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
stead.”
And this passage of the VIth. book of Ramusius, p. 62 of the Paris
edition:
“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
him;
“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
fingers?
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
maid.”
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
food.”[97]
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
rubbed.”
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
sacrifice.”[100]
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,
74):
“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.,
23):
“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
lads:
“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
finds:
“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
shoulders.”
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.”
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