[123]. See whether it is with good reason or no that the succeeding epigram, no. 69, calls Philaenis the tribad of tribads.
[124]. To make yourselves quite sure about what the author means by androgynic loves, look at the passage as a whole: “Come, you man of the new age, you lawgiver of unknown amours, if you open out new ways to the lubricity of men, you may grant to the women equal license. Let them cohabit together as the men do; let woman lie with woman, and simulate with their lascivious organs conjunctions, sterile though they be, as man lies with man! Let the word one hears so very rarely, and which I am ashamed to pronounce, let the lubricity of our tribads triumph without blushing.” Observe in the first place how tribads were seldom spoken of, and that they kept themselves in the dark; in the second place how the immoderate clitoris of the tribad is said to simulate lascivious organs in conjunction. Seneca, Controversia Secunda, in a similar sense, calls such a monstrosity *****, an artificial man; lastly the epithet “sterile” is applied to the clitoris, and points to the dry unproductiveness of the tribadic coitus.
[125]. Instead of “pedicating boys,” Martial might have said, if the metre had allowed it, “entering boys.” Seneca’s expression (Letter XCV), “viros ineunt,” which was a source of great trouble to the great Justus Lipsius, signifies nothing else: “The women will contest for the crown of lubricity with the men. May the gods confound them! one of their refined lubricities reverses the laws of Nature: they have connection with men!” There you have in plain words the turpitude which Justus Lipsius considered worthy of the infernal regions: tribads pedicating.
[126]. When women are in rut they pass their water, nature wills it so, Juvenal, VI., 63-65: “Let lewd Bathyllus dance the pantomime of Leda” (representing Leda receiving Jupiter in a dance with wanton gestures:
“Tuscia cannot command her bladder, Appula is sighing as if in amorous trance....”)
The same XI., 166-168:
“The other sex however feels more pleasure, is much sooner fired, and lets the water off, excited through eyes and ears.”
(What Juvenal says here as to this greater enjoyment on the part of the opposite sex is connected with his general opinion that women experience more pleasure in Love than men do. So his words in VI., 254: “For how insignificant is our pleasure!” Tiresias, called upon to arbitrate on this point in Lucian (Amores, p. 85), declared women’s enjoyment to be double that of men: “Unless indeed we are to agree with Tiresias’ arbitrement, that the woman’s pleasure is twice that of the man”).
Martial, XI., 17:
“How often will your rigid nerve lift up your tunic, though you be as stern as Curius or Fabricius! You too have to read our pages, be they ever so lascivious, young maiden, though you come from Padua.”