Note 62 — Chapter III · OF IRRUMATION[60]
Reading edition
I do not quite know whether the following passage from the Thesmophoriazusae (915-917) refers to this or no:
“Now, unhappy girl, you long for pleasure after the Ionian mode. Besides I think you are a Labda, as is the way of the Lesbians.”
A fellatrix seems to have borne the name of Labda, by reason of the first letter of the word Lesbianize: but the passage stands quite isolated, for in that of Varro, preserved by Nonius, and referring to the annotation of Scaliger on the Priapeia LXXVIII., where we find:
“Depsistis, decite. Labdae.”
The reading is doubtful, and the sense not clear. The verse of Ausonius, Epigr. 128:
“When he puts his tongue in, then he is a Labda,” has nothing to do with this question, as we shall show later on.