(But to you I will do no harm; nay! rather shall my member, when your left hand has done its work and been washed, say to your grasping avarice,—now lick, fellate, me). This passage has been misunderstood by most of the commentators, because they chose to read lana (woollen cloth) for laeva (the left hand), or else thought to find here a reference to manustupration (masturbation with the hand). But really it means nothing more than that the poet declares he will resort to irrumation, after his mentula (member) has been washed with the left hand, [the Latin cannot mean this; lotā is ablative case, and must be taken with laevā. Transl.],—a usage to which we shall come back again subsequently; but which is at once clearly authenticated by a fragment of Lucilius, where we read:
Laeva lacrimas mutoni absterget amica.
(With the left hand his mistress wipes the tears from his penis).
[97] Galen, Isagoge ch. 18. (edit. Kühn Vol. XIV. 779).
[98] Galen, loco citato ch. 13. pp. 657, 758.
[99] Plato, Phaedo p. 81 A., οἱ ἀφικομένη ὑπάρχει αὐτῇ εὐδαίμονι εἶναι, πλάνης καὶ ἀγνοιας καὶ φόβων καὶ ἀγρίων ἐρώτων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων κακῶν τῶν ἀνθρωπείων ἀπηλλαγμένῃ. (So having come there, the soul is in a state of assured happiness being free of error and ignorance and fear, and fierce passions and the other ills of mankind).
[100] Plutarch, De solert. anim. p. 972 D., Ἔρωτες δὲ πολλῶν οἱ μὲν ἄγριοι καὶ περιμανεῖς γεγόνασιν, οἱ δὲ ἔχοντες οὐκ ἀπάνθρωπον ὡραϊσμόν. (But for the passions of many, some are naturally fierce and frantic, but there are others again that show no anti-social effeminacy). The Etymologicum Magnum says: ἄγριοι οἱ παιδεράσται, ἤτοι ὅτι ἄγριόν ἐστι τὸ πάθος ἡ παιδεραστία. (wild,—means the paederasts, that is, because the passion of paederastia is a wild one). Perhaps too the phrase of Theocritus is referable to the same: ἄγριον, ἄγριον ἕλκος ἔχει κατὰ μηρὸν Ἄδωνις (a savage, savage wound has Adonis in the thigh).
[101] In Hesychius occurs also the form ἀγριοψωρία (malignant itch). Whether the latter is connected with our subject, technical investigations must inform us. The passing over of Mentagra into Psora (Itch) points that way.
[102] Willian, “Die Hautkrankheiten” (Skin-Diseases), transl. by F. Friese, Breslau 1794. 4to., Vol. 1. pp. 29 and 32.
[103] Paulus Aegineta, De re Med. bk. IV. ch. 3., ἀγρίους δὲ καλοῦσι λειχήνας τοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν μετρίως ξηραινόντων οὐδὲν ὀνιναμένους. ὑπὸ δὲ τῶν σφοδρῶς παροξύνοντας. (now they call malignant lichens those which get no benefit from the milder siccatives, and are actually aggravated by the more violent).