You understand now why the young slave of Naevolus (Martial, III., 71) had pain at the anus; why the same Martial, VI., 37 says Carinus’ posteriors had to be cut; and where the sting lies in the following distich:
“You, who know all the reasons and weighty arguments of the sects,—come tell me, what dogma is it bids you be perforated” (IX., 48).
This effeminate philosopher, who affected to speak as though he had been the successor and heir of Pythagoras, was indeed bound, if anyone was, to know the reasons of lacerations[[30]] of the anus, and the weights of men’s members. He was accustomed to the passive part, of whom Ausonius says in mockery, as we saw a little above, that his clazomenae served as an anvil.
Men preferred to be supposed pedicators rather than patients; hence Martial’s witty epigram:
“It is now many a long day, Lupus, that Charisianus has been saying he cannot pedicate. But whenever his friends asked him why, he said his bowels were relaxed” (XI., 89).
Would you see the picture of a man engaged in pedication? he is being interrupted in the midst of his business, but the drawing is not the less pleasant for that. The engraving belonging to chapter III. of the third part of Félicia, presents this position.
Who does not know that the Greeks and Roman were intrepid pedicons and determined cinedes? In the Greek and Latin authors, to the indignation of the pedagogues, the male Venus parades on every page:
“All burnt with the same fire”—we are quoting Aloysia Sigaea, and we could not express ourselves better or more elegantly. We are, however, going to make annotation to this extract,—“all burnt with the same fire, the common people, the higher classes, the King. This depravity cost Philip, King of Macedon, his life[[31]]; he died by the hand of Pausanias, whom he had outraged.” It subjected Julius Caesar to the passion of King Nicomedes[[32]],—Caesar, “wife of all men, and husband of all women”[[33]].
Augustus did not escape this shame[[34]], Tiberius[[35]] and Nero gloried in it. Nero married Tigellinus[[36]], and was himself espoused by Sporus[[37]], Trajan[[38]], the best of rulers, was accompanied by a paedagogium, while he marched from victory through the Orient. What he named his paegogium, while he marched from victory to victory through the Orient. What he named his paedagogium was a troop of pretty lads, well developed, whom he called day and night to come to his arms. Antinous served as mistress to Hadrian,—a rival to Plotina, but more fortunate than she was[[39]]. The emperor mourned over his death, and placing the dead man amongst the Gods, he raised altars and temples in his honour. Antonius Heliogabalus, nephew of Severus, was accustomed, an old author says[[40]], to have pleasures administered to him through all the orifices in his body; his contemporaries looked upon him as a monster. Before this Venus grave philosophers danced in company with pederasts. Alcibiades and Phaedo slept with Socrates[[41]], when they wanted to get their tutor into good humour. It is from this kind of amours practised by the venerable man, that is derived the erotic phrase: to love Socratically. Every action and every word of Socrates were held as sacred by all sects of philosophers; they built a temple and erected an altar in his honour; all his actions had legal force, and his words the authority of an oracle. The philosophers did not turn away from the example set by their Hero (for Socrates took rank with the Heroes) and new national divinity. Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator, living some centuries before Socrates, refused the title of a good and deserving citizen to any man who had not a friend that served him as a concubine. He willed it that virgins should perform naked on the stage, so that the view of their charms freely exposed, should dull in men that sensual longing which by the aid of nature draws them to women, that they might thus reserve all their passion for their friends and companions. For what men see every day loses half its effect.
Again, why speak of the Poets?[[42]] Anacreon[[43]], was hotly in love with Bathyllus; almost all pleasantries of Plautus have this subject for their aim; they are of this kind: