Authors vary on this point. Herodotus: “The Persians pollute young boys; they have learned it from the Greeks,” (I., 135). Plutarch refutes the assertion: “How can the Persians be indebted to the Greeks for these impurities, when all historians are agreed upon the fact that they had eunuchs before they had ever come near to the Grecian seas?” (_Of the Maliciousness of Herodotus_, p. 857, vol. II of Frankfort edition of 1620). _Athenaeus_: “Pederastia was first introduced in Greece by the Cretans, as is related by Timaeus; other authors however have asserted that the man who first imported that sort of love was Laius, who, having been hospitably received by Pelops, fell in love with Chrysippus, the son of his host, carried him off in his chariot, and fled to Thebes.” (XIII., 79.) And who has not heard of the incontinence of the inhabitants of Sodom?” Footnote 54: Particularly in Euboea, whence the expression, “Chalcidize”, meaning, according to Hesychius, to pedicate, because masculine loves flourished among the Chalcidians. “Phicidize” is another expression for the same thing from the name of a town now unknown; Suidas: “Phicidize, to be a Pederast”, and similarly, “Siphnianize” from Siphnos, an island in the Ægean; Hesychius says: “Siphnianize, that is to finger the anus; the inhabitants of Siphnos are, in fact, given to the practice of pederastia.” We have seen above that the meaning of Siphnianize has been perverted. Footnote 55: _Athenaeus_, XIII., 79: “Of all the barbarians the Celts, although their women are most beautiful—it is, therefore, not surprising that an ardent amateur of “fine women,” such as Julius Caesar is described to us, should in the Gallic Provinces have been not over respectful to the conjugal bed—the Celts take more pleasure in pederastia than any other Nation, to such a degree that amongst them it is no rarity to find a man lying between two minions.” Footnote 56: Pardon me, illustrious Marcus Pullarius, for having almost forgotten you. Ausonius, _Epigr._ LXX.: “Which Marcus? The one they call the “cat that catches boys”, he who tarnishes all the purity of childhood, who plies with his back-door tool the rearward Venus, the poet Lucilius’ _subulo_, his _pullipremo_.” Ausonius calls him the pullarian cat, because he hunted after young lads (puelli) as the cat gives chase to birds; he calls him, applying to him the same epithets as “Lucilius, who Satires he had the opportunity of reading,—more fortunate in this than we,—a _subulo_” (from _subula_, an awl), wanting to make it understood that with his member he transfixed, like a cobbler with his awl, the anus of cinedes; and _pullipremo_, from his compressing in his work young lads. Footnote 57: