Note 44 — Chapter II · ON PEDICATION
Reading edition
The actual words of Plautus are:
“I must do the puerile service: I will cower down over a hamper” (Cistellaria IV., sc. I., v. 5),—which means, I will bend down to the hamper, raising the buttocks, and thus present them to the pedicon. This is, in fact, what is called, the “puerile office”, and which Apuleius (Metam. III., ch. 2), calls “the puerile corollary.” Martial, IX., 68 says simply, “illud puerile.” Conquinescere is according to Nonius, p. 531, Gottfried’s edition, to curve the spine, an expression designating in particular the passive posture as we have seen in the Pseudolus:
“When he curves the spine, then simultaneously wriggle your buttocks.”
Some authors have also used a still more forcible expression, “Ocquinescere,” vis., “to cower low down” (Nonius, p. 567). Pomponius, on word “Prostibulum”: “I have never forced pedication upon any citizen; I have always abstained, unless the patient had asked me and cowered down of his own free will.” And on word “Pistor”: “Unless somebody anticipated my desires, willingly crouching down so that I could do the thing securely.” This position of the patient cowering down is very rarely alluded to; the question generally turns upon his kneeling. “Thus,” says Lampridius of Heliogabalus, he offered himself with the buttocks raised to the pedicon” (ch. 5). Heliogabalus was kneeling, and not crouching. The same is the case with Timarchus in Lucian: “All that were near you remember it; they have seen you on your knees, while your accomplice did you know what” (Apophras, p. 152, vol. VII.—Works of Lucian edit. by J.-P. Schmid). If you would like to see these two postures, you will find them in the Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars, pl. XXVII., a patient crouching, and pl. XXXVIII., a patient kneeling.
From the fact that men wanting to void their excrement when out of doors cower down, it has come about that passive pederasts were said to sh...t,—in fact to sh...t the active party’s member as it goes in and out of the anus. Hence in the Priapeia, LXX.:
“Look at me, thief, and realize the weight of the member you will have to sh...t.” Martial, IX., 70 also plays on the word:
“When you love a woman, Polycharmus, you always sh...t before you have done. Tell me, Polycharmus, what you do, when you pedicate?”