut away in circumcision
بظر (bätr). Usually the circumcision of maids
is first performed on the completion of the tenth year by women who make it their special business and who are known as مبظّرة (mobatterat). These women perambulate the streets and openly call out, “Any maids to circumcise?”[235] Besides the Arabs, Circumcision of maids is to be found among the Copts or modern Egyptians,[236] the Ethiopians,[237] in some districts of Persia,[238] among the Negroes in Bambuk[239] and the Panos in the province of Maynas in South America, the latter actually restricting the practice to the women.[240]
[Baths and Bathing.]
§ 37.
In spite of all precautions adopted it was impossible to keep away everything unclean from the body, while this latter by its own excrements was constantly making itself more or less unclean;[241] hence it was only natural that from the most primitive times men’s attention was directed towards means of removing the uncleanliness so contracted. But the defilement was never more than an external one; it concerned merely the skin and the orifices of the mucous membrane, while the matter requiring removal was of a sort soluble in water, and thus water was always the chief and foremost means employed to secure cleanliness. Doctrines of Cosmogony further confirmed the practice; these made water the origin of all things, a direct effluence of the deity and therefore itself divine,—a means not only of purification, but of sanctification as well.
Θάλασσα κλύζει πάντα τἀνθρώπων κακά,
(The sea washes away all evils of mankind) was the refrain, one that resounds to this day in our ears from the East; so that we cannot wonder that baths and bathing formed a capital factor both in the public and private life of the Ancients. Whatever view might be taken of sexual intercourse, all agreed in this, that a certain defilement was connected with it, which (as follows indeed from our exposition on earlier pages) might easily become injurious to the organs brought into activity, and could only be obviated by dint of baths and a system of bathing.[242]
Thus we read in Herodotus:[243] “But as often as a Babylonian has had intercourse with his wife, he sits down beside a lighted censer, and his wife does the same on the opposite side; then when morning has come, both bathe themselves, for they will touch no vessel until they have washed. The same practice is followed by the Arabians too.” Whether bathing after each act of coition was a national custom of the Egyptians, we have been unable to discover, but Clement of Alexandria[244] states that they were forbidden, as was almost everywhere the case in Antiquity, to enter the temple without having washed or bathed themselves after sexual intercourse; while the Priests were bound to bathe after every nocturnal pollution.[245] This was equally an ordinance of the Jews, who at the same time were rendered by such pollution unclean till the evening. The last named People were also obliged to wash after every act of coition; at any rate Josephus[246] and Philo[247] declare it to have been so, for in the Old Testament it is nowhere enjoined. As is generally known, this custom has been kept up in the East down to the present day, even among the Christian populations,—affording a concurrent testimony to the necessity for its observance in these countries.
Whether the Greeks deliberately and with intention made use of baths and bathing immediately after sexual intercourse, it is difficult to ascertain quite for certain; but it seems probable, as not only does Mythology more than once[248] make express mention of the bath after coition, but the phrase ὅσιος ἀπ’ εὐνᾶς ὤν (being holy, purified, after the couch) points to the same conclusion. Moreover there is a passage in Lucian,[249]—though it is quite true he often describes Roman customs,—that might be thought to prove the same.
Clearer indications are forthcoming in the case of the Romans, who not only must not undertake any sacred function or enter a Temple, if they had failed to bathe after carrying out coition,[250] but were also bound generally after every act of cohabitation to wash the parts brought into use. At any rate this holds good of the women, and so applies to the Roman matron (comp. the passage of Suetonius quoted in § 27) as to Atia, the mother of Augustus, as well as in an even greater degree to the amica (mistress) or courtesan. The regular name for this was aquam sumere (to take water).[251] Indeed there were actually special attendants aquarioli (water-boys),[252] whose business it was not merely to fetch water for this purpose, but also in particular to bathe and cleanse the “filles de joie” after sexual intercourse. For this reason Lampridius says of the Emperor Commodus (ch. 2), aquam gessit, ut lenonum ministeriis probrosis natum magis, quam in loco crederes, ad quem fortuna pervexit (he fetched water, so that you would more readily suppose him born to perform the shameful offices of pandars than in the station whereto fortune raised him). Such cleanliness was especially obligatory on those who had to do with the preparation of food and drink, such as bakers, cooks and butlers;[253] and if we do not find it directly enjoined among many ancient Peoples, the only reason of this is that they were already accustomed to wash and bathe every morning[254] immediately on leaving their bed.
In the same way as after natural coition the parts brought into use were bathed and washed, this was also done after unnatural, and so we read in the Collection of Priapeia (Carm. 40.):
Falce minax et parte tui maiore, Priape,