“Homer taught you to call voice ****; but who taught you to have the tongue **** (in a slit)?” The unknown poet plays upon the ambiguity of the word ****, which is used with respect to the tongue in an honest sense, when derived from ****, I speak, but as a vile usage when derived from ***, a slit. LXXV. “Avoid Alpheus’ mouth, he loves Arethusa’s bosom, plunging head-first into the salty sea.” In this epigram also the poet draws upon the ambiguity of the words mouth, bosom (bay), head-first, salt sea, which may refer to the river Alpheus in Arcadia and to Arethusa, a spring near Syracuse, but also to the mouth of a _cunnilingue_, that goes and plunges into the vulva of a woman; not to mention yet another idea connected with this, to which we shall return presently. LXXVI. “Cheilon and **** have the same letters, and why? It is because Cheilon will lick things that are like and unlike.” This mockery is addressed to the cunnilingue Cheilon. The epigram tells him that he has somehow a right of licking, as his name, composed of the same letters as ****, announces at once the licker, whether he may lick the lips of a mouth, similar to his own, or those of a vulva, which are very dissimilar. The distich of Meleager upon Phavorinus, published by Huschkius in his _Analecta critica_ (p. 245), seems to bear upon the same subject: “You doubt whether Phavorinus does the thing. Doubt no more; he told me himself he did,—_with his own mouth_.” As Martial uses often very happily the word _narrat_ (III., 84), when he speaks of the abuse of the tongue for _fellation_, and Horace the same, so Meleager says **** (he told) of the man, who employs his for licking the vulva. The following epigram of Ammanius from the _Analecta_ of Brunck, vol. II., p. 386, is somewhat more obscure: “It is not because you suck your pen that I dislike you; ’tis because you do so,—without a pen.” The scholiast imagined by author wanted to upbraid a lazy pupil who passed his time sucking his pen, as do others biting their nails, and to scold him at the same time for sucking without a pen, meaning for being a _cunnilingue_. But it may be taken to refer, and I think with more reason, to a man who is in the habit of putting out his tongue for the obscene act of the _cunnilingue_, and who is so accustomed to it that he puts it out in the ordinary intercourse of life. This monstrous practice was pushed to such lengths that, it is almost incredible, there were people who, not content to lick vulvas which were dry, did it when they were humid with the menses or any other secretion. Aristophanes says of Ariphrades in the _Knights_, v. 1280-83: “He is not only lewd; his fancy goes astray; he pollutes his tongue with shameful pleasures, licking up in his orgies the abominable dew, fouling his beard and tormenting women’s privates.”