“In almost all the old treatises the word is written Opicum instead of Oscum; it is from the name of this people that shameless and impudent expressions are called obscene, because indulgence in filthy debauchery was very common among the Oscans.”
The Ancients employed many forms of circumlocution to convey the meaning of their filthy practices. For instance, instead of irrumate, they said: to offend the mouth[[68]], corrupt the mouth[[69]], to attack the head[[70]], to defy to the face[[71]], insult the head, not to spare the head[[72]], to split open the mouth[[73]], gain the heights[[74]], mount to loftier regions[[75]], compress the tongue[[76]], to indulge in abominable intercourse[[77]], and instead of receiving the member into the mouth they said: to lend the mouth in kind complaisance[[78]], work with the mouth[[79]], lick men’s middle parts[[80]], lick simply[[81]], or lastly to be silent[[82]]. Just as Persius has employed the word cevere, to wriggle in the sense of flattering, so Catullus uses irrumate as meaning to treat ignominiously[[83]].
It is thus he complains of having been irrumated by Memmius XXVIII., 9, 10:
“Oh, Memmius, well and long and leisurely, laid on my back all the length of that beam, you irrumated me.”
He had, in fact, experienced in Bithynia the meanness and avarice of this Praetor, Memmius, who had not cared a rap for his comrades’ honour, and who is alluded to in Epigr. X., 12, “Praetor and irrumator.” In Epigr. XXXVII., he threatens his boon companions in debauchery, with whom his mistress has taken refuge:
“... Do you think I dare not irrumate alone, as I stand here, two hundred pothouse-heroes?” And he adds that he would write on the front of the tavern the infamy of these blackguards:
“... Your names I shall chalk up all over the tavern’s front.”
Other passages of Catullus, XXI., 12, and LXXIV., 5, are also quoted to prove the various employment of the word irrumate; but they do not seem to me to bear upon the question.
The epithet shameless was especially given to the man who allowed himself to be pedicated or irrumated. Priapeia LIX.:
“If you come to steal, you will return shameless.”