Note 73 — Second Part.

Pollux, Onomast IV. ch. 25. p. 187., mentions among forms of wasting-diseases φθίνης νόσος, for which some editors, and quite rightly, prefer to read φθίνας νόσος (wasting disease). Suidas also says φθίνας ἡ νόσος, but without giving any further explanation; on the contrary in Hesychius we find: s. v. φθινὰ[ς] ἡ ἐρυσίβη, καὶ εἶδος ἐλαίας (under word φθινὰ; the red blight, also a species of olive). But by ἐρυσίβη is signified mildew, blight, smut on grain, the same thing therefore as the Romans called rubigo or robigo, on which Servius, on Virg. Georg. I. 151., has the following observation: Robigo genus est vitii, quo culmi pereunt, quod a rusticanis calamitas dicitur. Hoc autem genus vitii ex nebula nasci solet, cum nigrescunt et consumuntur frumenta. Inde Robigus deus et sacra eius septimo Kalendas Maias Robigalia appellantur. Sed haec abusive robigo dicitur; nam proprie robigo est, ut Varro dicit, vitium obscoenae libidinis quod ulcus vocatur: id autem abundantia et superfluitate humoris solet nasci, quae Graece σατυρίασις dicitur. (Robigo is a sort of blight, that kills the corn-stalks, which is spoken of as a disaster by the peasants. Now this kind of blight commonly springs from a mist or exhalation, the crops blackening and being burnt up. Hence the god Robigus, and his feast-day on the seventh day before the Kalends of May (April 24.), known as the Robigalia. But this is called robigo only by a misnomer; for properly speaking robigo is, as Varro says, a vitiation due to abominable licentiousness and is called an ulcer, and it commonly springs from that abundance and over-copiousness of the humour, which in Greek is called Satyriasis). These words are for our purpose pose of the highest importance, teaching us as they do, that a distinctive form of ulceration, that the patient had brought on himself by sexual excesses, was not only familiar among the Romans but actually bore the special name of robigo. It must have displayed a distinctive redness, and have consumed the parts affected similarly to the smut or rust of grain, or the rust of iron. It is surely a sufficient indication to call the chancre-ulcer a blight, a burning: Comp. anthrax, carbo (malignant pustule, carbuncle). To this day in Germany it is vulgarly said of any one attacked by the primary forms of Venereal disease, “the man has burned himself”. Festus, (edit. Dacier p. 451.) says: Robum rubro colore et quae rufo significare, at bovem quoque rustici appellant, manifestum est, unde et materia quae plurimas venas eius coloris habet dicta est rubor, (Robus clearly indicates things of a red or reddish colour,—now countrymen even speak of an ox as robus; hence any substance having manifold veins of this colour is called rubor). Now such is habitually the case with the penis attacked by phimosis or paraphimosis and under the morbid condition of constant erection (Satyriasis) superinduced by these. Again this shows us the reason why Priapus is so frequently called “ruber hortorum custos” (the red keeper of gardens),—Priapeia Praef. 5.; and why he is said, “Ruber sedere cum rubente fascino,” (to sit, red with his ruddy verge),—Horace, Odes 84. Sat. I. 8. 5. Now as the blight in grain was regarded specially as a consequence of the dew (mildew), and ros (dew) again is used in the sense of the male semen, as well as for the moisture secreted in the female vagina during coition, we might draw yet another analogy from this, and at the same time a proof of the verecundia loquentium (shamefacedness in speech),—p. 43., of the old Romans. Thus it would seem the Greeks too indicated by their φθινὰς the same thing as the Romans by robigo. That it was a human disease, is clearly enough shown by the passage from Pollux, and besides we can see it was so from another in Plutarch in his Life of Galba (ch. 21.), where he says: Τιγελλῖνον μὲν οὐ πολὺν ἔτι βιώσεσθαι φάσκοντος· χρόνον, ὑπὸ φθινάδος νόσου δαπανώμενον, (For he said that Tigellinus would not live much longer, being exhausted by a wasting disease),—a quotation proving at the same time the deadliness of the malady. Once more, Hesychius has for φθινὰ also φοινία, saying, φοινία.ἐρυσίβη (φοινία: red blight, and as the adjective corresponding would necessarily be φοινικίος or φοινίκινος, it follows that φοινικίη νόσος and φθινικὴ νόσος,—φθινικὴ being the adjective from φθινὴ or φθινὰς, (which however would more strictly speaking be φθινακή), would mean exactly the same thing, viz. an “Ulcus rubrum et rodens ex coitu cum foeda muliere natum” (red eating ulcer, coming from coition with an unclean woman), the fatal event of which affection was a matter of common observation among the Ancients. Now if this interpretation is the right one in the passage of Hippocrates, it is clear that λεῦκαι were the consequences of this malady, and accordingly we should have a proof that in Antiquity, no less than in modern times, primary ulcers not only preceded secondary affections of the skin, but were actually recognized as such. However as the proofs for this aperçu are still too fragmentary on the side of the ancient Physicians, we must suspend our immediate judgement on the point, and content ourselves for the present with saying, that φοινικίη νοῦσος stood originally in the text in the sense of cunnilingere (to be a cunnilingue), whereas a later inquirer put φθινικὴ into its place, inasmuch as in his time their meanings had become identical as that of a bodily ailment, and so the consequence of the vice instead of the vice itself found its way even into the text. For granted φθινὰς has the meaning of robigo (blight), there is no doubt this only came to be the case as late as in the time of the Alexandrine critics. Besides this, φοινικιστὴς is also found in the Etymologicum Magnum for Cunnilingus; we read: γλωττοκομεῖον, ἐν ᾧ οἱ αὐληταὶ ἀπετίθεσαν τὰς γλώττας· εἴρηται δὲ καὶ τὸ γυναικεῖον αἰδοῖον ὑπὸ Εὐβούλου φοινικιστὴν σκώπτοντος· (γλωττοκομεῖον, tongue-hole, place in which fluteplayers insert their tongues); the female privates also called so by Eubulus, making a scoff at the φοινικιστὴς,—cunnilingue). The Etymologicum Magnum further has as synonyms for cunnilingere: γλωττοστροφεῖν, περιλαλεῖν καὶ στωμύλλεσθαι· γλωττοδεψεῖν, αἰσχρουργεῖν (to ply the tongue: to talk excessively, to babble; to work or soften with the tongue: to do obscenely), and for cunnilingus, γλώσσαργον, στόμαργον (tongue-busy: mouth-busy).]