Though the explanation of ῥινοκολοῦρος given just now might very well at a pinch be regarded as satisfactory, still we think it hardly answers sufficiently well to the κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον (after the same fashion), while the variant ῥινοκλοῦρος seems to point to ῥιναύλουρος or ῥιναύλουρις as the true reading. In Tatian (Orat. ad Graecos p. 83.) in fact we read: ῥιναυλοῦσι τὰ αἰσχρά, κινοῦνται δὲ κινήσεις ἃς οὐκ ἐχρῆν, καὶ τοὺς ὄπως δεῖ μοιχεύειν ἐπὶ τῆς σκηνῆς σοφιστεύοντας αἱ θυγατέρες ὑμῶν καὶ οἱ παῖδες θεωροῦσι. (They flute their obscenities through the nose, and make movements that in decency they should not make, while actors who teach on the stage the whole art of how to debauch a woman are the spectacle your daughters and your boys gaze at.) The Scholiast observes on this ῥινοκτυποῦσιν, οἱονεὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῖς ῥώδωσι, συνέλκοντες ποιὸν ἦχον ἐπὶ καταγέλωτι ἀποτελοῦσι, (they make a noise with the nose, a sort of breathing with the nostrils; by drawing in these they produce a certain sound by way of mockery), and in Lucian, Lexiphanes ch. 19., we find ἔοικα δὲ καὶ ῥιναυστῆσειν, (and I am like to go nose-playing), of which the Scholiast gives the following explanation: ἀντὶ τοῦ ταῖς ῥισὶ καταυλῆσαι, ἐποίουν γὰρ τοῦτο ῥιναυλοῦντες, ἤτοι διὰ τῶν ῥινῶν ψοφοῦντες ἐπὶ διασυρμῷ τινῶν καὶ χλεύῃ. (put instead of fluting with the nostrils; for they used to do this when they nose-fluted, or in other words, made a noise with the nostrils by way of mocking people and joking). Now if we take ῥιναυλεῖν (to nose-flute) in these passages,—and all this confirms what has been previously said (above p. 144.) on the word ῥέγχειν (to snort) in the Speech of Dio Chrysostom,—for fistulam canere per nares, to play the flute with the nose, and at the same time remember that Eustathius (as was noted above, p. 236. Note 2.) derived ἀπομύζουρις and μύζουρις from μυζᾶν-οὐράν (οὐρά,—the tail, the penis), the Greeks would seem to have said ῥιναυλεῖν-οὐράν, penem pro fistula canere, (to play on the penis instead of a flute), and we should have the adjective or substantive ῥιναύλουρις, qui penem pro fistula canit per nares, (one who plays on the penis instead of a flute with the nostrils), which admirably expresses not only the action of the fellator, but also the music he makes to accompany it, as he is compelled to snort, drawing his breath heavily through the nose.

Which explanation the reader will choose, we must really leave to him, for interpretations of words of this sort can never be brought to the absolute test of evidence, inasmuch as nick-names as a rule take their origin only too often in external circumstances. Still this much we think we may pronounce with certainty, that the words of the Gloss have to do simply de rebus venereis, with matters of love, and not with Venereal complaints, and thus Naumann’s propositions[33] at least are devoid of foundation. Perhaps it may be possible by means of a comparison of the licentious representations on old Vases, of which the late Hofrath Böttiger would seem to have possessed a choice collection, and some examples of which are preserved also at Berlin, in connection with one or other of the words given in the Gloss, as generally with the embodiments in Art of the Venus ebria (drunken Venus), to afford a better explanation, one that may indeed be of no particular value to the student of Antiquity pure and simple, but nevertheless is indispensable to the Physician for the correct understanding of sundry diseases of the Ancients, or at any rate one sufficient to avoid incorrect assertions and false conclusions, and to refute such.

We are not in a position to give a systematic history of the spread of the vice of the fellator and irrumator; but at any rate this much is certain that in Imperial times the Vice was most widely indulged in, as the Epigrams of Martial, and what Suetonius relates in his Life of Tiberius (chs. 44, 45.) sufficiently bear witness.

[Diseases of the Fellator.]
§ 22.

Now to pass on to the medical point of view, no one presumably will deny that the mouth of the fellator must necessarily be exposed to various complaints as a consequence of his Vice. Nevertheless there prevails universally, so far as our studies up to the present have enabled us to judge, complete silence among the Physicians of Antiquity as to the practice of λεσβιάζειν (to Lesbianize, to practise fellation) as a cause occasioning morbid affections of the mouth and the contiguous parts. This is the more surprising, as we find that non-professional Writers are not entirely unacquainted with such effects, as we shall show directly. For our purpose this silence is doubly unfortunate, depriving us as it does of all means of submitting such affections of the mouth as are described by Physicians to any proper appreciation in regard to their ætiological relationships,—an appreciation that in any case must naturally have been in view of our knowledge of the vice of the fellator one of extreme difficulty. The difficulty is this: fellator and fellatrix, equally with the Cunnilingue, the fornicater and fornicatrix, were liable to suffer from ulcers of the throat, for example, as a result of their peculiar vice, but in the former case these ulcers were primary, in the latter secondary,—now how is an inquirer to discover any diagnostic sign here, whereby to distinguish the one class from the other? Yet all the while, certainty on this point is of the very highest importance in view of the question as to the existence of Venereal disease in Antiquity, the chief argument always alleged against accepting the fact of such existence being the absence of secondary symptoms such as are nowadays commonly met with, especially about the throat[34].

It is remarkable that not one, so far as we know, of the authors who have studied the history of Venereal Disease makes any mention of this circumstance; neither do the Pathologists ever bring forward the vice of the fellator as an ætiological factor. Clossius[35] it is true speaks of Irrumatio, relying on Perenotti di Cigliano and Fabre; but these last are really speaking of the Cunnilingue, not of the fellator. Probably they are of Erasmus’opinion: λείχαζειν ni fallor tale quiddam est Graecis, quale fellare Latinis. Nam vox etiamnum manet, tametsi rem iam olim e medio sublatam arbritor. (λειχάζειν—to practise licking,—if I am not mistaken, is a similar practice with the Greeks to that of fellation with the Romans. The word indeed still remains, but the thing I believe to have long since entirely disappeared). On this however Forberg (loco citato p. 304.) very justly adds: Vereor ut vere: certe audio, ne ab nunc hominum quidem moribus plane abhorrere id schematis, quid viderint ii, quibus magnas urbes adire licet. (I fear this is not true: at any rate I am told this sort of practice is not entirely repugnant to the habits of some men even of our own day, to judge by what those see who have the opportunity of visiting large cities). How many primary ulcers of the throat, especially in the case of common Prostitutes, may have been mistaken for secondary ones, and have been treated accordingly, in fact are treated so still, without the Physician having a suspicion of how they were actually incurred! But what the Physicians of our own times are ignorant of, though familiar enough to many of the Laity, this knowledge we cannot reasonably demand from the Physicians of Antiquity. Yet supposing they did actually possess this knowledge, it was very excusable if they looked at what lay nearest before their eyes and regarded all throat ulcers as being primary,—in just the same way as any Practitioner of to-day finds it excusable in a Colleague that he thinks only of secondary ulcers, inasmuch as what in Ancient times happened very commonly is practised at the present day at any rate much less frequently. Consequently the absence of mention on the part of the old Physicians of secondary ulcers of the throat in connection with complaints of the genital organs cannot be considered as any sort of proof of their non-existence.

Among the maladies to which the fellator was exposed, we have in the first place to reckon the foul smell from the mouth[36], which is mentioned as especially prevalent among the Romans. The Physicians as a rule derived it, if no local symptoms, of ulcers, etc., were apparent, from some fault of the stomach[37],—an instance surely where the Laity were cleverer than the Profession! The sympathy between the mouth and the genitals and anus makes it evident why at the present day we notice, particularly in immoral women, an evil smell from the mouth, which they endeavour to conceal by chewing burned coffee and the like. No doubt this was the case in Antiquity[38] as well, so we are by no means justified in attributing every instance of foul breath in harlots and cinaedi to the practice of fellation.

Yet another consequence of fellation was pain in the mouth (στομαλγία, mouth-ache; only we must remember as to this that Pollux, Onomast. III. 7. 69., cites ἀλγεῖν,—to suffer pain, as a synonym of to love), tongue-ache (γλωσσαλγία[39]) and toothache[40], and generally pains of the palate and throat, rendering voice and speech indistinct. Hence Martial says[41]:

Qui recitat lana fauces et colla revinctus,

Hic se posse loqui, posse tacere negat.