Quare si tibi sensus est pudorque,
Hibernas, Line, basiationes,
In mensem, rogo, differas Aprilem.
(’Tis winter time, and the shuddering chill of December is upon us. None the less, Linus, you dare to greet with your frosty salute all men you meet here and there, and to kiss all Rome. What more disagreeable or more cruel could you do, if you had been struck or thrashed? With an embrace so chilling may no wife kiss me, or unripe maid with wheedling lips. But you,—you think yourself more attractive and more pleasing, you from whose dog-like nose a blue icicle hangs, whose beard is frozen stiff, such a beard as the Cilician shearer crops with his upward-pointing clippers from the chin of a Cinyphian he-goat. I had rather meet a hundred cunnilingues; I am less afraid of a Gaul new come to town. Wherefore, if you possess any sense or any shame, I do beseech you, Linus, defer your wintry salutes till April is come). Now Linus is designated by Martial, bk. VII. Epigr. 9, as a fellator, and bk. XI. Epigr. 26., as a cunnilingue.
[56] Whence also the proverbial saying in Suidas: κύνα δέρειν δεδαρμένην· τὸ τοῦ Φερεκράτους· σχῆμα δέ ἐστι ἀκόλαστον εἰς τὸ αἰδοῖον· εἴρηται δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ, ἄλλο πασχόντων αὖθις ἐφ’οἷς πεπόνθασιν ἡ παροιμία. (to skin the skinned bitch; expression of Pherecrates; is an abominable practice in connection with the private parts; the proverb is spoken of such as suffer something a second time over, after having suffered it once already). Similarly Plautus, Trinum. II. 4. 27., Edepol mutuum mecum facit (By my faith, he plays give and take with me). Again κυνάμυια (shameless fly) is found in Suidas, which he explains by ἀναιδεστάτη· παρεσχημάτικε τὸ ὄνομα ἀπὸ τοῦ κυνὸς καὶ τῆς μυίας· ὁ μὲν γὰρ κύων ἀναιδής, ἡ δὲ μυῖα θρασεῖα, (a most shameless woman: name borrowed figuratively from the dog and the fly; for the dog is shameless, and the fly audacious)—probably with a reference to Homer, II. XXI. 394., where κυνόμυια is found, and the Scholiast observes: ἀναιδής ὡς μυῖα, ἐκ δύο ἀναιδῶν τελείων, τοῦ τε κυνός καὶ τὴς μυίας, διὰ τὸ ὑπερβάλλον τῆς ἀναιδείας. (shameless as a fly; from two completely shameless creatures, the dog and the fly; on account of the excessive degree of their shamelessness). Further there is in this connection the word κυναλώπηξ (fox-dog), which was a nick-name of Philostratus, as we see from Aristophanes, Knights 1078., on which passage the Scholiast observes: λέγει δὲ αὐτὸν καὶ πορνοβοσκὸν καὶ καλλωπιστὴν (now he calls him both brothel-keeper and dandy). If we derive the word from τὸν κύνα (frenulum praeputii,—ligament of the prepuce,—Paulus Aegineta, VI. 54.) ἀλωπίζειν, it would designate the fellator, as ἀλωπὸς, ἀλωπίζειν, ἀλωπηκίζω is formed from α privative (negative) and λῶπος, λώπη (the covering, skin, wool); and ἀλωπηκία is to be explained in the same way,—but not from the scab or mange of the fox, nor yet as the Etymologicum Magnum would have it, because the places where the fox discharges his urine die, the grass e.g. dries up and withers. Hence ἀλώπηξ might be taken as bald-headed, and then the further meaning of licentious dissoluteness given to it, for in Antiquity baldness was very usually looked upon as a consequence of sexual excesses, and as every one knows, Caesar was called by his soldiers moechus calvus (the bald-headed adulterer). But old men, who in particular are bald-headed, especially practised, owing to their lack of the power of erecting the penis, the vice of irrumation and of the cunnilingue, which makes Martial say (IV. 50.) Nemo est, Thai, senex ad irrumandum (No one, Thais, is too old a man for irrumation). κυναλώπηξ would then be a bald-headed cunnilingue. Possibly however this idea was also partly due to a reminiscence of the fox’s habit, when desirous of following up a scent, of sticking his head to the ground (Aelian, Hist. Anim. VI. ch. 24.),—a manœuvre he also adopts, as is generally known, when dying. In evidence of this view may be quoted what Cicero, Orat. pro Domo ch. 18., says to Sextus Clodius: ligurris (you are a licker), and ch. 31. Quaere hoc ex Sexto Clodio, iube adesse, latitat omnino; sed si requiri iusseris, invenient hominem apud sororem tuam (Publii Clodii) occultantem se capite demisso (Require this of Sextus Clodius, bid him appear; he lurks entirely out of sight. But if once you order him to be sought out, they will find the man at your sister’s house (Publius Clodius’s) hiding himself with head held down.) Comp. Catullus, 87. In Martial, Bk. IV. Epigr. 53., canis is used in same sense as κύων in Greek,—apparently? Perhaps the women of Antiquity made use of dogs as well to serve as cunnilingues. According to Brockhusius on Tibullus I. 7. 32., II. 4. 32. they were usual companions of “ladies of pleasure” at Rome, whence too suburanae canes (bitches of the Subura) in Horace, Epod. V. 58. and Subura vigilax (the watchful Subura) in Propertius, IV. 7. 15. During the Middle Ages at any rate such an employment of dogs was nothing unusual. This is stated by Panormita, Hermaph. Epigr. XXX., Epitaphium Nichinae Flandrensis, Scorti egregii:—
Pelvis erat cellae in medio, qua saepe lavabar,
Lambebat madidum blanda catella femur.
(Epitaph on Nichette the Fleming, a famous Harlot:—There stood a basin in middle of the chamber, in which I would many a time wash myself, the while my fawning bitch-pup licked her mistress’s dripping thigh).
and Epigr. XXXVII.,
Te viset Jannecta, sua comitante catella,