[40]. “Who, indeed, could put up with a ruler who imbibed pleasure through all the cavities in his body? Not even a beast would be suffered to do so. At Rome his only care was to send out emissaries, who had to look out for and to bring to the court the best shaped men for his enjoyment. He had a performance of the comedy of “Paris” in his palace, played the part of Venus himself, and suddenly dropping his clothes, he appeared naked with one hand on his chest and the other covering his pudenda; he then knelt down and offered his raised buttocks to his pedicon” (Lampridius, Heliogabalus, ch. 5). And a little farther on: “He loved Hierocles to such a degree as to kiss his virile parts, a thing I blush to report; he said that he thus celebrated the Floralia” (Ibid., ch. 6). He did not hesitate to repeat the infamous wedding of Nero with Pythagoras: “Zoticus had such a power over him that the principal officials of the state treated him as though he really were the husband of the Emperor. He married him, and made him consummate the marriage in the presence of the giver away of the bride, telling him, “Push in, Magira!” And this was done at a time when Zoticus was ill” (Lampridius, ch. 10). Zoticus was called Magira on account of the profession of his father, who had been a cook.
[41]. Socrates, as is well known, has not been in want of warm defenders; Brucker (Critical History of Philosophy, I., pp. 539, 540), may stand for all of them. Undoubtedly Plato, in Symposium, brought in Alcibiades, who says he recollects, to use the expression of Cornelius Nepos (Alcibiades, ch. 2.) “to have passed a night with Socrates, but not otherwise than a son might with his father.” But Xantippe, and it is not surprising, was indignant that her husband should be on such familiar terms with a good-looking youth like Alcibiades; and Aelian (Varide Historiae, XI., 12), relates that she stamped upon a cake sent by Alcibiades, which made Socrates laugh and cry out: “What are you doing? You cannot eat it now. I do not care for it at all!” But, Socrates! good morals and such friends are incompatible. Enough to name amongst the disciples of Socrates Plato, whom Diogenes Laërtius (III., 23), declares to have loved Aster, Phaedrus, Alexis, and before all Dion; he quotes an epigram of Plato on Dion, ending thus:
“O you, who have so fiercely burnt my heart with love, you Dion!”
[42]. Valerius Maximus (IX., 12) relates of Pindar: “One day, at the Gymnasium, Pindar, leaning his head against the breast of a young lad, whom he loved above all (Suidas says his name was Theoxenes), fell asleep; no sooner had the head of the establishment seen him asleep than he ordered all the doors to be closed, for fear of the poet being awakened.” Athenaeus on his part (XIII., 81) tells us of Sophocles: “Sophocles loved boys to the same degree as Euripides loved women”; and a little farther on (ch. 82) he relates the story of a youth whom Sophocles enjoyed, but at the price of his mantle, which the rogue abstracted. Euripides, having been informed of this adventure, mocked the poet for having been thus done: “I also”, he said, “have had him, but he got nothing else out of me.” I am surprised that this passage of Athenaeus should have appeared doubtful to the celebrated Casaubon, on account of the expression “got out of me” which is quite correct and applicable. Sophocles and Euripides had both lavished their white fluids upon the little rogue; but from one of them he got besides a mantle, from the other nothing else.
[43]. “No less fiercely burned the love of Anacreon of Teos, they say, for the Samian youth Bathyllus” (Horace, Epodes, XIV., 9, 10).
[44]. The actual words of Plautus are:
“I must do the puerile service: I will cower down over a hamper” (Cistellaria IV., sc. I., v. 5),—which means, I will bend down to the hamper, raising the buttocks, and thus present them to the pedicon. This is, in fact, what is called, the “puerile office”, and which Apuleius (Metam. III., ch. 2), calls “the puerile corollary.” Martial, IX., 68 says simply, “illud puerile.” Conquinescere is according to Nonius, p. 531, Gottfried’s edition, to curve the spine, an expression designating in particular the passive posture as we have seen in the Pseudolus:
“When he curves the spine, then simultaneously wriggle your buttocks.”
Some authors have also used a still more forcible expression, “Ocquinescere,” vis., “to cower low down” (Nonius, p. 567). Pomponius, on word “Prostibulum”: “I have never forced pedication upon any citizen; I have always abstained, unless the patient had asked me and cowered down of his own free will.” And on word “Pistor”: “Unless somebody anticipated my desires, willingly crouching down so that I could do the thing securely.” This position of the patient cowering down is very rarely alluded to; the question generally turns upon his kneeling. “Thus,” says Lampridius of Heliogabalus, he offered himself with the buttocks raised to the pedicon” (ch. 5). Heliogabalus was kneeling, and not crouching. The same is the case with Timarchus in Lucian: “All that were near you remember it; they have seen you on your knees, while your accomplice did you know what” (Apophras, p. 152, vol. VII.—Works of Lucian edit. by J.-P. Schmid). If you would like to see these two postures, you will find them in the Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars, pl. XXVII., a patient crouching, and pl. XXXVIII., a patient kneeling.
From the fact that men wanting to void their excrement when out of doors cower down, it has come about that passive pederasts were said to sh...t,—in fact to sh...t the active party’s member as it goes in and out of the anus. Hence in the Priapeia, LXX.: