“An evil star, Zoilus, has struck your tongue of a sudden, even while licking a vulva. Of a surety, Zoilus, you must now use your member.”
Bæticus, the castrated priest of Cybelé, against whom Martial has directed Epigram III., 81, was a cunnilingue:
“What have you, Bæticus, a priest of Cybelé to do with the female pit? That tongue of yours by rights should lick men’s middles. For what was your member amputated with a Samian potsherd, if the woman’s parts had so much charm for you? You must have your head castrated; true, you are a castrated Gallus in your secret parts, but none the less you violate the rites of Cybelé; you are a man so far as concerns your mouth.”
If this passage were in the least doubtful, Epigram 77 of the same book might offer difficulties, not otherwise:
“Some latent sickness of your stomach I suspect. Why, I wonder, Bæticus, are you an eater of filth?”
In fact the fellator as well as the cunnilingue may be called eaters of filth, as in the passage of Galen quoted previously, where both of them are called coprophagi (dung-eaters). Bæticus however has only to do with the female pit; he is a cunnilingue, not a fellator. On the contrary, the lewd tongue of Tongilion (III., 84) is that of a fellator, not of a cunnilingue; for the tongue of a cunnilingue plays the part of a lover, being active; while that of a fellator acts the part of a prostitute, remaining passive. Sometimes for want of attention the most learned commentators are at fault in elucidating these playful passages. One of the twin brothers, who in our friend of Bilbilis (the poet Martial) (III., 88), are licking different groins, was a cunnilingue. The neighbor of Priapus, “by whose fault it is unhappy Landacé swears she can hardly walk, she is so enlarged,” is covertly designated as a cunnilingue (Priapeia LXXVIII.); yet for all that Scioppius maintains he was only a fornicator; but why should we turn away from the proper sense of the word on account of the enlarged aperture? As if the vulva could not be enlarged, or relaxed by the tongue of the cunnilingue equally as much as by active co-habitation!
Tiberius Cæsar in his retreat at Capri does not seem to have disdained the voluptuousness of the cunnilingue. Blasted by every other kind of abomination, of what else is the Emperor accused in the Atellanian song, mentioned by Suetonius (Tiberius, ch. 45), which was so much applauded:
“An old buck licking the vulvas of goats,” but this of being a cunnilingue? Do you want to see Tiberius employed at his licking?
Plate XXII., in Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars, represents it.