Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris)
General
Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris)
Erotic literature; Sex customs -- Greece; Sex customs -- Rome
“I must do the puerile service: I will cower down over a hamper”
(_Cistellaria_ IV., sc. I., v. 5),—which means, I will bend down
to the hamper, raising the buttocks, and thus present them to the
pedicon. This is, in fact, what is called, the “puerile office”,
and which Apuleius (_Metam._ III., ch. 2), calls “the puerile
corollary.” Martial, IX., 68 says simply, “_illud puerile_.”
_Conquinescere_ is according to Nonius, p. 531, Gottfried’s
edition, to curve the spine, an expression designating in
particular the passive posture as we have seen in the _Pseudolus_:
“When he curves the spine, then simultaneously wriggle your
buttocks.”
Some authors have also used a still more forcible expression,
“_Ocquinescere_,” vis., “to cower low down” (Nonius, p. 567).
Pomponius, on word “_Prostibulum_”: “I have never forced pedication
upon any citizen; I have always abstained, unless the patient had
asked me and cowered down of his own free will.” And on word
“_Pistor_”: “Unless somebody anticipated my desires, willingly
crouching down so that I could do the thing securely.” This position
of the patient cowering down is very rarely alluded to; the question
generally turns upon his kneeling. “Thus,” says Lampridius of
Heliogabalus, he offered himself with the buttocks raised to the
pedicon” (ch. 5). Heliogabalus was kneeling, and not crouching. The
same is the case with Timarchus in Lucian: “All that were near you
remember it; they have seen you on your knees, while your accomplice
did you know what” (_Apophras_, p. 152, vol. VII.—Works of Lucian
edit. by J.-P. Schmid). If you would like to see these two postures,
you will find them in the _Monuments de la vie privée des douze
Césars_, pl. XXVII., a _patient_ crouching, and pl. XXXVIII., a
_patient_ kneeling.
From the fact that men wanting to void their excrement when out of
doors cower down, it has come about that passive pederasts were said
to sh...t,—in fact to sh...t the active party’s member as it goes in
and out of the anus. Hence in the _Priapeia_, LXX.:
“Look at me, thief, and realize the weight of the member you will
have to sh...t.” Martial, IX., 70 also plays on the word:
“When you love a woman, Polycharmus, you always sh...t before you
have done. Tell me, Polycharmus, what you do, when you pedicate?”
Footnote 45:
_Pseudolus_, IV., sc. VII., 85.
Footnote 46:
You might very well, Aloysia, have quoted Horace too (_Epodes_, XI):
“Now Lyciscus holds me in love-bonds, from which neither friendly
advice, nor humiliating affronts avail to liberate me.”
And _Satires_, I., ii, v. 116-119.
“When your privates are swelling, if some maid-servant or
slave-boy is at hand for you to assail forthwith, do you choose
rather to burst with desire? Nay! not I!”
Footnote 47:
_Art of Love_, II., 683, 684.
Footnote 48:
_Priapeia_, II.
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