“Saluting raven[90], why do they call thee _fellator_? Never a mentula entered your beak.” The fact is ignorant people believed the raven fulfilled the coitus with his beak: Pliny says: “The vulgar herd believes that it operates the coitus and procreates with its beak. Aristotle denied this, saying that ravens merely exchange kisses in the same way, familiar to everybody, that pigeons do.” (_Natural History_, X., 12.) Erasmus denies in his _Adagia_, under the word _Lesbiari_ (p. 409 of the Frankfort edition, 1670), that in his time the obscene practice of irrumation was still known: “A**** (to lick), if I am not mistaken, is with the Greeks the same thing as _fellare_ with the Latins. The word indeed remains; but the thing itself has been, I think, long done away with.” I fear this is not really the case. At any rate I am informed that this practice is not entirely opposed to the habits of libertines of the present day; those must decide whose opportunities take them to great cities. Plate XXI., in the _Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars_ represents a _fellator_. However the graceful picture in question really belongs more properly to the category of “spintrian postures”, of which more anon, than to the present chapter. FOOTNOTES - OF IRRUMATION ----- Footnote 60: You see we follow the same general order as in the _Priapeia_, VII. “_I_ warn you, boy, I mean to pedicate you; with you, my girl, I will copulate. The _third_ penalty is kept for the bearded ruffian.” Footnote 61: Eustathius, p. 741, is very ambiguous: “Lesbianize,—to commit a shameful action.” Footnote 62: I do not quite know whether the following passage from the _Thesmophoriazusae_ (915-917) refers to this or no: “Now, unhappy girl, you long for pleasure after the Ionian mode. Besides I think you are a Labda, as is the way of the Lesbians.” A fellatrix seems to have borne the name of Labda, by reason of the first letter of the word Lesbianize: but the passage stands quite isolated, for in that of Varro, preserved by Nonius, and referring to the annotation of Scaliger on the _Priapeia_ LXXVIII., where we find: “Depsistis, decite. Labdae.” The reading is doubtful, and the sense not clear. The verse of Ausonius, _Epigr._ 128: “When he puts his tongue in, then he is a Labda,” has nothing to do with this question, as we shall show later on. Footnote 63: I do not know whether the nickname of Rododaphné (rose-laurel), given to Timarchus in Syria (_ibid._, ch. 27), does not mean _cunnilingue_, as by rose is understood the female parts, while the laurel leafs means the licking tongue. This surname had no doubt for Lucian an obscene sense which he would not disclose: “In Syria they call you Rododaphné, why? I should blush to say it.” Footnote 64: