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.,
331.
“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
mystery.
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
end:
“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
behind.”
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
kisses.”
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
olisbos.”
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
coitus.
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
Padua.”
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
category.”
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------