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﻿Title: Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris)
Author: Forberg, Friedrich Karl
Language: English

*** Start of this Doctrine Publishing Corporation Digital Book "Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris)" ***




                          Classical Erotology

                          (De figuris Veneris)

                          FRED. CHAS. FORBERG


                        LITERAL ENGLISH VERSION.

                       [Illustration: Decoration]

                           One Hundred Copies
                   JULIAN SMITHSON M. A., AND FRIENDS



One Hundred Copies only of this volume have been printed (all on the
same paper and the type distributed) for Viscount Julian Smithson M. A.,
the Translator, and his Friends. None of these Copies are for Sale.



It is perhaps well to state at once that the “Manual of Classical
Erotology” is intended only for Students of the Classics, Lawyers,
Psychologists and Medical Men. Those persons, we think, who may peruse
it as a means of awakening voluptuous sensations will be severely
disappointed. Never did a work more serious issue from the press. Here
we have no curious erotic story born of a diseased mind, but a cold,
relentless analysis of those human passions which it is ever the object
of Science to wrestle with and overthrow.

As a basis also for the correct interpretation of the drama of the
ancient world, Forberg’s studies are most valuable. Apart from that
extraordinary book, Rosenbaum’s _History of the Esoteric Habits, Beliefs
and Customs of Antiquity_, we know of no other compilation which casts
so intense a search-light upon those Crimes, Follies and Perversions of
the “Sixth Sense” which transformed the olden glory of Greece and Rome
into a by-word and a reproach amongst the nations.

The present English translation now offered to Scholars is entirely new
and strictly exact. No liberties have been taken with the text. It was
felt that any attempt to add more colour, or to increase the
effect,—involving a departure from the lines of stern simplicity laid
down by Forberg,—would have detracted from the scientific value and
character of the work.

The late Isidore Liseux issued in 1882 a French version with Latin text
_imprimé à cent exemplaires_ “for himself and friends.” This work is now
very seldom to be met with because the whole edition was privately
subscribed by Scholars and Bibliophiles before its appearance. The
thieving copyists went of course immediately to work and some wretched
penny-a-liner, utterly ignorant of both Latin and Greek, produced an
English transcript full of faults, based only on the French text.

There is no need to add that such a book as this is of no value to the
Student as a work of reference, for the faulty and forceless renderings
often to be met with in Liseux’ version are reproduced with charming
exactness, while the absence of the original text makes it all the more
perilous to accept the work as a guide. Having said this much concerning
the only two translations known to us, we proceed to give some account
of good master Forberg and what is known of the inception and building
up of his chef-d’œuvre.

The eminent Author of this book never became famous. His name is
mentioned occasionally in connexion with the “Hermaphroditus” of Antonio
Beccadelli, known by the surname of Panormitanus, which he edited.
Brunet, Charles Nodier, and the _Bibliographie des Ouvrages relatifs aux
Femmes, à l’Amour et au Mariage_, speak of him in this connexion; while
a list of his works appears moreover in the _Index Locupletissimus
Librorum_ or _Bücher-Lexicon_ (Bibliographical Lexicon) of Christian
Gottlob Kayser, Leipzig, 1834. But with the exception of the _Allgemeine
Deutsche Biographie_, the publication of which was commenced in 1878 by
the Historical Commission of the Munich Academy, and which has devoted a
short notice to him, all Dictionaries and Collections whether of Ancient
or of Modern Biography are mute with respect to him. The
_Conversations-Lexicon_ and the vast Encyclopaedia of Ersch and Gruber
do not contain a single line about him, while Michaud, Didot, Bachelet
and Dezobry, Bouillet, Vapereau, utterly ignore his existence. For all
that he well deserves a word or two.

Friedrich Karl Forberg was born in the year 1770 at Meuselwitz, in the
Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, and died in 1848 at Hildburghausen. He was a
philosopher and a collaborator with Fichte, while he devoted a part of
his attention to religious exegesis: but above all he was a philologian,
and a humanist,—at once learned and inquisitive. He followed first the
career of a University-teacher; _Privat-docent_ in 1792, Assistant
Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Jena (1793), he was installed
in 1796 as Co-Rector at Saalfeld. His inaugural thesis: “Dissertatio
inauguralis de aesthetica transcendentali”, is dated 1792 (Jena, 8vo.);
this was followed by a “Treatise on the Original Conditions and Formal
Limitations of Free Will” in German and an “Extract from my Occasional
Writings” also in German (1795). From 1796 to 1800 he wrote extensively
in defence of the teachings of Fichte in Journals, Reviews, particularly
in the Philosophical Magazine of Schmidt, and in sundry publications
emanating from Fichte himself. He published moreover: “Animadversiones
in loca selecta Novi Testamenti” (Saalfeld, 1798, 4to.), “an Apology for
his pretended Atheism”, in German (Gotha, 1799, 8vo.). “Obligations of
Learned Men”, in German (Gotha, 1801, 8vo.), etc.

The second part of his life seems to have been devoted entirely to
Literature. In 1807 he was appointed as Conservator of the Aulic Library
at Coburg, and having had enough of philosophy, he turned his whole
attention to the study of Latin and Greek antiquity. Previously to this
his tastes had already been revealed by the publication of several
pretty editions of the minor Latin erotic poets; these form a collection
of six or eight volumes in 16mo., with red margin-lines, and are now
very difficult to procure. The discovery he made in the Coburg library
of a manuscript of the “Hermaphroditus” of Panormitanus, offering
important new readings and variants from the received text, suggested
the idea to him of producing a definitive edition of the work, with
copious commentaries.

The said “Hermaphroditus” so called, “because”, says La Monnoye, “all
the filth in connection with both sexes forms the theme of the volume”,
is a collection of Latin Epigrams filled out with a patchwork of
quotations from Virgil, Ovid and Martial, in which memory has a much
larger share than imagination, and which has never appeared to us to
possess any great literary value. But the mishaps the book has had to
encounter, its having been publicly burnt in manuscript in the market
places of Bologna, Ferrara and Milan, the anathemas hurled against it by
some savants, and the favour with which it was received by others, who
were glad to awaken by its perusal old reminiscences, have given it a
kind of reputation. The Abbé Mercier de Saint-Léger was the first to
publish it in Paris, together with the works of four other poets of the
same sort: Ramusius de Rimini, Pacificus Maximus, Jovianus Pontanus, and
Joannes Secundus[1]. But Forberg, whilst fully appreciating the work and
particularly the courage of the learned Frenchman, found much to find
fault with; the Epigrams of Panormitanus were not numbered, which made
citations from them troublesome, a great number of readings were faulty,
and, thanks to his manuscript, he could correct them; lastly, Mercier de
Saint-Léger had omitted to give any running commentary on his author, to
explain his text by means of notes and the comparison of parallel
passages, whereas, according to Forberg a book of this character
required notes by tens and hundreds, each verse, each hemistich, each
word, offering matter for philosophical reflections and highly
interesting comparisons. He therefore took the book in hand and began to
collect with inquisitive care everything the Ancients had written upon
the delicate subjects treated in the “Hermaphroditus.”

But having come to the end of his task, he found that his commentary
would drown the book, that hardly would he be able to get in a verse of
it every two or three pages, all the remainder of the book being taken
up by his notes, and that the result would be chaos. Dividing his work
into two parts, he left the smaller one in the shape of annotations,
reduced to the merest indispensable explanations, to the
“Hermaphroditus”, while of the second and more copious harvest of his
erudite researches he composed a special treatise, which he had printed
as a supplement under the title, “Apophoreta”, or “Second Course”; this
treatise being in his eyes only a kind of dessert, following upon the
substantial repast furnished by the Latin Poet of the XVIth. century.
The whole forms a volume much sought after by amateurs: “Antonii
Panormitae _Hermaphroditus;_ primus in Germania edidit et Aphoreta
adjecit Frider. Carol. Forbergius. Coburgi, sumtibus Meuseliorum, 1824,

Forberg, good, simple man, was mistaken, owing to his too great modesty;
the true feast, at once substantial, nourishing and savoury, is his own
work, the work which he elaborated from his own resources, from his
inexhaustible memory and from his astonishing knowledge of the Greek and
Latin authors down to their minutest details. On reprinting this
excellent work, which undoubtedly deserved to be translated, we have
given it a new title, one that is much more suitable than the old, “The
Manual of Classical Erotology.” In virtue of the charm, the abundance,
the variety of the citations, it is a priceless erotic Anthology; in
virtue of the methodical classification of the contents Forberg has
adopted, it is a didactic work,—a veritable Manual. He began with
collecting from the Greek and Latin writers the largest number possible
of scattered notices, which might serve for points of comparison with
the Epigrams of Beccadelli; having possessed himself of a large
accumulation of these, it occurred to him to set them out in order,
arranging them in conformity with the similarity of their contents,
deciding finally upon a division into eight chapters, corresponding with
the same number of special manifestations of the amorous fancy and its

                     I. —Of Copulation.
                    II. —Of Pedication.
                   III. —Of Irrumation.
                    IV. —Of Masturbation.
                     V. —Of Cunnilingues.
                    VI. —Of Tribads.
                   VII. —Of Intercourse with Animals.
                  VIII. —Of Spintrian Postures.

He found that he had to make subdivisions in each class according to the
nature of the subject, to note particularities, individualities; and the
contrast between this scientific apparatus, and the facetious matters
subjected to the rigorous laws of deduction and demonstration is not the
least amusing feature of the book. Probably no one but a German savant
could have conceived the idea of thus classifying by categories, groups,
genera, variations, species and sub-species all known forms of natural
and unnatural lusts, according to the most trustworthy authors. But
Forberg pursued another aim besides. In the course of his researches he
had noticed how reticent the annotators and expounders generally are in
clearing up matters which would seem to require it the most, some in
consequence of a false reserve, others for fear of appearing too
knowing, and others again from ignorance; also how many mistakes and
gross blunders they have fallen into, by reason of their not
understanding the language of erotics and failing to grasp its infinite
shades of meaning.

It is precisely on those obscure and difficult passages of the Ancient
poets, on those expressions purposely chosen for their ambiguity, which
have been the torment of the critics and the puzzle of the most erudite
commentators, that our learned Humanist has concentrated his most
convincing observations.

The number of authors, Greek, Latin, French, German, English, Dutch,
whom he has laid under contribution in order to formulate his exact and
judicious classifications, mounts up to a formidable total. There are to
be found in the _Manual of Erotology_ something like five hundred
passages, culled from more than one hundred and fifty works, all
classified, explained, commented upon, and in most cases, enveloped in
darkness as they had been, made plain as light itself by the mere fact
of juxtaposition. With Forberg for a guide no one need henceforth fear
to go astray,—to believe, for instance, like M. Leconte de Lisle, that
the woman of whom Horace says that she changes neither dress nor place,
“_peccatve superne_” “has not erred beyond measure”; what a mistake!—or
with M. Nisard to translate Suetonius expression, “_illudere caput
alicuius_” “to attempt some ones life”[3]!

Forberg, a philosopher, has treated these delicate subjects like a
philosopher, namely, in a purely speculative manner, as a man quite
above and beyond terrestrial matters, and particularly so with respect
to the lubricities which he has made it his task to examine so closely.
He declares he knows nothing of them personally, has never thought of
making experimental investigations on them, but derives all his
knowledge, from books. His candour is beyond suspicion. He has not
escaped censure; but having a reply ready for every objection and
authorities to quote on every point, he found an answer to his
detractors ready made in the phrase of Justus Lipsius, who had been
reproached with taking pleasure in the abominations of Petronius: “The
wines you set upon the table excite the drunkard and leave the sober man
perfectly calm; in the same way, these kinds of reading _may_ very
likely inflame an imagination already depraved, but they make no
impression upon a mind that is chaste and disciplined.”

                          FOOTNOTES - FORWARD


Footnote 1:

  _Quinque illustrium Poetarum, Antonii Panormitae; Ramusii Ariminensis;
  Pacifici Maximi Asculani; Io. Joviani Pontani; Io. Secundi Hagiensis,
  Lusus in Venerem, partim ex codicibus manuscriptis, nunc primum editi
  Parisiis, prostat ad Pristrinum, in Vico suavi_, (_at Paris, at
  Molini’s, Rue Mignon_), 1791, 8vo.

Footnote 2:

  To certain copies are added some thirty engravings representing the
  principal erotic postures; these engravings are taken from the
  _Monuments de la Vie Privée des douze Césars_, and from the _Monuments
  du Culte Secret des Dames Romaines_, two works, now becoming every day

Footnote 3:

  See below pp. ?? and ??? respectively.



                         Metamorphoses of Venus

WE propose to pass in review the different metamorphoses of
Venus,—though truly not all of them. For how is it possible to specify
the thousand modes[4], the thousand forms of Love, on which the
inventive satiety of pleasure ventures? But at any rate such as fall
into distinct and definite kinds admit of being easily and methodically
classified. Do not, inquisitive reader, hope for more than this. We are
not of those who seek after a petty personal glory by unveiling the
results of their own experience or by describing novel _tours de force_
in the wrestling-school; we are not so much as raw recruits at this
game. Nor yet is it our intention to reveal things we have seen or heard
in this connexion. If we _would_, we could not,—to your satisfaction,
for books are our only authorities. We are solely and entirely bookmen,
and scarce frequent our fellow creatures at all.

These trifles engaged our attention first as a mere pastime. We were led
to them accidentally, as we roamed from subject to subject for
Philosophy, the garden we had hoped to set up our tent in for life, lies
desolate. How _can_ Philosophy flourish in times like ours, when almost
every new day sees new systems sprout forth, to die down again tomorrow;
when there are as many philosophers as philosophies, when schools have
ceased to exist, when instead of groups only individuals are to be met
with? Our second motive was to provide some satisfaction, however
little, to the claims of those readers who very often find themselves
disconcerted by the unconventional raciness of Ancient authors and their
out-spoken witticisms, and justly complain of the prudish brevity or
entire silence of the Commentators who leave their difficulties
unexplained. Of course these latter wrote for the young; and no one can
blame them under the circumstances for not having dwelt carefully and
curiously on shameful secrets.

If we have fallen into any mistakes, lay the fault, we beg, first on our
insufficient intellectual furniture, secondly on our ignorance as to the
more uncommon forms of lust, an ignorance prevalent in small towns, and
lastly, if you please, put it down to the honest simplicity of our
Coburg citizens’ _members_.

We only follow others’ example. We have predecessors in Astyanassa, who
according to Suidas[5] first wrote “of Erotic Postures”; and in
Philaenis of Samos[6], or rather, to deprive no one of his due,
Polycrates, an Athenian sophist, who brought out under the name of an
honourable matron a book “On the various Postures of Love.” Then there
was Elephantis[7] or Elephantiné, a Greek girl, whose licentious
writings Tiberius is said to have furnished his sleeping-room with; also
Paxamus[8] who composed the _Dodecatechnon_ on lascivious postures; and
Sotades[9] of Maroneia, surnamed the Cinaedologue, from whose name a
whole class of literature, remarkable for its excessive lubricity, is
known as the Sotadic; and Sabellus, of whom Martial speaks: “Copious
verses, only too copious, on scandalous subjects you have read me, O
Sabellus, such as neither the maids of Didymus[10] know, nor yet the
wanton treatises of Elephantis. Therein are new postures of Love that
the desperate fornicator tries, and what debauchees use, but never tell
of,—how grouped in a series five copulate at once, how a greater number
still can make a chain. It was hardly worth the pains to be erudite.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

Moreover amongst our predecessors was the famous Pietro Aretino[11], a
man of an almost divine genius, whom ill-natured report represents as
having illustrated sixteen plates painted by Julio Romano and engraved
on copper by Marc-Antonio with verses indecent beyond all expression;
Lorenzo Veniero again[12], a Venetian nobleman, author of a little work
in Italian, bearing the title _La Puttana Errante_ (The Wandering
Whore), in which he has undertaken to specify no less than thirty-five
modes of loving. Lastly there was Nicolas Chorier, a French lawyer, who
under the name of Aloysia Sigaea, a young Spanish lady, has given us the
_Satirae Sotadicae de arcanis Amoris et Veneris_ (Sotadic Satires on the
Secret Rites of Love and Venus); though the book also appears under the
name of Joannes Meursius with the title _Elegantiae Latini Sermonis_
(Graces of Latin Prose). In this book you do not know which to admire
most, the style at once elegant, correct and careful, yet free from
pedantry, the wit equally gay and graceful, the brilliant sparks of
Latin erudition that glitter everywhere, the rich and copious eloquence
graced as with jewels by polished and luminous words and phrases of a
pleasant antique flavour, or lastly the pre-eminent skill displayed in
varying with such manifold versatility one simple theme. The others we
need not mention further.

Our predecessors, whether the more modern, or those of Antiquity whom we
have cited, and all whose works alas! envious time has robbed us of, did
not lack severe critics, nor yet studious readers. And our own treatise
will no doubt in its turn meet with both these classes. It is a man’s
book; we have written it, fearless of censure, for men,—not for such as
are wont with growning brow “to pitchfork nature out of doors”, but
rather for such as have once for all dared to live their lives, who
neither wish to lurk in darkness nor yet to defy the open day with
effrontery, in one word for those who think that in Love as in all else
the golden mean is the course to choose. Let others go their way, and
arrogate to themselves the title of sages!

                  *       *       *       *       *

THE work of Venus may be accomplished with or without the help of the
_mentula_ (virile member). If with the mentula, the friction of this
organ, in which friction the whole pleasure consists, can be effected
either in the _vulva_ (female organ), in the _anus_ (arse-hole), in the
mouth, by the hand or in any cavity of the body. If without the mentula,
the vulva may be worked either with the tongue, with the clitoris, or
with any object resembling the virile organ.

                 FOOTNOTES - THE Metamorphoses Of Venus


Footnote 4:

  Ovid, _Art of Love_, I., 435, 36: “To fully expose the ungodly wiles
  of harlots, ten mouths, and as many tongues to boot would not

  Aloysia Sigaea: “The body in sacrificing to Venus can take as many
  postures as there are ways in which it can bend and curve. It is
  equally impossible to enumerate all these, as it is to say which is
  best fitted to give pleasure. Each acts in this respect according to
  his own caprice, according to place, time, and so on, choosing the one
  he prefers. Love is not identical for each and all.” (Dialogue VI.)

Footnote 5:

  Suidas under _Astyanassa_: “Astyanassa, maid of Helen the wife of
  Menelaus, who was the first to invent the different positions in the
  act of love. She wrote “Of Erotic Postures”; and was followed and
  imitated by Philaenis and Elephantine, who carried further the series
  of suchlike obscenities.”

Footnote 6:

  _Priapeia_, LXIII: “To her a certain girl (I very nearly gave her
  name) is wont to come with her paramour; and if she fails to discover
  as many postures as Philaenis describes, she goes away again still
  itching with desire.”

  Philaenis has found a champion of her good name in Aeschrion, who
  wrote an epitaph for her that is still extant in _Athenaeus_, bk.
  VIII. ch. 13: The last lines read: “I was not lustful for men nor a
  gad-about; but Polycrates, by race an Athenian, a mill clapper of
  talk, a foul-tongued sophist, wrote—what he wrote; I know nought of it

  Her works were familiar to Timarchus in Lucian (_Apophras_, p.
  158,—vol. VII., of Works of Lucian, edit. J. P. Schmid): “Tell me
  where you find these words and expressions,—in what books? is it in
  the volumes of Philaenis, that are always in your hands?”

Footnote 7:

  Suetonius, _Tiberius_, ch. 43: “He decorated his various and variously
  arranged sleeping-chambers with pictures and bas-reliefs of the most
  licentious character, and furnished them with the works of Philaenis,
  that no one in performing should want a model of the posture

  _Priapeia_, III: “Taking pictures from the licentious treatises of
  Elephantis, Lalagé presents them an offering to the stiff-standing
  god, and begs you prove if she performs agreeably to the pictured

  It would seem then that artists depicted the postures described by
  Elephantis, she herself possibly setting the example. Paintings of the
  sort Lalagé dedicates to Priapus, and asks her lover to have her and
  see if she is a docile pupil in faithfully imitating all the modes of
  connection depicted in them. No doubt such representations of
  licentious postures, taken from the works of Elephantis or Philaenis
  or elsewhere stimulated the ingenuity of Artists to work out in
  emulation these enticing _motifs_ to the highest degree of finish.
  _Ovid_ alludes to such works of art in his _Art of Love_, II., 680:
  “They unite in Love in a thousand postures; no picture could suggest
  any fresh ones ...”; as also the author of an ancient Epigram quoted
  by _Joseph Scaliger_ in his Commentary on the _Priapeia_, III.; “And
  when she has thrown herself into every posture in imitation of the
  seductive pictures, she may go: but let the picture be left hanging
  over my bed.” Nothing was commoner with the Romans than to decorate
  the wall and partitions of rooms with licentious paintings, as may be
  gathered from Propertius II., vi, 27 sqq.: “The hand that first
  painted filthy pictures, and exposed foul sights in an honest home,
  corrupted the pure eyes of young maids, and chose to make them
  accomplices of his own lubricity. In old days our walls were not
  daubed with fancies of this vile sort, when never a partition was
  adorned with a vicious subject.”

Footnote 8:

  _Suidas_: “Paxamus wrote the _Dodecatechnon_; the subject is the
  obscene postures.” But I think he has no good reason to connect with
  this the epithet _Dodecamechanos_ given to a certain Cyrené. The said
  wanton damsel seems to have practised rather than described the twelve
  postures of Venus. _Suidas_ under _Dodecamechanon_: “There was a
  famous _hetaera_, Cyrené by name, further known as _Dodecamechanos_,
  because she practised twelve different postures in making love.”

  _Aristophanes_ says in the _Frogs_, 1361-63: “Do you dare to criticize
  my songs, you that modulate your cadences on the twelve-fold postures
  of Cyrené?” Her name occurs also in the _Thesmophoriazusae_ (104), but
  merely her name. (Our invariable rule is to quote from Burmann’s
  edition of Aristophanes.) I am doubtful as to whether Musaeus should
  be counted among writers on the Erotic postures. Martial, XII., 97
  recommends Instantius Rufus to read his (Musaeus’) books, as being of
  the most advanced lasciviousness, vying with those of the Sybarites in
  obscenity and full of the most suggestive and spicy wit; warning him
  at the same time to have his girl ready to hand, if he did not want
  his hands to perform the wedding-march and consummate the marriage
  without a woman at all.

Footnote 9:

  _Athenaeus_, XIV., 13: “Also the Ionic dialect has to show the poems
  of Sotades and the “Ionic” poems preceding his, those of Alexander the
  Aetolian, and Pyres of Miletus, and Alexis, and others of the same
  class. The last mentioned is known as the Cinaedologue. But in this
  _genre_ the most eminent writer is Sotades, of Maroneia, as is stated
  by Carystius of Pergamus in his work on Sotades, and by Apollonius,
  Sotades’ son, who also wrote a work on his father’s poems. “His end
  was a miserable one. Having assailed Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of
  Egypt, with witticisms too independent for the sensitive ears of
  princes, the king caused him to be enclosed in a leaden casket, and
  thrown into the sea.”

Footnote 10:

  Who were these “maids of Didymus.” Nobody knows. Failing any more
  plausible supposition, it may very well be conjectured that among the
  four thousand works written according to Seneca (Letter LXXX.-VIII.)
  by the Grammarian Didymus, there was one on the postures of lascivious
  girls, worthy to be named side by side with the treatises of
  Elephantis. Undoubtedly a man who devoted himself to such subtile
  questions as whether Anacreon was more libertine than drunkard,
  whether Sappho was a public woman or not, was quite likely to discuss
  the Erotic postures.

Footnote 11:

  See _Bayle’s_ Dictionary, article: _Pierre Arétin_; also Murr’s
  _Journal zur Kunstgeschichte_ (Year-Book of the History of Art), vol.
  XIV., pp. 1-72.

Footnote 12:

  _Pierre Bayle_, in his Dictionary, under _Pierre Arétin_: “There is a
  _Dialogue between Maddalena and Giulia_, entitled _La Puttana Errante_
  (The wandering whore), in which are exhaustively treated _i diversi
  congiungimenti_ (the different modes of intercourse), to the number of
  thirty-five. Aretino, though the book has always been printed under
  his name, disowns it, declaring it to be the work of one of his pupils
  named Veniero.” _Brunet_, Manual du Libraire (Book dealer’s Handbook).
  “The _Puttana errante_, a little book, very rare, quite worthy of
  Aretino in view of the obscenities it contains, but which has been
  erroneously attributed to him. Lorenzo Veniero, a Venetian nobleman,
  is the real author. He published it to avenge himself on a Venetian
  courtesan named Angela, whom he designates under the insulting name of
  Zaffetta, that is to say, in the Venetian dialect, daughter of a

  [_Bayle_, _Forberg_ and many other writers have confused the _Puttana
  errante_, a poem by Lorenzo Veniero and a burlesque parody of the
  Romances of chivalry, with the _Dialogue between Maddalena and
  Giulia_, a prose work to which the Elzevirs gave the title properly
  belonging to the poem. Neither one nor the other is the work of Pietro
  Aretino. See note at end of vol. VI. of the _Dialogues du divin Pietro
  Aretino_ (Dialogues of the divine Pietro Aretino), Paris, Liseux,
  1879, 3 vols. 18°, and London, 1880, 3 vols. 18°. [Note of French
  Translation of Forberg, _Manuel d’Erotologie classique_, Paris,
  Liseux, 1882.]]


                               CHAPTER I

                             OF COPULATION

AND first of all let us consider what is accomplished by means of the
mentula introduced into the vulva. This is, properly speaking, to effect
copulation; but there are various ways of doing it. As a matter of fact
copulation can be effected:—the man face downwards with the woman on her
back, the man on his back with the woman face down, the man on his back
with the woman turning her back to him; the man sitting with the woman
turning her face towards him, sitting with the woman turning her back to
him; the man standing or kneeling with the woman turning her face
towards him, standing or kneeling with the woman turning her back to
him. Let us examine each of these methods separately.

Coition with the man face down on the woman who lies on her back is the
ordinary method, and the most natural.

Aloysia Sigaea says:

    “For my own part I like the usual custom and the ordinary method
    best: the man should lie upon the woman, who is on her back, breast
    to breast, stomach to stomach, pubis to pubis, piercing her tender
    cleft with his rigid spear. Indeed what can be imagined sweeter than
    for the woman to lie extended on her back, bearing the welcome
    weight of her lovers’ body, and exciting him to the tender
    transports of a restless but delicious voluptuousness? What more
    pleasant than to feast on her lovers’ face, his kisses, his sighs,
    and the fire of his wanton eyes? What better than to press the loved
    one in her arms and so awake new fires of desire, to participate in
    amorous sensations unblunted by any taint of age or infirmity? What
    more favorable to the delight and enjoyment of both than such
    lascivious movements given and received? What more opportune at the
    instant of dying a voluptuous death than to recover again under the
    revivifying vigour of burning kisses? He who plies Venus on the
    reverse side, satisfies but one of his senses, he who does the same
    face to face satisfied them all.” (Dialogue VI.)

Ovid, the Master of Loves’ Mysteries, invites pretty women to take this
posture by preference:

    “See you reckon up each of your charms, and take your posture
    according to your beauty. One and the same mode does not become
    every woman. You are especially attractive of face; then lie on your
    back.” (_Art of Love_, III., 771-773.)

This posture is by no means limited to one mode. The woman lying on her
back, the rider may clasp her between his legs, or she may receive him
between hers. Yet another position may be adopted, according as the
woman lie back with legs stretched wide apart or with the knees raised.

It is this position,—lying on her back with legs wide apart, that
Caviceo asks Olympia to assume for making Love:

    “I do not wish you”, he says, “to work your buttocks, or to respond
    with corresponding movements to my efforts. Neither do I wish you to
    lift your legs up, whether both at once, or one after the other,
    when I have mounted you. What I do wish you to do is this: First
    stretch your thighs as far apart, open them as wide as a woman well
    can. Offer your vulva to the member which is going to pierce it, and
    without altering this position, let _me_ complete the work.... Count
    my thrusts one by one, and see you make no mistake in the total”
    (Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue V.).

Would you see a representation of this? Take the tale _Félicia ou mes
fredaines_, part II., ch. xxv, and look at the plate facing the text.

The other position, in which the woman is lying with her knees raised,
is the one which Callias makes Tullia take:

    “After I am lying upon your dear body”, he says, “press me fast in
    your arms, and hold me thus embraced. Draw your legs back as far as
    you can, so that your pretty feet touch your buttocks, smooth as
    marble” (Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue VI.).

If you would enter the woman lying on her back with her legs in the air,
it may be done in yet another way than Tullia’s mode, and one perhaps
still more delicious, by placing your mistress so that she rests her
legs crossed over the loins of her rider. A representation of this very
pleasant posture, which would rouse the numbed tool of a Hippolytus, is
to be found in part IV. of the _Félicia_ mentioned above. There is
another similar plate in ch. xxi, not without charm. Doris, in the
epigram of Sosipator, vol. I. of the _Analecta_ of Brunck (p. 584),
seems also to have made a trial of this figure:

    “When I stretched Doris with the rosy buttocks on the bed, I felt
    immortal in my youthful vigour; for she clipped me round the middle
    with her strong legs, and unswervingly rode out the long-course of

Doris did not bestride him; the expression, “When I stretched” shows
this; she was lying on her back, and with her feet lifted up clasped her

But again the feet of the woman lying on her back may also be held up by
others. In this way Aloysio enjoyed Tullia with the help of Fabrizio, in
the VI. Dialogue of Aloysia Sigaea, where Tullia expresses herself as

    “Aloysio and Fabrizio come running towards me. “Lift up your legs”,
    says Aloysio to me, threatening me with his cutlass. I lifted them
    up. Then down he lies on my bosom, and plunges his cutlass in my
    ever open wound. Fabrizio raised my two legs in the air, and
    slipping a hand under each of my hams, moves my loins for me without
    any trouble on my part. What a singular and pleasant mode of making
    you move! I declared I was on fire, but before I could end my
    sentence, the overflowing foam of Venus quenched the fire”[13].

So too was it with feet in air, whether of her own accord or seconded by
another, that Leda gave herself, with her husband’s consent, to the
doctors who had been called in, as Martial describes the scene:

    “To her old spouse Leda had declared herself to be hysterical, and
    complains she must needs be f...cked; yet with tears and groans
    avers she will not buy health at such a price, and swears she had
    rather die. The husband beseeches her to live, not to die in her
    youth and beauty; and permits others to do what he cannot effect
    himself. Straightway the doctors arrive, the matrons retire; and up
    go the wife’s legs in air; oh! medicine grave and stern!” (XI., 72.)

Face downwards to her the man may do the woman’s business, while she is
half reclining, either obliquely in bed, or on a chair, or lying

The latter position is recommended by Ovid to the woman with rounded
thighs and faultless figure:

    “She that has young rounded thigh and flawless bosom, should ever
    lie reclined sideways on the couch”[14] (_Art of Love_, II., v. 781,

Copulation face to face with the woman sitting obliquely is described by
Aloysia Sigaea with her usual elegance and vivacity:

    “Caviceo came on, blithe and joyous” (it is Olympia speaking). “He
    despoils me of my chemise, and his libertine hand touches my parts.
    He tells me to sit down again as I was seated before, and places a
    chair under either foot in a way that my legs were lifted high in
    air, and the gate of my garden was wide open to the assaults I was
    expecting. He then slides his right hand under my buttocks and draws
    me a little closer to him. With his left he supported the weight of
    his spear. Then he laid himself down on me ... put his battering-ram
    to my gate, inserted the head of his member into the outermost
    fissure, opening the lips of it with his fingers. But there he
    stopped, and for awhile made no further attack. “Octavia sweetest”,
    he says, “clasp me tightly, raise your right thigh and rest it on my
    side.”—“I do not know what you want”, I said. Hearing this he lifted
    my thigh with his own hand, and guided it round his loin, as he
    wished; finally he forced his arrow into the target of Venus. In the
    beginning he pushes in with gentle blows, then quicker, and at last
    with such force I could not doubt that I was in great danger. His
    member was hard as horn, and he forced it in so cruelly, that I
    cried out, “You will tear me to pieces.” He stopped a moment from
    his work. “I implore you to be quiet, my dear”, he said, “it can
    only be done this way; endure it without flinching.” Again his hand
    slid under my buttocks, drawing me nearer, for I had made a feint to
    draw back, and without more delay plied me with such fast and
    furious blows that I was near fainting away. With a violent effort
    he forced his spear right in, and the point fixed itself in the
    depths of the wound. I cry out.... Caviceo spirted out his venerean
    exudation, and I felt irrigated by a burning rain.... Just as
    Caviceo slackened, I experienced a sort of voluptuous itch as though
    I were making water; involuntarily I draw my buttocks back a little,
    and in an instant I felt with supreme pleasure something flowing
    from me which tickled me deliciously. My eyes failed me, my breath
    came thick, my face was on fire, and I felt my whole body melting.
    “Ah! ah! ah! my Caviceo, I shall faint away”, I cried; “hold my
    soul—it is escaping from my body” (Dialogue V.).

Finally the conjunction with the woman lying on her side, particularly
on her right side, is deemed by Ovid the most simple, calling for the
least effort:

    “A thousand modes of Love are there; the simplest and least
    laborious of all is when the woman lies reclined on her right side”
    (_Art of Love_, III., 787, 88).

Above all this position is the most convenient for tall women:

    “Let her press the bed with her knees, with the neck slightly bowed,
    she whose chief beauty is her long shapely flank” (_Art of Love_,
    III., v. 779, 80).

It seems that the Phyllis of Martial allowed herself to be done in that

    “Two arrived in the morning, who wanted to lie with Phyllis, and
    each was fain to be first to hold her naked body in his arms;
    Phyllis promised to satisfy them both together, and she did it; one
    lifted her leg, the other her tunic” (X., 81).

She was lying on her side; the f... lifted her leg; the pederast her

We now come to the manner, in which the man lying on his back has
connection with the woman face downwards. The parts are interchanged;
the woman plays the rider and the man the horse. This figure was called
the horse of Hector.

Martial says:

    “Behind the doors the Phrygian slaves would be masturbating, every
    time Andromaché mounted her Hector horse fashion” (XI., 105).

Ovid, however, with much sagacity denies that this posture could have
pleased Andromaché; her figure was too tall, for this to have been
agreeable or even possible for her. It is for little women, that it is
pleasant to be thus placed:

    “A little woman may very well get astride on her horse; but tall and
    majestic as she was, the Theban bride never mounted the Hectorean
    horse” (_Art of Love_, III., v. 777, 778).

It is no business of ours to decide the question.

At any rate Sempronia takes this posture with Crisogono.

    “He could wait no longer: “Are you undressed”, said Crisogono. “Now,
    my Sempronia, take the position, which gives me so much pleasure,
    you know which.” He stretches himself down on his back, she gets
    upon him astride, with her face towards him, and with her own hand
    guides his burning arrow between her thighs” (Aloysia Sigaea, Dial.

This is the same attitude, which in Horace is imposed by the slave upon
the little harlot, who:

    “... naked in the light of the lantern, plied with wanton wiles and
    moving buttocks the horse beneath her” (Sat. II. vii, v. 50).

As to the matron spoken of v. 64 of the same satire as “never having
sinned _above_”, no doubt this posture did not suit her. Women have not
all the same taste.

Evidently, it was as little to the taste of the girl whom Xanthias in
Aristophanes’ _Wasps_ (v. 499) asked to ride him; for she asks him
indignantly, and playing on the double meaning of the word (Hippias and
——, a horse), if he was for re-establishing Hippias’ tyranny: “Irritated
she asked me if I wanted to revive the tyranny of Hippias.”

Again in his _Lysistrata_ (v. 678) this master of wanton wit points to
the same thing, declaring the female sex to be very good at riding and
fond of driving: “Woman loves to get on horseback and to stick there.”

Aristophanes mocks similarly those, of whom he says, in verse 60 of the
same play, that “They are aboard their barks.” “They are mounted on
their chargers.” For —— signifies both a ship and a horse. Plango in
Asclepiades, Brunck’s _Analecta_, vol. I., 217, affects the same figure.

    “When she in horsemanship vanquished the ardent Philaenis, whilst
    her Hesperian coursers foamed under her reins.”

Yet more expert in this kind of amorous riding than Philaenis herself,
this ardent votary of pleasure thanks Venus in this epigram, that she
has been able so to exhaust certain Hesperian gallants, whom she had
mounted, that they had left her with wanton members all drooping, and
feeling no desire left in them. To bestride men was also the favourite
pastime of Lysidicé, who was never tired in the service of Venus, of
whom the following epigram of Asclepiades treats:

    “Many a horse has she ridden beneath her, yet never galled her thigh
    with all her nimble movements.”

Courtesans consecrated to Venus a whip, a bit, a spur, in order to
signify, that with their clients they like best to pose themselves in
that way, and that they preferred riding themselves to being
ridden,—nothing more.

It is the same when in Apuleius, Fotis satiated her Lucius with the
pleasures of the undulating Venus:

    “Saying this she leaped upon the couch and, seated upon me
    backwards, plying her hips, vibrating her lithe spine lasciviously,
    she satiated me with the delights of the undulating Venus, till both
    of us exhausted, powerless and with useless limbs, sunk down,
    exhaling our souls in mutual embraces” (_Metamorph._, II., ch. II).

The next figure,—the man lying supine and the woman turning her back to
him, is executed by Rangoni with Ottavia, under the direction of Tullia:

    RANGONI: Look how stiff I stand! But I want to try the bliss in a
    new way.

    TULLIA: In a new way? No! I swear by my wanton soul you shall not.
    You shall not take a new way.

    RANGONI: It was a slip of the tongue; I meant to say a new posture.

    TULLIA: And what sort of one? I have an idea ... what they call the
    horse of Hector. Lie down on your back, Rangoni; let your puissant
    spear stand firm to the enemy, who is to be pierced, Well done!

    OTTAVIA: What must I do, Tullia?

    TULLIA: Clip Rangoni between your thighs, mounting him a-straddle.
    His cutlass as he lies should meet your sheath poised over it. Why!
    you’ve taken the position admirably. Excellent!

    RANGONI: Oh! what a back, worthy of Venus! Oh! the ivory sides! Oh!
    the inviting buttocks!

    TULLIA: No naughty words! He who praises the buttocks, slanders the
    vulva! You know better, Ottavia! Her greedy vulva has swallowed your
    bristling member whole, Rangoni.

    OTTAVIA: Quick, Rangoni, it is coming!... quick, quick, help me!

    RANGONI: I am coming, Ottavia,—I am come! Are you?—Are you, darling!

    TULLIA: How now? Are you so quickly done up, you two? (Aloysia
    Sigaea, Dial. VI).

The pygiacic[15] mysteries, to which Eumolpus in Petronius (Satires, ch.
cxl), invites a young girl, refer to the posture practised by the man
lying on his back, with the woman upon him, her back turned towards him.

    “Eumolpus did not hesitate to invite the young girl to the pygiacic
    mysteries, but begged of her to seat herself upon the goodness known
    to her (that being himself, to whose goodness the mother had
    recommended her daughter), and ordered Corax to get on his stomach
    under the bed on which he was, so that with his hands pressed
    against the floor, he might assist with his movements those of his
    master. Corax obeyed, beginning with slow undulations responding to
    those of the young girl. When the crisis was approaching, Eumolpus
    exhorted Corax with a loud voice to quicken up his movements. Thus
    placed between his servant and his mistress, the old man took his
    pleasure as in a swing.”

Would it be surprising, if in these posterior mysteries, Eumolpus’
member had perchance gone wrong, and taken by mistake one orifice for
the other?

You will find this figure represented in a copper-plate engraving in the
very elegant book of d’Hancarville, _Monuments du culte secret des dames
romaines_, ch. xxv, and you will be glad to know the note, with which
the learned annotator accompanies the same.

    “This attitude is to the taste of many men, and even the ladies find
    an increase of pleasure in practising it. It is supposed, that
    Priapus penetrates farther in, and that the fair one by her
    movements procures for herself a more voluptuous delight, and a more
    abundant libation.”

Is it possible for the man, conveniently, to manage the business while
turning his back to the woman lying on her back? Experts must decide.
Aloysia Sigaea says with good common sense:

    “There are many postures it is impossible to execute, even supposing
    the joints and loins of the candidates for the sacred joys of Venus
    more flexible than can be believed. By dint of pondering and
    reflection more ideas occur to the fancy than it is practicable to
    realize: Nothing is inconceivable to the longings of an unbridled
    will; nothing difficult to a furious and unregulated imagination.
    Love will find out a way; and an ardent fancy level mountains. Only
    the body is unable to comply with everything the mind, good or bad,

In another work of d’Hancarville’s, _Monuments de la vie privée des
douze Césars_, plate XXVII., you find represented men seated and
copulating with women, who are facing them; plate XV., in the same book
presents to your curiosity a man sitting and working a woman, who turns
her back on him. Augustus is seated: he is attacking backwards, with
true imperial audacity, Terentia[16], the wife of Maecenas, after
drawing her onto his lap; Maecenas is present, asleep—asleep of course
only for the Emperor. You may see a similar posture in the _Contes et
Nouvelles en vers_ by Jean de la Fontaine: it is on the plate appended
to the tale, called _Le Tableau_, p. 223, vol. II., Amsterdam, 1762.

Nothing is more frequent than conjunction whilst standing, the woman
with her back to the man; it is indeed very easy to do it that way in
any place, as you have only to lift up the fair one’s petticoats, and
out with your weapon; it is, therefore, the best manner for those who
have to make instantaneous use of an opportunity, when it is important
to be sharp about it, as may happen, when you take your pleasure in
secret. Thus Priapus complains of the wives and daughters of his
neighbors, who came incessantly to him burning with ticklish desires.

    “Cut off my genital member, which every night and all night long my
    neighbours’ wives and daughters, for ever and for ever in heat, more
    wanton than sparrows in springtide, tire to death,—or I shall
    burst!...” (_Priapeia_, XXV).

I remember a medical man of our time, one of the most celebrated
professors, (I had nearly uttered his name), who to emphasize this,
called his daughter, and pointing to the blushing girl, while his
hearers could not help smiling said: “This girl I fabricated standing.”
A representation of this position is to be found in the _Monuments de la
vie privée de douze Césars_, pl. XLVI., and another in the _Monuments du
culte secrets des dames romaines_, pl. XIII.

But further, a man may join himself to a woman standing face to face by
supporting her in such a way, that her whole body is lifted up, her
thighs resting on the man’s hips, or else by lifting up the lower part
of her body, whilst the upper part is resting on a couch. Will you feast
your eyes with a representation of this not ungraceful position? If so
you will not omit to look at plate XXIV of the _Monuments du culte
secret des dames romaines_, and plate XL of the _Monuments de la vie
privée des douze Césars_; Ovid, if I am not mistaken, had his eyes on
one or the other of these figures:

    “Milanion was supporting Atalanta’s legs on his shoulders; if they
    are fine legs this is how they should be held” (_Art of Love_, III.,
    vv. 775, 776). The former of these modes is no doubt that described
    by Aloysia Sigaea, Past Mistress of these naughtinesses, and with a
    vivacity, a grace, and elegance that leaves nothing to be desired:

    “La Tour came forward instantly.... I had thrown myself on the foot
    of the bed”—(Tullia is speaking)—“I was naked; his member was erect.
    Without more ado he grasps in either hand one of my breasts, and
    brandishing his hard and inflamed lance between my thighs, exclaims
    “Look Madam, how this weapon is darting at you, not to kill you, but
    to give you the greatest possible pleasure. Pray, guide this blind
    applicant into the dark recess, so that it may not miss its
    destination; I will not remove my hands from where they are, I would
    not deprive them of the bliss they enjoy.” I do as he wishes, I
    introduce myself the flaming dart into the burning centre; he feels
    it, drives in, pushes home.... After one or two strokes I felt
    myself melting away with incredible titillation, and my knees all
    but gave way. “Stop”, I cried—“stop my soul, it is escaping!” “I
    know”, he replied, laughing, “from where. No doubt your soul wants
    to escape through this lower orifice, of which I have possession;
    but I keep it well stoppered.” Whilst speaking he endeavoured, by
    holding his breath, still further to increase the already enormous
    size of his swollen member. “I am going to thrust back your escaping
    soul”, he added, poking me more and more violently. His sword
    pierced yet deeper into the quick. Redoubling his delicious blows,
    he filled me with transports of pleasure,—working so forcefully
    that, albeit he could not get his whole body into me, he impregnated
    me with all his passion, all his lascivious desires, his very
    thoughts, his whole delirious soul by his voluptuous embraces. At
    last feeling the approach of the ecstasy and the boiling over of the
    liquid, he slips his hands under my buttocks, and lifts me up
    bodily. I do my part; I twine my arms closely round his form, my
    thighs and legs being at the same time inter-twisted and entangled
    with his, so that I found myself suspended on his neck in the air,
    lifted clean off the ground; I was thus hanging, as it were, fixed
    on a peg. I had not the patience to wait for him, as he was going
    on, and again I swooned with pleasure. In the most violent raptures
    I could not help crying out—“I feel all ... I feel all the delights
    of Juno lying with Jupiter. I am in heaven.” At this moment La Tour,
    pushed by Venus and Cupido to the acmé of voluptuousness, poured a
    plenteous flood of his well into the genial hold, burning like fire.
    The creeper does not cling more closely round the walnut tree than I
    hold fast to La Tour with my arms and legs” (Dial. VI).

As to the last manner by means of which copulation may be achieved, the
man standing with the woman half lifted up, Conrad practises it with
slight modifications.

    (TULLIA speaking): “He opened my thighs—I do not dislike Conrad,
    though I am not particularly partial to him. I neither consented,
    nor refused. As to him, he fancied a novel posture, and not at all a
    bad one. I was lying on my back; he raised my right thigh on his
    shoulder, and in this position he transfixed me, while I was
    awaiting the event, without greatly desiring it. He had at the same
    time extended my left thigh along his right thigh. His tool plunged
    into the root, he began to push and poke, quicker and quicker. What
    need to say more? Picture the conclusion for yourself” (Dial. VI).

Last of all, a man can get into a woman turning her back to him after
the manner of the quadrupeds, who can have no connection with their
females otherwise than by mounting upon them from behind[17]. Some
authorities have held that a woman conceives easier while on all fours.
Lucretius says:

    “... Women are said to conceive more readily when down after the
    manner of beasts, as the organs can absorb the seed best so, when
    the bosom is depressed and the loins lifted” (_Of the Nature of
    Things_, IV., vv. 1259-1262).

Also Aloysia Sigaea:

    “Some people pretend that the fashion to make love indicated by
    Nature is that one where the woman offers herself for copulation
    after the manner of the animals, bent down with the hips raised; the
    virile ploughshare penetrates thus more conveniently into the female
    furrow, and the seminal flow waters the field of love.... The
    doctors, however, are against this posture; they say it is
    incompatible with the conformation of the parts destined for
    generation.” (Dial. VI.)

However this may be, it happens frequently, that women cannot be managed
in any other way. Given an obese man and a woman likewise obese or with
child, how are they to do the thing otherwise? This is the reason why,
so they say, Augustus having married Livia Drusilla, divorced wife of
Tiberius Nero and already six months gone in pregnancy, had connection
with her after the manner of animals. Plate VII of the _Monuments de la
vie privée des douze Césars_ will give you an idea of the posture
assumed by both of them. But why should we not give you the annotations
whereby the learned editor has elucidated the plate? Here they are:

    “This Drusilla was the famous Livia, the wife of Tiberius Nero, who
    had been one of Anthony’s friends. Augustus fell violently in love
    with her, and Tiberius gave her up to him, although she was at the
    time six months with child. A good many jokes were made about the
    eagerness of the Emperor, and one day, while they were all at table,
    and Livia was reclining by Augustus, one of those naked children,
    whom matrons used to educate for their pleasures, going up to Livia
    said: “What are you doing here? yonder is your husband”, pointing to
    Nero, “there he is”[18]. Soon afterwards Livia was confined, and the
    Romans said openly, that lucky people get children three months
    after being married, which passed into a proverb. One historian says
    that Augustus was obliged to caress his wife “after the manner of
    beasts” on account of her pregnancy, and it was to this luxurious
    attitude that the cameo of Apollonius, the celebrated gem-cutter of
    the time of Augustus, makes allusion. True that the state in which
    Livia was may have made this posture necessary: but it seems that it
    was at all times to the taste of the Ancients, either because they
    considered this attitude favorable for procreation, as Lucretius
    maintains, or because they found it to be a refinement of
    voluptuousness. The most extraordinary and least natural postures
    have always appeared to rakes as enhancing the pleasure of the
    conjunction. But it must be admitted that imagination still outruns
    actual possibilities.”

A singular reason for the necessity of encountering a woman backwards is
given by Aloysia Sigaea, with her usual sagacity:

    “For pleasure, one likes a vulva which is not placed too far back,
    so as to be entirely hidden by the thighs; it should not be more
    than nine or ten inches from the navel. With the greater number of
    girls the pubis goes so far down, that it may easily be taken as the
    other way of pleasure. With such coition is difficult. Theodora
    Aspilqueta could not be deflowered, till she placed herself prone on
    her stomach, with her knees drawn up to her sides. Vainly had her
    husband tried to manage her, while lying on her back, he only lost
    his oil” (Dialogue VII).

Ovid recommends this way with women who begin to be wrinkled:

    “Likewise you, whose stomach Lucina has marked with wrinkles, mount
    from behind, like the flying Parthian with his steed” (_Art of
    Love_, III., v. 785, 86).

The same advice also seems to be given by him a little before:

    “Let them be seen from behind whose backs are sightly” (v. 774).

But besides necessity, it is a fact that women are worked in this way
out of mere caprice, variety offering the greatest pleasure. It is
simply for this reason that Tullia suffers Fabrizio to do her that way,
in Aloysia Sigaea:

    “As Aloysio got up” (Tullia speaks) “Fabrizio makes ready for
    another attack. His member is swollen up, red and threatening. “I
    beg of you “Madam”, he says, “turn over on your face.” I did as he
    wished. When he saw my buttocks, whiter than ivory and snow, “How
    beautiful you are!” he cried. “But raise yourself on your knees and
    bend your head down.” I bow my head and bosom, and lift my buttocks.
    He thrust his swift-moving and fiery dart to the bottom of my vulva,
    and took one of my nipples in either hand. Then he began to work in
    and out, and soon sent a sweet rivulet into the cavity of Venus. I
    also felt unspeakable delight, and had nearly fainted with lust. A
    surprising quantity of seed secreted by Fabrizio’s loins filled and
    delighted me; a similar flow of my own exhausted my forces. In that
    single assault I lost more vigour than in the three preceding ones”
    (Dialogue VI.)[19].

This copulation from the back is practicable in another very pleasant
fashion, an excellent reproduction of which can be seen in the _Monument
du culte secret des dames romaines_, plate XXVIII. A woman is
represented with her hands placed on the ground, while the lower part of
the body is lifted up and suspended by cords; she is turning her back to
the man who stands. This seems to be much the same position as was taken
up by the wife of the artisan Apuleius speaks of in his _Metamorphoses_
(book IX), whom “bending over her, the lover planed with his adze, while
she leant forward over a cask.” An engraving showing this ingenious
attitude is appended to the story of _The Tub_ in the _Contes et
Nouvelles en vers_ of Jean de La Fontaine, vol. II., p. 215.

                       FOOTNOTES - OF COPULATION


Footnote 13:

  This method was not unknown at the time of Aristophanes, as we see
  from the following passage of the _Peace_:

      “So that you may straightway, lifting up the girl’s legs,
      accomplish high in air the mysteries” (v. 889, 890).

  And in the _Birds_ he says:

      “For this girl, your first messenger, why! I will lift up her legs
      and will in between her thighs” (v. 1254, 55).

Footnote 14:

  Readers will find another figure given in some of the books: “The man
  should be standing, while the woman reclines sideways on the bed.”

Footnote 15:

  From —— buttock.

Footnote 16:

  Dio Cassius, LIV., 19: “He was so fond of her, that one day he matched
  her against Livia, as to which of them was the most beautiful.” It was
  no bad idea to engage them in such a match, but think you he suffered
  them to fight this out in any costume but that in which the Goddesses
  three presented themselves before the dazed eyes of Paris?

Footnote 17:

  Pliny has treated this at great length in his _Natural History_ (Book
  X., ch. 63).

Footnote 18:

  Compare Dio Cassius, bk. XLVIII., ch. 44.

Footnote 19:

  The thing itself is very old; Aristophanes alludes to it in the

      “To wrestle on the ground, to stand on all fours” (v. 896).

  And in the _Lysistrata_:

      “I will not squat down like a lioness carved on a knife-handle”
      (v. 231).


                               CHAPTER II

                             ON PEDICATION

SO much for copulation in the normal way. We will now discuss another
mode of pleasure,—that due to introduction of the member into the anus.
A man who exercises his member in the anus, be it of a man or a woman,
pedicates; he is called a pederast, pedicon, drawk[20], and the other
party, who allows himself to be invaded in that way, is called the
patient, cinaedus, catamite[21], minion, effeminate; if adult or worn
out, he is named exolete. The masculine pleasure (so called because
women allowed themselves much more rarely to be pedicated than men) is
appreciated equally by the active party, the pedicon, as by the passive
party, the patient. The pleasure of the pedicon is easy to understand,
as the enjoyment of the virile member consists in the intensity of the
friction; the pleasure felt by the patient by the introduction of the
member in his entrails is more difficult to make out,—at least for my
feeble intelligence, for such practices are quite strange to me. Do not
believe, however, that the pleasure of the patient is only secondary,
nor yet that he prostitutes himself only in order to do the same
afterwards himself, nor that he remedies in this way the sluggishness of
his own member by the vigorous working of another man’s nerve causing a
pleasurable titillation of the posterior, analogous to that which
Antonius Panormitanus (_Hermaphroditus_, I., 20), tells us may be
produced by inserting the fingers in the anus[22], or still better, by
beating the same locality with rods, according to Aloysia Sigaea:

    “Amongst the men of our acquaintance, I have heard the Marquis
    Alfonso say that rods act as spurs to the amorous battle; without
    them he would be sluggish and impotent. He has his buttocks flogged
    with rods vigorously, his wife being present lying ready on the bed.
    During the flagellation his tool begins to stiffen, and the more
    violent the strokes are, the stronger is the tension. When he feels
    himself in proper condition, he precipitates himself upon his wife,
    works her with rapid movement, and inundates her with the heavenly
    gifts of Venus and wins all the delights a man may find in Love”[23]
    (Dialogue V).

What else was it but this that so stirred Rousseau, the precocious
genius of Geneva, and his boyish member, and brought such ideas into his
head, when on one occasion Mlle. Lambercier, cracking the whip upon the
buttocks of the child, inflicted that punishment, which he afterwards
was longing for all the rest of his life? Hear him relate the
circumstance himself in his merry way and with his habitual charm of
style, in the first book of the _Confessions_; we only omit small
matters, added by the immortal author for the amplification of the

    “As Mlle. Lambercier had for us the affection of a mother, so she
    had the authority of one, and she carried the latter so far as to
    inflict upon us the punishment of children when we had deserved it.
    For a long time she only used threats, and such a threat of a novel
    punishment seemed very dreadful to me; but after the execution I
    found the experience less terrible than the expectation, and the
    oddest thing was, the punishment made me more partial to her, who
    had inflicted it, than I had been previously. I stood in fact in
    need of all this affection for her and of all my natural mildness,
    in order to hold back from provoking the same punishment by acting
    so as to deserve it, for I had found in the pain, and even in the
    shame, a mixed feeling, in which sensuality predominated, and which
    left me with more desire than apprehension of experiencing the same
    treatment over again from the same hand. Who would believe that this
    chastisement of a child eight years old by the hand of a maiden of
    thirty should have influenced my tastes, my longings, my passions
    for the remainder of my life? Tormented by I know not what, my eye
    feasted ardently upon good-looking females; they constantly came
    into my mind doing to me as Mlle. Lambercier had done. Imagining
    only what I had experienced, my desires did not pass beyond the sort
    of voluptuous feeling I had known already. In my foolish fancies, in
    my erotic fury, in the extravagant acts to which they incited me
    sometimes, I borrowed in imagination the help of the other sex,
    without ever dreaming it was good for any other use than that which
    I wanted to make of it. When in the course of time I had grown up to
    manhood, my old taste of childhood associated itself so much with
    the other, that I never could divert the desires which fired my
    senses; and this absurdity, joined to my natural timidity, made me
    always anything but enterprising with women, as I dared not say all
    or could not do all I wanted; the sort of enjoyment, of which the
    other was for me but the last stage, could neither be initiated by
    the one who longed for it, nor guessed by the other who might have
    granted it. Thus I have passed through life coveting, yet not daring
    to tell the persons I loved most what it was I coveted. Never bold
    enough to declare my inclination, I amused it as least by ideas in
    connection with it. One may judge what such avowals must have cost
    me, considering that all through my life, seized in the presence of
    those I loved by the fury of a passion which bereft me of voice,
    hearing and sense, and made me tremble all over convulsively, I
    never could venture to tell them my folly, and ask them to add the
    one familiarity which I wanted to the other ones. I only got to it
    once in my childhood, with another child of my age, and the proposal
    came from her.”

However to return to our proper subject, from which we have strayed. If
pleasure felt by the passive party cannot be conceived to be of a kind,
which through the anus is communicated to the mentula (member), we must
come to the conclusion that the _patient_ experiences in the anus the
same kind of irritation which the other party feels in his genital
parts; that, therefore, the _patient_ feels in that place a real
pleasure unknown to those who have not tried it[24]. Martial at any rate
speaks out without any circumlocution of this rut of the anus:

    “Of his anus, split to the naval, not a vestige is left to Carinus;
    for all that he is in rut to the very navel. Oh! the scurvy lot of
    the wretch! Bottom he has none,—but he _will_ be a cinede” (VI.,

An ardour of this strange sort even affected Tullia, as she confesses
herself in the pages of Aloysia Sigaea:

    “Seeing resistance was in vain, I yielded to the madmen. Aloysio
    bends forward over my buttocks, brings his javelin to the back-door,
    knocks, pushes, finally with a mighty effort bursts in. I gave a
    groan. Instantly he withdraws his weapon from the wound, plunges it
    in the vulva and spurts a flood of semen into the wanton furrow of
    my womb. When all was over, Fabrizio attacks me in the same fashion.
    With one rapid thrust he introduced his spear, and in less than no
    time made it disappear in my entrails; for a little time he plays at
    come and go, and scarce credible as it may sound, I found myself
    invaded by a prurient fury to such an extent that I have no doubt,
    that I should get accustomed to it very well, if I chose” (Dialogue

Coelius Rhodiginus confirms this pruriency of the anus in ch. 10. of XV.
book of his _Lectiones antiquae_.

    “We know”, he says, “that the minions experience a very great
    pleasure in undergoing this shameful act.”

And he gives a reason for it, whether good or bad the doctors may
decide: “With people whose seminal ducts are not in normal condition, be
it that those leading to the mentula are paralysed, as is the case with
eunuchs and the like, or for any other reason, the seminal fluid flows
back to its source. If this fluid is very abundant with them, it
accumulates in great quantities, and then the part where the secretion
is accumulated longs for friction. People thus situated like above
everything to play the part of _patients_.”

Be this as it may, nothing is more certain than the fact of such
enjoyment on the part of the _patient_. So highly did the Roman cinedes
prize a stiff member between their buttocks, that they could not see a
big mentula without their mouths watering; they were ready to give their
last penny to enjoy the favours of a man extraordinarily gifted in that

Juvenal, IX., v. 32-36:

    “Destiny governs man; it influences the parts, which the toga
    covers. If your star pales, useless will be the length and strength
    of your member to you,—even though Virro shall have seen you naked
    with lips that water.”

Martial, I., 97:

    “He wants to know why I think he is a minion? We bathe together; he
    never raises his eyes, but gazes with devouring looks at the
    sodomites; and cannot behold their members without his lips

And again, II., 51:

    “Oftentimes you have no more than a single penny in your box, and
    that penny more worn than your anus, Hyllus; yet neither baker nor
    wine shop will have it, but some man who sports an enormous member.
    Your unfortunate belly must starve for your anus; while the latter
    devours, the former is famished.”

It is therefore not astonishing that the public baths resounded with
plaudits, when men with extraordinary members entered them.

Martial, IX., 34:

    “If you hear clapping of hands in the bathing hall, Flaccus, you may
    be sure some deformed person’s enormous member is there.”

Juvenal, VI., v. 373, 374:

    “Far seen, pointed at by all men’s fingers, he enters the baths.”

It was not without some art that the patients performed their functions.
But their business was made up of these two chief requirements:
depilation and knowing how to use the haunches.

_Patients_ took care in the first place to remove the hair carefully
from all parts of their body[25]; from the lips, arms, chest, legs, the
virile parts, and in particular from the altar of passive lust, the
anus: Martial, II., 62:

    “Pluck out the hair from breast and legs and arms; keep your member
    cropped and ringed with short hair; all this, we know, you do for
    your mistress’ sake, Labienus. But for whom do you depilate your

And IX., 28:

    “While you, Chrestus, appear thus with your parts all hairless, with
    a mentula like a vulture’s neck, and a head as shining as a
    prostitute’s buttocks with never a hair appearing on your leg, and
    with your pallid lips all shorn and bare, you talk of Curius,
    Camillus, Numa, Ancus, of all the hairy heroes we have ever read of
    in history, and spout big words and threatenings against theatres
    and the times. Let but some big-limbed man come into sight, you call
    him with a nod, and take him off....”

And he says, IX., 58:

    “Nought is worse worn than Hedylus’ rags, save one thing only (he
    cannot deny it himself), his anus;—this is worse worn than his

In a similar way he has spoken before of the anus of Hyllus as more worn
by friction than a poor man’s last penny (II., 51), and Suetonius (_Life
of Otho_, ch. xii) speaks similarly of the body of Otho, given to the
habits of a catamite, and Catullus (Carm. 33) reproaches the younger
Vibennius: “You could not sell your hairy buttocks for a doit.”

For the same reason _Galba_ requested Icelus to get depilated before he
was to take him aside. Suetonius, Galba, ch. xxii:

    “He was very much given to the intercourse between men, and amongst
    such he preferred men of ripe age, exolets. It is said that when
    Icelus, one of his old bedfellows, came to Spain, to inform him of
    Nero’s death, he, not content with kissing him closely before
    everyone present, asked him to get at once depilated, and then took
    him aside with him quite alone.”

Moreover even those depilated their anus, who by dint of a rough head of
hair and a bristly beard, tried hard to simulate the gravity of the
ancient Philosophers. Martial, IX., 48:

    “Democritus and Zeno and ambiguous Plato,—all the sages whose
    portraits we see decked with bristling hair,—you prate of; you might
    well be Pythagoras’ heir and successor; while from your own chin
    hangs no less imposing a beard. But as bearded man it is a shame for
    you to receive a rigid member between your smooth posteriors.”

Juvenal, II., v. 8-13:

    “Put not your trust in faces; everywhere is debauchery rampant! Thou
    wouldst whip the vicious; Thou! thou!—the most notorious of all
    Socratic minions! Hair-covered limbs and coarse hair along the arms
    bespeak a fiery soul; but on your smooth anus the surgeon cuts away
    the swollen tumours, a grin on his face the while.”

Persius, IV., v. 37, 38:

    “Tell me, when you comb a scented beard upon your cheeks, why does a
    shaven member stand forth from your groin?”

This is why Martial, VI., 56 advised Charidemus to get his buttocks
depilated, so that he might be taken for a _patient_ rather than for a

    “Because your thighs bristle with coarse hair, and your chest is
    shaggy, you think, Charidemus, to leave your words to posterity.”

    “Take my word, and pluck out the hairs all over your body, and get
    it certified you depilate your buttocks. What for? you ask. You know
    they tell many tales about you; make them believe, Charidemus, that
    you are acting the _patient_.”

It was not _patients_ only that had themselves depilated; men leading an
idle, careless life followed the same practice[26].

    “To be depilated, to have the hair dressed in tiers of ringlets, to
    tipple to excess in the baths,—these practices prevail in the city;
    still they cannot be said to be customary, for nothing of all this
    is exempt from blame” (Quintilian, _Instit. orat._, I., 6).

It is rather surprising that the same Quintilian, whose bile is stirred
by curled hair, has let it pass by patiently, that women should bathe
together with men:

    “If it is a sure sign of adultery for a woman to bathe with men,
    why! it will be adultery to dine with young friends of the male sex,
    to have a male friend. You might as reasonably say a depilated body,
    a languid gait, a womanish robe, are certain signs of effeminacy, of
    want of virility; for such will seem to many to reveal immorality of
    character” (_Ibid._, V., 9).

Martial, II., 39 has also noticed, and not once only, the habits of
those men who practised feminine arts of the toilette, and looked just
as if they had come out of a band-box:

    “Rufus, see you that man there on the first benches ... whose oiled
    curls exhale the whole shop of Marcelianus, and whose polished arms
    shine without a hair to be seen?”

Again, he says, V., 62:

    “... Who is this Crispulus, who has legs undisfigured by a single

Even the great Caesar did not disdain this coquetry, Suetonius, ch. 45:

    “He took too much care of his appearance, to the point of not only
    having his beard removed with nippers, and shaved with a razor, but
    even of being depilated, for which things he was blamed.”

This custom is connected with those Samnite vases, filled with rosin and
pitch to be heated for depilation, and for softening the pitch, found
amongst the properties of Commodus, and which by the orders of Pertinax
were sold by public auction. Julius Capitolinus speaks of them
(_Pertinax_, 8). For removing the hair there were used in fact either
tweezers or an unguent called dropax or psilothrum. Martial mentions the
use of tweezers in the Epigram (IX., 28) quoted before; of dropax or
psilothrum he speaks in Book III., 74:

    “You depilate your face with psilothrum and your head with dropax.”

And again VI., 93:

    “She revives her youth with psilothrum.”

And X., 65:

    “You rub yourself every day with dropax.”

The dropax or psilothrum was obtained by melting rosin in oil (Pliny,
_Natural History_, XIV. 20):

    “Rosin dissolves in oil, and I am ashamed to say, that the most
    honest use made of this mixture is to serve people as a depilatory.”

Aëtius also mentions it in Book III., ch. cxc, of his _Opus Medicum_:

    “The simplest dropax is the one called pitchplaster. Dry pitch is
    diluted with oil; it is applied hot to the skin, which must first be
    cleanly shaved, under which circumstances it adheres closely. Before
    the plaster is quite cold, it is taken off, warmed again, and put on
    afresh; again it is removed before being cold, and this process is
    repeated several times.”

Hence Juvenal’s, “Youthfulness by pitch”, (VIII., 114), and

    “The thighs neglected and dirty with tufts of hair” of Nævolus, to
    whom he says:

    “Your skin has none of the gloss, that of old the well-smeared
    plaster of hot pitch gave it” (Sat. IX., 13-15).

What else does Martial, mean when (III., 74), he speaks of “Gargilanus’
nails,—that cannot be trimmed with pitch?”

Persius (IV., 37-41) has, I presume, joined together both modes of

    shaven member stand forth from your groin? Though five strong men
    weed your plantation and work your parboiled buttocks with the
    hooked tweezers, I tell you there is no plough will tame that
    stubborn field!”

Here _forceps_ is the same thing as _volsella_ (tweezers); while the
“parboiled buttocks” would seem to refer to the hot _dropax_. After the
application of such a plaster the skin could not but have a boiled look.

Ausonius (_Epigr._ CXXXI.) alludes to this passage of Persius:

    “The reason you smooth your groin with hot dropax is that a skin
    soft and smooth entices the whores, plucked smooth themselves. But
    that you pluck out the herbage from your parboiled bottom, and
    polish up with pumice your battered Clazomenae, what means this,—if
    not that the vice of man with man works in you, and you are a woman
    behind, a man in front.”

The _Clazomenae_ are without a doubt the man’s buttock, limp and
cracked, as those of _patients_ will be, as those of Carinus were, whom
Martial, XI., 37 blames for “his lacerated anus.” Ausonius calls them so
from the Greek, in Latin “frango” (I break), thus playing with the name
of a city. Gonzalvo the Cordevan makes a similar pun, when, desiring to
pedicate, he says, he wishes to go to Aversa; also when he wishes to
irrumate the mouth, he says: “I go to the Orient”, or when he is about
to lick the vulva, in Latin _ligurire_, “I go to Liguria.” By calling
the Clazomenae hammered (battered) Ausonius means to imply that they
were as if polished with a hammer, by having served as an anvil. It is
as if my fellow-countrymen were to say in joke of a bald man (in German
_Kahl_), “he scratches his polished Kehl.” What could be clearer or
wittier? Forcellini is therefore wrong in saying this passage of
Ausonius has no sense. Other editors have _inclusas_ instead of
_incusas_, indicating the fissure which separates the buttocks, by the
rotundities of which it is on both sides closed in. But in the first
place the Clazomenae may well be the buttocks, they being cleft, though
not indeed themselves a cleft; in the second place, who could imagine
this miserable man depilated the cleft of the buttocks rather than the
buttocks themselves?

Some persons, by a refinement of luxury, employed women to depilate
them. Such women called themselves _ustriculae_ (from _urere_, to burn),
as they made use of a sticky plaster of boiling dropax to burn the hair
on the legs and other parts of the body. Tertullian (_De Pallio_, ch.
4), says: “So effeminate as to employ _ustriculae_”; while Salmasius,
commenting playfully on the passage, p. 284, declares: “Once upon a time
_ustriculae_ served to depilate the legs; now they serve to harass our
minds.” Augustus, who according to Suetonius, “was in the habit of
singeing his legs with burning nutshells, to make the hair grow more
silky” (_Augustus_, ch. 68), no doubt made use of the nimble hands of
these _ustriculae_.

Women likewise resorted to depilation[27], looking upon the fleece of
the pubis as something disgusting. Martial:

    “... Nor yet one of your mother’s pots full of foul rosin, such as
    the women of the outer suburbs use to depilate themselves withal”
    (XII., 32).

As men employed women to free them of hair, so women offered their pubis
without shame to men for the same office. Pliny’s bile rises at this
(_Nat. Hist._, XXIX., 8): “Women are not afraid to show their pubis. It
is but too true, nothing corrupts manners more than the art of the
medical man.”

The emperors themselves condescended to undertake this office for their

Suetonius, _Domitian_, ch. 22:

    “It was rumoured, that he was fond of depilating his concubines
    himself, and would bathe amid a crowd of the most infamous

Lampridius, _Heliogabalus_, ch. 31:

    “In his baths he was always together with the women, and he made
    their toilets with psilothrum: he used psilothrum likewise for his
    beard, and, disgusting to relate, the same which the women had just
    been using. With his own hand he shaved off the fleece from the
    virile part of his pedicons, and then shaved his own beard.”

What Lampridius finds so repugnant, is that the emperor did not hesitate
to use upon his beard the same ointment, which the women had just been
applying as a plaster upon the pubis, and which he used at once and
before the bad smell had evaporated.

But to return to our _patients_, they also were not in want of
illustrious lovers, who took care to depilate them; an example of this
we find in the emperor Hadrian, according to Spartianus, who says, ch.

    “That he corrupted the freedmen of Trajan, made the toilet of his
    minions, and often depilated them, while he was attached to the
    Court, is generally believed.”

In what other way can we believe Hadrian to have made the toilet of
these minions, if not in the same way in which Heliogabalus made the
toilet of his females, with psilothrum, particularly as it is added that
he depilated them frequently? We may take it for granted that he used
that ointment, or that he rubbed their faces with moistened bread,
either to improve their skin or to hinder the beard growing too soon.
Suetonius, _Otho_, ch. 12:

    “He shaved his face every day, and rubbed it with damp bread, a
    habit which he had contracted when the first down began to appear,
    so as not to get bearded.”

Juvenal, II., 107 has aimed an arrow of the same sort at Otho:

    “It surely is the duty of a mighty Captain ... to keep his skin
    right smooth ... and knead bread with his fingers to make a plaster
    for his face.”

What wonder then if the women cherished similar artifices? Who can help
thinking of the woman depicted with such marvellous art by Juvenal, from
verse 460 to verse 472 of that Sixth Satire, to which Salmasius gave the
epithet, of “divine”? “Her face is all puffy with bread crumbs, where
the lips of the poor husband keep sticking”, to such an extent, that one

    “... Whether her countenance, plastered and _massaged_ with so many
    preparations, overlaid with poultices of boiled and moistened flour,
    should be called a face at all,—or a sore.... At last she peels her
    face, removes the outermost layers. For the first time she may be
    recognized for herself. Then she treats her skin with asses’ milk,
    for which she drags about in her train a herd of asses,—and would
    take them with her, if she were exiled to the North Pole.”

For painting the face it seems that a coating of chalk was used, as in
the case of the Pederast mentioned in Petronius, who perspired so
violently in working vainly the groin of Eucolpus:

    “From his perspiring forehead flowed rivulets of acacia juice, and
    in the wrinkles of his cheeks there was such a mass of chalk that
    you might have believed you saw a wall exposed to the wind and
    washed by the rain” (_Satyricon_, ch. 23).

But let us leave all these nasty preparations, before we find ourselves
stuck fast in them.

We have said that another branch of this business, on the part of the
_patient_, consists in _cevere_. A _patient cevet_, who during the
action wriggles and moves his haunches up and down, so as to enjoy more
pleasure himself and give more pleasure to the pedicon. Women, doing the
same in copulation, are said to _crissare_. Martial, III., 95:

    “Nay! you pedicate finely, Naevolus; you ply your haunches right

Juvenal, II., 20-23:

    “... Virtue on their lips, they ply their buttocks.—‘Shall I honour
    you, in the act of your back-play, Sextus?’ says the infamous

The same author, IX., 40:

    “With calculated art moves his haunches.”

Plautus, in the _Pseudolus_, III., 75:

    “Soon as ever the fellow cowers down, ply your haunches in time to

For this reason some authorities hold, I do not know whether rightly or
wrongly, the word _cinede_ to come from the fact that the wretches known
by that name are in the habit of _wriggling the private parts_.
Undoubtedly the suppleness of the thighs, the agility of the buttocks
are counted amongst the particular talents of cinedes in Petronius, ch.

Enter a Cinede reciting these verses:

    “Hither, come hither, cinede wantons,—stretch the foot and take your
    course, fly with soles in the air, with supple thighs, and nimble
    buttocks, and libertine hands,—all ye old, emasculated minions of
    Delos, come!”

To this subject also refers _Epigr._ XXXVI of the 1st Book of the
_Hermaphroditus_, edited by us; which consult, reader, if worth your
while. As he who wriggles with his haunches does it to please somebody,
people use the word _cevere_ also to convey the meaning of sycophancy or
adulation. Thus: “An, Romule, ceves” (What Romulus, you fawn too?) in
Persius (I., 87); in the same way _irrumate_ is used in the sense of an
outrage, affront.

That women _can_ be pedicated, exactly the same as men, is indicated by
nature; that they _have_ consented, is proved by numerous testimonies in
Antiquity.—Apuleius, _Metamorphoses_, III., p. 138:

    “While we were thus prattling, a mutual desire invaded our minds and
    roused our limbs; having undressed entirely we gave ourselves up to
    the transports of Venus. I soon felt tired. Fotis of her own good
    will offered me the catamite corollary.”

Martial, IX., 68:

    “All night long I possessed a lewd young maiden, whose complaisant
    demeanor it were impossible to excel. Exhausted with a thousand
    modes of love, I asked for the puerile service, which she granted at
    once before I had finished my asking.”

The same, XI., 105, reproaches his wife as follows:

    “You refuse to pedicate; yet Cornelia allowed it to Gracchus, Julia
    to Pompey, and Portia did it for Brutus. Ere the Derdanian Cupbearer
    served the wine, Juno herself acted Ganymede for Jupiter.”

Tullia permitted the same to Aloysio and Fabrizio, in Aloysia Sigaea; we
have quoted the passage. Crispa tastes the same variety of pleasure, in
Epigram LXXI of Ausonius:

    “She lets herself be done in either orifice.”

The ancient Greeks took great delight in the posterior Venus. One can
scarcely express what fervent admirers they were of beautiful buttocks;
it went so far, that young girls competed in public, before an
assemblage sitting as it were in another “Judgment of Paris” to
pronounce which of them was the most gifted in that respect. Athenaeus
(XII., 80) informs us that in the environs of Syracuse a villager had
two daughters who often quarrelled as to which of them had the finest
posteriors; one day they showed them on the highway to a young man from
Syracuse, who chanced to be passing, and asked him to adjudicate between
them. He decided in favour of the elder sister, fell at once violently
in love with her, and on his return home he told his younger brother
what had befallen him. The latter went forthwith to see the two girls,
and became enamoured of the younger. Soon they got married to the two
youths, who were opulent, and they were called by their fellow-citizens
the _Callipygi_, because, although of lowly birth, their posteriors
served them for a dowry. Full of gratitude, they dedicated a temple to
Venus, under the title of Venus Callipygos (Venus of the beauteous

It will not surprise you, that any young girl remarkable for her
beautiful posteriors amongst her companions was all the more in request
for the puerile office, and all the more disposed to lend herself to it.
Mania consented to it in favour of Demetrius, as testified by Machon, in
Athenaeus (XIII., 42), when the king wanting to enjoy her buttocks, she
accepts his gift, and says:

    “Son of Agamemnon, it is now _your_ turn to have them.[28]”

A certain young man, Ponticus by name, exacted the same corollary in the
morning from Gnathena, whom he had possessed all night; it is again
Machon who tells us the story (_ibid._, XIII., 43). Demophon, the minion
of Sophocles, asked the same favour of Nico[29] who being famed for the
beauty of her buttocks,—“she is said to have had an exceedingly
beautiful bottom”—was afraid he might lend them to Sophocles (_ibid._,
XII., 45). Gnathaenion (_ibid._, XIII., 44) made an ingenious excuse for
having been similarly complaisant. A certain tinker having ungenerously
boasted he had five times running mounted that little courtesan in that
way, Andronicus, whom she preferred to everybody else, got to hear it,
and reproached her bitterly for having allowed such a blackguard to
enjoy her so abundantly in a posture which his prayers never obtained
from her. Gnathaenion replied that, not caring to have her breasts
handled by a fellow black with dirt and soot, it had appeared to her
better to take that posture, so as to receive the least possible
fraction of the wretched creature’s body. Plate XXVII of the _Monuments
du culte secret des dames romaines_ presents the picture of a man
pedicating a woman.

It is, however, not without some inconvenience, or even danger, that one
lends oneself to the passive part. Aloysia Sigaea, Past-Mistress in the
Sciences of Love, enlightens us on this point:

    “In the first place intolerable sufferings are inflicted upon the
    _patient_, for in most cases he is invaded by too large a stake;
    hence frightful infirmities, incurable by all the art of
    Aesculapius. The confining muscles are ruptured, and consequently
    the excrements cannot be held back and escape. What could be more
    disgusting? I have known noble ladies afflicted with cruel maladies
    to such a degree by eruptions and ulcers, that it took them two or
    three years to recover their health. I myself (Tullia) have not
    escaped scot free from the accursed embraces of Aloysio and
    Fabrizio. When they first forced their darts in, I endured atrocious
    pain, but soon the feeling of slight titillation consoled me....
    When however I reached home again, I felt a burning pain at the
    place they had lacerated: I felt myself consumed by an itching as if
    I were on fire, and in spite of the nursing of Donna Orsini, it cost
    much trouble to extinguish that confounded fire. If my lacerations
    had been neglected, I should have died a miserable death” (Dial.

You understand now why the young slave of Naevolus (Martial, III., 71)
had pain at the anus; why the same Martial, VI., 37 says Carinus’
posteriors had to be cut; and where the sting lies in the following

    “You, who know all the reasons and weighty arguments of the
    sects,—come tell me, what dogma is it bids you be perforated” (IX.,

This effeminate philosopher, who affected to speak as though he had been
the successor and heir of Pythagoras, was indeed bound, if anyone was,
to know the reasons of lacerations[30] of the anus, and the weights of
men’s members. He was accustomed to the passive part, of whom Ausonius
says in mockery, as we saw a little above, that his _clazomenae_ served
as an anvil.

Men preferred to be supposed _pedicators_ rather than _patients_; hence
Martial’s witty epigram:

    “It is now many a long day, Lupus, that Charisianus has been saying
    he cannot pedicate. But whenever his friends asked him why, he said
    his bowels were relaxed” (XI., 89).

Would you see the picture of a man engaged in pedication? he is being
interrupted in the midst of his business, but the drawing is not the
less pleasant for that. The engraving belonging to chapter III. of the
third part of _Félicia_, presents this position.

Who does not know that the Greeks and Roman were intrepid pedicons and
determined cinedes? In the Greek and Latin authors, to the indignation
of the pedagogues, the male Venus parades on every page:

    “All burnt with the same fire”—we are quoting Aloysia Sigaea, and we
    could not express ourselves better or more elegantly. We are,
    however, going to make annotation to this extract,—“all burnt with
    the same fire, the common people, the higher classes, the King. This
    depravity cost Philip, King of Macedon, his life[31]; he died by the
    hand of Pausanias, whom he had outraged.” It subjected Julius Caesar
    to the passion of King Nicomedes[32],—Caesar, “wife of all men, and
    husband of all women”[33].

Augustus did not escape this shame[34], Tiberius[35] and Nero gloried in
it. Nero married Tigellinus[36], and was himself espoused by Sporus[37],
Trajan[38], the best of rulers, was accompanied by a _paedagogium_,
while he marched from victory through the Orient. What he named his
_paegogium_, while he marched from victory to victory through the
Orient. What he named his _paedagogium_ was a troop of pretty lads, well
developed, whom he called day and night to come to his arms. Antinous
served as mistress to Hadrian,—a rival to Plotina, but more fortunate
than she was[39]. The emperor mourned over his death, and placing the
dead man amongst the Gods, he raised altars and temples in his honour.
Antonius Heliogabalus, nephew of Severus, was accustomed, an old author
says[40], to have pleasures administered to him through all the orifices
in his body; his contemporaries looked upon him as a monster. Before
this Venus grave philosophers danced in company with pederasts.
Alcibiades and Phaedo slept with Socrates[41], when they wanted to get
their tutor into good humour. It is from this kind of amours practised
by the venerable man, that is derived the erotic phrase: to love
_Socratically_. Every action and every word of Socrates were held as
sacred by all sects of philosophers; they built a temple and erected an
altar in his honour; all his actions had legal force, and his words the
authority of an oracle. The philosophers did not turn away from the
example set by their Hero (for Socrates took rank with the Heroes) and
new national divinity. Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator, living some
centuries before Socrates, refused the title of a good and deserving
citizen to any man who had not a friend that served him as a concubine.
He willed it that virgins should perform naked on the stage, so that the
view of their charms freely exposed, should dull in men that sensual
longing which by the aid of nature draws them to women, that they might
thus reserve all their passion for their friends and companions. For
what men see every day loses half its effect.

Again, why speak of the Poets?[42] Anacreon[43], was hotly in love with
Bathyllus; almost all pleasantries of Plautus have this subject for
their aim; they are of this kind:

    “I shall do like the lads, I will cower down over a hamper.”[44]

Or again:

    “The soldier’s poniard did it fit your sheath?”[45]

That grand master of the art of poetry, Maro, who won the surname of
Parthenias by his ingenuousness and innate modesty, cherished a certain
Alexander, whom Pollio had given to him as a present, and he has
celebrated him under the name of Alexis[46]. Ovid suffered from the same
malady; he however preferred young girls to lads, because in his
amusement he wanted reciprocal pleasure, and not a selfish enjoyment. He
said he loved the pleasure “of the simultaneous ejaculation of both
parties”[47], and for this reason he was less given to the love of boys.

Young girls and wives finding themselves neglected, the first by those
they loved, the other ones by their husbands, instead of offering their
services only as females, resolved to play the part of the lads. The
depravity became so great that this complaisance was actually extorted
from brides, as it was before from married women; in fact the husband
went at the young wife pederastically, and the two sexes were joined in
one and the same body. In the facetious poems of the ancients,
Priapus[48] threatens every thief of vegetables from his garden that
comes near his weapon, to make him sacrifice what in the first night the
bride accords to her ardent husband, for fear that he may wound another

Making use of his imagination with the licence ever granted both to
painters and poets, Valerius Martial[49] pretends to hear is wife
grumble that she also had buttocks, and that he had not need of boys.
“Juno” she says, “also pleased Jupiter from that side.” The poet is not
to be convinced, he answers her that the part taken by a boy is one
thing, and that of the wife another, and that she ought to be satisfied
with hers.

Under the name-boards[50] and the lamps[51] in the brothels sat[52] boys
as well as girls, the first dressed in the feminine stola, the latter in
the manly tunic, and with their hair dressed like boys. Under the guise
of one sex was found the other. Asia[53] was the original home of this
pest, then Africa got infected, and soon the scourge invaded Greece and
the adjoining countries of Europe[54]. In Thrace Orpheus was the
importer and supporter of this unclean pleasure. The Thracian women,
finding themselves held in contempt....

    “During the sacred feasts and the nocturnal orgies of Bacchus, tore
    the youth to pieces, and bestrewed the wide plains with his limbs.”
    (Virgil, _Georg._ IV., 521, 522.)

It is alleged that in those ancient times the Celts[55] ridiculed those
amongst them who kept aloof from this practice; such could expect
neither civil employment nor honours. Those, that preserved the purity
of their morals were shunned as impure. “In a town where everyone is
mad, it is not good to be alone sane, and by reason of its not being
good it is not advisable.” (Dialogue VI.)

This ends our brilliant extract from Aloysia Sigaea.

Even in our own days[56] the taste for the male Venus has not
disappeared, witness the Persians, who are very much addicted to this
kind of pleasure, as is related by those who have travelled in their
country. Amongst others there is Adam Lhuilier, chapter 15, book V., of
his _Itinerary_. If we may trust to Aloysia Sigaea, the Italians and
Spaniards did it; also the Dutchmen, with whom towards the middle of the
XVIIIth. Century, as J. David Michaëlides tells us in his _Treatise on
the Law of Moses_ (in Dutch), §258, this habit was so much in vogue,
that the punishment of death was hardly of avail against it; also the
Parisians, according to the Author of the _Gynaeology_ (in German, vol.
II., p. 427), a fully competent authority, who adds that in almost all
the great cities of Europe there are to be found plenty of people who,
either being satiated with the ordinary pleasure, or afraid of
infectious diseases, prefer the posterior to the anterior Venus,—the
English always excepted, who abominate this practice. Not to be for ever
talking generalities and never giving definite instances, the cases of
Gonzalvo of Cordova[57] and of Vendôme[58], both of them excellent
Generals, have been made notorious enough by historical documents; to
these we could add other still more illustrious examples, taken from our
own time and made known by a heedless fame; that of a great author, of a
great king, the father of his country, and of a man, who during his life
gained general admiration by the penetration of his intellect, and the
splendour of his language, and whose knowledge embraces all branches of
knowledge, not only the ordinary ones, but the profoundest and most
abstruse[59],—a man that might well propose the riddle of the Sphinx to
his eminent confrère in whom we delight to admire the power of a truly
Ciceronian eloquence, unknown in Germany since the death of the great
Ernesti. These examples, I say, we could easily allege, were we not
apprehensive of raising, quite contrary to our purpose and intention, a
feeling of odium against the pious memory of most distinguished men.

Do you wish for any more? Pacificus Maximus offers a goodly number, both
of the active and the passive parties. _Elegy_ I., p. 107. of the Paris

    “The sole cause of my badness was my master,—the man my father and
    mother incautiously entrusted me to. He was the king of pedicons;
    not one escaped his lust, so artful and winning was he. Many a thing
    I learned, I had better have left unknown; much did I absorb through
    my rectum, much through my lips.”

_Elegy_ II., to Ptolemy (p. 110):

    “For you, ungrateful boy, I keep my treasures all, and no one shall
    enjoy them but yourself; my mentula is growing: while it used to
    measure seven inches, now it measures ten.”

_Elegy_ IV., to Marcus (p. 113):

    “You could not, Marcus, find a better, a more convenient, place, in
    which to meet me; not a spy is here nor witness, neither man nor
    woman can tell tales. Let’s do it under the willows in this verdant
    meadow; the drooping boughs will hide us with their foliage. The
    rivulet will lull us to sleep with its pleasant murmur, and the bird
    that warbles mid the boughs. Hither come, and glide into my lap,
    thou that art torment at once and remedy of my desires!”

_Elegy_ XIV (p. 128):

    “One day Etruscus brought to me a youth, so fair as is seldom seen
    at Jupiter’s board: “I give him up to you”, he said, “lay hold of
    him, that he may cling to you both day and night. May the gods grant
    you love him well; he will be wise if you but pedicate him.”

    And I: “I like this liberty conceded to my passion; I shall always
    be obliged to you. Be sure this child, good as he is, will be better
    still in future; he will suck my wisdom in through many places.”

    Joyful he goes, joyful I seize hold of my prey; delay, however
    short, seems long to me. Oh, father proved in virtue! the one
    blameless man, the one sage in this great town! The master lays
    hands upon the lad’s posteriors, the lad grasps the master’s member.
    Think you, ye unlearned, he will learn in this fashion? Oh, lucky
    boy, to have me for a teacher! oh lucky fate, that gave you such a

_Elegy_ XV (p. 131):

    “If the member is dead, the voluptuous wish is still alive; if the
    old man can no longer pedicate, he still wants to.”

_Elegy_ XX (p. 139):

    “My member is so little, this part of me so dwindled, I almost think
    I never had one, or that it has disappeared; my finger cannot feel,
    my eye cannot see it,—fate has been but niggardly to me. I could be
    your attendant, Cybelé, without operation, I need no shard of glass,
    I am a castrated priest already. And still—it is a shame, but must
    be confessed; there is no worser lad than I in all the world. As
    soon as ever I could, I served the filthy Venus, for the hand of
    Pederasts had drawn me to it; a thousand members and big ones,
    churned in my inside, and day and night my anus was in quest. If
    only my passive action could have profited my member, when erect it
    would have touched my head, when limp my feet; but nothing did it
    good, it never grew. And what I did, perhaps only made it worse.
    Every boy likes to see his member grow, get big enough to amply fill
    his hand.”

But enough of pedication; irrumation is our next business.

                       FOOTNOTES - ON PEDICATION


Footnote 20:

  _Drawk_, from —, I work, execute; for _dravicus_, as _cautus_ for
  _cavitus_, _lautus_ for _lavitus_.

Footnote 21:

  Catamite according to Festus, is the same thing as Ganymede, the
  minion of Jupiter; the Latins, by similar corruption of words,
  pronounced _Proserpina_ for _Persephone_, _Aesculapius_ for
  _Asclepios_, _Carthago_ for _Carchedo_, _Pollux_ for _Polydeukes_,
  _Sybilla_ for _Siobulé_, _masturbare_ for _manu stuprare_.

Footnote 22:

  Thus Oenothea, to excite the lad’s feeble nerve, pushes a leathern
  mentula (member) into Eucolpius’ anus (Petronius, 138): “Oenothea
  fetches a leathern contrivance; this she first oiled and sprinkled
  with pepper and crushed nettle-seeds, and then proceeded to push
  little by little up my anus.” We shall have to speak in chapter VI of
  another use of these leathern tools.

Footnote 23:

  According to the author of the _Gynaeology_ (German edition, vol.
  III., p. 392) there are to be found at this day in the London brothels
  women who make it their business to flagellate customers who desire

Footnote 24:

  In order to appease the ardours of the anus, the Siphnians (Siphnos,
  one of the Cyclades) were in the habit of introducing a finger up the
  anus. The Greeks called this proceeding to _siphnianize_. Suidas:
  _Siphnianize_,—to finger the posterior.

Footnote 25:

  Always, however, excepting the head, for they took great care of their
  head of hair. Horace, Ode X., book IV., says to Ligurinus:

      “When those curls are gone, that now descend to your

  And (Epode XI., v. 40-43): “Nothing”, he says, “will take away his
  love for Lyciscus, save another love for a plump youth, tying up his
  long hair.” In the same sense Martial speaks of _Capillati_ (III., 58;
  II., 57), and of _Comati_ (XII., 99).

Footnote 26:

  To depilate one’s armpits was, however considered as being necessary
  to the cleanliness of the body: “One man keeps himself tidy, another
  neglects himself more than is right; one man depilates his legs,
  another does not depilate even his armpits.” (Seneca, letter CXIV.)

Footnote 27:

  The Greeks did not disdain this strange practice any more than the
  Romans. Aristophanes, in the _Lysistrata_ (v. 89).

  “My affair will be tidy with the couchgrass pluck’d off.” In the
  “Frogs” he speaks of dancing girls barely arrived at puberty beginning
  to tear off the fur” (v. 519); in the _Thesmophoriazusae_ again there
  is mentioned “a _mons Veneris_ plucked clean” (v. 719). That the
  Greeks preferred a bare pubis to a furred one, though we may be of a
  different opinion, is apparent from another passage of Aristophanes,
  in the _Lysistrata_, v. 151, 2, where a smooth pubis is represented as
  a chief incitement to virile ardour:

      “If we were to go naked with a smooth pubis, our husband’s members
      would stand, and they would be fain to have us.”

  As to old women, they likewise denuded their pubis of the bristles in
  order to appear less decrepit. Martial, X., 90.

      “Ligella, do you pluck your old affair, and stir the ashes of your
      burnt-out fire?”

      Refinements such as those are for young maidens; you are in error
      if you think that thing a vulva that a man’s member will no longer

  The depilation of the vulva was also used as a punishment.

  Aristophanes, _Thesmophoriazusae_, 545, 6.

      “We will pluck her pubis, and teach her so, woman as she is, not
      to speak ill of women.”

  The same punishment was inflicted upon adulterous women taken in the
  act; a black radish or a mullet was introduced into her anus, which
  was then depilated, as well as her pubis, with burning cinders.
  Aristophanes, _Clouds_, 1079:

      “What, must you suffer the empalement with the radish, and the hot

  Suetonius, under the word ——: “Thus they treated adulteresses who had
  been caught in the act: they took black radishes and planted them in
  their anus, which they rubbed with hot cinders, after having torn out
  the hair.”

Footnote 28:

  To understand this, the sentence must be complete; the worthy Forberg
  takes his readers far too learned; Mania, in the poem of Machon, says
  to Demetrius, offering her buttocks: “Son of Agamemnon, it is now
  _your_ turn to have them,—you who have ever been so liberal with your
  own.” (Note of the translator.)

Footnote 29:

  The following is the passage from Machon, as quoted by Athenaeus;
  without a knowledge of it Forberg’s allusion remains obscure:

      “... Demophon, Sophocles’ minion, when still a youth had Nico,
      already old and surnamed the she-goat; they say she had very fine
      buttocks. One day, he begged of her to lend them to him. ‘Very
      well,’ she said with a smile,—‘Take from me, dear, what you give
      to Sophocles.’” (Note of the translator.)

Footnote 30:

  _Secta_, sect (from _sequor_) may also be derived from _secare_, to
  cut, and thus mean: laceration. (Note of the translator.)

Footnote 31:

  Justinus tells the tale somewhat differently: “Pausanias had had to
  undergo since his puberty the violence of Attalus, who added to this
  indignity a crying outrage: having invited him to a feast and made him
  drunk, he not only satisfied upon him, when full of wine, his brutal
  lust, but allowed him to be used by all the guests like a vile
  courtesan, and made him the laughing stock of his equals. Unable to
  bear this infamy, Pausanias carried his complaint before Philip many
  and many a time, but the King always put him off with illusory
  promises. When Pausanias however saw Attalus elevated to the rank of
  the Chief of the Army, his fury turned against Philip, and the
  vengeance which he could not take upon his enemy, he took upon the
  iniquitous judge.” (IX., 6).

Footnote 32:

  Suetonius, _Julius Caesar_, ch. 48: “Not content with having written
  in some of his letters that Cæsar was conducted by the guards to the
  bed-chamber of the King, slept there in a golden bed hung with purple,
  and that he allowed the bloom of his youth to be blighted in Bithynia,
  Cicero said to him one day in the midst of the Senate, where Cæsar was
  defending the case of Nysa, the daughter of King Nicomedes, and spoke
  of his obligations to that King: Pray, let us pass over all this; it
  is only too well known what you have received, and what you have

  On the day of his triumph over the Gauls, the soldiers sung the
  following verses, amongst those which are usually sung behind the
  triumphal car, and they are well known.

      “Cæsar has subdued the Gauls, and Nicomedes Cæsar: this day is
      Cæsar triumphant for having subdued the Gauls, and Nicomedes, who
      subdued Cæsar, has no triumph.”

  Catullus (_carm._ 57):

      “How well they go together, those shameless cinedes, Mamurra the
      _patient_, and Cæsar.”

Footnote 33:

  Suetonius, _Julius Cæsar_, ch. 51: Nor yet did he respect the conjugal
  bed in the provinces; this appears from the distich, also sung by the
  soldiers at the triumphal entry:

      “Citizens mind your wives; we bring you the bald-headed adulterer.
      You expended gold in Gaul; here you are taking your change.”

  The same author (_Julius Cæsar_, ch. 52) says: “Helvius Cinna, tribune
  of the people, admitted to many people, that he had drawn up and kept
  ready a law by the instructions of Cæsar, to bring it forward during
  his absence, by which he would be at liberty, with a view to leaving
  offspring, to marry whom he would and as many wives as he wished. So
  that nobody should be in any doubt about the notoriety of his lewdness
  and infamy, Curio, the elder, in one of his pleadings, calls him the
  husband of all women, and the wife of all husbands.”

Footnote 34:

  “Sextus Pompeius reproached him for being effeminate, and Marc Anthony
  says he bought his adoption from his uncle (or rather his great-uncle)
  by prostituting himself to him. On a day of public games all the world
  understood and applied to him very demonstratively the following
  verses, spoken of a Priest of Cybelé, Mother of the Gods, playing the

      “See you how a cinede governs the world with a finger?”
      (Suetonius, _Augustus_, ch. 68.)

  A picture representing Augustus playing the part of a _patient_, is in
  the _Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars_, pl. VI., and
  another of Cæsar and Nicomedes, pl. I.

Footnote 35:

  “It is even said, that during a sacrifice, he could not restrain
  himself, smitten with the pretty face of the incense-bearer; the
  divine service barely finished, he took the youth aside, and debauched
  him, and then did as much for his brother, who played the flute. Soon
  afterwards he ordered their legs to be broken, because they reproached
  each other with their infamy.” (Suetonius, _Tiberius_, ch. 44). The
  act of this madman is represented on pl. XX. in the work of
  d’Hancarville, cited on a previous page.

Footnote 36:

  And also Pythagoras. “One would have thought that nothing was left for
  him in the way of debauchery, and that he had reached the limits of
  depravity, if he had not a few days later chosen out of this infamous
  herd a certain Pythagoras, whom he took for his husband with all the
  solemnity of a marriage. The _flammeum_ was put on the Emperor’s head,
  the auspices were consulted, neither dowry nor nuptial torches were
  forgotten; all was done openly, even those things, which, if done with
  a woman, are hidden by the night.” (Tacitus, _Annals_, XV., 37). The
  man called Pythagoras by Tacitus, appears to be the same to whom
  Suetonius (_Nero_, ch. 29), gives the name of Doryphorus, either on
  account of his services, or by mistake. “He took for husband the
  freedman Doryphorus in the same way in which Sporus had taken him
  himself for husband, and he counterfeited the cries and sobbings of
  virgins when losing their maidenhead.” Plate XXXVIII of the above
  quoted work shows an illustration of this anecdote.

Footnote 37:

  “He went so far as to try to change a young man into a woman; his name
  was Sporus, and he had him castrated; having given him a dowry, he
  caused him to be brought to him with the _flammeum_ on his head, and
  married him with all the nuptial solemnities. There has come down to
  us an appropriate saying on somebody’s part, namely, whether it might
  not have been better for human kind if Domitian, his father, had
  married a woman of that sort. He made Sporus dress himself in the
  costume of the Empresses, and had him carried in his litter; he
  travelled with him in that way, taking him through the meetings and
  markets in Greece, and soon after in Rome, about the time of the
  Sigillarian festivities, kissing him from time to time.” (Suetonius,
  _Nero_, ch. 28). Plate XXXIV in the repeatedly quoted French work,
  gives a representation of the abominable wedding.

Footnote 38:

  “He (Hadrian) enjoyed the affection of Trajan, but this did not save
  him from the malevolence of the pedagogues of the young boys Trajan
  loved so ardently” (Spartianus, _Hadrian_, ch. 2).

Footnote 39:

  “He lost, during his navigation of the Nile, his dear Antinous, and
  wept for him like a woman. There are sundry allegations about this
  Antinous; some say he was devoted to Hadrian, others point to the
  beauty of his shape, and to the pleasure Hadrian experienced with him.
  At the instance of Hadrian the Greeks placed him in the ranks of the
  Gods, and affirmed that he gave oracular decisions; those oracles, it
  is said, were composed by Hadrian himself” (Spartianus, _Hadrian_, ch.
  14). St. Jerome says in the _Hegesippus_: “Antinous, a slave of the
  Emperor Hadrian, after whom a circus was named the Antinoian, founded
  also a town bearing his name (Antinoia), and established an Oracle in
  the temple.”

Footnote 40:

  “Who, indeed, could put up with a ruler who imbibed pleasure through
  all the cavities in his body? Not even a beast would be suffered to do
  so. At Rome his only care was to send out emissaries, who had to look
  out for and to bring to the court the best shaped men for his
  enjoyment. He had a performance of the comedy of “Paris” in his
  palace, played the part of Venus himself, and suddenly dropping his
  clothes, he appeared naked with one hand on his chest and the other
  covering his pudenda; he then knelt down and offered his raised
  buttocks to his pedicon” (Lampridius, _Heliogabalus_, ch. 5). And a
  little farther on: “He loved Hierocles to such a degree as to kiss his
  virile parts, a thing I blush to report; he said that he thus
  celebrated the Floralia” (_Ibid._, ch. 6). He did not hesitate to
  repeat the infamous wedding of Nero with Pythagoras: “Zoticus had such
  a power over him that the principal officials of the state treated him
  as though he really were the husband of the Emperor. He married him,
  and made him consummate the marriage in the presence of the giver away
  of the bride, telling him, “Push in, Magira!” And this was done at a
  time when Zoticus was ill” (Lampridius, ch. 10). Zoticus was called
  Magira on account of the profession of his father, who had been a

Footnote 41:

  Socrates, as is well known, has not been in want of warm defenders;
  Brucker (_Critical History of Philosophy_, I., pp. 539, 540), may
  stand for all of them. Undoubtedly Plato, in _Symposium_, brought in
  Alcibiades, who says he recollects, to use the expression of Cornelius
  Nepos (_Alcibiades_, ch. 2.) “to have passed a night with Socrates,
  but not otherwise than a son might with his father.” But Xantippe, and
  it is not surprising, was indignant that her husband should be on such
  familiar terms with a good-looking youth like Alcibiades; and Aelian
  (_Varide Historiae_, XI., 12), relates that she stamped upon a cake
  sent by Alcibiades, which made Socrates laugh and cry out: “What are
  you doing? You cannot eat it now. I do not care for it at all!” But,
  Socrates! good morals and such friends are incompatible. Enough to
  name amongst the disciples of Socrates Plato, whom Diogenes Laërtius
  (III., 23), declares to have loved Aster, Phaedrus, Alexis, and before
  all Dion; he quotes an epigram of Plato on Dion, ending thus:

      “O you, who have so fiercely burnt my heart with love, you Dion!”

Footnote 42:

  Valerius Maximus (IX., 12) relates of Pindar: “One day, at the
  Gymnasium, Pindar, leaning his head against the breast of a young lad,
  whom he loved above all (Suidas says his name was Theoxenes), fell
  asleep; no sooner had the head of the establishment seen him asleep
  than he ordered all the doors to be closed, for fear of the poet being
  awakened.” Athenaeus on his part (XIII., 81) tells us of Sophocles:
  “Sophocles loved boys to the same degree as Euripides loved women”;
  and a little farther on (ch. 82) he relates the story of a youth whom
  Sophocles enjoyed, but at the price of his mantle, which the rogue
  abstracted. Euripides, having been informed of this adventure, mocked
  the poet for having been thus done: “I also”, he said, “have had him,
  but he got nothing else out of me.” I am surprised that this passage
  of Athenaeus should have appeared doubtful to the celebrated Casaubon,
  on account of the expression “got out of me” which is quite correct
  and applicable. Sophocles and Euripides had both lavished their white
  fluids upon the little rogue; but from one of them he got besides a
  mantle, from the other nothing else.

Footnote 43:

  “No less fiercely burned the love of Anacreon of Teos, they say, for
  the Samian youth Bathyllus” (Horace, _Epodes_, XIV., 9, 10).

Footnote 44:

  The actual words of Plautus are:

      “I must do the puerile service: I will cower down over a hamper”
      (_Cistellaria_ IV., sc. I., v. 5),—which means, I will bend down
      to the hamper, raising the buttocks, and thus present them to the
      pedicon. This is, in fact, what is called, the “puerile office”,
      and which Apuleius (_Metam._ III., ch. 2), calls “the puerile
      corollary.” Martial, IX., 68 says simply, “_illud puerile_.”
      _Conquinescere_ is according to Nonius, p. 531, Gottfried’s
      edition, to curve the spine, an expression designating in
      particular the passive posture as we have seen in the _Pseudolus_:

      “When he curves the spine, then simultaneously wriggle your

  Some authors have also used a still more forcible expression,
  “_Ocquinescere_,” vis., “to cower low down” (Nonius, p. 567).
  Pomponius, on word “_Prostibulum_”: “I have never forced pedication
  upon any citizen; I have always abstained, unless the patient had
  asked me and cowered down of his own free will.” And on word
  “_Pistor_”: “Unless somebody anticipated my desires, willingly
  crouching down so that I could do the thing securely.” This position
  of the patient cowering down is very rarely alluded to; the question
  generally turns upon his kneeling. “Thus,” says Lampridius of
  Heliogabalus, he offered himself with the buttocks raised to the
  pedicon” (ch. 5). Heliogabalus was kneeling, and not crouching. The
  same is the case with Timarchus in Lucian: “All that were near you
  remember it; they have seen you on your knees, while your accomplice
  did you know what” (_Apophras_, p. 152, vol. VII.—Works of Lucian
  edit. by J.-P. Schmid). If you would like to see these two postures,
  you will find them in the _Monuments de la vie privée des douze
  Césars_, pl. XXVII., a _patient_ crouching, and pl. XXXVIII., a
  _patient_ kneeling.

  From the fact that men wanting to void their excrement when out of
  doors cower down, it has come about that passive pederasts were said
  to sh...t,—in fact to sh...t the active party’s member as it goes in
  and out of the anus. Hence in the _Priapeia_, LXX.:

      “Look at me, thief, and realize the weight of the member you will
      have to sh...t.” Martial, IX., 70 also plays on the word:

      “When you love a woman, Polycharmus, you always sh...t before you
      have done. Tell me, Polycharmus, what you do, when you pedicate?”

Footnote 45:

  _Pseudolus_, IV., sc. VII., 85.

Footnote 46:

  You might very well, Aloysia, have quoted Horace too (_Epodes_, XI):

      “Now Lyciscus holds me in love-bonds, from which neither friendly
      advice, nor humiliating affronts avail to liberate me.”

  And _Satires_, I., ii, v. 116-119.

      “When your privates are swelling, if some maid-servant or
      slave-boy is at hand for you to assail forthwith, do you choose
      rather to burst with desire? Nay! not I!”

Footnote 47:

  _Art of Love_, II., 683, 684.

Footnote 48:

  _Priapeia_, II.

Footnote 49:

  _Epigr._ 44, book IX:

      “Catching me with a boy, you harass me with your cries, and you
      tell me, my wife, that you have posteriors too.”

      Many and many a time did Juno say the same to Jupiter the
      Thunderer; yet he continued to sleep with slender Ganymede.

      He of Tyrius, laying his bow aside, bent Hylas under him; think
      you therefore that Megara was without buttocks? Dephné, by her
      flight, vexed Phœbus, but his love’s ardour found relief in the
      end in the boy Oebalius. Although Briseis slept, often with her
      backs turned upon him, his smooth-skinned friend Patroclus was
      more to the taste of the son of Aeacus.

      Cease then, wife, to call your affairs by masculine names; better
      consider you have two vulvas.

  His Epigram XII., 98, treats of the same matter:

      “Knowing as you do the honest walk and fidelity of your husband,
      and that he never misuses your bed with concubines, why, foolish
      woman, torment yourself about those venal boy lovers,—brief and
      fugitive is the pleasure from their complaisance!

      They are more useful to you than to their master, I tell you, for
      they make him think that one wife is better than they all. They
      give what you will not give;—But I will, you say, so that the
      volatile husband stray not from the conjugal bed.

      But it is not the same thing, I want a fig not an orange, and you
      must know theirs is a fig, yours an orange; Look! a matron, a
      woman like you, must know what belongs to her. Leave to boys what
      is theirs, and do you make the best of what is yours.”

Footnote 50:

  Some prostitutes sat (Plautus, _Poenulus_, I., ii., v. 54), others
  stood: “Another man will only have the harlot that stands upright in
  the unclean brothel,” (Horace, _Sat._ I., ii., v. 30.)

Footnote 51:

  Juvenal’s _Messalina_ (VI., v. 123) prostitutes herself “under the
  fictitious name-board of Lycisca.” Petronius: “I see men gliding in
  stealthily between the name-boards and the naked prostitutes; I
  understood, alas, too late, that I had been introduced into a bad
  place.” (_Satyr._ ch. 7.) Martial, XI., 46:

      “When you pass the threshold of a chamber with name-board over the
      door, whether it be a boy or a girl that greeted you with a

  That the prostitutes changed their names is apparent from a passage in
  Plautus (_Poenulus_, V., iii, 20, 21):

      “For to-day they were to change their names, and will lend their
      bodies for infamous traffic.”

Footnote 52:

  Horace, _Sat. II._, vii, 48, 49:

      “... Every woman that naked beneath the bright lamplight endured
      the thrusts of a swollen member.”

  Juvenal, VI., 130, 131.

      “Foul with the reek of the lamp, she bore to the Imperial couch
      the stink of the brothel.”

Footnote 53:

  Authors vary on this point. Herodotus: “The Persians pollute young
  boys; they have learned it from the Greeks,” (I., 135). Plutarch
  refutes the assertion: “How can the Persians be indebted to the Greeks
  for these impurities, when all historians are agreed upon the fact
  that they had eunuchs before they had ever come near to the Grecian
  seas?” (_Of the Maliciousness of Herodotus_, p. 857, vol. II of
  Frankfort edition of 1620). _Athenaeus_: “Pederastia was first
  introduced in Greece by the Cretans, as is related by Timaeus; other
  authors however have asserted that the man who first imported that
  sort of love was Laius, who, having been hospitably received by
  Pelops, fell in love with Chrysippus, the son of his host, carried him
  off in his chariot, and fled to Thebes.” (XIII., 79.) And who has not
  heard of the incontinence of the inhabitants of Sodom?”

Footnote 54:

  Particularly in Euboea, whence the expression, “Chalcidize”, meaning,
  according to Hesychius, to pedicate, because masculine loves
  flourished among the Chalcidians. “Phicidize” is another expression
  for the same thing from the name of a town now unknown; Suidas:
  “Phicidize, to be a Pederast”, and similarly, “Siphnianize” from
  Siphnos, an island in the Ægean; Hesychius says: “Siphnianize, that is
  to finger the anus; the inhabitants of Siphnos are, in fact, given to
  the practice of pederastia.” We have seen above that the meaning of
  Siphnianize has been perverted.

Footnote 55:

  _Athenaeus_, XIII., 79: “Of all the barbarians the Celts, although
  their women are most beautiful—it is, therefore, not surprising that
  an ardent amateur of “fine women,” such as Julius Caesar is described
  to us, should in the Gallic Provinces have been not over respectful to
  the conjugal bed—the Celts take more pleasure in pederastia than any
  other Nation, to such a degree that amongst them it is no rarity to
  find a man lying between two minions.”

Footnote 56:

  Pardon me, illustrious Marcus Pullarius, for having almost forgotten
  you. Ausonius, _Epigr._ LXX.:

      “Which Marcus? The one they call the “cat that catches boys”, he
      who tarnishes all the purity of childhood, who plies with his
      back-door tool the rearward Venus, the poet Lucilius’ _subulo_,
      his _pullipremo_.”

  Ausonius calls him the pullarian cat, because he hunted after young
  lads (puelli) as the cat gives chase to birds; he calls him, applying
  to him the same epithets as “Lucilius, who Satires he had the
  opportunity of reading,—more fortunate in this than we,—a _subulo_”
  (from _subula_, an awl), wanting to make it understood that with his
  member he transfixed, like a cobbler with his awl, the anus of
  cinedes; and _pullipremo_, from his compressing in his work young

Footnote 57:

  “Menacing with his couched lance some youth (he was a determined
  pedicon), he would say he intended to go to Aversa, a famous town”
  (Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue VII.).

Footnote 58:

  See the “History of the Eighteenth Century”, by Christ. Dan. Voss (in
  German, Part V., p. 364). As to pedicons of less exalted position, of
  whom mention is made by the widow of Philip, first Duke of Orleans,
  (in her amusing letters, pp. 74, 284, 350), which appeared about
  thirty years ago, there are: the Cardinal de Bouillon, the Chevalier
  de Lorraine, the Comte de Marsan, François Louis, Prince de Conti.
  These together with the Comte de Varmandois, a cinede this last, must
  rest content to appear in a mere foot-note.

Footnote 59:

  Do not misunderstand what I say. It is not for an honest man to
  sharpen his wits at the expense of another’s book.


                              CHAPTER III

                           OF IRRUMATION[60]

TO put the member in erection into another’s mouth is called to
_irrumate_, a word, which in its proper sense means to give the breast;
in fact, according to _Nonius_, p. 579 (Gottfried’s edition), the
Ancients called the bosom _ruma_. The verge, introduced into the mouth,
wants to be tickled either by the lips or the tongue, and sucked; the
party who does this service to the penis is a fellator or sucker, for
with the Ancients _fellare_ meant to suck, also according to _Nonius_,
p. 547. The equivalent to _fellare_ in Greek is ——.

The Lesbians are believed to be the inventors of this particular
nastiness. The Scholiast, in verse 1337 of the _Wasps_ of Aristophanes,
cites Theopompus as vouching for the fact.

This is the reason why the Greeks apply the expression “Lesbianize” or
“Lesbize” to those who imitated the Lesbian usages, either as
_irrumants_, or as _fellators_. Suidas: “Lesbianize—to defile the mouth;
the Lesbians are in fact believed to give themselves to these shameful
acts.” The same author says under the word, “_Siphnianize_,—to
_Lesbianize_, that is to use the mouth abominably.”[61] Aristophanes has
employed the word in the sense of _sucking_ (_Wasps_, 1337).

    “Look, how cleverly I kept you away, when you wanted to Lesbianize
    the guests.”

And again in the _Frogs_ 1343:

    “Has this Muse never used the Lesbian mode?”[62]

But Hesychius has employed it for _irrumate_: “Lesbianize, to defile a
man’s mouth.”

Lesbianize and Phœnicianize are generally used conjointly, as though
this practice had been equally common among the Phœnicians. Lucian says
in his _Apophras_ (ch. 26):

    “In the name of the Gods tell me what you are thinking of, when it
    is bruited about publicly that you Lesbianize and Phœnicianize?”

What the difference between the two may be is not known. At any rate
Timarchus, who is so bitterly attacked by Lucian, was a _fellator_, as
may be readily gathered from the following. Timarchus, having arrived at
Cyzicus to be present at a wedding feast, was turned out of doors
(_ibid._, ch. 26), the mistress of the house upbraiding him in these
words for the impurity of his mouth: “I would not have in my house a man
who must have a man himself!” The passage preceding the above is still
plainer and more to the point: What does the man reproach Timarchus
with, who has surprised him kneeling before a young lad (_ibid._, ch.
21), and who says farther on, “that he had seen him at work”, if this
does not apply to a _fellator_? Besides, what is the meaning of that
sore throat contracted by him in Egypt (_ibid._, ch. 27), where
according to rumour, he had been nearly suffocated by a sailor, who fell
upon him and stopped his mouth? Whence that nickname of the Cyclops
(_ibid._, ch. 28), which was given to him, because one day, when he was
lying drunk on the ground, a young man, “with an upstanding stake
exceeding well sharpened”, threw himself upon him, to force it into his
mouth, as Ulysses did with the eye of the Cyclops, “A new Cyclops, with
the mouth open at full stretch, you let him burst your cheeks.” It is
useless to add to this the passages with respect to those who repel his
kisses (ch. 23), or as to the use to which he puts his tongue (ch. 25),
for it is doubtful whether they are addressed to a _fellator_ or a
_cunnilingue_ (a licker of the vulva). That Timarchus was no stranger to
_irrumation_, seems implied (ch. 17) by the apostrophe, “Are you not all
that?” the more so as previously Lucian’s saying: “If any one sees a
cinede do or suffer the shameful act...” makes it apparent that the
active part was also one of the vices of Timarchus. Lucian could
therefore justly say of this Timarchus, that he Lesbianized and
Phœnicianized, if he wanted to imply by one of these words, “sucking”,
and by the other, “irrumating.” But it is uncertain which of these words
means “to suck”, and which “to irrumate.” But what does this matter?
There is no doubt that Lucian intended to make this distinction.
Phœnicianize might even be applied to a _cunnilingue_[63], an expression
which we shall dilate upon presently. Needless therefore in this place
to give examples of women who allowed their vulvas to be licked.

Very remarkable is a passage of Galen in book X., _De vi simplicium_, in
which he makes a distinction between Lesbianize and Phœnicianize,
demonstrating that the one is more shameful than the other:

    “It is worse for an honest man to be spoken of as an eater of
    excrements than as being a defiler or a cinede; and amongst the
    defilers we execrate such as Phœnicianize more than those who
    Lesbianize. The latter I consider to be doing what is as bad as the
    habit of drinking menstrual discharge.[64]”

Galen means by this that the man who uses human excrements as medicine
is considered worse than a fellator or a cinede; that amongst the
fellators the Phœnicianists are more abominable than the Lesbianists.
There can therefore be no doubt that he designates the action of the
_fellators_ by the word Phœnicianizing, and by Lesbianizing that of the
_irrumants_. In fact, as he judges those the worst who come nearest to
the eaters of excrements, he could not detest less those who defile
their mouths by fellation than those who defile the mouths of other
people by irrumation; similarly he could not help holding in abhorrence
the _cunnilingues_ and the drinkers of menses, of whom more later on.

But the Lesbians found imitators. The inhabitants of Nola were in bad
repute amongst the Ancients in that respect; in Ausonius, _Epigr._
LXXI., Crispa, a fellatrix, is said to practice the business “with which
an unprecedented effeminacy inspired the people of Nola.” However, here
is this spirited epigram in its entirety:

    “Over and above the intimate joys of legitimate love, hateful lust
    has found out other foul modes of pleasure, of the sort the
    loneliness of Lesbos taught Hercules’ heir, of the sort smooth
    tongued Afranius in his actor’s gown displayed upon the stage, of
    the sort an unprecedented effeminacy inspired the men of Nola with.
    Crispa, with but one body, yet practises them all: masturbates,
    fellates, works by either orifice,—dreading to die in vain before
    she has tried every mode.”

To explain,—of course Crispa did not neglect to have herself entered in
the usual way; these are “the intimate joys of legitimate love.” Then
she allowed herself to be pedicated; this is the vice of Philoctetes,
the inheritor of the arrows of Hercules, as also Afranius, of whom
Quintilian says: “He excelled in the Roman comedy; a pity that he
polluted his plays with infamous masculine amours! He thus bore witness
against his own morals” (_Inst. Orat._, X., I). Further Crispa did not
fail to allow herself to be _irrumated_, this is, “the vice their
unprecedented effeminacy instilled into the men of Nola.” Lastly the
whole is recapitulated quite plainly in the last line but one; to
masturbate is the genus, while to fellate, and to work by one and the
other orifices are so many species, three altogether.

There are authors who think that the celebrated riddle of Coelius in
Quintilian: _Clytaemnestram quadrantariam, in triclinio coam, in
cubiculo nolam_ (_Instit. Orat._, VIII., 6 p. 747), refers to a woman of
the name of Nola, she being a _fellatrix_ after the fashion of the
Nolans. But I prefer the interpretation of Alciatus; he believes that
the woman in question was Clodia, the notorious sister of Clodius, and
wife of Metellus, called _Coa_, because she liked coitus on the open
triclinium, and _Nola_ because she refused the same in bed. Spalding
evinces surprise at the want of exactitude, which the word
_quadrantaria_ would have in that case. To me that appears like looking
for knots in a rush. Why should we not suppose Clodia, disgusted, like
Messalina, by the facility of her adulteries, to have been drawn into
extraordinary excesses[65] to such a point that she would no longer have
commerce with men in the dark, but only in the glare of lighted torches,
as Martial confesses in speaking of himself (XI., 104):

“You love the game in the dark, I like it by lamp-light; my delight is
to make my entry with light to see by,”—and in the presence of living
witness, that she might be seen, if not actually on her back, at any
rate going away for it or just coming back afterwards. Do you think that
indecency could not possibly go so far? What did Augustus do, whom Marc
Anthony, according to Suetonius, “reproached for having at a festival
taken the wife of a Consular from the triclinium to a bedroom, in the
presence of her husband, and afterwards conducted her back to the table
with her face all on fire and her hair in disorder?” (_Augustus_, ch.
69). And Caligula, according to the same Suetonius, “when a guest at a
wedding-feast said to Piso, who was sitting close by him: “Do not push
up so close to my wife!” and immediately after made her rise from the
table and took her away with him” (_Calig._, ch. 25). The same author,
(_Calig._, ch. 36), speaking of the most illustrious Roman ladies, tells
us that Caligula “invited them to dinner with their husbands, passing
them in review before him, he examined them with the minute attention of
a slave dealer, lifting their heads up if any of them bowed them down
with shame. As often as he felt inclined, he left the triclinium and
took the chosen fair one aside with him; then after returning to the
room with the traces of his doing still upon him, he would praise or
criticize these ladies openly, speaking of the beauties or blemishes of
their bodies, and even how often he had repeated the enjoyment.” Horace
again speaks of an adulterous woman (_Odes_, III., vi, 25-32):

    “Soon she looks out for fresher adulterous pleasures, while the
    husband is drunk; and does not care to whom she grants the furtive
    forbidden pleasures, which with the torches extinguished, she is
    ready to give and take. Nay! she does not care for her very
    husband’s presence, and with his knowledge she rises to meet
    whosoever may call, say a merchant, say the commander of a Spanish
    ship in harbour, who buys her favours by tariff!”

Again look at the feast of the Pope, Alexander VI., whom we have already
mentioned for your profit and amusement in our _Hermaphroditus_[66].

Is this evidence enough to satisfy you as to these _Coae_ of the
triclinium? Well! it was after this fashion Clodia preferred to be had.
Alone with a solitary lover in bed and no one by, she refused
(_nolebat_); in public on the triclinium, she was willing enough for
coition (_volebat coire_). Hence the jest; she was _Coa_ and _Nola_.
Coelius might have put it still more plainly; on the triclinium she was
_Vola_, in bed _Nola_.

It was not the inhabitants of Nola only who were addicted to the Lesbian
vice, the Oscans[67] generally were considered to be very much given
that way, so much so that certain authors trace to them (the Osci), in
earlier times called the Opsci or Opici, the etymology of the word
“Obscene”, Festus, p. 553:

    “In almost all the old treatises the word is written _Opicum_
    instead of _Oscum_; it is from the name of this people that
    shameless and impudent expressions are called obscene, because
    indulgence in filthy debauchery was very common among the Oscans.”

The Ancients employed many forms of circumlocution to convey the meaning
of their filthy practices. For instance, instead of _irrumate_, they
said: to offend the mouth[68], corrupt the mouth[69], to attack the
head[70], to defy to the face[71], insult the head, not to spare the
head[72], to split open the mouth[73], gain the heights[74], mount to
loftier regions[75], compress the tongue[76], to indulge in abominable
intercourse[77], and instead of receiving the member into the mouth they
said: to lend the mouth in kind complaisance[78], work with the
mouth[79], lick men’s middle parts[80], lick simply[81], or lastly to be
silent[82]. Just as Persius has employed the word _cevere_, to wriggle
in the sense of flattering, so Catullus uses _irrumate_ as meaning to
treat ignominiously[83].

It is thus he complains of having been irrumated by Memmius XXVIII., 9,

    “Oh, Memmius, well and long and leisurely, laid on my back all the
    length of that beam, you irrumated me.”

He had, in fact, experienced in Bithynia the meanness and avarice of
this Praetor, Memmius, who had not cared a rap for his comrades’ honour,
and who is alluded to in _Epigr._ X., 12, “Praetor and irrumator.” In
_Epigr._ XXXVII., he threatens his boon companions in debauchery, with
whom his mistress has taken refuge:

“... Do you think I dare not irrumate alone, as I stand here, two
hundred pothouse-heroes?” And he adds that he would write on the front
of the tavern the infamy of these blackguards:

    “... Your names I shall chalk up all over the tavern’s front.”

Other passages of Catullus, XXI., 12, and LXXIV., 5, are also quoted to
prove the various employment of the word _irrumate_; but they do not
seem to me to bear upon the question.

The epithet _shameless_ was especially given to the man who allowed
himself to be pedicated or irrumated. _Priapeia_ LIX.:

    “If you come to steal, you will return _shameless_.”

Cicero, _De Oratore_, II., 257:

    “If you are _shameless_ before and behind....”

Horace, _Epistle_, I., xvi., 36:

    “If he calls me a thief, he denies that I am chaste.”

Lampridius, _Commodus_, ch. 10:

    “Already as a child he was a glutton and _shameless_, which is
    explained by what he says in ch. 5: “He gave himself up to the
    infamous abuses of young men and to their assaults”, and ch. i:
    “From his tenderest age he was depraved, mischievous, cruel, a
    libertine; he allowed his mouth to be soiled and defiled.”

On the other hand, a woman who had never submitted to a man, was called
_chaste_ (_Priapeia_ XXXI.):

“You are allowed to be as chaste as Vesta;” The same epithet was given
to a wife that was faithful to her husband such a one as is praised by
Martial in _Epigr._ X., 63.

    “My couch is lighted by the rarest glory,—one member, one mentula
    alone has known my chastity.”

To the preceding examples of _fellators_ and _fellatrices_ we will now
add, from Aloysia Sigaea’s book, that of Crisogono, who cleverly
persuades Sempronia to lend him her mouth:

    “The day before yesterday (it is Ottavia speaking), Crisogono came
    to see my mother in the afternoon. All was quiet and silent. He had
    scarcely begun to wanton a little with her, when he became very
    importunate. “Yesterday morning”, he said, “I learned a new kind of
    pleasure. One of our grand personages, who had certainly tasted it,
    says that there is nothing so disgusting and repulsive as those
    parts of his wife which stamp her as a woman,—and he has a very
    pretty wife, mind! In that sink every thing is foul, while in this
    (kissing my mother on the mouth), dwells the true Venus. He
    therefore abominates that illfavoured cavern, and adores that pure
    mouth, that charming head. He looks to nothing else, his member
    rises for nothing else. His wife is as spirited as she is beautiful,
    and even more obliging. She knows no other pleasure than her
    husband’s; what he thinks right she thinks proper, and abets all the
    caprices of her husband; so she lends him the service of her mouth.
    What would you do, Sempronia, if I asked you? If you were to refuse
    I should say that you have forgotten all your promises and your
    pledged faith. You know that Socrates said, the beautiful body of a
    pretty woman is nothing but a living treasure chamber of
    voluptuousness, the storehouse whereto men resort to find their
    pleasures, whereto they direct the burning floods of their
    lubricity. What matter whether you fulfil your duty through that
    pure canal (kissing her mouth), or through that other (touching
    below), which is infect?” He persuaded her to what she was willing
    to do without persuasion. “Oh!” she said, smiling, “what an air you
    want me to play, and upon what a flute, in our concert!” taking in
    her hand his member, which began to rise. She seized the point of
    his dart between her lips and turning her tongue around it, caused
    novel transports of delight to the member that slid into its new
    receptacle. But feeling that the fountains of the brine of Venus
    were on the point of bursting forth, she recoiled with horror. “You
    would not degrade me so far”, said my mother, “as to make me drink a
    man in a liquid form?” She had scarcely spoken, when an abundant
    shower fell upon her robe. He showed some anger, “How could you be
    so foolish,” he cried, “as to spoil such good work!” She replied:
    “Forgive me, the next time you will find me more obedient.” She kept
    her word, and actually drank men in a liquid state,—a spicy thing,
    for indeed the seed is spicy with salt!” (Dial. VII.)

Mancia also proved complaisant in that way to Marino; Eleanor tells it
in Aloysia Sigaea:

    “My cousin, Mancia, has married a Neapolitan of the name of Marino.
    Marino is burning all over with debauchery. The libertine looks for
    the woman in Mancia even above the breasts; he wants her mouth, as
    though the vulva of the young wife had taken refuge there, or as if
    the mouth had made a bargain with the vulva to participate in the
    games of Venus. I blamed her for allowing so unnatural an act. “What
    would you have?” she said. “Marino’s instrument occupies my mouth,
    so I cannot complain. We please our husbands only by reason of being
    women. Never mind where she is taken, if a woman only proves that
    she is a woman, she will please.”” (Dial. VII.)

So too Alfonso tries to engage Eleanor herself in the same fashion:

    “Look you! Ottavia”, added Eleanor, “how passionately loving Alfonso
    is. Some days ago, after having several times plied his javelin in
    the legitimate way, he presented it to my mouth. “Your catapult, my
    Alfonso”, said I, “is not made for breaching this door; you are mad,
    and you want to make me the same.” “No! I would fain have you mad,
    not myself; for that you love me, I owe to your madness, not to any
    merits of my own. If I get delirious, I may forget the respect which
    I owe you, and I would rather die than cease to live for you alone.”
    These words softened my heart, and decided me to assist him in that
    game. I seized his inflamed dart with a good heart between my lips.
    But that was all, his member returned voluntarily to the place it
    had left, and finished its exploits, which it had impudently begun
    above, properly in the region of the middle.” (Dial. VII.)

Gonzalvo of Cordova was another amateur of this mode. Aloysia Sigaea:

    “Gonzalvo of Cordova, a celebrated general, is said to have taken
    very much to this kind of voluptuousness in his old age.” (Dial.

The prurient ingenuity of Tiberius invented a new species of

    “His turpitude went still farther, to such infamous excesses, that
    it is as difficult to relate them as to listen to them; they are
    scarcely credible. He caused little children, of the tenderest age
    to be taught to play between his legs, while he was swimming in his
    bath, calling them his little fishes, to touch him lightly with
    tongue and teeth, and like babies of some little strength and
    growth, though not yet weaned, to suck his privates as they would
    their mother’s breast. His age and his inclination predisposed him
    for this sort of pleasure before all others.” (Suetonius,
    _Tiberius_, ch. 44).

A representation of this ingenious libertine while tickled by what he
called his little fishes, is to be seen on plate XVIII. of the
_Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars_.

Men advanced in age, whose member will no longer obey their will, are
more inclined to irrumate than others. To this circumstance the passage
in Martial, IV., 50, refers:

    “No man is too old to irrumate.”

XI., 47:

    “Gain the heights; there your old member will revive.”

And III., 75:

    “Your mentula, Lupercus, has long ceased to stiffen; nevertheless,
    in your folly you strive to make it rise. You are fain now to
    corrupt pure lips for gold; but even so your Venus is stimulated in

For this reason irrumators are less feared by married men. Thus Martial
dealt more lightly with Lupus, whom he had surprised while irrumating
his Polla, in the passage (X., 40) quoted previously. The husband of
Glycera, if so be that she had one, also need not have feared that
Lupercus would do duty for him, Martial, XI., 41:

    “Lupercus loves the beautiful Glycera; he is her lord and master,
    and he alone. He was complaining bitterly he had not loved her for a
    month; Aelianus asked the reason,—he replied Glycera had the

Lepidinius, in the _Hermaphroditus_ (I., 13), is of opinion, that anyone
who has once irrumated can never get rid or renounce the habit. I must
leave it to experts to decide upon this. So also thinks Aloysia Sigaea:
“Such as have once tasted it, are mad after this pleasure.” (Dial. VII.)

No wonder that after fellation, the mouth has to be washed out with
water. Martial alludes to this, II., 50;

    “You lend your mouth, and then drink water, Lesbia; quite
    right,—where your work is, there you take water.”

_Priapeia_, XXX., says:

    “Walk in the vineyards, and if you steal any of the grapes, you
    shall have water, stranger, to take in another way.”

Priapus means: “You came to get water to drink; but if you pluck any
grapes, I shall irrumate you, and then you will want water to rinse your
mouth rather than to drink.” Martial says as much to Chioné in _Epigram_
III., 87, quoted before.

To ask for the loan of the mouth is to demand a thing much more shameful
than the other two orifices. Martial, IX., 68:

    “All the night long I possessed a lewd young girl; I never knew
    anyone more naughty. Tired of a thousand postures, I asked for the
    puerile service; before I had done asking, she turned at once in
    compliance. Laughing and blushing, I asked something worse than
    that,—the wanton consented instantly”[84].

Those that found themselves thus situated took good care not to be
surprised; Martial, XI., 46:

    “When you have crossed the threshold of a chamber with name on
    signboard, whether it be boy or girl that smiled on you in welcome,
    doors and hangings and locks do not content you, and you want to be
    yet more certain you are not watched. Mystery is what you want; you
    look suspiciously on the smallest crack in the door and stop it; the
    same with the tiniest pinhole made by some inquisitive hand. Nobody
    can be more modest or circumspect in his doings, Cantharus, than the
    man who wants to pedicate or copulate.”

However, the old Romans did not blush to irrumate, as is evident by the
use Catullus makes of that word, contemptuous though it be. What they
_were_ ashamed of was _fellation_. Indeed there is a certain bold
audacity in playing the active part, but none in the passive one,
particularly when the mouth, the noblest organ of the body, has to
perform such vile offices. Add to this that a fetid breath was acquired
by this habit, which _fellators_ took every means to hide, afraid of
putting to flight fellow-guests at table and acquaintances who should
greet them with a kiss in the street.

_Fellators_ were so repugnant to the guests at table, that no cups[85]
were offered to them, or when they had been offered, they were
afterwards broken[86], and that it was only with the greatest
unwillingness any one would kiss their mouth[87], when presented for
salute. Thus it was preferable to be taken for a _cinede_ to being taken
for a _fellator_[88], like Phœbus in Martial, III., 73:

    “You sleep with youths whose members are full size, and what rises
    with them, will not rise with you. Pray, Phœbus, tell me, what must
    I suspect? If I could think that you were but effeminate! But rumour
    says, you are not a _cinede_!”

The case of Callistratus, in XII., 35 of our author, is a similar one:

    “You are very frank, Callistratus, with me, and you tell me that
    they often do it to you. You are not quite so simple, as you would
    appear; the man that tells such things does not tell of others

For the same reason, as Charidemus will not be called a _patient_, and
shows his legs and chest covered with hair. Martial tells him (VI., 56),
to arrange himself in such a way as to appear a minion rather than a

    “Because your legs are covered with bristles, your chest with hair,
    you think, Charidemus, to hand down your words to posterity; take my
    advice, and pluck the hair from all over your body, and get it
    certified you depilate your buttocks. Why so? you ask.—You know the
    world tells many tales; try to make them believe you are merely

_Fellation_, as was but fair, received payment, and high payment.
Martial, XI., 67 shows this:

    “Informer you are and blackmailer, swindler and trickster,
    _fellator_ and bully. The wonder is you have no money.”

And again, III., 75:

    “Your member, Lupercus, has long ceased to stiffen; nevertheless in
    your folly, you strive to make it rise. Of no avail is cole-wort or
    salacious onions, of no use to you the provocative savory. You are
    fain now to corrupt pure lips for gold; but even so your Venus is
    stimulated in vain. But,—a thing to be marvelled at and scarce
    believed,—what will not rise, Lupercus, does rise if you pay a heavy

But when on the subject of fellation, we must not pass over in silence
the raven, whom our standing authority (Martial, XIV., 74), calls a

    “Saluting raven[90], why do they call thee _fellator_? Never a
    mentula entered your beak.”

The fact is ignorant people believed the raven fulfilled the coitus with
his beak:

Pliny says: “The vulgar herd believes that it operates the coitus and
procreates with its beak. Aristotle denied this, saying that ravens
merely exchange kisses in the same way, familiar to everybody, that
pigeons do.” (_Natural History_, X., 12.)

Erasmus denies in his _Adagia_, under the word _Lesbiari_ (p. 409 of the
Frankfort edition, 1670), that in his time the obscene practice of
irrumation was still known:

    “A**** (to lick), if I am not mistaken, is with the Greeks the same
    thing as _fellare_ with the Latins. The word indeed remains; but the
    thing itself has been, I think, long done away with.”

I fear this is not really the case. At any rate I am informed that this
practice is not entirely opposed to the habits of libertines of the
present day; those must decide whose opportunities take them to great
cities. Plate XXI., in the _Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars_
represents a _fellator_. However the graceful picture in question really
belongs more properly to the category of “spintrian postures”, of which
more anon, than to the present chapter.

                       FOOTNOTES - OF IRRUMATION


Footnote 60:

  You see we follow the same general order as in the _Priapeia_, VII.

      “_I_ warn you, boy, I mean to pedicate you; with you, my girl, I
      will copulate. The _third_ penalty is kept for the bearded

Footnote 61:

  Eustathius, p. 741, is very ambiguous: “Lesbianize,—to commit a
  shameful action.”

Footnote 62:

  I do not quite know whether the following passage from the
  _Thesmophoriazusae_ (915-917) refers to this or no:

      “Now, unhappy girl, you long for pleasure after the Ionian mode.
      Besides I think you are a Labda, as is the way of the Lesbians.”

  A fellatrix seems to have borne the name of Labda, by reason of the
  first letter of the word Lesbianize: but the passage stands quite
  isolated, for in that of Varro, preserved by Nonius, and referring to
  the annotation of Scaliger on the _Priapeia_ LXXVIII., where we find:

      “Depsistis, decite. Labdae.”

  The reading is doubtful, and the sense not clear. The verse of
  Ausonius, _Epigr._ 128:

      “When he puts his tongue in, then he is a Labda,” has nothing to
      do with this question, as we shall show later on.

Footnote 63:

  I do not know whether the nickname of Rododaphné (rose-laurel), given
  to Timarchus in Syria (_ibid._, ch. 27), does not mean _cunnilingue_,
  as by rose is understood the female parts, while the laurel leafs
  means the licking tongue. This surname had no doubt for Lucian an
  obscene sense which he would not disclose: “In Syria they call you
  Rododaphné, why? I should blush to say it.”

Footnote 64:

  Here is the preceding sentence, “which will better elucidate Galen’s
  meaning: To drink sweat, urine or menses is an abominable and
  detestable practice; human excrements still more so, in spite of what
  Xenocrates has written about their beneficial action when applied in
  lieu of ointment about the mouth or throat, or when swallowed. He has
  also spoken of the absorption through the mouth of ear-wax. I myself
  could not make up my mind to eat of them, though it were to cure my
  sickness right off. Of all abominable things the most abominable, I
  think, are human excrements.”

Footnote 65:

  Tacitus, _Annals_, XI., 26.

Footnote 66:

  We will here reproduce the curious passage of Jean Burchard, to whom
  we owe this story. It is taken from his _Diarium_, edited by Leibnitz,
  in 1696, p. 77:

      “On the last Sunday in October the Duke of Valentinois had invited
      to supper in his chamber” (the chamber of Alexander VI), “in the
      Apostolical palace, fifty beautiful prostitutes, called
      courtesans, who, after supper danced with the valets and other
      persons present, first in their clothes, and then naked. After
      this the table, chandeliers were placed on the floor here and
      there, with lighted candles, and chestnuts were thrown about,
      which the courtesans collected moving on their hands and knees
      quite naked among the chandeliers, the Pope, the Duke and his
      sister Lucrezia being present and looking on. Finally presents
      were brought in: silk mantles, pairs of shoes, head-dresses, and
      other objects, to be given to those who had copulated with the
      greatest number of these courtesans: they were publicly enjoyed in
      the room there, the lookers-on acting as umpires, and awarding the
      prizes to the victors.”

Footnote 67:

  Nola was a city in the territory of the Campanians. It is for this
  reason that the _Campanian malady_, mentioned by Horace (_Sat. I._,
  V., 62), has been connected with debauchery, but without sufficient

Footnote 68:

  Varro, is his _Marcipor_, according to Nonius: “He introduced
  afterwards into his gullet the virile verge: he offends the mouth of

Footnote 69:

  Martial, III., 75:

      “You make it your work to corrupt pure lips for gold.”

  And Again II., 28:

      “Not even Vetustilla’s warm mouth give you more pleasure.”

Footnote 70:

  “How accustomed he was to assault the heads of the most illustrious
  women, is plainly evidenced by the adventure of Mallonia, who,
  debauched by him, refused to submit to him again. He caused her to be
  accused by his informers, and kept asking her during her trial,
  whether she had anything to reproach herself with. Without waiting for
  the verdict, she ran home and transfixed herself with a poniard,
  upbraiding loudly the foul, hairy dotard for having wanted to abuse
  her mouth.” (Suetonius, _Tiberius_, ch. 45).

Footnote 71:

  He was so glad to have won Transalpine Gaul that he could not help
  announcing some days after in the Senate, that he had reached the
  fulfillment of his wishes, in spite of the hatred and malice of his
  enemies, and that he defied them to their face. Somebody having said
  to him offensively that this could not so easily be done with a woman,
  he replied jokingly, that Semiramis had gained a kingdom, and the
  Amazons had occupied a great part of Asia (Suetonius, _Caesar_, ch.
  22). Caesar employed the expression: “defying to the face” in the
  honest sense, while his adversary invested it with an obscene
  signification, in allusion to his infamous acts in Bithynia.

Footnote 72:

  I speak of those whose abominable lasciviousness and execrable lust do
  not even spare the head. (Lactantius, _Instit. Div._ VI., 23.)
  Similarly Juvenal, VI., v. 299, 300:

      “For what cares the drunken Venus? She knows not the difference
      between groin and head.”

Footnote 73:

  Martial, II., 72:

      “They say Posthumus, that they did to you last night, at supper,
      what I would not have let them do;—who could approve such doings?
      They split your mouth! ...”

  Then playing upon the words rumour and irrumate he adds:

      “... As the author of this crime, the town’s rumour designates

  And again III., 73, _ibid._:

      “Rumour denies you are a Cinede.”

  III., 80:

      “Rumour says, you have an evil tongue.”

  And III., 87:

      “Rumour says, Chioné, that your vulva is intact, that nothing
      could be purer than it. Yet you bathe without covering the thing
      that should be covered; if you have any shame, then put your
      drawers upon your face.”

  _Percidere_ employed alone means to pedicate. _Martial_ IV., 48; VII.,
  61; IX., 48; XI., 29; XII., 35; and _Priapeia_, XII., XIV. Some copies
  have _praecidere_ for _percidere_, but this seems to be an untenable

Footnote 74:

  _Martial_, XI., 47:

      “Why do you plague in vain unhappy vulvas and posteriors; gain but
      the heights, for there any old member revives.”

  _Priapeia_ LXXV.:

      “Through the middle of boys and girls travels the member; when it
      meets bearded chins then it aspires to the heights.”

Footnote 75:

  _Priapeia_ XXVII.:

      “A footlong amulet will pedicate you; if that will not cure you, I
      go higher.”

Footnote 76:

  Plautus, in the _Amphytrion_, I sc. 1, 192:

      “I shall compress to-day the wicked tongue.”

  The Latins employed the verb “compress” for _irrumate_, as if it were
  a form of fornication; and similarly “split open”, as if it were a
  form of pedication.

Footnote 77:

  Plutarch: “It is reported that in the night before the passing of the
  Rubicon, Caesar had a frightful dream; he dreamt that he was indulging
  in abominable intercourse with his mother.” (_Lives_, _Julius Cæsar_,
  XXXII.) Hesychius’ interpretation refers to this:—to perform
  abominable acts.”

Footnote 78:

  Suetonius: “A picture of Parrhasius, representing Atalanta in the act
  of complacently lending her mouth to Meleager was bequeathed to him
  with the alternative that he might have a million sesterces instead,
  if the subject offended him. He not only preferred the picture, but
  had it solemnly hung in his bedroom.” (_Tiberius_, ch. 44.)

Footnote 79:

  Horace, _Epode_ VIII., 17-20:


Footnote 80:

  Martial, II., 62:

      “A doubtful down did scarcely deck your cheek, when your tongue
      already licked men’s middle parts.” The same III., 81:

      “Baeticus, you, a Gaul, what have you to do with the female pit?
      that tongue of yours should lick men’s middles.”

  Ausonius, _Epigr._ CXX:

      “When Castor longed in vain to lick men’s middles, but could take
      no one home with him, he found means not to lose all pleasure of
      the sort, fellator as he was; he started to lick his own wife’s
      organs.” In other words from being a _fellator_ Castor became a

Footnote 81:

  Martial, III., 88:

      “They are twin brothers, but they suck different teats: tell me
      are they more unlike or like?”

  The one was a _fellator_, the other a _cunnilingue_.

  Again, VII., 54:

      “You shall suck not mine, which is honest and small, but a member
      escaped from the fire of Solyma’s city and condemned to tribute.”

  I do not know whence Scioppius (_Priap._ X), has it, that Martial was
  well furnished; the latter avows in that passage, that his mentula was
  quite small. To affront Chrestus, he orders him to lick, not his, but
  the mentula of a Jewish slave. He has mentioned this Jewish slave
  already in _Epigr._ 34 of the same book:

  “My slave carries a heavy Jewish parcel without skin to cover it.”
  That means his member is circumcized, the gland being uncovered,
  without prepuce, in one word, “recutitus.” So, I think, is to be
  understood the _recutitorum inguine virorum_ of Martial, VII., 29: he
  means, “the virile parts of circumcized men,” the skin of whose glands
  is drawn back. _Recutitus_ stands for _recinctus_, _regelatus_,
  _reseratus_. Many other words, _e.g._ revincire, similarly admit of
  two meanings, and thus, no doubt should arise about Martial’s
  expression: _recutita colla mulae_ (IX., 58), which refers to the
  mules having a new skin covering their necks. I differ from those who
  think that those were called _recutiti_ whose prepuce began to grow
  again; a _recutitus_ was to the Romans an object of contempt.
  Petronius: “He has two faults, else he would be like any other man
  _recutitus est et sertit_. He is circumcized and snores” (_Satyr._,
  ch. 28). It is impossible to suppose the _glans_ could have been
  thought more disgusting covered by a new prepuce than with none at

Footnote 82:

  A man that is being irrumated cannot speak, his mouth being obstructed
  by the mentula, thus: he is silent. Martial, III., 96 says to
  Gargilius, a _cunnilingue_, menacing him with the third punishment, if
  he should catch him in the fact:

      “If I should catch thee at it, Gargilius, I’ll make thee silent.”

  Married men were in the habit of pedicating beardless adults, and of
  irrumating the bearded ones. For which reason Martial warns Gallus
  (II., 47) to shun the seductions of a famous rakish lady, as he was
  running the risk, if taken by the husband in flagrante delicto, of
  being irrumated by him:

      “Your buttocks you rely on? But the husband is no pederast; he
      likes but two ways, either mouth or vulva.”

  And for the same reason he consents to _marry_ Thelesina (II., 49):

      “No Thelesina for me as my wife! Why?—She is a prostitute. Nay!
      but she pays young lads. Then I consent.”

  Then there is a complaint for having been deceived with respect to the
  lover of Polla, his mistress (X., 40):

      “Constantly was I told that my Polla was on intimate terms with an
      unknown cinede. Well, I surprise them, Lupus; no cinede was he.”

  Instead of a lad, whom he would have pedicated, he finds a cool,
  experienced gallant, not at all likely to expiate his crime by means
  of his buttocks. Martial might, however, have punished him more
  cruelly by forcing into his fundament, either a mullet (Juvenal, X.,

  “There are adulterers whom the mullet pierces”; or a radish. “In
  Armenia, taken in the act of adultery, he ran away plugged with a
  radish in his posteriors.” (Lucian, _De Morte Peregrini_,—Works, vol.
  VII., p. 425.) Catullus XV., 18, 19:

      “Drawing your feet asunder, your postern wide open, they will
      insert into you radish and mullet.”

  Martial also has used the expression of _being silent_, in the above
  stated sense but, somewhat more obscurely, IX., 5:

      “If in two apertures you can work, Galla, and can do more than
      double work in both, why, Aeschylus, does she get tenfold pay? She
      fellates, but that is not a matter of such price surely. Nay! it
      is because she must be silent!”

  It is not her infamy that Galla sells so dear; it is the inconvenience
  of having to be silent during the process, which, for a prattler, “is
  a very serious matter,” as Martial says, IV., 81. Book XII., _Epigr._
  35, quoted later on, also refers to this.

Footnote 83:

  It is the same with the word _stuprum_. Festus: The ancients employed
  the word stuprum for turpitude, as appears in the Song of Neleus.

      “Foede stupreque castigor cotidie.” (I am foully and disgracefully
      beaten every day.)

  Naevius: “They would rather die than return to their co-citizens _cum

Footnote 84:

  First the rogue lends her vulva, then her buttocks, and lastly her
  mouth. Some suppose the full-bosomed Spatalé of Martial, II., 52 was
  just as prodigal:

      “Dasius was astute at counting the bathers; he asked full-bosomed
      Spatalé the fee of three women, and she paid.”

  But I believe they wrong the good Spatalé. Dasius, the bathing man,
  wanted only that Spatalé, whose charms were ample and buxom, she
  taking up as much room as three other women, should pay for three.

  The Phyllis of Martial, XII., 65, showed herself liberal in every way:

      “The beautiful Phyllis, who throughout the whole night had proved
      herself right liberal in every way....”

  From this you will understand what Martial means by “refusing nothing”
  (XI., 50):

      “I will not deny you anything, Phyllis; for you deny me nothing.”

  And similarly, IV. 12:

      “You refuse no one, Thaïs. If you know no shame for this, blush at
      least that you refuse nothing, Thaïs!”

  And again, XII., 72:

      “There is nothing, Lygdus, that you do not now deny me; there was
      a time when there was nothing you did deny!”

  And he says (XII., 81) right out:

      “Whoso refuses nothing, Atticilla, sucks.”

  It is in this sense that Mallonia refused to be entirely at the mercy
  of Tiberius; she had already admitted him to her vulva and anus, but
  when it came to the mouth the poor girl could not overcome her
  disgust. We have before quoted the passage of Suetonius. Of a woman
  who refuses nothing, Arnobius (II., 42) says: “That she is ready to
  undergo anything,” and of a woman that is drunk, “so much so as not to
  able to refuse anything.” Ovid says (_Art of Love_, III., v. 766):

      “She is meet to undergo all kinds of assaults.”

Footnote 85:

  Martial, II., 15:

      “You do not offer your cup to any man; it is discretion, Hermus,
      forbids, not pride.”

  And VI., 44:

      “No one, Calliodorus may drink from your cup.”

  Seneca: When Caius Caesar accepted sums of money for the expense of
  the games from friends who brought them to him, he refused to take a
  large amount from Fabius Persicus. His friends not looking at the
  character of the sender, but at the value of the sum sent, reproached
  him for having refused. “What!” said he, “am I to accept the service
  of a man from whose cup I should decline to drink?” (_De Beneficiis_,
  II., 21.) Fabius Persicus was a _fellator_ not a _cunnilingue_; this
  is apparent from the controversy in which Seneca engaged about him,
  viz: what a prisoner should do whom a man promised to buy off, at the
  price of having his body prostituted, and his mouth sullied.

Footnote 86:

  Martial, XII., 75:

      “It is no little matter, Flaccus if you drink with them; and then
      have to break the cup they touched.”

  And Macedonius in the _Analecta_ of Brunck, III., 116:

      “There drank a woman with me yesterday, whose fame is anything but
      good;—go break the cups, my lads!”

Footnote 87:

  Martial, XI., 96:

      “Every time you happen to meet a _fellator’s_ kisses, I can fancy,
      O Flaccus, how you plunge your head in water.”

  And I., 95:

      “You sung but badly, Agelé, when you were loved _per vulvam_. Now
      no one kisses you, and you sing well.”

  And I., 84:

      “Your lap-dog, Manneia, licks your mouth and lips I am not a bit
      surprised; dogs like dirt.”

  Seneca: “And mark! he made that Fabius Persicus, whose kisses are
  shunned even by people who know no shame, a priest only the other
  day.” (_De Beneficiis_, IV., 30.)

Footnote 88:

  It appears from Martial’s _Epigram_ (XI., 99), that the kiss on the
  mouth was the regular thing with the Romans; _fellators_, therefore,
  could not be surprised at their kisses being avoided. The poet of
  Bilbilis makes yet another mock at their expense (II., 42):

      “Zoilus, why spoil the bath by bathing your bottom in it? If you
      would make it still dirtier, plunge your head in.”

  And VI., 81:

      “You bathe, Charidemus, as though you had a grudge against
      mankind, entirely submerging in the bath your privates. I should
      not like you to wash your head that way, Charidemus; and now look!
      you are washing your head. I had rather it were your privates!”

Footnote 89:

  In the last verse there are two furtive stings; the first is about not
  telling (_tacet_,—is silent), an expression, which was used as
  denoting a _fellator_; the second is the word “tell,” (_narrat_), the
  honourable use of the mouth being put for the dishonourable, as in
  Epistle III., 84:

      “What tells (_narrat_) your harlot.—No! I don’t mean your girl,
      Tongilion!—What then?—Your tongue!”

Footnote 90:

  You will find in Macrobius (_Saturnalia_, II., 4), why he was called
  saluting. Augustus returned as victor from Actium; amongst those who
  came to congratulate him was a man holding a raven, which he had
  taught to cry: “I salute thee, Caesar Victor and Emperor!” Caesar,
  admiring this flattering bird, bought it for 20,000 sesterces.



                        _OF CLASSICAL EROTOLOGY_

                             SECOND VOLUME


                               CHAPTER IV

                            OF MASTURBATION

TO excite the member by friction with the hand until the sperm comes
spirting out of it is what the Ancients call masturbation, from
_masturbare_, that is _manu stuprare_,—to pollute with the hand. This
may be done by one’s own hand, or by borrowing someone else’s. If by
one’s own, it is generally the left hand that is employed, hence the
expression, “left-hand whore” in Martial, IX., 42:

    “You never, Ponticus, enter a woman, but use your left-hand whore,
    making your hand the mistress for your pleasure; think you this is
    nothing? Believe me, it’s a crime, yes! a crime, and worse than you
    can imagine. Old Horatius copulated once at any rate to beget his
    three sons; Mars once to get chaste Ilia with twins. Neither of them
    could have done it, if by masturbation they had procured by the use
    of their own hand pleasures so shameful. Believe me, that nature’s
    voice confirms it,—what escapes ’twixt your fingers, Ponticus, is a
    human being.”

To the same subject also _Epigr._, XI., 74 refers:

    “Oftentimes, Lygdé, you swear you will grant my prayer, even
    appointing the place, even appointing the hour. Longtime I lay
    consumed with longing, till often my left hand comes to help in your

And this passage of the VIth. book of Ramusius, p. 62 of the Paris

    “What are you to do? Is your left hand safe and sound? Well use it,
    then you will not want a whore. Why pay for what your left hand
    gives you gratis?”

There were of course also people who used their right hand; the same
Ramusius of Rimini, book IV., p. 61, tells us:

    “I suffer, dear Donatus, from so frightful an erection, I am fearful
    for my member, if you do not help me. My right hand, being wounded,
    can do nothing; I have no money; Hylas is not here; no vulva opens
    for me—no chance of fornication, appease my desire, that I may live,
    and you can do it cheaply.”

Pacificus Maximus, _Elegy_ XII., p. 126, Paris edition:

    “What shall I do? I am so stiff—I’m bursting, and I could easily
    fill three or four large bottles. It is long since my member has
    known a vulva, long since it has stirred the entrails of a man. It
    is stiff day and night, and will never relax,—night and day it lifts
    its head. No youth, no girl will listen to my prayer, no help—my
    right hand must then do the service!”

We have seen just above, with what severity Martial reproached Ponticus,
a masturbator, for losing between his fingers the substance of a man.
Nevertheless this fine moralist did not hesitate to put his own hand to
similar use under the pressure of erection, _Epigr._ 43, book II.:

    “Another Ganymede, my hand assisted me.”

and XI., 74:

    “Often my left hand comes to my help in your stead.”

Nor was his severity given to whining when he exhorted (XI., 59), the
cinede Telesphorus:

    “Soon as ever you see I want it, and know that I am in erection,
    Telesphorus, then you demand a heavy price,—can I say nay?[91] If I
    will not swear to pay you, you will withdraw those posteriors of
    yours, which are so precious to me. If with his razor set to my
    throat my barber, whilst shaving me, demands my liberty and fortune,
    I promise all; ’tis not the barber asks, but a cut-throat, and fear
    compels me to say ‘Yes.’ But once I see the razor returned to its
    curved case and harmless, why! I will break every limb of the
    fellow. Not that I will harm you, but my left hand once washed, my
    member will say “Go hang!” to your grasping avarice.”[92]

The same when his wife surprised him engaged with a youth (XI., 44),—a
witty epigram quoted above, as also when he intended to marry Thelesina
(II., 49):

    “Thelesina makes presents to young lads; all the better.”

The same when he recommends somebody, I do not know who (XI., 23), to
make use of the posteriors of Galesius only, as the part that would suit

    “Youths are divided by nature; one part is reserved for girls, and
    the other for men—use your own portion.”

Is what the pedicon loses in the anus of the cinede anything else but
the substance of a man, which the masturbator wastes between his

As it is in the nature of the virile member to rise at the mere sight of
a pretty woman’s naked body, the amorous desire in that state often
craves imperiously for relief, for “man in erection is not
overwise.”[93] This is why, when the fair one’s heavy coverlets have
been thrown back:

    “Meantime the adulterer she has sent for lurks in furtive
    concealment, and impatient of the delay, yet says never a word, but
    pulls his foreskin.”[94]—Juvenal, VI., 236, 7. and why:

    “The Phrygian slaves would be masturbating behind the doors, each
    time his bride mounted the Hectorean horse.”—Martial, XI., 105.

This is why during the dances of the young Gaditanian girls, which were
without doubt very like the dances that are still so much appreciated by
the Spaniards[95], the limp appendages of even grey-haired spectators
begin to move visibly, as many authors tell us. Martial, VI., 71:

    “Cunning in the wanton gestures that go with the Baetician
    castanets, skilled in dancing to the Gaditanian measures, she might
    well stiffen trembling Pelias, and excite Hecuba’s husband to
    emulate vigorous Hector.”

Juvenal, XI., 162-165:

    “Perhaps you may wait while the Gaditanian dancer begins to feel the
    wanton stimulus of the loud strains of her accompanying band, and
    the girls, fired by the applause sink to the ground with quivering
    buttocks,—a sight to sting languid senses to love.”[96]

But it is not only by the sight of a beautiful naked female the member
is excited; who does not know that it is also roused merely by images
called up by the imagination, particularly in the night. And the power
of such fancies is such as to provoke a pleasurable ejaculation of
sperm. Priapus himself has experienced this. _Priapeia_ XLVIII:

    “You see this organ after which I am called by my name Priapus, is
    wet; this moisture is not dew, nor yet hoar-frost. It is the outcome
    given of its own sweet will, on recalling memories of a complaisant

It is said that Diogenes, the cynic, was a masturbator; once caught in
the act of handling his mentula, he said: “I wish to heaven I could in
the same way satisfy my stomach with friction when it barks for

When the masturbation is done by the loan of another person’s hand, it
is possible that the pleasure is participated on the part of the agent.

It forms part of the business of a courtesan to be clever with her
fingers; a languid member may by their use be invigorated. The inertness
of the virile member may be caused by the inconveniences of age, and
this either on the part of the woman, as in Martial, VI., 23:

    “You require my penis, Lesbia, to be ever in erection for you;
    believe me a man’s member is not like a finger. True, you strive to
    excite me with hands and tender words, but your face is a stubborn
    fact and counteracts all your efforts.”

and again in the same author, XI., 30:

    “When you set your old hand the task of rousing my member, your
    thumb, my Phyllis, will but strangle me.”

or of the man, Martial, XI., 47:

    “Only in dreams you get stiff[98], Maevius, and your verge begins to
    make water right onto your own feet; in vain your wearied fingers
    ply your wrinkled member,—rouse it as you may, it will not raise its
    drooping head.”[99]

Aristophanes in the _Wasps_, 735-38:

    “Yes, I will nurse him and get him all that is wanted for an old
    man: beef broth to lap, soft wool, and a rug to keep him warm, and a
    courtesan to rub his member and his loins...”

The same author, _ibid._, v. 1334, 35:

    “... The cable is rotted away, yet is it still fond of being

Nor is it unwelcome to men in the vigor of life, and who are fit to
caress young girls, to have mistresses whose hands are not lazy in bed,
and whose fingers know how to act in the dark regions where the arrow of
love is hidden. Martial, XI., 105, complains about the unseemly gravity
of his wife, which forbade her to render him that service:

    “You will not help me on by movement or by word, nor yet with your
    fingers, as though you were preparing the incense and the wine for

Penelopé, on the other hand, contented Ulysses well that way, as Martial
has it in the same epigram:

    “Chaste though she was, when the king of Ithaca lay snoring,
    Penelopé liked to have her hand always on it.”

Ovid’s mistress did him the same service, but all in vain one miserable
night, when a hostile divinity seemed to have smitten to death that most
pitiful part of him, to use his own expression, and the girl, in order
that the servants might not think that she had remained untouched,
pretended to make her ablutions all the same (_Amores_, III., viii., 73,

    “My darling did not disdain even to put her hand to it and gently
    try to rouse it.”

This virtue of the fingers in procuring erection is alluded to by
Juvenal, VI., 195, 96:

    “... How well a soft and libertine voice will erect your member; it
    is as good as fingers!”

The author of the _Priapeia_ was also well aware of the fact; LXXX.:

    “My member is not very long nor very thick,—handle it, and you’ll
    see it grow apace.”

And so was Janus Dousa, quoted by Scioppius á propos of this same
_Priapeia_, cleverly scenting out the man’s character:

    “Dousa, commenting upon Petronius, informs us that he knows _by home
    experience_ how this object grows in thickness and length when
    shampooed by a woman.”

You can estimate the importance of this function by the value set by the
Ancients, as in our days by the Turks, upon shampooers, men and women,
who are employed for manipulating the joints with artistic expertness,
their fingers softly pressing and turning them, and their hands kept
soft by the constant use of gloves, kneading tenderly all the limbs.
Seneca, _Letter_ LXVI.:

    “Would I rather offer my limbs for shampooing to my superannuated
    minions? or to some little woman, or some weakling man, more woman
    than man, to draw and crack my fingers? Should I not rather envy
    yonder Mucius, who put his hand in the fire with the same equanimity
    as though he tendered it to a shampooer.”

Martial, III., 82:

    “A woman shampoos your body all over with nimble skill; her trained
    hand manipulates _all_ your members.”[101]

John of Salisbury states in his _Policraticus_, book III., ch. 13, after
some ancient author, perhaps Clearchus, as Lipsius thinks:

    “When a rich libertine turns in his luxurious ways to effeminacy, a
    youth with frizzled hair takes before all the world his feet while
    he is lying on his couch, and shampoos them and his legs, not to go
    further, with his delicate hands. That youth is always wearing
    gloves, so as to preserve them white and soft for the benefit of
    rich people. Then, using his hands more licentiously, he runs them
    over all the body with impudent touchings and ticklings, raising the
    desires and stirring the amatory flames of his employer.”

I may very well describe here, for I could not find a better place, a
performance for which the friendly hand of a woman is in request, but of
a woman that is an expert, which will gently press your testicles and
stroke your thighs; it is said that nothing can be pleasanter or more
voluptuous. Aloysia Sigaea describes, with her inexhaustible ingenuity,
such a scene, executed by Ottavia and Roberto, with the assistance of
Manilia; the fullness, variety and richness of the description, placed
in the mouth of Ottavia, are admirable:

    “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.,

    “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

    “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.”

As to other interstices of the body, _e.g._ the armpits, between the
thighs, the calves, the buttocks (mind, I do not say the anus, but
between the buttocks), be it enough to mention Heliogabalus; Lampridius,
ch. 5:

    “How put up with a Prince who sought for pleasure in every cavity of
    the body, when you would not suffer a brute beast to do as much?”

Also Commodus, according to the same Lampridius, ch. 5:

    “He gave himself up to the infamous assaults of young men, polluting
    every part of his body, even his mouth, and that with either
    sex,”—_i.e._ he was both a _fellator_ and a _cunnilingue_.

Is it necessary to speak here of the debauchery of those who assault the
corpses of females, or statues? This is not real coitus, there being no
two parties to the act. Nevertheless, according to Herodotus (II., 89),
in Egypt a man was taken in the act of abusing the corpse of a woman
just dead:

    “It is said that a man was surprised in the act of working in the
    fresh corpse of a woman, and denounced by a fellow-workman.”

In consequence of this a law was promulgated forbidding the corpses of
noble and beautiful women to be given into the hands of the embalmer
until three or four days after their decease. And who does not know the
story of the Venus of Cnidos, the work of Praxiteles, as related by
Pliny, _Historia Naturalis_, XXXVI., ch. 5:

    “It is related how a certain youth fell in love with her, and having
    hidden himself one night in the temple, cohabited with the statue,
    leaving a stain as the mark of the gratification of his passion upon
    the marble.”

There is a similarity in this with the mistake made by a bull which,
according to Valerius Maximum, VIII., ch. II., fell in love with a
bronze cow, and copulated with the same at Syracuse, being deceived by
the perfection of the resemblance.

                      FOOTNOTES - OF MASTURBATION


Footnote 91:

  Martial had made use of the same interrogative phrase with the verb in
  the infinitive and _puta_ put instead of _scilicet_ also in Epigram
  III., 26. _Hoc me puta velle negare?_ (Can I say nay to this?)
  Scholars have found occasion for a pile of annotations on the two
  passages: these need not detain us.

Footnote 92:

  Martial’s meaning is: My left hand will console my suffering mentula;
  the business done, my hand covered with the ejaculation of the sperm,
  like the fleece on the pubis of Ravola in Juvenal, IX., 4,—if indeed
  it is the fleece of his pubis that is intended:

      “Whilst Ravola with wet beard rubs the groin of Rhodopé” ... the
      greedy cinede will be told to go to the deuce, to slink off with
      drooping head, like the man in Horace (_Satires_ II., 69), who

      “Nothing is left to him and his but to weep.”

  This moist hand reminds us of the adulterous woman in Juvenal, XI.,
  186, who:

      “Show humid traces in the doubtful pleats of her tunic.”

Footnote 93:

  Suidas under the word *****, after Aelius Dionysius apparently.

Footnote 94:

  It was not out of voluptuousness, but for decency’s sake that Jews,
  who had renounced their nation, had their prepuce redressed over the
  gland, as they did not wish it to be seen that they had been
  circumcized, so they took means to get their bare gland recovered.
  “And they made for themselves new prepuces” (_Maccabees_, I., 1., 15),
  “Is there anyone that has been brought to believe, circumcized? Let
  him not recover his gland” (_Corinthians_, I., vii., 18). Celsus, _De
  Medicina_, VII., ch. 25: “If the gland is bare, and it is desired for
  convenience sake to recover it, this can be effected, but more easily
  with a child, than with a grown man, more easily with the man born so,
  than with the man who has been circumcized after the custom of certain
  people. After having explained the method of cure applicable to men,
  with whom it is a natural accident,” Celsus continues: “With people
  that have been circumcized, the skin must be detached behind the crown
  of the gland. This operation is not very painful as the prepuce being
  loosened, you can draw it with the hand back to the pubis without any
  loss of blood.

  Then the loosened integument is drawn once more over and beyond the
  gland. This done the verge is dipped frequently into cold water, and
  then covered with a plaster, which has a strong tendency to minimize
  inflammation. As soon as it is quite free from inflammation, the verge
  is to be bandaged from the pubis to the annular incision; the skin is
  then drawn over the gland, but kept separate from it by a plaster. In
  this way the lower part of the skin grows on again, while the upper
  part heals without adhering.” From this passage it would appear that
  at the time of Celsus the method of laying bare the gland which
  afterwards prevailed with the Jews was not discovered yet, by which,
  according to Buxtorf (Dictionnaire Talmudique), after the prepuce has
  been cut away, the circumcisor takes hold of the remaining skin
  between the thin edges of his thumb nails, and draws it forcibly back.
  If this practice had been customary it would have been superfluous to
  separate the prepuce with the scalpel. I conjecture from this, that
  the Jews were called _recutiti_ from having this skin of the gland
  drawn back, which, not being done, the circumcision was not considered
  complete; but Celsus makes me doubt this.

Footnote 95:

  Julius Caesar Scaliger, _Poetica_, book I., p. 64:

      “One of these infamous dances was the * *** ** meaning wriggling
      the haunches and thighs, the _crissare_ of the Romans. In Spain
      this abominable practice is still performed in public.”

Footnote 96:

  Do not miss, reader, the motive of this dance, with their buttocks
  wriggling the girls finally sunk to the ground, reclining on their
  backs, ready for the amorous contest. Different from this was the
  Lacedæmonian dance * ** * ** when the girls in their leaps touched
  their buttocks with their heels. Aristophanes in the _Lysistrata_, 82:

      “Naked I dance, and beat my buttocks with my heels.” Pollux, IV.,
      ch. 24: “As to the * ** * **, this was a Laconian dance. There
      were prizes competed for, not only amongst the young men, but also
      amongst the young girls; the essence of these dances was to jump
      and touch the buttocks with the heels. The jumps were counted and
      credited to the dancers. They rose to a thousand in the ** *** * !

  Yet more difficult was that kind of dance which was called ****, in
  which the feet had to touch the shoulders. Pollux, _ibid._: “The ****
  were dances for women: they had to throw their feet higher than their

  This kind of dance is not unknown in more modern times. J. C.
  Scaliger, _Poetica_, book I., p. 651: “To this day the Spaniards touch
  the occiput and other parts of the body with their feet.”

Footnote 97:

  Diogenes Laërtius, VI., 2, 46: “One day, whilst masturbating himself
  in the middle of the market he said: “I wish to heaven that I could
  prevent my stomach from being hungry by rubbing it.” Plutarch, _De
  Stoicorum repugnantiis_, 1044, vol. II., of his works: “Chrysippus
  praised Diogenes for masturbating himself in public, and for saying to
  the bystanders: “Would to heaven by rubbing my stomach in the same
  fashion, I could satisfy my hunger.”

Footnote 98:

  Mark with what minuteness the Ancients scrutinized nature; with what
  ingenuity they gave expression to all their sentiments! Who dares
  nowadays write such a verse describing as a natural thing what might
  be but a solecism of his mentula.

Footnote 99:

  Bassus, who was in the habit of taking his pleasures with young
  minions, longhaired and slim, set the hands of his wife to work to
  excite his mentula, when he came back to the conjugal couch fatigued
  and languid. Martial, XII., 99:

      “You tire yourself, oh Bassus, but with minions, paying them from
      the dowry of your wife; thus when you return to her side, that
      member bought at the price of many million sesterces, lies
      languid. In vain her tender thumb tries to excite it, vain are her
      tender words, it will not stand.”

Footnote 100:

  The women of Aristophanes (_Lysistrata_, v. 227) threatened their
  husbands with a similar rigidity of body:

      “Though you may have your way, I shall be crabbed and never move.”

Footnote 101:

  He had a hand of no less experience (Juvenal, VI., 422-23), that
  cunning shampooer who put his fingers to the lady’s clitoris.

      “And made his mistress’s thigh resound beneath his hand high up.”


                               CHAPTER V


WE have now said enough about the work of Venus performed by the virile
member; it remains for us to explain how a sacrifice may be offered to
Venus without one. This may be done by means of the tongue or of the
clitoris. We have accordingly first to treat of the cunnilingues, those
who lick women’s privates and then of the tribads.

As it is the office of the _fellator_ or _fellatrix_ to suck the virile
parts, so it is the business of cunnilingues to lick the female. The
cunnilingue operates by introducing his tongue into the vulva. Martial,
XI., 62 has described his monstrous act very clearly:

    “Manneius, husband with his tongue, adulterer with his mouth,—more
    foul than the mouths of harlots of the Summoenium; whom seeing, as
    he stood naked, from a window, the filthy procuress closed her
    brothel; whose middle she had rather kiss than his head. He who of
    old knew all the channels of the inwards, and could declare with a
    sure and certain voice, whether ’twas a boy or girl in the mother’s
    belly (be glad, all vulvas, for your part is done), can no longer
    erect his fornicating tongue. For lo! as he lurks with tongue
    plunged in the swelling vulva and hears the babes wailing inside
    their mother, a shocking malady paralyses his greedy mouth,—and now
    he can no more be either clean or unclean.”

By the same paralysis of the tongue Zoilus was struck; Martial, XI., 86:

    “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

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

    “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.

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:


    “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.


    “Avoid Alpheus’ mouth, he loves Arethusa’s bosom, plunging
    head-first into the salty sea.”

In this epigram also the poet draws upon the ambiguity of the words
mouth, bosom (bay), head-first, salt sea, which may refer to the river
Alpheus in Arcadia and to Arethusa, a spring near Syracuse, but also to
the mouth of a _cunnilingue_, that goes and plunges into the vulva of a
woman; not to mention yet another idea connected with this, to which we
shall return presently.


    “Cheilon and **** have the same letters, and why? It is because
    Cheilon will lick things that are like and unlike.”

This mockery is addressed to the cunnilingue Cheilon. The epigram tells
him that he has somehow a right of licking, as his name, composed of the
same letters as ****, announces at once the licker, whether he may lick
the lips of a mouth, similar to his own, or those of a vulva, which are
very dissimilar.

The distich of Meleager upon Phavorinus, published by Huschkius in his
_Analecta critica_ (p. 245), seems to bear upon the same subject:

    “You doubt whether Phavorinus does the thing. Doubt no more; he told
    me himself he did,—_with his own mouth_.”

As Martial uses often very happily the word _narrat_ (III., 84), when he
speaks of the abuse of the tongue for _fellation_, and Horace the same,
so Meleager says **** (he told) of the man, who employs his for licking
the vulva.

The following epigram of Ammanius from the _Analecta_ of Brunck, vol.
II., p. 386, is somewhat more obscure:

    “It is not because you suck your pen that I dislike you; ’tis
    because you do so,—without a pen.”

The scholiast imagined by author wanted to upbraid a lazy pupil who
passed his time sucking his pen, as do others biting their nails, and to
scold him at the same time for sucking without a pen, meaning for being
a _cunnilingue_. But it may be taken to refer, and I think with more
reason, to a man who is in the habit of putting out his tongue for the
obscene act of the _cunnilingue_, and who is so accustomed to it that he
puts it out in the ordinary intercourse of life.

This monstrous practice was pushed to such lengths that, it is almost
incredible, there were people who, not content to lick vulvas which were
dry, did it when they were humid with the menses or any other secretion.
Aristophanes says of Ariphrades in the _Knights_, v. 1280-83:

    “He is not only lewd; his fancy goes astray; he pollutes his tongue
    with shameful pleasures, licking up in his orgies the abominable
    dew, fouling his beard and tormenting women’s privates.”

Tormenting women’s privates, licking the dews, staining the beard, there
you have the man whom humid vulvas do not disgust! there you have a
beard like that of the Ravola of Juvenal, IX., 4, “when he with beard
all moist was rubbing against the groin of Rhodopé.” However, not to be
dogmatic, it may be admitted that Ravola’s moist beard may have been
intended merely the wet hair of a fornicator’s pubis. From the above
passage of Aristophanes we may deduce surely enough that the expression
“working with the tongue,” which he also uses, rather ambiguously, with
respect to the same Ariphrades, applies to a _cunnilingue_ rather than
to a _fellator_, _Wasps_, 1847-77:

    “Then Ariphrades, the best endowed of all, of whom his father said
    once, he never had a teacher, but prompted by nature, of his own
    free will, learned how to work his tongue, visiting every brothel!”

The same personage re-appears in the _Peace_, 885, where he is described
without any circumlocution as imbibing the feminine secretion by way of
a sauce:

    “And throwing himself on her he will drink up all her juice.”

The Greeks, however, had in this kind of voluptuousness a host of
imitators amongst the Romans. Mamercus Scaurus is known to us through
Seneca (_De Beneficiis_, IV., ch. 31), in this light:

    “Did you not know when you appointed Mamercus Scaurus as Consul,
    that he swallowed the menses of his servant girls by the mouthful?
    Did he make a secret of it? Did he pretend to be a blameless man?”

Similarly with Natalis, letter LXXXVII.:

    “Lately Natalis, that man with a tongue as malicious as it is
    impure, in whose mouth women used to eject their monthly

Both of them were consequently “imbibers of menses,” an appellation
which, as we have seen in chapter III., Galen applies to _cunnilingues_.

Now too we can clearly understand the meaning of Nicharchus’ epigram
against Demonax, vol. III., p. 334 of Brunck’s _Analecta_:

    “Do not, Demonax, regard all things with downcast head, and do not
    spoil your tongue with over-gratification; the sow has threatening
    bristles. You live amongst us, but you sleep in Phœnicia, and though
    no son of Semelé, you are thigh-reared.”

He never looks up, exactly like the Cinede Maternus of Martial, I., 97;
he gratifies his tongue, which likes erection; whether the vulva be
covered with hair or depilated, he does not mind; during the day he
lives in Greece, but sleeps in Phœnicia, because he stains his mouth
with the monthly flux, which is, as every one knows, of the Phœnician
dye, viz., purplish red[103]; like another Bacchus, he draws his
nourishment from a thigh.[104] This scarcely needs an explanation. You
can picture the _cunnilingue_, with his mouth glued between the thighs,
at work.

This strange depravity was still in favor in succeeding centuries.
Ausonius, in his _Epigrams_ CXX., CXXIII., CXXV., CXXVI., CXXVII., and
CXXVIII., has bequeathed a very unenviable notoriety to the names of
Castor and of Eunus:

Epigram CXX.:

    “Castor[105] wanted to lick the middle part of men, but he could not
    persuade any one to go with him; however the _fellator_ did not miss
    his treat; he went and licked his own wife’s privates.”

Epigram CXXIII., entitled _In Eunum liguritorem_.—On Eunus the Licker:

    “Eunus, why do you pay court to Phyllis, the perfume seller? Men say
    your tongue knows her parts, but not your member! Mind you make no
    mistakes in the names of her scents and perfumes, and that
    Seplasia’s atmosphere play you no tricks; think not costus and
    cysthus have the same odor,—that sardines and nard exhale the same
    savor. Poor Eunus! the things that he tastes and smells are very
    different; his mouth and his nose have tastes widely dissimilar!”

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

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 _Pe_nelopé; add to it the first of
    _Di_do; then to the first of _Ca_nis append the first of _Re_mus:
    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.

Epigram CXXVII.:

    “Eunus, when you lick the groins of your wife, she being with child;
    ’tis because you would be betimes in _teaching the tongues_ to your
    babes yet unborn.”

You seem, he says, to send out your tongue to meet your unborn children,
and fulfilling your duty as a Grammarian, to teach them lessons of
tongue, and the interpretation of obscure terms.[109] The Manneius of
Martial, whom we have spoken of above, was also in the habit of licking
pregnant women’s privates.

Epigram CXXVIII., entitled _On the same Eunus, the Learned Licker_:

    “Eunus, the little Syrian pedagogue, licker of privates, Opican
    doctor (’tis Phyllis he owes his knowledge to), beholds the feminine
    engine in fourfold different fashions: Opening it triangularly, he
    makes it the letter Delta (Δ); seeing the pair of folds side by side
    along the valley of the thighs with the line in the middle where the
    slit of the vagina opens, he says it is a Psi (Ⲯ); in fact its shape
    is triple-cloven then. Then when he has put his tongue in, it is a
    Lambda (Λ), and he makes out therein the true design of a Phi (Φ).
    Why! ignoramus, do you think you see a Rho (Ρ) written, where merely
    a long Iota (Ι) should be put? Contemptible doctor, foul pedant, you
    deserve the Tau (Τ) yourself; the crossed Theta (ϴ) should by rights
    be put against your name.”

    Ausonius calls Eunus an Opican, because these filthy practices were,
    according to Festus, most common among the Osci or Opici. He then
    indulges in a series of jests, or rather represents Eunus as doing
    so, on the shape of the female organ[110]. He says it seems to him
    either quadrangular, or triangular, in the latter case corresponding
    to the Greek [Greek: D] (similarly Aristophanes called it a
    Delta,—“their delta plucked clean of hair,” _Lysistrata_, 151), and
    also likens it to the letter **, owing to the folds which surround
    the vulva on either side[111], and form the outer lips, the lane in
    the middle being the opening of the vulva, and so together form the
    trifid letter **; in the _Technopaegnium_, 140, he calls it a
    three-pronged fork, the slit being the middle and the lips the outer
    prongs. Then he says that Eunus is a Lambda when he is licking, on
    account of the first letter of the word ****. All this is clear
    enough, and I do not understand how the very learned Vinet can
    complain of its obscurity. Neither has it given me much trouble to
    make out what Ausonius means by the letters Rho and Iota. The
    solution seems to me to be as follows: “Do not tell us, Eunus, that
    your pike in action resembles the letter (Ρ) of the Greeks, a letter
    which evidently looks like a lance with balls; in your amorous
    diversions you use no other lance than your tongue, which, as you
    will not deny, looks more like a javelin without balls, something
    like the letter Iota; you cannot deceive me, who well know that you
    would rather be taken for a fornicator than for a _cunnilingue_,
    like that Gargilius, of whom Martial, III., 96, says:

        “You do not enter, only lick my mistress; yet you boast yourself
        adulterer and copulator!”

Lastly and finally by the Tau he threatens his man with the gallows, and
by the Theta with death. Of this there can be little doubt; it is a
proved fact that the letter Theta, the initial of the word ****,
signified with the Greeks condemnation to death[112]. With regard to
Tau, there is room for doubt; instead of Tau some of the copies of
Ausonius give (δ), and although this sign may, according to Scaliger,
very well signify the rope for hanging, the difficulty I feel is this,
that a composite letter, a small letter, an abbreviation of doubtful
antiquity, thus placed amongst simple, capital, unabbreviated letters
seems to come in very inappropriately. It may be that Ausonius
originally wrote ****; then * having been left out by an inadvertence of
the copyist, the ** might easily have been turned into **. The Tau, as
the reader will see at once, represents a gallows. Tertullian, _Adversus
Maricionem_: “This letter Tau of the Greeks is with us the T, a sort of

As was the case with irrumation, so with even more reason the licking of
women’s privates was particularly adopted by old men, whose tool will
not raise its head[113].

Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue VII., says: “He (Gonzalvo of Cordova), was
likewise a mighty _cunnilingue_ by reason of his great age.”

    “Why does Blatara lick? because he cannot manage otherwise.”

The same author, VI., 26:

    “Lotades has lost the power of stiffening; so licks.”

And again, XII., 88:

    “Thirty young boys you have at command, and as many girls; yet you
    have only one member, and that will not rise. What then will you

Lick, no doubt, as we are told Linus did, in _Epigr._ XI., 25:

    “This too frisky mentula, Linus, so well known to girls in plenty,
    will longer stand; so mind your tongue.”

Sextillus (Martial, II., 28), was in all probability also a

    “Have your laugh at those, Sextillus, that call you cinede, and show
    them your middle finger[114]. You are not, Sextillus, a pedicon nor
    yet a fornicator, nor does Vetustilla’s burning mouth tempt you.—You
    are none of these, I allow, Sextillus; then what are you? I know
    not, but remember! there are two sorts yet.”

Two sorts are still left for Sextillus, to suck the virile member and to
lick the vulva, while he is neither a fornicator, nor a cinede, nor a
pedicon, nor an irrumator. Which did he choose to be? This we are not
told. Eunuchs, just as impotent as aged men, adopt the practice for the
same reason.[115] Gregory Nazianzen says in his funeral sermon on Basil
the Great:

    “They of the gynaeceum, those men, who amongst women are men, and
    amongst men women; who have nothing virile about them but their
    impiety; those that cannot give themselves up to voluptuousness in
    the natural way, have recourse to their tongue as their only

The _cunnilingues_ exhaled an evil smell from the mouth, and their
kisses were as much shunned as those of _fellators_. Martial, XII., 87:

    “You say the mouths of pedicons smell badly; if this is true,
    Fabullus, as you say, tell me! what think you of the breath of

And the same, XII., 59:

    “The neighbors kiss you every one, from the bearded cowherd, whose
    kisses have flavor of the he-goat, down to the _fellator_ and the
    _cunnilingue_ fresh from his business.”

_Cunnilingues_ and _fellators_ are compared to he-goats by Catullus
(XXXVII.), on account of their fetid breath:

    “Think you you alone have members, that you alone are entitled to
    satisfy women, and may consider all other men he-goats?”

Do not suppose for a moment that Catullus is speaking here of castrated
he-goats, which would be against the sense of the word, one invariably
used to designate entire he-goats. The sense is the same, but got at in
another way. He says: “Do you believe that you alone have members fit to
do the girls’ business? that all the others betray by their goatish
breath their vile trade as _cunnilingues_ or _fellators_, and
consequently the inertness of their mentulas, their feebleness, their
inability for erection? You will better appreciate the sting of Atellane
verse respecting Tiberius Cæsar: “An old buck licking the she-goats’

It was thought better to be taken for a fornicator than for a
_cunnilingue_; in the first place, because your friends would not kiss
you; Martial, VII., 94:

    “I had rather confront a hundred _cunnilingues_.”

Suetonius, _De Illustribus Grammaticis_, ch. 23:

    “He (Remmius Palaemon) was passionately fond of women, so much so as
    to prostitute his mouth to please them, and it is said that he was
    one day rebuked in the following way by a man who in the throng
    could not contrive to avoid one of his kisses: “Master,” he said,
    “if you see a man in a hurry to get away, will you lick him off?”

In the second place for fear of scaring away your guests. Aristophanes
says of Ariphrades, in the _Knights_, 1285, 86:

“Whoever does not execrate that man, may he never drink from the same
cup with us”—lastly, for fear of letting it be plainly known how
shrunken one was, and how miserable one’s member. Martial, III., 96:

    “You lick my mistress, but you do not enter her; yet you boast
    yourself adulterer and copulator!”

Hence the _cunnilingues_ took no less care than the _fellators_ to hide
the fetidness of their breath by means of essences and perfumes,
Martial, VI., 55:

    “Always scented with cassia and cinnamon, and your skin darkened
    with perfumes from the Phœnix’ nest, you reek of the leaden jars of
    Nicerotus’ shop. You mock at us, Coracinus, because we are
    unscented. Rather than smell sweet like you, I’d not smell at all.”

To remove every doubt as to Coracinus being a _fellator_ or a
_cunnilingue_, we will quote _Epigr._ IV., 43, where he is expressly
called a _cunnilingue_:

    “I did not say you were a cinede, Coracinus; I am not so rash and
    reckless. What I did say in a light, insignificant matter, one
    perfectly well known, that you will not deny yourself,—I said,
    Coracinus, you were a _cunnilingue_.”

It was believed that Venus revenged injuries done to herself or to hers,
not only by condemning the guilty to submit to be the passive party, but
by turning them into _cunnilingues_. Hence the pathic tastes of

    “With which the destitution of Lemnos inspired the heir of

To use the very words of Ausonius, _Epigr._ LXXI; and by inflicting
these tastes Venus is said to have avenged the wounds of Paris, Martial,
II., 84:

    “The sons of Poeas was effeminate and prone to man-love; thus they
    say did Venus avenge Paris’ wounds.”

In the same epigram Martial rallies Sertorius on being _cunnilingue_,
giving as a possible reason his having killed Eryx, the son of Venus:

    “Why does Sicilian Sertorius lick women’s privates; because, Rufus,
    it would seem it was he killed Eryx.”

_Cunnilingues_ appear to have been generally pale-faced; it is for
medical men to say why. This may help you to discern the salt in
Martial’s epigram on Charinus, I., 78:

    “Charinus is well and strong, and still he is pale;

    Charinus drinks with moderation, and still he is pale;

    Charinus digests well, and still he is pale;

    Charinus loves the open air and sun, and still he is pale;

    Charinus dyes his skin, and still he is pale;

    Charinus licks a woman’s privates, and still pale is he.”

That is to say, amongst the causes that should prevent paleness the one
last enumerated is the veritable cause of his paleness. _Fellators_
would also seem to have had pale faces, _Catullus_, LXXX:

    “How is it, Gellius, that those rosy lips of yours grow whiter than
    the winter’s snow, when at morn you leave your house, and the eighth
    hour calls you from your long-protracted soft repose? I know not
    what to think. Can it be true what rumor whispers, that you devour
    the middle parts of men? This at any rate is evidenced by wretched
    Virro’s sunken flanks and your own lips masked with the milky juice
    sucked from him.”

The withered flanks are those of Virro, the _irrumator_, the lips those
of Gellius; the passage is somewhat ambiguous, and only thus to be
explained. One Virro, accustomed to take the passive part, has been
already mentioned by us, in quoting Juvenal, IX., 35. I do not know
whether it is the same:

    “Though Virro has caught sight of you all naked, and the foam has
    come to his lips.”

_Pathics_, too, no less than _fellators_, appear to have pallid faces.
Juvenal, II., 50:

    “Hispo submits to young men; he is pale with either kind of infamy.”

He served as _patient_ to young men, and was moreover a _fellator_, as
is shown by the difference which the poet institutes between him and
women, who do not lick each other’s secret parts:

    “Taedia does not lick Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla.”

Women, in fact, are rarely _cunnilingues_, although there _are_
examples. Martial only mentions one woman as belonging to that category;
we shall come across her again in the next chapter.

                        FOOTNOTES - CUNNILINGUES


Footnote 102:

  But Clodia was something more than a sister for Publius Clodius; this
  would appear from the spirited pleasantry of Cicero, _Pro Coelio_, ch.

      “If there had not arisen differences between me and that lady’s
      husband, ... brother, I would say; I always make that mistake.”

Footnote 103:

  Gonzalvo of Cordova, according to Aloysia Sigaea (Dialogue VIII.),
  made similar jokes: “He also, I am sure, in spite of his age, was a
  great tongue-player (linguist). A pretty girl of some twenty years had
  to amuse him. When he wanted to put his tongue to her _juste milieu_,
  he declared he wanted to go to Liguria.” He could play with words upon
  the same matter, always implying the idea of a humid vulva, saying
  that he was going to Phœnicia, or to the Red Sea, or to the Salt Lake;
  you now understand what is meant by the Salt Lake or Salt Sea, into
  which Alpheus threw himself according to the epigram in the
  _Anthology_. Nearly related to this are the salgamas of Ausonius, of
  which we shall speak shortly, and the “onions swimming in putrid
  brine,” which the Bæticus of Martial, III., 77 devours. As it was said
  of the fellators that they “Phœnicized”, because they followed the
  example set by the Phœnicians, so probably the same word was applied
  to the _cunnilingues_ as loving to swim in a certain sea of Phœnician
  red; and, in fact, this was the case. Hesychius: “Scylax, an Erotic
  posture, like that assumed by Phœnicizers.” The Phœnicians assumed a
  certain posture, called Scylax, or _the dog_. There could be nothing
  better for describing the depraved action of a _cunnilingue_ than this
  canine epithet with regard to the posture taken for irrumating or
  fellation; dogs are _cunnilingues_ as anybody knows, and have been so
  ever since their abominable adventure which their ambassadors met with
  (allusion to Phaedrus’ fable).

Footnote 104:

  Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, III., 308-12:

      “... Mortal woman could not survive the celestial fire; she was
      consumed by her spouse’s favours. The infant but half formed is
      torn from the mother’s womb, and, if we may believe the tale, is
      sown still immature in the father’s thigh, and there completes the
      period of gestation.”

Footnote 105:

  This Castor is perhaps the same who, according to the statement of
  Ausonius (Epigram in _Professoribus Burdegalensibus_, XXII., 7) had
  published a book with the title _Cunctis de Regibus ambiguis_.

Footnote 106:

  Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, XII., ch. 12: “The Costus-root has a burning
  taste and an exquisite smell; its berries are otherwise useless.”

Footnote 107:

  The Cysthus, Greek **** is the private parts of a woman. Aristophanes,
  _Lysistrata_, v. 1160: “And a more beautiful cysthus I never saw.”

Footnote 108:

  Pliny _Nat. Hist._, XII., ch. 12: “The leaves of the nard must be
  considered more minutely, for they are a principal ingredient in

Footnote 109:

  Quintilian, _Instit. orat_., I., ch. 1: “He can learn the
  interpretation of the occult languages, what the Greeks call ******
  Alcuin, _Grammatica_, p. 2086, in Putschius’ _Collection_: _Glossa_ is
  the interpretation of a verb or a noun; _e.g._ _catus_ is the same
  thing as _doctus_.” On this occasion it may be permitted to the
  Director of the Court-Library at Coburg to state, that this library
  contains a remarkable copy of the collection of Putschius, by the hand
  of John Scheffer, who died at Upsala in 1679, beginning thus: “The
  notes to be found in this volume, on the margin of books IV. and V.,
  of Priscian, have been made after a very ancient and most beautifully
  written manuscript, in which a number of traces of primitive Latin
  orthography are found, as for instance: _dirivare_ for _derivare_,
  _peneultimus_ and _antepeneultimus_ for _penultimus_ and
  _antepenultimus_, _Oratius_ for _Horatius_, etc.”

Footnote 110:

  As we are on the subject of the shape of the female organ, it will not
  be amiss to enumerate in this place all the various names by which it
  was known in Latin; the greater part of them we have gathered from the
  treasure-house of Aloysia Sigaea: “The field, the ring, the furrow,
  the cavern, the clitoris, the conch-shell, the cunnus, the little
  boat, the cysthus, the pit, the garden, the between-thighs, the
  barque, the swine, the wicket, the slit, the precipice, the hole, the
  trench, the sheath, the virginal, the vulva. And what should hinder us
  from giving at the time the names of the virile member: The armature
  of the belly, the catapult, the tail, the stem, the parcel, the
  column, the pole, the lance with balls, the amulet, the pike, the
  groin, the hanger, the mentula, the mutinus, the muto, the nerve, the
  virile sign, the stake, the peculia, the penis, the stopper, the
  phallus, the javelin, the tree, the obelisk, the shaft, the spectre,
  the seminal member, the awl, the bull, the dart, the balista, the
  beam, the thyrsus, the vessel, the little vessel, the vein, the
  private, the verpa and verpus, the verge, the ploughshare.” Here you
  have more than enough.

Footnote 111:

  _Altrinsecus_, in Ausonius, is equivalent to _utrinsecus_, meaning,
  from either side. Lactantius employs that word in _De Opificio Dei_,
  ch. 8: “It is incredible how the fact of their being double (the ears)
  adds to their beauty, as much on account of the symmetry thus
  produced, as because the sounds which arise on all sides, can more
  easily be received on both sides (altrinsecus).”

Footnote 112:

  Persius, VI., 13: “And you may mark the crime with a black Theta.” See
  also Martial, VII., 36.

Footnote 113:

  I say it was adopted by them particularly; that there were also young
  men, who by a singular depravity licked the vulvas they might have
  entered legitimately, Martial tells us, XI., 86:


Footnote 114:

  When the middle-finger is pointing, the other fingers are turned
  inside, representing thus a mentula with its accessories; for which
  reason it was thus pointedly shown to Cinedes (the Greeks expressed
  this in a single word: ******), either by way of invitation or to
  tease them. Martial, I., 93: “Cestus has often complained to me,
  Mamurianus, that you tease him with your finger.” It was also pointed
  at people held in contempt. The same author, VI., 70:

      “He points with the finger and that the impudent finger” (that is
      Martianus, who is never ill, does to the doctors). Thence this
      unlucky finger had the epithet “infamous.” Persius says without
      any obscene afterthought, II., 33: “The grandmother cleanses the
      babe with the infamous (middle) finger.”

Footnote 115:

  Nevertheless, Eunuchs who have been deprived of their testicles, but
  not of their mentula, are by no means wanting in lubricity: they can
  do the business without any danger for a woman, inasmuch as they
  cannot generate children. The Roman matrons were well aware of the
  fact: Martial, VI., 67:

      “You ask me, Pannicus, why Gallia keeps so many Eunuchs; she loves
      to be enjoyed, but wants no children.”

  Juvenal, VI., 365-67:

      “There are women who like feeble eunuchs, and kisses that are ever
      harmless, and the absence, nay! the impossibility, of a beard, for
      they need use no abortive.”

  St. Jerome, in the _Life of Hilarion_: “A steward with curled locks,
  castrated for the sake of longer pleasure and perfect safety....” To
  make more sure of their enjoyment, experienced dames did not allow the
  testicles of the Eunuchs to be cut off until the member had attained
  full proportions, apprehensive that it might remain puny and inactive
  if the operation were made earlier. They wanted their Eunuchs well
  furnished, capable of challenging Priapus himself. By such they liked
  to be worked, being sure of not becoming enceinte. Juvenal, VI.,

      “With those however is love’s pleasure most exquisite, whose
      testicles, when they are lusty and fully matured, are delivered to
      the surgeons, the pubis being already black with hair. The organs
      are spared till they are full and ready; then at last, when they
      have reached two pounds in weight, Heliodorus cuts them, to the
      prejudice of the barber. The observed of all observers, stared at
      by all, see him enter the baths and challenge the god of vineyard
      and garden, castrated thus by his lady’s order. He may sleep now
      with his mistress; still beware, Josthumus, how you trust him with
      your Bromius, now fully developed and ready for the razor.”


                               CHAPTER VI

                               OF TRIBADS

THE tribads, also called frictionists[116] from the Greek ****, I rub,
are women, with whom that part of the genital apparatus which is called
the clitoris, attains such proportions, that they can use it as a
mentula, either for fornication or pedication. The clitoris,[117] which
is a very sensitive caruncle (a small fleshy cone), capable of movement
and resembling the verge, gets into erection with all women, not only
during the coitus, the delights of which it is said to enhance immensely
by increased titillation, but also in consequence of mere amorous
longing; with tribads, either by a freak of nature or in consequence of
frequent use, it attains immoderate dimensions[118]. The tribad can get
it in erection, enter a vulva or anus, enjoy a delicious voluptuousness,
and procure if not a complete realization of cohabitation, at least
something very near to it, to the woman who plays the passive part. What
more is there to say? She plays the man’s part with the omission of the
ejaculation of the semen, not that this sort of coitus is an altogether
dry affair, as women are in the habit of emitting their liquid during
the joys of love[119].

This depravity of voluptuousness, whether caused by the warmth of the
climate, or by a peculiarity of the soil or waters, or other reasons
unknown to us, was especially common with the women of Lesbos; this is
attested by all the old writers. Lucian, in his “Dialogues of
courtesans,” No. V. (Works, vol. VII., p. 349.): “This is one of those
tribads, as they are to be found in Lesbos, who will have nothing to do
with men, and do the men’s business with women.” If such things were an
every day occurrence with the Lesbian women, we must believe that they
were pushed to them by natural instigation[120], and to allay an
intolerable pruriency. Who has not heard of that most celebrated queen
of all tribads, Sappho, herself a Lesbian? Some authors, Maximum of Tyre
the first among them, have with the best intention tried to exonerate
her from his infamous vice; but hear her in Ovid (and he represents the
Ancients in sentiment and feeling), repudiating her would be apologists,
_Heroides_, XV., 15-20:

    “Neither the maidens of Pyrrha, nor those of Methymna[121], nor all
    the host of Lesbian beauties please me. Vile to me seems Anactoria,
    vile the fair Cydno, Atthis is no more so dear to my eyes as once
    she was, nor yet a hundred others I loved not innocently[122].
    Villain! yours is now what belonged to many women....”

and verse 201:

    “Lesbian women, beloved, who made me infamous!”

Sappho speaks first in general of those that have submitted to her
caresses, the maidens of Pyrrha and Methymna; then she mentions by name
Anactoria, Cydno and Atthis,—to whom Suidas adds Telesippa and Megara:

    “Her favorites, whom she loved well, were three in number, Atthis,
    Telesippa, Megara, and for those she burnt in impure passion.”

These passages from the Ancients are clear enough, and do not admit of
any doubt; they even assist us in explaining other sentences, which
otherwise seem obscure or ambiguous; for instance the “masculine Sappho”
of Horace (_Epistles_ I., XIX., 28); “making plaint against the maids of
her country” (_Odes_ II., XIII., 25); also Ovid, _Art of Love_, III.,

    “Sappho should be well known, too; what more wanton than she?”
    _Tristia_, II., 363:

    “What was the lore Lesbian Sappho taught, but to love maids?”

and Martial, VII., 68[123].

    “Sappho, the amorous, praised our poetess; the latter was more pure,
    the former not more perfect in art.”

Lucian’s witty and licentious pen has made famous another tribad,
Megilla, in the above quoted Dialogue. This Dialogue is not outrageously
obscene, for it breaks off just at the moment when things would have had
to be said very plainly; nevertheless, the virginal modesty of our
Wieland has not dared to translate it into German. The philosopher of
Samosata brings Leaena upon the scene, and makes her disclose by what
artifices Megilla gained her consent. Leaena asks Megilla:

“Are you then made like a man, and do with Demonassa (whom Megilla used
after the manner of tribads), as men do?” “I have not got exactly all
that, my Leaena,” answers Megilla, “but I am not entirely without it.
However, you will see me at work, and in a very pleasant manner. I have
been born like all of you, but I have the tastes, the desires and
something else of a man. Let me do it to you, if you do not believe me,
and you will see that I have everything that men have. Give me leave to
work you, and you will see.” Leaena confesses that she at last
consented, moved by her solicitations and promises, and no doubt also by
the novelty of the thing. “I let her have her way,” she says, “yielding
to her entreaties, seconded by a magnificent necklet and a robe of fine
linen. I took her in my arms like a man; she went to work caressing me,
panting with excitement and evidently experiencing the extreme of
pleasure.” Clonarion asks her inquisitively:

“But what did she do to you Leaena, and how did she manage?” But Leaena
eludes the question. “Do not ask me anything more; these are nasty
doings; by Urania, I shall not breathe a word more!” she answers, to the
great regret of the reader, who would like to penetrate further this

Amongst the tribads is still to be named Philaenis, the same, no doubt,
who according to Lucian (_Amores_, ch. 28—Works vol. V., p. 88), wrote
about erotic postures: “Let our women’s apartments be filled by women
like Philaenis, dishonored by androgynic[124] loves!”—Sophoclidisca in
Plautus, to whom Paegnion says: “Do not caress me, subagitatrix!”
(_Persa_, act II., 41);—and Folia of Ariminum, who according to Horace
(_Epodes_, V., 41) was “of masculine lubricity.” However writers as a
rule touch upon these points more lightly than is agreeable to the
curiosity of the reader. For the same reason the too great reserve of
Seneca (_Controversia_, II) is to be regretted, where he says at the

    “Hybreas having to plead in favor of a man who had surprised and
    killed a tribad, described the grief of the husband; on such a
    subject one must not ask for a too particular investigation.”

Much more complete, full and explicit is our good friend of Bilbilis
(Martial). Hear him! he is disclosing the tribadic doings of Balba, so
clearly that it could not be done better; I., 91:

    “As no one, Bassa, ever saw you go with men; as rumor never assigned
    you a lover, as every office about you was fulfilled by a troop of
    women, no man ever coming nigh you, you seemed to us, I admit, a
    very Lucretia. But, oh! shame on you, Bassa, you were a fornicator
    all the time! You dare to conjoin the private parts of two women
    together, and your monstrous organ of love feigns the absent male.
    You have contrived a miracle to match the Thebian riddle: that where
    no man is, there adultery should be!”

Surely it is clear enough what Bassa did, in conjoining the privates of
two women together. By no means! There are expounders, and very good
ones, too, who have quite misunderstood this very easy passage, and have
imagined that Bassa misused women by introducing into their vagina a
leathern contrivance, an olisbos, a _godemiche_; we shall speak at the
end of this chapter of this kind of pleasure, but it was quite unknown
to Bassa, who simulated the man in her own person.

Nothing could be more monstrous than the libertine passion of Philaenis;
she did not content herself with introducing her stiff clitoris in the
vulva of tribads, Martial, VII., 69:

    “Tribad of tribads, you, Philaenis, you are well justified in
    calling her your mistress whom you work;” or in those of other young
    girls, and to get a dozen of them under her in a day; but she even
    pedicated boys; Martial, VII., 67:

    “Philaenis the tribad pedicates boys[125], and stiffer than a man in
    one day works eleven girls.”

In order to leave nothing untasted in the way of virile lusts she was
also a _cunnilingue_; same epigram, at the end:

    “After all that, when she is in good feather,—she does not suck,
    that is too feminine; she devours right out girls’ middle parts. May
    all the gods confound you, Philaenis, who think it manly work to
    lick the vulva.”

Philaenis, when overmuch in rut, caused herself also to be served by
_cunnilingues_; this is clear enough from Martial, IX., 41:

    “When Diodorus, wanting the Tarpeian crowns, left Pharos behind and
    sailed for Rome, Philaenis vowed that to celebrate her mate’s return
    an innocent maid should lick her, such a one as the chaste Sabine
    women still cherish.”

She vowed if her husband returned to have her vulva licked by a young
girl, well-known for her innocence and chastity; to have it done by
prostitutes was for Philaenis nothing new; she wanted on that occasion
to experiment with a virgin, exactly like men, who always want something
new and strange to spur their lust. How rare it was for women to use
other women for that purpose appears from Juvenal II., 47-49:

    “... There will no other instance be found so abominable in our sex;
    Taedia does not lick Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla.”

But what could you find stronger, more energetic and plainer to
enlighten the reader completely on this subject than the following
verses in _Satire_ VI., 308-333, where Juvenal’s ire against the
tribadic orgies in Rome breaks out in words of fire?

    “At night they stop their litters here, make water here, and flood
    with long syphons the Goddess’ statue, and ride turn and turn about
    and go through the motions under the eye of the conscious moon; then
    they make for home. When the morning light returns, you walk through
    your wife’s piss, to visit your great friends. Known are the secret
    rites of the _Bona Dea_, when the flute excite their wanton loins,
    when drunk with music and with wine they rush along, whirling their
    locks and howling, these Maenads of Priapus! How they yearn for
    instant copulation! how their voice trembles with passionate
    longing! what floods of old wine gush down their dripping thighs! A
    prize is offered, and Laufeia challenges the brothel-master’s girls,
    and wins the first place for nimble hips; while herself is mad for
    the pleasure Medullina’s artful movements give her. Amongst these
    dames merit carries off the palm from noble blood. There nothing
    must be feigned, all must be done in very truth and deed,—enough to
    set on fire, however chilled with age, Laomedon’s son and old Nestor
    with his rupture! Then is seen mere lust that will brook not a
    moment’s more delay, women in her bare brutality, while from every
    corner of the subterranean hall rises the reiterated cry: “The hour
    is come, admit the men.” Is the lover asleep? she bids the first
    young man to hand snatch up his hood and come at once. Is none to be
    found? resort is had to slaves. No hope of slaves? a water-carrier
    will be hired to come. If he comes not, and men there are none, she
    will not wait an instant more but get an ass to mount her from

The tribadic orgies were divided into two kinds; in one of them the
Roman dames, giving free course to their lust, defiled the altar of
chastity; in the other they celebrated the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_.
You see in the first place the tribads go at night in litters to the
altar of chastity, there pass their water[126] against the statue of the
Goddess, and having perhaps spirted their urine up to her face[127] they
at all events wet the area all about, (their husbands walking right
through it in the morning, when they go to see their patrons), and then
they ride or allow themselves to be ridden alternately; here we have
more than one Philaenis, tribad of tribads! Other ladies go to celebrate
the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_, well known to the public since the
adventures of Clodius[128]. You observe them rousing themselves with the
sounds of flutes and trumpets, as also with fumes of wine, to undergo
valiantly the jousts of mutual love; you see their amorous frenzy, their
hair flying in the wind; you note their sighs of longing, and how they
piss with excitement. A prize is set, as in the feast of Pope Alexander
VI., to be given to the most intrepid tribad: Laufeia calls upon the
brothel-girls to let her ride them, and carries off the crown[129];
there is none there of better heart than Medullina, expert in plying her
loins and buttocks; there all etiquette ceases, mistresses and servants
alike contest for the palm of obscenity; there is no sham, all is
tribadic reality[130]; but, after all, finally nature got the upper hand
again, the tribad disappeared, and the woman became again a woman,
leaving alone tribadism, as a phantom only of pleasure, and not
satisfying them; from all parts a cry is raised: “Now is the time for
the men to come in: go and find young men; if you cannot find any, then
slaves will do; if they are lacking, bring the first men you can find in
the streets.” And if all fails, in their shameless wantonness, they will
offer their buttocks to an ass[131]. On the origin of tribads[132]
Phaedrus has a fable, IV., 14:

    “Another asked the reason why tribads and cinedes were created. The
    old man thus explained: The same Prometheus, modeller of the human
    clay, that if it knock against Fortune is shivered in pieces, once
    when he had been fashioning all day long separately those parts that
    modesty keeps hidden beneath a garment, to fit them presently to the
    bodies he had made, was unexpectedly invited to supper by Bacchus.
    There he imbibed the nectar in large drafts, and returned late home
    with unsteady foot; then what with fumes of wine and sleepiness, he
    joined the female parts to male bodies, and fixed male members on to
    the women. Thus it is we find lust indulging in depraved pleasures.”

The masculine member applied to women is evidently that clitoris of such
proportions in erection, that the tribads can use it like a penis; the
female apparatus fitted on to man is nothing else but the posterior
orifice, which itches in the case of cinedes, just as the vulva
titillates women. Tribads were not wanting in the times of Tertullian;
he calls them frictrices. _De Pallio_, ch. 4:

    “Look at those she-wolves who make their bread by the general
    incontinence; amongst themselves they are also frictrices.”

The same author says in the _De Resurrectione Carnis_, ch. 16: “I do not
call a cup poisoned which has received the last sigh of a dying man; I
give that name to one that has been infected by the breath of a
frictrix, of a high-priest of Cybelé, of a gladiator, of an executioner,
and I ask if you will not refuse it as you would such persons’ actual

Nor was the trade of tribad out of date in the time of Aloysia Sigaea:

    “Nay! do not think me”, says Tullia, Dialogue II., “worse than
    others. This taste is spread almost over the universe. Italians,
    Spaniards, French, are all alike as to the tribadism of their women;
    if they were not ashamed, they would always be rutting in each
    other’s arms.”

More, she quotes herself some examples of the hot transports of tribads,
Dialogue VII.:

    “Enemunda, the sister of Fernando Porcio, was very beautiful, and
    not less so was a friend of hers, Francisca Bellina. They frequently
    slept together in Fernando’s house. Fernando laid secret snares for
    Francisca; the latter knew that he desired to have her, and was
    proud of it. One morning the young man, stung by his desires, rose
    with the sun, and stepped out upon the balcony to cool his hot
    blood. He heard the bed of his sister in the next room cracking and
    shaking. The door stood open; Venus had been kind to him and had
    made the girls careless. He enters; they do not see him, blinded and
    deafened by pleasure. Francisca was riding Enemunda, both naked,
    full gallop. ‘The noblest and most powerful mentulas are every day
    after my maidenhead,’ said Francisca, ‘I should select the finest,
    dear, but for you; so fain am I to gratify your tastes and mine.’
    Whilst speaking she was jogging her vigorously. Fernando threw
    himself naked into the bed; the two girls, almost frightened to
    death, dared not stir. He draws Francisca, exhausted by her ride,
    into his arms and kisses her: ‘How dare you, abandoned girl,’ he
    says, ‘violate my sister, who is so pure and chaste? You shall pay
    me for this; I will revenge the injury done to our house; answer now
    to my flames as she has answered to yours.’ ‘My brother! my
    brother!’ cries Enemunda, ‘pardon two lovers, and do not betray us
    to slander!’ ‘No one shall know anything,’ he answered, ‘let
    Francisca make me a present of her treasure, and I will make you
    both a present of my silence.’”

The conversation of Ottavia with Tullia, acting as tribad, in the same
work (Dialogue II) is still bolder and more to the point:

TULLIA: Pray do not draw back; open your thighs.

OTTAVIA: Very well! Now you cover me entirely, your mouth against mine,
your breast against mine, your belly against mine; I will clasp you as
you are clasping me.

TULLIA: Raise your legs, cross your thighs over mine, I will show you a
new Venus; to you quite new. How nicely you obey! I wish I could command
as well as you execute!

OTTAVIA: Ah! ah! my dear Tullia, my queen! how you push! how you
wriggle! I wish those candles were out; I am ashamed there should be
light to see how submissive I am.

TULLIA: Now mind what you are doing! when I push, do you rise to meet
me; move your buttocks vigorously, as I move mine, and lift up as high
as ever you can! Is your breath coming short?

OTTAVIA: You dislocate me with your violent pushing; you stifle me; I
would not do it for any one but you.

TULLIA: Press me tightly, Ottavia, take ... there! I am all melting and
burning, ah! ah! ah!

OTTAVIA: Your affair is setting fire to mine—draw back!

TULLIA: At last, my darling, I have served you as a husband; you are my
wife now!

OTTAVIA: I wish to heaven you were my husband! What a loving wife I
should make! What a husband I should have! But you have inundated my
garden; I am all bedewed! What have you been doing, Tullia?

TULLIA: I have done everything up to the end, and from the dark recesses
of my vessel love in blind transports has shot the liquor of Venus into
your maiden barque.

Leo Africanus, in his _Description of Africa_, p. 336 (edition Elzevir,
of 1632), mentions the tribads of Fez:

    “But those who have more common sense, call these women (he is
    speaking of witches) “Sahacat,” a word which corresponds with the
    Latin _fricatrices_, because they take their pleasure with each
    other. I cannot speak more plainly without offending decency. When
    good-looking women visit them, these witches fall at once in hot
    love with them, not less hot than the love of young men for girls,
    and they ask them in the guise of the devil to pay them by suffering
    their embraces. So it happens that very often when they think they
    have been obeying the behests of demons, they have really only had
    to do with witches. Many, too, pleased with the game they have
    played, seek of their own impulse to enjoy intercourse again with
    the witches, and under pretence of being ill, summon one of them or
    send their unfortunate husbands to fetch her. Then the witches,
    seeing how matters stand, asseverate that the wife is possessed by a
    demon, and can only be liberated by joining their association.”

You ask whether tribads are still to be found in our days? If there are
none now, there certainly were some in existence in Paris only a short
time before the Great Revolution, if we are to trust the author of
_Gynaeology_, III., p. 428. There was a veritable college of tribads in
Paris, who went by the names of Vestals, holding regular meetings in
particular localities. There were a great many members, and of the
highest classes; they had their statutes with respect to admission; the
affiliated were divided into three degrees: aspirants, postulants, the
initiated. Before the postulant could be admitted to the secret of the
order, she had to undergo for three days a difficult probation: shut up
in a cell tapestried with lewd pictures, and ornamented with carved
Priapi of magnificent proportions, she had to keep up a fire with I do
not know how many ingredients, and arranged in such a manner that it
would go out if there was taken too much or too little of any of the
materials; on the four altars of the temple, which was adorned with
statues of Sappho, of the Lesbians she had loved, and of the Chevalier
d’Eon, who for so many years successfully dissimulated his sex, and with
splendid hangings, perpetual fires were burning. Kept English women,
too, did not recoil at tribadism, as the same author states, III., p.
394. He affirms that not long before the close of the last century,
confederacies of tribads, called Alexandrine confederacies, were still
in existence in London, though in a small number only.

Enough now of those who are, strictly speaking, included under the name
of tribads; but the word has a more extended signification. The term is
also applied to those women who in default of a real mentula, make use
of their finger or of a leathern contrivance, which they introduce into
their vulva, and so attain a fictitious enjoyment. Germany, I have
lately heard, has been ringing with complaints about this abuse. As
regards the leathern engine[133], called by the Greeks olisbos, the
women of Miletus, above all others, made it their instrument of
pleasure. Aristophanes, in the _Lysistrata_, 108-110:

    “For since the day the Milesians left us in the lurch, not an
    olisbos have I set eyes on, eight inches long,—that might give us
    its leathern aid....”

Suidas under the word “****”:

    “A virile member made of leather which was used by Milesian women,
    as being tribads and immodest. It was also made use of by widows.”

The same author under the word “****”:

    “Cratinus also says on this head: _Lewd_ women will be using the

Hesychius quotes the same passage.

If you ask whether modern women, who have suffered the wrong of seeing
their beauty slighted, actually have recourse to this leathern
substitute, Aloysia Sigaea (Dialogue II) shall answer you:

    “The Milesian women made for themselves imitations in leather, eight
    inches long and thick in proportion. Aristophanes tells us that the
    women of his day habitually made use of such. And to this very day
    Italian, Spanish and Asiatic women honor this instrument with a
    place in their toilet apparatus; it is their most precious
    possession, and one very highly appreciated.”

It is an undoubted fact that the Roman matrons cherished a species of
inoffensive snake[134], the cold skin of which served as a refrigerator
in summer, Martial, VII., 86:

    “If Glacilla winds an icy serpent round her neck....”

Lucian _Alexander_ (Works, vol. IV., p. 259):

    “In that country one sees serpents of an enormous size, but so quiet
    and mild that they are fondled by women, sleep with the children, do
    not get angry on being trodden on or handled, and suck the nipples
    of the breast like a nursling.”

This being so, our eminent Bottiger was probably right, when he wrote
page 454 of his _Sabina_[135] a profoundly scientific work in German,
that very likely snakes were used as instruments to satisfy the
lubricity of amorous women. You may understand now what happened, or
what might have happened to Atia, the mother of Augustus, of whom
Suetonius (_Augustus_, ch. 94) wrote:

    “I read in the treatise of Asclepiades of Mendé called the
    _Theologumena_, how Atia the mother of Augustus, having gone at
    midnight to the temple of Apollo, to assist at a solemn sacrifice,
    fell asleep, and so did the other women present; how a serpent
    suddenly glided close to her, and after some little time withdrew
    again, and how on waking she purified herself, as though she had
    left the arms of her husband.”

There would be nothing surprising in the fact that a serpent of that
sort should have investigated even without incitation on Atia’s part, a
certain locality which was well known to it by the lubricity of other
women, and that Atia felt on awakening the very same sensation as though
she had undergone a real coitus.

                         FOOTNOTES - OF TRIBADS


Footnote 116:

  They were also called hetairistriae:—Hesychius: “Hetairistriae
  tribads”—and likewise dietairistriae, according to the same author:
  “Dietairistriae, women who go after prostitutes (hetairae) for carnal
  intercourse, just as men do; same as tribads.”

Footnote 117:

  Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue III.: “But I forgot (Tullia speaking) to tell
  you of the clitoris. This is a membranous body, situated at the bottom
  of the pubis, and representing in a reduced form the virile verge. As
  is the case with the verge, the amorous desire excites it to erection,
  and in certain women of an ardent temperament it inflames them with
  pruriency to such a degree that by the mere caressing of it with the
  hand they very often discharge their fluid without the help of a rider
  at all.”

Footnote 118:

  If that woman whom Plater saw, according to Venette in his _Tableau de
  l’amour conjugal_, vol. I., ch. 1, 3, was not a tribad, she might well
  have been one; her clitoris, which with other women attains in its
  utmost erection the length of the half of the little finger or
  thereabouts, was as long as the neck of a goose. Is it surprising that
  women furnished with such an implement should wish to get rid of it?
  Amputation is however dangerous. Plater did not venture to finish an
  amputation which he had commenced, and Rodohamides, an Egyptian
  physician of the XIth century, had not courage to even undertake one,
  although commanded by a queen to perform the operation (Venette, IV.,
  2). Those whom Adramytes, the king of the Lydians, order to castrate
  women, were they more courageous? Athenæus, XII., 2: “Xanthus states
  in the second book of his Lydiacs, that Adramytes, king of the
  Lydians, was the first to have women castrated and employ them as
  eunuchs.” However that may be, these female eunuchs have very much
  exercised the commentators. Some suppose that straps and buckles did
  in their case the same service as the chastity-belts, which, it is
  said, Spaniards and Italians to this day compel their wives to wear if
  they think they have reason to be jealous: others believe that it was
  a question of suture, as is the case with the natives of Angola and
  the Congo, who stitch the vulvas of young girls for the protection of
  their maidenheads; but I believe that nobody knows anything certain in
  this respect. Nor does it appear that these women had to submit to an
  operation, which is certainly practised upon the young girls by the
  Arabs, Copts, Ethiopians, in some parts of Persia and Nigritia, and
  which consists in cutting off the prepuce of the clitoris; this is
  proved by abundant evidence, and reported in the Encyclopedia of Ersch
  and Gruber under the word: “Beschneidung” (Circumcision); how indeed
  could Athenæus describe as _Eunuchize_ that which is calculated to
  increase the fecundity of women. I thought first that these women were
  tribads changed into eunuchs by the removal of their immoderately
  large clitoris; I am now inclined to believe that the king caused that
  to be done to these women, which according to Aristotle, _Nat. Hist._
  IX., 50, was done to sows: “Sows are castrated, so that they shall no
  longer desire the coitus and get quickly fattened. They are castrated,
  suspended by their hind legs, after fasting two days, by an incision
  in that place where with a man the testicles are situated, in fact in
  the female matrix.” Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, VIII., 51: “Sows are
  castrated in the same way as female camels, after a fast of two days,
  suspended by their hind legs, by an incision in the vulva; they thus
  fatten much quicker.” Columella, VII., IX. 5: “Sows are also castrated
  by incision in the vulva; the wounds cicatrics, and they cannot
  conceive any more.” This practice has by no means disappeared;
  Schneider notes it in the passage of Columella; sows, cows, mares,
  sheep, are still castrated by excising their ovarium. Why should we
  not believe that Adramytes wanted the same process to be applied to
  the fair sex, in order to make women sterile? However the ancient
  Egyptians, who (see Strabo, book XVII., p. 824) undoubtedly
  circumcized themselves, and also their women, appear to me to have had
  in view not so much ovariotomy as the circumcision of the prepuce of
  the clitoris, a practice still in use with them, as stated above;
  cutting the female parts being thus something like circumcision, it is
  to be assumed that a similar operation was intended rather than any
  other one.

Footnote 119:

  Let us consult again Aloysia Sigæa, Dialogue III.: “It has happened
  sometimes to myself (Tullia), when Callias tries on me his
  lubricities, when he tickles me and excites me. Then I sometimes water
  his too libertine hands with an abundant dew from my pleasure grounds.
  And that gives him an opportunity for letting off a whole sheaf of
  sarcasms and jokes. But what can I do? I begin to laugh, and so does
  he; I tell him he is too impudent, he tells me I am too lewd; we call
  each other names right and left, and in the midst of our mutual
  recrimination he will throw himself upon me, turn me on my back, and
  force me to submit to his assault, saying he will give me his dewdrops
  for those he has drawn from me, so that I may not be a loser.” Further
  on, Dial., IV.: “Callias, pressing me more closely to him, buried his
  weapon deeper into my belly, almost as though he were trying to get
  himself in altogether. Soon a delicious stream spirted into me, and at
  the same time I felt my liquid boiling over, causing me such delight
  that I forgot all reticence, and myself excited Callias more and more,
  pressing him against me and begging him to quicken his pace. Thus we
  expired both together with our muscles relaxing at one and the same
  instant.” You will understand by this the meaning of the epigram to
  Sosipator in the _Analecta_ of Brunck, I., p. 504:

      “Until the white liquor ran over with both of them, and Doras
      unwound her wearied limbs.”

  Reiske thought the “white liquor” in this passage meant drops of
  perspiration. Nonsense! it means the virus secreted by both sexes, and
  liberated in the last spasms of lust. Aloysia Sigæa, Dialogue IV.: “As
  I finished speaking” (it is still Tullia that speaks), “he got upon
  me, and collecting all his strength he pushed the arrow into me, he
  filled my womb with his fecundating dew, and I also shed the rivulet
  of white liquid. Incapable of enduring any longer so intense a
  voluptuous feeling, we sank back exhausted in each other’s arms.” We
  have quoted besides on different occasions extracts from the rich
  treasures of Aloysia Sigæa, on this subject.

Footnote 120:

  Women, whose clitoris is too prominent, are thus prevented from having
  intercourse with men, so that when they are seized with amorous
  designs they cannot well find any other way of satisfying their
  desires than by playing tribadism. (Venette IV., ii, 4.)

Footnote 121:

  Pyrrha and Methymna are towns in Lesbos. Pomponius Mela, II., 7: “In
  the Troad is Lesbos, and in Lesbos there were formerly five cities,
  viz.: Antissa, Pyrrha, Eresos, Methymna, Mytilene.”

Footnote 122:

  Not innocently, or rather, “not without crime”; some read “which I
  loved not without crime” others, “which I loved here without crime,”
  but the difference is not great. If you prefer “which I loved here,”
  the excuse itself is a confession. All we want is the admission that
  the tribad-tastes of Sappho are no modern invention, but originated,
  how we know not, and prevailed in very early times. The love of woman
  for woman was never known under any other name than the notorious one
  of tribadism.

Footnote 123:

  See whether it is with good reason or no that the succeeding epigram,
  no. 69, calls Philaenis the tribad of tribads.

Footnote 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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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

Footnote 127:

  There is some ambiguity about the “long syphons.” They are rivulets of
  urine passed near the statue, or perhaps Juvenal means, to use the
  expression of Grangé, “Urine spirted right up into the Goddess’ face,
  which may be done by impudent women compressing with the hands their
  parts, and thus retaining for some time the water; thus collected it
  will spurt out with greater force.”

Footnote 128:

  Verse 335-339.

      “But all the Moors and Indians well know the flute-girl who showed
      a bigger penis than great Caesar’s two anti-Catos, in that place
      from which a rat will fly, conscious of possessing testicles....”

Footnote 129:

  The “nimble hips” are those of the tribad, who is riding another in
  the posture of Apuleius’ Fotis, _Metamorph._ II., p. 122, when she
  gratified Lucius with the joys of a superincumbent Venus.

Footnote 130:

  All this was actually represented in Paris, 1791, on the stage of a
  theatre, where, according to the author of the _Gynaeology_ III., 423,
  a man completely naked had connection with a woman as naked as
  himself, both representing savages, accompanied by the plaudits of
  both sexes. There is however nothing new under the sun. With the
  Romans it had long been customary, after the public games were
  finished, to bring prostitutes into the arena, and set them to work,
  so that the spectators might have an opportunity to perform what they
  had been looking at with greedy eyes; a herald proclaimed what was to
  come. Tertullian, _De Spectaculis_, ch. 17: “Prostitutes, the victims
  of public incontinence, are brought upon the stage, shamefaced with
  respect to the women only; to the men they were known; they are
  exposed to the laughter of all, high and low; their dwellings, their
  prices, even their recommendations were proclaimed by the crier.”
  Isidorus, _Origines_, XVIII., 42: “The theatre is like a brothel; when
  the games are over, public women are prostituted there.” The rape of
  the Sabines described in Livy (II., 18) would seem to have been a not
  dissimilar form of amusement: “In this year young Sabines in Rome
  having, in the midst of the games, abducted some prostitutes, the
  tumult ensuing thereupon degenerated into a riot, in fact nearly into
  a battle.”

Footnote 131:

  Observe the subtlety of the expression adopted by the poet: “offers
  her buttocks to an ass to get on them.” Juvenal knows that a woman has
  no chance to have an ass’s mentula in her except by turning her back
  to the beast.

Footnote 132:

  Plato, _Symposium_ (Works, Zweibrücken edition, vol. X., p. 205)
  imagines another origin; in the passage where he relates the
  celebrated fable, according to which Jupiter had cut the men in
  halves, he says: “As to those women who are halves of women, they are
  not much harassed by desires after men; but are much more given to
  amuse themselves with women; the hetairistriae descend from their

Footnote 133:

  Another use of these leathern engines has been noted in ch. II.

Footnote 134:

  This sort of snake served also to amuse men. Suetonius, _Tiberius_,
  ch. 72: “He kept for amusement a snake; one day, when he went as usual
  to feed it, he found it devoured entirely by ants, which he took as a
  warning to guard against being attacked by a mob.” Pliny, _Nat. Hist._
  XXIX., ch. 4: “The Aesculapian serpent was brought to Rome from
  Epidaurus; it was kept in the public edifices, and also in private
  houses.” Seneca, in the _De Ira_, II., ch. 31, speaks of: “Those
  snakes that glide harmlessly amid the cups and into the bosoms of the
  guests.” They were not of a small size; this appears from what
  Philostratus says in his _Heroics_, VIII., 1: “Ajax had a tame snake
  of five cubits length, which kept close to him, guided him on his way,
  and followed him about like a dog.” This kind of snake was very common
  at Pella, in Macedonia, as Lucian says in a passage quoted in the
  text: “There are many such in their country.” They are still to be
  found in Italy, according to Justus Lipsius in his Notes to Seneca.

Footnote 135:

  “Sabina, or the Morning Toilette of a Roman Lady at the end of the
  First Century,” translated into French by Clapier, 1813, 8vo.


                              CHAPTER VII

                      OF INTERCOURSE WITH ANIMALS

IT will not be out of place to say something here of the incontinence of
those who have carried out carnal intercourse with animals. It appears
that in Egypt the Mendesians, who paid divine honors to a he-goat[136],
prostituted to him publicly women, even against his inclination, in
celebrating his rites. Herotodus II., 46:

    “A monstrous affair was connected with this district (viz., the
    Mendesian) in my time; a he-goat covered a woman in public.”

Strabo, XVII., p. 802:

    “Mendes, where they worship Pan, and a live he-goat; the latter in
    that place have intercourse with women[137].”

The Jews also knew something of the practice; as we know from the law of
Moses, Leviticus xx., 15-16:

    shall surely be put to death” ...

How should Juvenal have come to tell us, Satire VI., 332-33:

    “... no more delay is there; she hastens to make a donkey ride her
    from behind,” if it had not been known that women sometimes
    submitted themselves to asses? Would Apuleius have thought of
    describing to us with no less minuteness than wit the scene in which
    Lucius, changed into an ass by a mistake of Fotis, effects
    intercourse with a matron? _Metamorphoses_, book X., p. 249:

    “But I was a prey to grave apprehensions; I asked myself how I, with
    my long and coarse legs, could mount a delicate woman, clasp with my
    hard hoofs her soft and tender limbs that looked like milk and
    honey; how could I with my enormous mouth, furnished with teeth as
    big as tomb-stones, kiss those small, rosy, scented lips; how lastly
    this lady, although in rut to her very finger nails, could take in
    such a big genital verge.... She, however, doubled her tender
    allurements, her endless kisses, her sweet murmurings, interspersed
    with sweet glances like stings: ‘I hold you at last,’ she cried, ‘I
    hold my dove, my sparrow!’ and having said this, she showed me how
    vain my fears had been for embracing me as closely as she could, she
    received me inside entirely, out and out. Even more than that,
    whenever I drew back in order to spare her, she pushed closer to me,
    and clasping my backbone like mad, she clung to me so closely that,
    by Hercules, I began to think that I was not well enough furnished
    to assuage her passion completely.”

A young girl of Tuscany got herself covered by a dog in the time of Pius
V., the Roman Pope, as reported by Venette II., iv., ch. 3; and
according to a note of Elmenhorst on the above quoted passage of
Apuleius, a woman was discovered in Paris, in October, 1601, to have had
connection with a dog. The law was appealed to, and in conformity with
the unanimous verdict pronounced by the parliament, the adulterous woman
and the dog were both burnt alive. Nay! more, a woman has been known to
submit to a crocodile, if we may believe Plutarch, who reports in his
treatise _On the Sagacity of Animals_ (p. 976, vol. II., of the complete

    “Quite lately our excellent Philinus, on returning from a long
    voyage to Egypt, told me that he had seen at Antaeopolis an old
    woman sleeping with a crocodile stretched comfortably beside her on
    her pallet.”

Nor have men despised the vulva of animals. Plate III of the _Monuments
du Culte Secret des Dames Romaines_, shows the picture of a man working
away in a goat, though the annotator ought not to have quoted in
illustration of it a passage of Virgil (_Bucolics_ III., 8.), which has
nothing whatever to do with this matter:

    “We know who (pedicated) you, while the he-goats looked at you

In our countries legal cases show that not only goats, but also sheep,
cows, and mares, have sometimes charmed shepherds and other people of
low breeding.



Footnote 136:

  Plutarch, _Of Animals that have Reason_, p. 989, vol. II., of his
  works: “It is reported in Egypt the he-goat Mendes, shut up with a
  great number of women, all of them beautiful, refused to have anything
  to do with them, and prefers goats by far.”

Footnote 137:

  If we may believe Venette (II., iv. 3), there is nothing more common
  in Egypt at the present day than for young women to have intercourse
  with he-goats.


                              CHAPTER VIII

                         OF SPINTRIAN POSTURES

IN the sundry kinds of voluptuous enjoyment which we have studied so
far, there are almost always only two persons in action. It happens,
nevertheless, that more than two, three or even more, may enjoy
themselves together; this is what we call after Tiberius, the spintrian
kind. Suetonius, _Tiberius_, ch. 43:

    “In his retreat at Capri he had a _sellaria_, the scene of his
    secret debaucheries, in which chosen groups of young girls and
    worn-out voluptuaries, the inventors of monstrous conjunctions,
    called by him _spintries_, formed a triple chain, surrendered
    themselves to mutual defilements in his presence, so as to reanimate
    by this spectacle his languishing desires.”

This _sellaria_, by the etymology of the word, was evidently a room
furnished with seats; those who prostituted each other on these seats
were called “_sellarii_,” from the place, and “_spintriae_,” from the
chain they formed. Spinter, according to Festus, p. 443, signified, “a
kind of bracelet worn by women on the upper part of the left arm.” The
word is probably a corruption of _sphincter_, the Greek **** from ****,
“I clasp,” as for instance, a band surrounding the arm. Tacitus,
_Annals_, VI., ch. 1:

    “Then there were invented names never known before, as for instance,
    _sellarii_ and _spintriae_, names taken from the turpitude of the
    place or from the complicated infamies undergone.”

Spintries then are those who, linked like the rings of a bracelet, thus
accomplish the pleasures of Venus. Three can link themselves thus, two
and two, in such a way that while the middle one is a fornicator or a
pedicon, in front is a woman or a cinede, behind a pedicon. Such was the
chain formed by those Ausonius (_Epigram_ CXXIX.) describes[138]:

    “Three in one bed; two submit to the infamous act, two perform
    it.—Four there are, I suppose.—Wrong! to the outermost ones give a
    villainy apiece; count the man in the middle twice, for he both acts
    and submits.”

Do you want to see the one in the middle working a woman? Plate XL. of
the _Monuments de la Vie Privée des douze Césars_ shows you an example.
Do you wish to see the middle one pedicating? Look at plate XXVII.

There is, however, no need that the middle actor should fornicate or
pedicate. He may be placed between his two companions in such a way that
while he is enduring the assault of a pederast behind, he may in front
irrumate, suck a member or lick a vulva. Hostius whose mind was so
fertile in inventing obscenities that he was held up as an example to
future ages, has tried all these postures and even added fresh
variations. Seneca (_Nat. Quaest._, I., 16) has inveighed against him
more vehemently than is perhaps fit for a philosopher. It seems to me as
though some secret voluptuousness has been acting here on the sense of
this rigid guardian of virtue; he says:

    “I will tell you here a story which will show you that lust will not
    disdain any artifice which is calculated to rouse desires, and to
    stimulate its own fury. The lasciviousness of Hostius was of the
    extremest kind. It was this rich miser, this slave of a hundred
    million sesterces, whose death, when he had been assassinated by his
    slaves, Augustus would not avenge, although he would not say that
    they were right to kill him. His lewdness was not contented with one
    sex; he was as passionate for men as for women. He had mirrors made
    which magnified the reflections so much that a finger appeared as
    big as an arm. These mirrors were placed in such a manner that when
    he had a man under him he could watch every movement of his
    accomplice, and enjoy as it were the fictitious size of his member.
    He chose his men carefully, the measuring tape in hand, and still
    had to deceive his insatiable passion. It would be too outrageous to
    report everything which this monster, that ought to have been torn
    into pieces, dared to say and do with his mouth; when surrounded on
    all sides by his mirrors he was the spectator of his own turpitudes,
    and those secret infamies which every man would deny, if accused of
    them, of such he took his fill not with his mouth only, but also
    with eyes. And, by Hercules, generally speaking crimes shun their
    own reflection; men who are bare of every feeling of honor and
    exposed to every insult, still have some sense of shame, and do not
    appear as they are. But he feasted his eyes on unheard of and
    unknown infamies, and, not content to see simply how he dishonored
    himself, he surrounded himself with mirrors, for the sake of
    multiplying and grouping his lubricities. As he could not see
    unaided everything distinctly when, pedicated by one man, he had his
    head between the thighs of another, he saw by his mirrors what he
    was doing and how. He saw the lewd work of his mouth, and watched
    himself absorbing men by every orifice. Sometimes placed between a
    man and a woman, playing both ways the passive part, he was able to
    see the greatest abominations. Darkness was not for him! So far from
    being afraid of the light of day, he wanted it for his monstrous
    copulations, and was proud to have them illuminated by it. Nay,
    more, he even wanted to be painted in these attitudes. Even
    prostitutes have a certain reserve, and those that abandon
    themselves to the outrages of all, veil to some extent their poor
    complaisances, and the very brothel keeps some relics of decency;
    but this monster turned his obscenities into a spectacle for

    “Yes,” he said, “I submit myself to a man and a woman at the same
    time; but nevertheless with the organs which are left free to me I
    am still able to commit a worse ignominy. All my limbs are polluted;
    then shall my eyes also take part in my enjoyments, they shall be
    witnesses and judges. What I cannot see in a natural way let me see
    by the help of art, so that I may not be ignorant of what I am
    doing. No matter to me that Nature has provided man with such
    insignificant organs of voluptuousness, the same nature which has
    furnished animals so well; I find means to deceive my passion, and
    to satisfy myself. Where is the harm, if I try to imitate nature? I
    will have mirrors which shall reflect images of incredible
    dimensions. If I could, I would make these images real; as I cannot,
    I must be satisfied with phantoms. Let me see these objects of
    obscenity larger than they are in reality, and surprise myself by
    the sight of them!”

Plate XXI. of the _Monuments de la Vie Privée des douze Césars_ shows
the picture of Tiberius in a very strange spintrian posture, which,
however, is not without charm; the emperor, half reclining on his back,
licks one girl’s privates who is kneeling over him, while he offers his
penis to be sucked by another.

There are also arrangements where more than three can join, making thus
a longer chain. Let a man put his member into a woman while both of them
are being pedicated at the same time, and you have four people forming a
triple chain, like those of Tiberius in the passage of Suetonius quoted
above. Suppose then another pedicon on each end, and then you have a
group of five, forming a quadruple interweaving. Martial, XII., 43:

    “There are to be found novel figures of Love, such as the
    impassioned fornicator may try, such as experienced libertines
    perform and keep the secret of; how five can copulate in a group,
    how more still may be connected in a chain.”

Look at Plate XXXVI. of the _Monuments de la Vie privée des douze
Césars_, with a group of five copulators artistically diversified. Nero,
lying face downwards, enters one girl who is on her back, at the same
time licking the privates of another who is standing; he himself is
being pedicated, while the girl standing also submits her behind to a
pedicon. That such a chain may be extended infinitely, is self evident.



Footnote 138:

  Translation by Ausonius of a Greek Epigram of Strata, to be found in
  Brunck’s _Analecta_, II., 380.



                                 OF THE

                            EROTIC POSTURES

1. The man face downwards taking between his thighs the woman, who lies
      on her back with her legs stretched out straight.

2. The man face downwards taken between her thighs by the woman, who
      lies on her back with the legs apart.

3. The woman lying on her back taking only one leg of her cavalier
      between her thighs.

4. The woman lying on her back with her feet crossed over the loins of
      the man.

5. The woman lying on her back with one of her legs stretched out, and
      the other over the man’s loins.

6. The woman lying on her back with the cavalier mounted on her with his
      back towards her face.

7. The woman lying on her back, with the cavalier mounted athwart her.

8. The man lying with the woman half couched on her side with the legs
      stretched out.

9. The man lying with the woman half couched on her side, one leg
      stretched out, the other one over the man’s loins.

10. The woman half couched, the man mounted with his back to her.

11. The man on his knees, the woman on her back with her legs open.

12. The woman on her back with her legs resting on the man’s loins, who
      is kneeling.

13. The woman on her back, one leg stretched out, the other one resting
      on the loins of the man, who is kneeling.

14. The woman on her back with her legs on the shoulders of the man, who
      is kneeling.

15. The woman on her back with one leg resting on the loins of the man,
      who is on his knees, and the other one on his shoulder.

17. The man kneeling gets into the woman, who is in a sitting position
      with her thighs open.

18. The woman sitting with one leg stretched out, and the other resting
      on the loins of the man, who is kneeling.

19. The woman sitting, with her two legs resting on the loins of the
      kneeling man.

20. The woman sitting with one leg stretched out, and the other on the
      shoulder of her cavalier on his knees.

21. The woman sitting with her two legs on the shoulders of her cavalier
      on his knees.

22. The woman sitting, one of her legs on the shoulder of the man on his
      knees, the other one stretched out.

23. The man on his knees, the woman with her back to him.

24. The man on his back, the woman facing him.

25. The man on his back with the woman turning her back to him.

26. The man on his back, the woman athwart him.

27. The man on his back, with the woman lifted up.

28. The man sitting with the woman facing him.

29. The man sitting, the woman facing him, with her legs in the air.

30. The man sitting with the woman turning her back upon him.

31. Man and woman standing.

32. Man and woman standing, with one leg of man or the woman lifted up.

33. The man standing, with the woman on her back, her legs open.

34. The woman lying on her back, with her legs lifted on the loins of
      the man, who is standing.

35. The woman lying on her back, one leg stretched out and the other
      lifted on the loins of the man, who is standing.

36. The woman on her back, with her two legs on the shoulders of the
      man, who is standing.

37. The woman on her back, one leg stretched out and the other one on
      the shoulder of the man, who is standing.

38. The woman on her back, with one of her legs on the shoulder of the
      man, who is standing, the other over his loins.

39. The man standing, the woman half lying on her side.

40. The man standing, getting into the woman who is sitting with her
      legs open.

41. The man standing, getting into the woman sitting with her legs in
      the air.

42. The man standing, the woman sitting with one leg stretched out and
      the other one lifted up.

43. The man standing and the woman lifted up.

44. The woman lifted up, with her legs on the shoulders of the man, who
      is standing.

45. The man standing, the woman on her knees, with her back towards him.

46. The man standing, the woman crouching down, with her back towards

47. The man standing, the woman with her back towards him, the lower
      part of the body elevated, and the upper part resting on the bed.

48. The man standing, the woman turning her back to him with the lower
      part of the body artificially raised.

49. A man lying down and being pedicated.

50. A man pedicated standing.

51. A man on his knees being pedicated.

52. A man pedicated crouching down.

53. Irrumator lying down.

54. Irrumator sitting.

55. Irrumator standing.

56. Irrumator kneeling.

57. Irrumator crouching.

58. Cunnilingue lying down.

59. Cunnilingue sitting.

60. Cunnilingue standing.

61. Cunnilingue kneeling.

62. Cunnilingue crouching.

63. Fellatrix and cunnilingue.

64. Masturbator.

65. The helping hand.

66. A third hand helping.

67. The finger helping.

68. The assistance of a leathern _godemiche_.

69. Coitus with a male animal.

70. Coitus with a female animal.

71. Tribad at work on a woman.

72. Tribad pedicating.

73. Three spintries: a fornicator pedicated.

74. Three spintries: a pederast pedicated.

75. Three spintries: a fellator being pedicated.

76. Three spintries: a fellator entering a woman.

77. Three spintries: a fellator pedicating.

78. Three spintries: a fellator irrumating.

79. Three spintries: a fellatrix entered by a man.

80. Three spintries: a fellatrix pedicated.

81. Three spintries: a fellatrix offers her vulva for licking.

82. Three spintries: a cunnilingue fornicating.

83. Three spintries: a cunnilingue pedicating.

84. Three spintries: a cunnilingue irrumates.

85. Three spintries: a cunnilingue being pedicated.

86. Three spintries: a female cunnilingue is entered by a man.

87. Three spintries: a female cunnilingue is pedicated.

88. Four spintries forming a double chain.

89. Four spintries forming a triple chain.

90. Group of five copulators.

                                   THE END


      ● Transcriber’s Notes:
         ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
         ○ There are numerous places where text is missing (marked with
           “*”) and unresolved page references (see p. ?) which are not
         ○ Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
         ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
         ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent
           only when a predominant form was found in this book.
         ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores

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