So also Sextus Clodius, whom Cicero frequently reproaches with the impurity of his mouth and the obscenity of his tongue (Pro Domo, chs. 10 and 18; Pro Coelio, ch. 32), appears to us to have been a cunnilingue. Hence, that hit of Cicero, in his Pro domo, ch. 18:
“My good Sextus, allow me to tell you, as you are already a good dialectician, you are also a good licker.”
Certainly if he was one, he was bound to lick Clodia, the sister of Publius Clodius[[102]], the wife of Metellus, the woman that was intimate with all the world. Cicero, Pro domo, ch. 31:
“Ask Sextus Clodius as to this, cite him to appear; he is keeping quite in the background. But if you will have him looked for, he will be found near your sister (he is addressing Publius Clodius), lurking somewhere with his head low.”
Pay attention, pray, to this expression: “the head low,” it will soon re-appear, when we speak of the Greeks.
The Greeks, in fact, felt no repugnance to the pleasure in question. Epigrams LXXIV., LXXV., and LXXVI., in the Analecta of Brunck, vol. III., p. 165, allude to this:
LXXIV.
“Homer taught you to call voice ****; but who taught you to have the tongue **** (in a slit)?”
The unknown poet plays upon the ambiguity of the word ****, which is used with respect to the tongue in an honest sense, when derived from ****, I speak, but as a vile usage when derived from ***, a slit.
LXXV.