Note 82 — Chapter III · OF IRRUMATION[60]

A man that is being irrumated cannot speak, his mouth being obstructed by the mentula, thus: he is silent. Martial, III., 96 says to Gargilius, a cunnilingue, menacing him with the third punishment, if he should catch him in the fact:

“If I should catch thee at it, Gargilius, I’ll make thee silent.”

Married men were in the habit of pedicating beardless adults, and of irrumating the bearded ones. For which reason Martial warns Gallus (II., 47) to shun the seductions of a famous rakish lady, as he was running the risk, if taken by the husband in flagrante delicto, of being irrumated by him:

“Your buttocks you rely on? But the husband is no pederast; he likes but two ways, either mouth or vulva.”

And for the same reason he consents to marry Thelesina (II., 49):

“No Thelesina for me as my wife! Why?—She is a prostitute. Nay! but she pays young lads. Then I consent.”

Then there is a complaint for having been deceived with respect to the lover of Polla, his mistress (X., 40):

“Constantly was I told that my Polla was on intimate terms with an unknown cinede. Well, I surprise them, Lupus; no cinede was he.”

Instead of a lad, whom he would have pedicated, he finds a cool, experienced gallant, not at all likely to expiate his crime by means of his buttocks. Martial might, however, have punished him more cruelly by forcing into his fundament, either a mullet (Juvenal, X., 317):

“There are adulterers whom the mullet pierces”; or a radish. “In Armenia, taken in the act of adultery, he ran away plugged with a radish in his posteriors.” (Lucian, De Morte Peregrini,—Works, vol. VII., p. 425.) Catullus XV., 18, 19:

“Drawing your feet asunder, your postern wide open, they will insert into you radish and mullet.”

Martial also has used the expression of being silent, in the above stated sense but, somewhat more obscurely, IX., 5:

“If in two apertures you can work, Galla, and can do more than double work in both, why, Aeschylus, does she get tenfold pay? She fellates, but that is not a matter of such price surely. Nay! it is because she must be silent!”

It is not her infamy that Galla sells so dear; it is the inconvenience of having to be silent during the process, which, for a prattler, “is a very serious matter,” as Martial says, IV., 81. Book XII., Epigr. 35, quoted later on, also refers to this.