CUNNILINGUES
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
member.”
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
applauded:
“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:
LXXIV.
“Homer taught you to call voice ****; but who taught you to have the
tongue **** (in a slit)?”
The unknown poet plays upon the ambiguity of the word ****, which is
used with respect to the tongue in an honest sense, when derived from
****, I speak, but as a vile usage when derived from ***, a slit.
LXXV.
“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.
LXXVI.
“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
purgation....”
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
another.
Epigram CXXV., directed against the same Eunus:
“The salgamas are no balmy odors; give place, all other perfumes. I
would rather not smell at all, either good or bad.”
Here again the poet plays with the words. The perfumes which Phyllis
sells he calls balms, and salgamas those which her vulva exhales.
Properly speaking, salgamas are roots and greens, which are preserved in
salt for winter use, and the odor of which is not pleasant to every
one’s nose. His saying that he would rather smell nothing at all than
smell something bad is borrowed from Martial VI., _Epigr._ 55, against
Coracinus, who was a _cunnilingue_:
“Rather than smell bad scents I would not smell at all.”
Epigram CXXVI.:
“Lais, Eros and Itys, Chiron and Eros, Itys once again,—if you write
the names, and take the initial letters, they make a word, and that
word is what you do, Eunus. What that word is and means, decency
lets me not say in plain Latin.”
The initial letters of the six Greek names form the word ****, he licks.
The phallic poet (_Priapeia_ LXVII) plays in the same way upon the word
_paedicare_ (to pedicate):
“Take the first syllable of _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
cross.”
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
do?”
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
_cunnilingue_:
“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
alternative.”
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
_cunnilingues_?”
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’
parts.”
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
Philoctetes:
“With which the destitution of Lemnos inspired the heir of
Heracles.”
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.
13:
“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
perfumery.”
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:
“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
member.”
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.,
367-77:
“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.”
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