[22]. Thus Oenothea, to excite the lad’s feeble nerve, pushes a leathern mentula (member) into Eucolpius’ anus (Petronius, 138): “Oenothea fetches a leathern contrivance; this she first oiled and sprinkled with pepper and crushed nettle-seeds, and then proceeded to push little by little up my anus.” We shall have to speak in chapter VI of another use of these leathern tools.
[23]. According to the author of the Gynaeology (German edition, vol. III., p. 392) there are to be found at this day in the London brothels women who make it their business to flagellate customers who desire it.
[24]. In order to appease the ardours of the anus, the Siphnians (Siphnos, one of the Cyclades) were in the habit of introducing a finger up the anus. The Greeks called this proceeding to siphnianize. Suidas: Siphnianize,—to finger the posterior.
[25]. Always, however, excepting the head, for they took great care of their head of hair. Horace, Ode X., book IV., says to Ligurinus:
“When those curls are gone, that now descend to your shoulders....”
And (Epode XI., v. 40-43): “Nothing”, he says, “will take away his love for Lyciscus, save another love for a plump youth, tying up his long hair.” In the same sense Martial speaks of Capillati (III., 58; II., 57), and of Comati (XII., 99).
[26]. To depilate one’s armpits was, however considered as being necessary to the cleanliness of the body: “One man keeps himself tidy, another neglects himself more than is right; one man depilates his legs, another does not depilate even his armpits.” (Seneca, letter CXIV.)
[27]. The Greeks did not disdain this strange practice any more than the Romans. Aristophanes, in the Lysistrata (v. 89).
“My affair will be tidy with the couchgrass pluck’d off.” In the “Frogs” he speaks of dancing girls barely arrived at puberty beginning to tear off the fur” (v. 519); in the Thesmophoriazusae again there is mentioned “a mons Veneris plucked clean” (v. 719). That the Greeks preferred a bare pubis to a furred one, though we may be of a different opinion, is apparent from another passage of Aristophanes, in the Lysistrata, v. 151, 2, where a smooth pubis is represented as a chief incitement to virile ardour:
“If we were to go naked with a smooth pubis, our husband’s members would stand, and they would be fain to have us.”