[127]. There is some ambiguity about the “long syphons.” They are rivulets of urine passed near the statue, or perhaps Juvenal means, to use the expression of Grangé, “Urine spirted right up into the Goddess’ face, which may be done by impudent women compressing with the hands their parts, and thus retaining for some time the water; thus collected it will spurt out with greater force.”
[128]. Verse 335-339.
“But all the Moors and Indians well know the flute-girl who showed a bigger penis than great Caesar’s two anti-Catos, in that place from which a rat will fly, conscious of possessing testicles....”
[129]. The “nimble hips” are those of the tribad, who is riding another in the posture of Apuleius’ Fotis, Metamorph. II., p. 122, when she gratified Lucius with the joys of a superincumbent Venus.
[130]. All this was actually represented in Paris, 1791, on the stage of a theatre, where, according to the author of the Gynaeology III., 423, a man completely naked had connection with a woman as naked as himself, both representing savages, accompanied by the plaudits of both sexes. There is however nothing new under the sun. With the Romans it had long been customary, after the public games were finished, to bring prostitutes into the arena, and set them to work, so that the spectators might have an opportunity to perform what they had been looking at with greedy eyes; a herald proclaimed what was to come. Tertullian, De Spectaculis, ch. 17: “Prostitutes, the victims of public incontinence, are brought upon the stage, shamefaced with respect to the women only; to the men they were known; they are exposed to the laughter of all, high and low; their dwellings, their prices, even their recommendations were proclaimed by the crier.” Isidorus, Origines, XVIII., 42: “The theatre is like a brothel; when the games are over, public women are prostituted there.” The rape of the Sabines described in Livy (II., 18) would seem to have been a not dissimilar form of amusement: “In this year young Sabines in Rome having, in the midst of the games, abducted some prostitutes, the tumult ensuing thereupon degenerated into a riot, in fact nearly into a battle.”
[131]. Observe the subtlety of the expression adopted by the poet: “offers her buttocks to an ass to get on them.” Juvenal knows that a woman has no chance to have an ass’s mentula in her except by turning her back to the beast.
[132]. Plato, Symposium (Works, Zweibrücken edition, vol. X., p. 205) imagines another origin; in the passage where he relates the celebrated fable, according to which Jupiter had cut the men in halves, he says: “As to those women who are halves of women, they are not much harassed by desires after men; but are much more given to amuse themselves with women; the hetairistriae descend from their category.”
[133]. Another use of these leathern engines has been noted in ch. II.
[134]. This sort of snake served also to amuse men. Suetonius, Tiberius, ch. 72: “He kept for amusement a snake; one day, when he went as usual to feed it, he found it devoured entirely by ants, which he took as a warning to guard against being attacked by a mob.” Pliny, Nat. Hist. XXIX., ch. 4: “The Aesculapian serpent was brought to Rome from Epidaurus; it was kept in the public edifices, and also in private houses.” Seneca, in the De Ira, II., ch. 31, speaks of: “Those snakes that glide harmlessly amid the cups and into the bosoms of the guests.” They were not of a small size; this appears from what Philostratus says in his Heroics, VIII., 1: “Ajax had a tame snake of five cubits length, which kept close to him, guided him on his way, and followed him about like a dog.” This kind of snake was very common at Pella, in Macedonia, as Lucian says in a passage quoted in the text: “There are many such in their country.” They are still to be found in Italy, according to Justus Lipsius in his Notes to Seneca.
[135]. “Sabina, or the Morning Toilette of a Roman Lady at the end of the First Century,” translated into French by Clapier, 1813, 8vo.