Note 62 — Second Part.
Reading edition
In particular it is the following Epigram in Brunck’s Analecta that has given occasion to this explanation:
Ἀλφειοῦ στόμα φεῦγε· φιλεῖ κόλπους Ἀρεθούσης. πρηνὴς ἐμπίπτων ἁλμυρὸν ἐς πέλαγος.
(Fly the Alpheus’mouth; he loves the bosom of Arethusa, falling headlong into the salt sea). Forbiger might have further cited the following passage from Aristophanes, Knights 1086, 87.,
ΑΛ. Καὶ γὰρ ἐμοὶ καὶ γῆς καὶ τῆς ἐρυθρᾶς γε θαλάσσης χὤτι γ’ἐν Ἐκβατάνοις δικάσεις, λείχων ἐπίπαστα.
(Verily for me you shall be judge over earth and the Red Sea to boot and all the realm of Ecbatana, licking up comfit-cakes,—? pickles). Here ἐπίπαστα is, as probably also in v. 103., the Salgama (pickles in brine) of Ausonius, Epigr. 125.; which moreover affords at any rate a partial explanation of the passage in Pollux, Onomast. bk. VI. ch. 9. p. 61., bk. X. ch. 24. p. 96. Still, even if according to this Phoenicia were used in the sense of the genital organs of women at time of menstruation, it by no means follows that φοινικίζειν meant only to have dealings with women in menstruation, any more than it does that it is identical with καταμηνίου πίνων (drinking of menstrual blood), as it has been shown just above not to be. In fact Galen says explicitly: φαίνεταί μοι παραπλήσιον, (it appears to me to be something similar!)