“What shall I do? I am so stiff—I’m bursting, and I could easily fill three or four large bottles. It is long since my member has known a vulva, long since it has stirred the entrails of a man. It is stiff day and night, and will never relax,—night and day it lifts its head. No youth, no girl will listen to my prayer, no help—my right hand must then do the service!” We have seen just above, with what severity Martial reproached Ponticus, a masturbator, for losing between his fingers the substance of a man. Nevertheless this fine moralist did not hesitate to put his own hand to similar use under the pressure of erection, _Epigr._ 43, book II.: “Another Ganymede, my hand assisted me.” and XI., 74: “Often my left hand comes to my help in your stead.” Nor was his severity given to whining when he exhorted (XI., 59), the cinede Telesphorus: “Soon as ever you see I want it, and know that I am in erection, Telesphorus, then you demand a heavy price,—can I say nay?[91] If I will not swear to pay you, you will withdraw those posteriors of yours, which are so precious to me. If with his razor set to my throat my barber, whilst shaving me, demands my liberty and fortune, I promise all; ’tis not the barber asks, but a cut-throat, and fear compels me to say ‘Yes.’ But once I see the razor returned to its curved case and harmless, why! I will break every limb of the fellow. Not that I will harm you, but my left hand once washed, my member will say “Go hang!” to your grasping avarice.”[92] The same when his wife surprised him engaged with a youth (XI., 44),—a witty epigram quoted above, as also when he intended to marry Thelesina (II., 49): “Thelesina makes presents to young lads; all the better.” The same when he recommends somebody, I do not know who (XI., 23), to make use of the posteriors of Galesius only, as the part that would suit him; “Youths are divided by nature; one part is reserved for girls, and the other for men—use your own portion.” Is what the pedicon loses in the anus of the cinede anything else but the substance of a man, which the masturbator wastes between his fingers? As it is in the nature of the virile member to rise at the mere sight of a pretty woman’s naked body, the amorous desire in that state often craves imperiously for relief, for “man in erection is not overwise.”[93] This is why, when the fair one’s heavy coverlets have been thrown back: “Meantime the adulterer she has sent for lurks in furtive concealment, and impatient of the delay, yet says never a word, but pulls his foreskin.”[94]—Juvenal, VI., 236, 7. and why: “The Phrygian slaves would be masturbating behind the doors, each time his bride mounted the Hectorean horse.”—Martial, XI., 105.