Galen means by this that the man who uses human excrements as medicine is considered worse than a fellator or a cinede; that amongst the fellators the Phœnicianists are more abominable than the Lesbianists. There can therefore be no doubt that he designates the action of the fellators by the word Phœnicianizing, and by Lesbianizing that of the irrumants. In fact, as he judges those the worst who come nearest to the eaters of excrements, he could not detest less those who defile their mouths by fellation than those who defile the mouths of other people by irrumation; similarly he could not help holding in abhorrence the cunnilingues and the drinkers of menses, of whom more later on.
But the Lesbians found imitators. The inhabitants of Nola were in bad repute amongst the Ancients in that respect; in Ausonius, Epigr. LXXI., Crispa, a fellatrix, is said to practice the business “with which an unprecedented effeminacy inspired the people of Nola.” However, here is this spirited epigram in its entirety:
“Over and above the intimate joys of legitimate love, hateful lust has found out other foul modes of pleasure, of the sort the loneliness of Lesbos taught Hercules’ heir, of the sort smooth tongued Afranius in his actor’s gown displayed upon the stage, of the sort an unprecedented effeminacy inspired the men of Nola with. Crispa, with but one body, yet practises them all: masturbates, fellates, works by either orifice,—dreading to die in vain before she has tried every mode.”
To explain,—of course Crispa did not neglect to have herself entered in the usual way; these are “the intimate joys of legitimate love.” Then she allowed herself to be pedicated; this is the vice of Philoctetes, the inheritor of the arrows of Hercules, as also Afranius, of whom Quintilian says: “He excelled in the Roman comedy; a pity that he polluted his plays with infamous masculine amours! He thus bore witness against his own morals” (Inst. Orat., X., I). Further Crispa did not fail to allow herself to be irrumated, this is, “the vice their unprecedented effeminacy instilled into the men of Nola.” Lastly the whole is recapitulated quite plainly in the last line but one; to masturbate is the genus, while to fellate, and to work by one and the other orifices are so many species, three altogether.
There are authors who think that the celebrated riddle of Coelius in Quintilian: Clytaemnestram quadrantariam, in triclinio coam, in cubiculo nolam (Instit. Orat., VIII., 6 p. 747), refers to a woman of the name of Nola, she being a fellatrix after the fashion of the Nolans. But I prefer the interpretation of Alciatus; he believes that the woman in question was Clodia, the notorious sister of Clodius, and wife of Metellus, called Coa, because she liked coitus on the open triclinium, and Nola because she refused the same in bed. Spalding evinces surprise at the want of exactitude, which the word quadrantaria would have in that case. To me that appears like looking for knots in a rush. Why should we not suppose Clodia, disgusted, like Messalina, by the facility of her adulteries, to have been drawn into extraordinary excesses[[65]] to such a point that she would no longer have commerce with men in the dark, but only in the glare of lighted torches, as Martial confesses in speaking of himself (XI., 104):
“You love the game in the dark, I like it by lamp-light; my delight is to make my entry with light to see by,”—and in the presence of living witness, that she might be seen, if not actually on her back, at any rate going away for it or just coming back afterwards. Do you think that indecency could not possibly go so far? What did Augustus do, whom Marc Anthony, according to Suetonius, “reproached for having at a festival taken the wife of a Consular from the triclinium to a bedroom, in the presence of her husband, and afterwards conducted her back to the table with her face all on fire and her hair in disorder?” (Augustus, ch. 69). And Caligula, according to the same Suetonius, “when a guest at a wedding-feast said to Piso, who was sitting close by him: “Do not push up so close to my wife!” and immediately after made her rise from the table and took her away with him” (Calig., ch. 25). The same author, (Calig., ch. 36), speaking of the most illustrious Roman ladies, tells us that Caligula “invited them to dinner with their husbands, passing them in review before him, he examined them with the minute attention of a slave dealer, lifting their heads up if any of them bowed them down with shame. As often as he felt inclined, he left the triclinium and took the chosen fair one aside with him; then after returning to the room with the traces of his doing still upon him, he would praise or criticize these ladies openly, speaking of the beauties or blemishes of their bodies, and even how often he had repeated the enjoyment.” Horace again speaks of an adulterous woman (Odes, III., vi, 25-32):
“Soon she looks out for fresher adulterous pleasures, while the husband is drunk; and does not care to whom she grants the furtive forbidden pleasures, which with the torches extinguished, she is ready to give and take. Nay! she does not care for her very husband’s presence, and with his knowledge she rises to meet whosoever may call, say a merchant, say the commander of a Spanish ship in harbour, who buys her favours by tariff!”
Again look at the feast of the Pope, Alexander VI., whom we have already mentioned for your profit and amusement in our Hermaphroditus[[66]].
Is this evidence enough to satisfy you as to these Coae of the triclinium? Well! it was after this fashion Clodia preferred to be had. Alone with a solitary lover in bed and no one by, she refused (nolebat); in public on the triclinium, she was willing enough for coition (volebat coire). Hence the jest; she was Coa and Nola. Coelius might have put it still more plainly; on the triclinium she was Vola, in bed Nola.
It was not the inhabitants of Nola only who were addicted to the Lesbian vice, the Oscans[[67]] generally were considered to be very much given that way, so much so that certain authors trace to them (the Osci), in earlier times called the Opsci or Opici, the etymology of the word “Obscene”, Festus, p. 553: