Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris)
General
Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris)
Erotic literature; Sex customs -- Greece; Sex customs -- Rome
This strange depravity was still in favor in succeeding centuries.
Ausonius, in his _Epigrams_ CXX., CXXIII., CXXV., CXXVI., CXXVII., and
CXXVIII., has bequeathed a very unenviable notoriety to the names of
Castor and of Eunus:
Epigram CXX.:
“Castor[105] wanted to lick the middle part of men, but he could not
persuade any one to go with him; however the _fellator_ did not miss
his treat; he went and licked his own wife’s privates.”
Epigram CXXIII., entitled _In Eunum liguritorem_.—On Eunus the Licker:
“Eunus, why do you pay court to Phyllis, the perfume seller? Men say
your tongue knows her parts, but not your member! Mind you make no
mistakes in the names of her scents and perfumes, and that
Seplasia’s atmosphere play you no tricks; think not costus and
cysthus have the same odor,—that sardines and nard exhale the same
savor. Poor Eunus! the things that he tastes and smells are very
different; his mouth and his nose have tastes widely dissimilar!”
He says mockingly: think not the sundry wares in the shop of Phyllis
your little perfume seller of Capua (Seplasia is in fact a street of the
town of Capua, where perfumes were sold), are all of the same odor and
savor. The costus[106] does not smell like the cysthus[107], the
nard[108] has a different flavor from the sardines,—a sort of little
fish preserved in salt. By this salty condiment Ausonius means to imply
precisely the same as the author of the Greek epigram signifies, when he
speaks of the Salt Sea, and which he himself has called salgama, meaning
the secretion of the humid vulva. But Eunus shows no discrimination
between what he licks and what he smells; the two have nothing in
common. He inhales perfumes which smell beautifully, and licks the
vulva, which smells abominably. His nose obeys one law, his tongue
another.
Epigram CXXV., directed against the same Eunus:
“The salgamas are no balmy odors; give place, all other perfumes. I
would rather not smell at all, either good or bad.”
Here again the poet plays with the words. The perfumes which Phyllis
sells he calls balms, and salgamas those which her vulva exhales.
Properly speaking, salgamas are roots and greens, which are preserved in
salt for winter use, and the odor of which is not pleasant to every
one’s nose. His saying that he would rather smell nothing at all than
smell something bad is borrowed from Martial VI., _Epigr._ 55, against
Coracinus, who was a _cunnilingue_:
“Rather than smell bad scents I would not smell at all.”
Epigram CXXVI.:
“Lais, Eros and Itys, Chiron and Eros, Itys once again,—if you write
the names, and take the initial letters, they make a word, and that
word is what you do, Eunus. What that word is and means, decency
lets me not say in plain Latin.”
The initial letters of the six Greek names form the word ****, he licks.
The phallic poet (_Priapeia_ LXVII) plays in the same way upon the word
_paedicare_ (to pedicate):
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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