Note 96 — Second Part.
Reading edition
Anthologia Graeca, cum versione Latina Hugonis Grotii, edita ab H. de Bosch (Greek Anthology, with Latin version by Hugo Grotius, edit. H. de Bosch) Utrecht 1795. 4to., Vol. I. p. 38. bk. II. Tit. 5. Epigr. 9. Brunck’s Analecta, Vol. III. p. 165. Epigr. 76. Here too should be quoted the following Epigram (Brunck’s Analecta, Vol. II. p. 386. Anthology, bk. II. Tit. 5. Epigr. 8.) of Ammianus, which at the same time speaks for the general meaning of licking:
Οὐχ ὅτι τὸν κάλαμον λείχεις, διὰ τοῦτό σε μισῶ, Ἀλλ’ ὅτι τοῦτο ποιεῖς καὶ δίχα τοῦ καλάμου.
(Not because you lick the reed, not for this do I abominate you; but because you do so even without the reed). Ausonius, Epigr. 126., endeavours in another way, by initial letters, to indicate λείχει (he licks):
Λαῒς, Ἔρως, et Ἴτυς, Χείρων et Ἔρως, Ἴτυς alter Nomina siscribis, prima elementa adime: Ut facias verbum, quod tu facis, Eune magister: Dicere me Latium non decet opprobrium.
(Λαῒς, Ἔρως, and Ἴτυς, Χείρων and Ἔρως, Ἴτυς repeated,—if you write these names, then take off the first letters, you make a verb with them that means what you do, learned Eunus; it does not become me to name the abomination nation in Latian speech). At the same time we see from this that in the IVth. Century, where Ausonius lived at Bordeaux, the vice of the cunnilingue was still constantly practised and that not even in secret. Should the words of Clement of Alexandria, Paedagog. II. ch. 8. p. 178., also be brought into connection with this: ἡ δὲ ἐπιτήδευσις τῆς εὐωδίας, δελεάρ ἐστι ῥαθυμίας, πόῤῥωθεν εἰς λίχνον ἐπιθυμίον ἐπισπωμένης. (And the cultivation of sweet perfume is a bait of idleness, indirectly alluring to dainty voluptuousness)? The male olere (to have an evil smell) held good equally for the cunnilingue.
Diogenes Laertius, V. 65., quotes verses of Crates, where we read: οὔτε λίχνος, πόρνης ἐπαγγελλόμενος παρῇσι (nor dainty desire, proclaimed on the cheeks of a harlot); the same occur also in Clement of Alexandria, loco citato ch. 10. Finally yet another quotation, from Martial (XI. 59.), should come in here; he says to a pathic:
At tibi nil faciam: sed lota mentula laeva λειχάζειν cupidae dicet avaritiae,
(But to you I will do no harm; nay! rather shall my member, when your left hand has done its work and been washed, say to your grasping avarice,—now lick, fellate, me). This passage has been misunderstood by most of the commentators, because they chose to read lana (woollen cloth) for laeva (the left hand), or else thought to find here a reference to manustupration (masturbation with the hand). But really it means nothing more than that the poet declares he will resort to irrumation, after his mentula (member) has been washed with the left hand, [the Latin cannot mean this; lotā is ablative case, and must be taken with laevā. Transl.],—a usage to which we shall come back again subsequently; but which is at once clearly authenticated by a fragment of Lucilius, where we read:
Laeva lacrimas mutoni absterget amica.
(With the left hand his mistress wipes the tears from his penis).