“Soon she looks out for fresher adulterous pleasures, while the husband is drunk; and does not care to whom she grants the furtive forbidden pleasures, which with the torches extinguished, she is ready to give and take. Nay! she does not care for her very husband’s presence, and with his knowledge she rises to meet whosoever may call, say a merchant, say the commander of a Spanish ship in harbour, who buys her favours by tariff!” Again look at the feast of the Pope, Alexander VI., whom we have already mentioned for your profit and amusement in our _Hermaphroditus_[66]. Is this evidence enough to satisfy you as to these _Coae_ of the triclinium? Well! it was after this fashion Clodia preferred to be had. Alone with a solitary lover in bed and no one by, she refused (_nolebat_); in public on the triclinium, she was willing enough for coition (_volebat coire_). Hence the jest; she was _Coa_ and _Nola_. Coelius might have put it still more plainly; on the triclinium she was _Vola_, in bed _Nola_. It was not the inhabitants of Nola only who were addicted to the Lesbian vice, the Oscans[67] generally were considered to be very much given that way, so much so that certain authors trace to them (the Osci), in earlier times called the Opsci or Opici, the etymology of the word “Obscene”, Festus, p. 553: “In almost all the old treatises the word is written _Opicum_ instead of _Oscum_; it is from the name of this people that shameless and impudent expressions are called obscene, because indulgence in filthy debauchery was very common among the Oscans.” The Ancients employed many forms of circumlocution to convey the meaning of their filthy practices. For instance, instead of _irrumate_, they said: to offend the mouth[68], corrupt the mouth[69], to attack the head[70], to defy to the face[71], insult the head, not to spare the head[72], to split open the mouth[73], gain the heights[74], mount to loftier regions[75], compress the tongue[76], to indulge in abominable intercourse[77], and instead of receiving the member into the mouth they said: to lend the mouth in kind complaisance[78], work with the mouth[79], lick men’s middle parts[80], lick simply[81], or lastly to be silent[82]. Just as Persius has employed the word _cevere_, to wriggle in the sense of flattering, so Catullus uses _irrumate_ as meaning to treat ignominiously[83]. It is thus he complains of having been irrumated by Memmius XXVIII., 9, 10: “Oh, Memmius, well and long and leisurely, laid on my back all the length of that beam, you irrumated me.” He had, in fact, experienced in Bithynia the meanness and avarice of this Praetor, Memmius, who had not cared a rap for his comrades’ honour, and who is alluded to in _Epigr._ X., 12, “Praetor and irrumator.” In _Epigr._ XXXVII., he threatens his boon companions in debauchery, with whom his mistress has taken refuge: