“Manilia then conducted us to the trysting place; she undressed me, and placed me naked on the couch. Roberto jumped on to the couch. “Now,” he said, “I shall enjoy the most supreme unalloyed bliss. Carried on your chariot, Olympia, I shall take my way through this dark thoroughfare (he was pinching my pubis the while), I shall take my way to glory.” His hands were straying over my belly, my thighs, examining everything. His member was swelling. “Permit me, my Venus!” he said, giving me a kiss. “Willingly,” I answered, “you shall have me in any way you like.” Manilia interposed, “Why so much talk! Do not talk but act! I will assist both of you, and add new delights to your voluptuous sensations. You are in excellent trim, Roberto! Come, down with you upon Ottavia’s snowy bosom, and have your fill!” Roberto precipitates himself upon me, and his engine strikes against my belly. Manilia’s soft hand intercepts the erring tool. “Come,” she says, “you vagrant, enter the lovely prison, and do the task set to you by your mistress.” With her other hand she pushes the young man’s back, and I take him in, entirely in. Manilia tells me not to move. “Raise your left thigh, Ottavia,” she says, “and stretch out the other one.” I obey. “You, Roberto, you now push gently and quickly; As to you, Ottavia, kiss him but without moving!” We do so. She added, “When you both feel the boiling foam running over, you, Ottavia, give a sigh, and you, Roberto, gently bite Ottavia’s lips!” He then begins to poke vigorously, but without haste or violence, in and out; I press him on to me, kissing him but not moving. I feel it coming. I sigh, “Now! now, Roberto!” cries Manilia, “help Ottavia! Work away!” He shakes me and pounds me. Soon I feel a slight bite on my neck. I heave a sigh. “And now, Ottavia,” cries Manilia, “you assist Roberto; move your buttocks briskly, raise up your loins, quick! quick! Well done, my child! Laïs herself, I think, could not have shown more flexibility nor agility!” The sweet youth begins to ejaculate, and I feel my inside inundated by the fiery spring of love. I moved with body and soul. I never arrived more quickly at the acmé of voluptuousness. Manilia caressed with one hand my buttocks, and with the other hand Roberto’s; at the same time she pressed with the points of her fingers the lips of my vulva and his testicles, which were close up. The youth swooned, and our nurse withdrew, and clapped her hands applauding!” (Dialogue VII.)
Plates IV. and XII., in the Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars, show you Cleopatra titillating with a delicate hand the virile parts of Julius Cæsar and Mark Anthony, while in the Monuments du culte secret des dames romaines; plate XVI., represents Livia bestowing the same caresses on Augustus; plate V., a Bacchante doing it to a Faun; plate IV., a masturbator—expressly so called. In plate XLIV. of the Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars, again, is a picture of a girl helping Tiberius with her benevolent hand in pedicating Otho.
Again it sometimes happened that lewd men found pleasure in handling the genital parts of other men. Martial knew nothing more infamous (XI., 23):
“That your coarse lips should receive the delicate kisses of fair-skinned Galesus, that you should sleep with your naked Ganymede—is not this enough yet? It ought to be! Cease at any rate to touch the privates with provocative hand. With boys of tender age this does more harm than the member does. The fingers hasten virility and make them prematurely men. Hence the goaty smell, the quick-coming hairs, and the beard that make the mother wonder, while they no more love to bathe in the open light of day. Nature has divided boys; one part is reserved for girls, the other for men. Keep to the part which is yours.”
Martial means to say that the member was given to boys for the purpose of using it with girls, while their buttocks were for the service of men, and that this pedicon should therefore make use of Galesus’ buttocks rather than play with his mentula. Of similar import is also Epigram XI., 71, directed against Tucca, who wanted to sell young lads:
“Oh, for shame! there is the groin with the tunic all open, and a member appears fashioned and trained by your hand.”
He says it is a crime to put up for sale those lads whom the infamous Tucca has trained for debauchery, and to let the buyers see their fully formed mentulas, accustomed to rise under the provocative hand of the master. Eumolpus subjects in the same way the verge of Encolpus to friction, Petronius, ch. 140:
“After these words” (Encolpus speaking) “I lifted up my tunic, and exhibited myself in full vigor to Eumolpus. He first recoiled as if horror-struck; but, like a man who expected worse, he got hold with his two hands of God’s gift, viz.: the verge in erection.”
I have still to treat, in order to complete my task, of other pleasures belonging to this category, meaning those which can be taken in any interstice of the body. A few words will suffice. Taking in the first place the breasts, I have recourse to Aloysia Sigaea:
“By the twin conch-shells of Venus!” (Dialogue VII., Ottavia speaking.) “I am ashamed. I blush to think, that the valley between my breasts has done duty as the avenue of Venus. You know there is in our house a gallery giving on the garden-parterres, which are full of all sorts of flowers. There Caviceo and I were promenading; he embraced me, kissed me, bit my lips.... He put his left hand in my bosom. ‘I am after trying a naughty trick,’ he said. ‘Undress, my darling!’ What was I to do? I undressed. His eyes rested on my bare bosom. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘Venus sleeping between your breasts. May I waken her!’ While he was talking he had thrown me on my back in the bed, and being in a noble state of erection, slides his hot, burning member between my breasts. How could I escape his blind passion. I had no choice but to bear it. His hands softly pressed my breasts together, so as to narrow the space, in which his mentula had to travel towards a new experience. Why make a long story? Stupefied as I was at this vain ridiculous imitation of Love, he inundated me with a burning libation: he had his will.”