He says mockingly: think not the sundry wares in the shop of Phyllis your little perfume seller of Capua (Seplasia is in fact a street of the town of Capua, where perfumes were sold), are all of the same odor and savor. The costus[[106]] does not smell like the cysthus[[107]], the nard[[108]] has a different flavor from the sardines,—a sort of little fish preserved in salt. By this salty condiment Ausonius means to imply precisely the same as the author of the Greek epigram signifies, when he speaks of the Salt Sea, and which he himself has called salgama, meaning the secretion of the humid vulva. But Eunus shows no discrimination between what he licks and what he smells; the two have nothing in common. He inhales perfumes which smell beautifully, and licks the vulva, which smells abominably. His nose obeys one law, his tongue another.
Epigram CXXV., directed against the same Eunus:
“The salgamas are no balmy odors; give place, all other perfumes. I would rather not smell at all, either good or bad.”
Here again the poet plays with the words. The perfumes which Phyllis sells he calls balms, and salgamas those which her vulva exhales. Properly speaking, salgamas are roots and greens, which are preserved in salt for winter use, and the odor of which is not pleasant to every one’s nose. His saying that he would rather smell nothing at all than smell something bad is borrowed from Martial VI., Epigr. 55, against Coracinus, who was a cunnilingue:
“Rather than smell bad scents I would not smell at all.”
Epigram CXXVI.:
“Lais, Eros and Itys, Chiron and Eros, Itys once again,—if you write the names, and take the initial letters, they make a word, and that word is what you do, Eunus. What that word is and means, decency lets me not say in plain Latin.”
The initial letters of the six Greek names form the word ****, he licks. The phallic poet (Priapeia LXVII) plays in the same way upon the word paedicare (to pedicate):
“Take the first syllable of Penelopé; add to it the first of Dido; then to the first of Canis append the first of Remus: what they make, I will do to you, thief, if I catch you in my garden. This is the penalty your crime will meet.”
Ausonius plays on the words doing and making. The initials of the Greek words make a word he cannot say in Latin,—it is too indecent. Yet Eunus has no hesitation in doing it,—putting it in action.