Note 27 — Chapter II · ON PEDICATION
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The Greeks did not disdain this strange practice any more than the Romans. Aristophanes, in the Lysistrata (v. 89).
“My affair will be tidy with the couchgrass pluck’d off.” In the “Frogs” he speaks of dancing girls barely arrived at puberty beginning to tear off the fur” (v. 519); in the Thesmophoriazusae again there is mentioned “a mons Veneris plucked clean” (v. 719). That the Greeks preferred a bare pubis to a furred one, though we may be of a different opinion, is apparent from another passage of Aristophanes, in the Lysistrata, v. 151, 2, where a smooth pubis is represented as a chief incitement to virile ardour:
“If we were to go naked with a smooth pubis, our husband’s members would stand, and they would be fain to have us.”
As to old women, they likewise denuded their pubis of the bristles in order to appear less decrepit. Martial, X., 90.
“Ligella, do you pluck your old affair, and stir the ashes of your burnt-out fire?”
Refinements such as those are for young maidens; you are in error if you think that thing a vulva that a man’s member will no longer recognize.”
The depilation of the vulva was also used as a punishment.
Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, 545, 6.
“We will pluck her pubis, and teach her so, woman as she is, not to speak ill of women.”
The same punishment was inflicted upon adulterous women taken in the act; a black radish or a mullet was introduced into her anus, which was then depilated, as well as her pubis, with burning cinders. Aristophanes, Clouds, 1079:
“What, must you suffer the empalement with the radish, and the hot cinders?”
Suetonius, under the word ——: “Thus they treated adulteresses who had been caught in the act: they took black radishes and planted them in their anus, which they rubbed with hot cinders, after having torn out the hair.”