As it is in the nature of the virile member to rise at the mere sight of a pretty woman’s naked body, the amorous desire in that state often craves imperiously for relief, for “man in erection is not overwise.”[[93]] This is why, when the fair one’s heavy coverlets have been thrown back:
“Meantime the adulterer she has sent for lurks in furtive concealment, and impatient of the delay, yet says never a word, but pulls his foreskin.”[[94]]—Juvenal, VI., 236, 7. and why:
“The Phrygian slaves would be masturbating behind the doors, each time his bride mounted the Hectorean horse.”—Martial, XI., 105.
This is why during the dances of the young Gaditanian girls, which were without doubt very like the dances that are still so much appreciated by the Spaniards[[95]], the limp appendages of even grey-haired spectators begin to move visibly, as many authors tell us. Martial, VI., 71:
“Cunning in the wanton gestures that go with the Baetician castanets, skilled in dancing to the Gaditanian measures, she might well stiffen trembling Pelias, and excite Hecuba’s husband to emulate vigorous Hector.”
Juvenal, XI., 162-165:
“Perhaps you may wait while the Gaditanian dancer begins to feel the wanton stimulus of the loud strains of her accompanying band, and the girls, fired by the applause sink to the ground with quivering buttocks,—a sight to sting languid senses to love.”[[96]]
But it is not only by the sight of a beautiful naked female the member is excited; who does not know that it is also roused merely by images called up by the imagination, particularly in the night. And the power of such fancies is such as to provoke a pleasurable ejaculation of sperm. Priapus himself has experienced this. Priapeia XLVIII:
“You see this organ after which I am called by my name Priapus, is wet; this moisture is not dew, nor yet hoar-frost. It is the outcome given of its own sweet will, on recalling memories of a complaisant maid.”
It is said that Diogenes, the cynic, was a masturbator; once caught in the act of handling his mentula, he said: “I wish to heaven I could in the same way satisfy my stomach with friction when it barks for food.”[[97]]