“... The cable is rotted away, yet is it still fond of being rubbed.” Nor is it unwelcome to men in the vigor of life, and who are fit to caress young girls, to have mistresses whose hands are not lazy in bed, and whose fingers know how to act in the dark regions where the arrow of love is hidden. Martial, XI., 105, complains about the unseemly gravity of his wife, which forbade her to render him that service: “You will not help me on by movement or by word, nor yet with your fingers, as though you were preparing the incense and the wine for sacrifice.”[100] Penelopé, on the other hand, contented Ulysses well that way, as Martial has it in the same epigram: “Chaste though she was, when the king of Ithaca lay snoring, Penelopé liked to have her hand always on it.” Ovid’s mistress did him the same service, but all in vain one miserable night, when a hostile divinity seemed to have smitten to death that most pitiful part of him, to use his own expression, and the girl, in order that the servants might not think that she had remained untouched, pretended to make her ablutions all the same (_Amores_, III., viii., 73, 74): “My darling did not disdain even to put her hand to it and gently try to rouse it.” This virtue of the fingers in procuring erection is alluded to by Juvenal, VI., 195, 96: “... How well a soft and libertine voice will erect your member; it is as good as fingers!” The author of the _Priapeia_ was also well aware of the fact; LXXX.: “My member is not very long nor very thick,—handle it, and you’ll see it grow apace.” And so was Janus Dousa, quoted by Scioppius á propos of this same _Priapeia_, cleverly scenting out the man’s character: “Dousa, commenting upon Petronius, informs us that he knows _by home experience_ how this object grows in thickness and length when shampooed by a woman.” You can estimate the importance of this function by the value set by the Ancients, as in our days by the Turks, upon shampooers, men and women, who are employed for manipulating the joints with artistic expertness, their fingers softly pressing and turning them, and their hands kept soft by the constant use of gloves, kneading tenderly all the limbs. Seneca, _Letter_ LXVI.: “Would I rather offer my limbs for shampooing to my superannuated minions? or to some little woman, or some weakling man, more woman than man, to draw and crack my fingers? Should I not rather envy yonder Mucius, who put his hand in the fire with the same equanimity as though he tendered it to a shampooer.” Martial, III., 82: “A woman shampoos your body all over with nimble skill; her trained hand manipulates _all_ your members.”[101] John of Salisbury states in his _Policraticus_, book III., ch. 13, after some ancient author, perhaps Clearchus, as Lipsius thinks: