“You lend your mouth, and then drink water, Lesbia; quite right,—where your work is, there you take water.”
Priapeia, XXX., says:
“Walk in the vineyards, and if you steal any of the grapes, you shall have water, stranger, to take in another way.”
Priapus means: “You came to get water to drink; but if you pluck any grapes, I shall irrumate you, and then you will want water to rinse your mouth rather than to drink.” Martial says as much to Chioné in Epigram III., 87, quoted before.
To ask for the loan of the mouth is to demand a thing much more shameful than the other two orifices. Martial, IX., 68:
“All the night long I possessed a lewd young girl; I never knew anyone more naughty. Tired of a thousand postures, I asked for the puerile service; before I had done asking, she turned at once in compliance. Laughing and blushing, I asked something worse than that,—the wanton consented instantly”[[84]].
Those that found themselves thus situated took good care not to be surprised; Martial, XI., 46:
“When you have crossed the threshold of a chamber with name on signboard, whether it be boy or girl that smiled on you in welcome, doors and hangings and locks do not content you, and you want to be yet more certain you are not watched. Mystery is what you want; you look suspiciously on the smallest crack in the door and stop it; the same with the tiniest pinhole made by some inquisitive hand. Nobody can be more modest or circumspect in his doings, Cantharus, than the man who wants to pedicate or copulate.”
However, the old Romans did not blush to irrumate, as is evident by the use Catullus makes of that word, contemptuous though it be. What they were ashamed of was fellation. Indeed there is a certain bold audacity in playing the active part, but none in the passive one, particularly when the mouth, the noblest organ of the body, has to perform such vile offices. Add to this that a fetid breath was acquired by this habit, which fellators took every means to hide, afraid of putting to flight fellow-guests at table and acquaintances who should greet them with a kiss in the street.
Fellators were so repugnant to the guests at table, that no cups[[85]] were offered to them, or when they had been offered, they were afterwards broken[[86]], and that it was only with the greatest unwillingness any one would kiss their mouth[[87]], when presented for salute. Thus it was preferable to be taken for a cinede to being taken for a fellator[[88]], like Phœbus in Martial, III., 73: