With a much lighter touch Martial in the course of his _Epigrams_ describes unflatteringly two women who on his evidence would modernly be classed as hermaphrodites. One, Bassa,[42] has gained an irreproachable reputation by admitting no men to her house as either lovers or servants, but the initiated know that with her feminine domestic staff she practices every license. The other, Philaenis, the erotic writer mentioned earlier, exceeds men in her prowess with women, and also takes the active part in sodomy with boys.[43] Although Dioscorides has denied in his epitaph in the _Greek Anthology_[44] that she wrote the “obscene book” attributed to her, Martial’s repeated references throughout the _Epigrams_ suggest that enough smoke hung over her in his day to justify the suspicion of fire. The specific sexual exercise implied by both Juvenal and Martial is tribadism, and there is mention in Juvenal as elsewhere of the _olisbos_ employed by women less well equipped for a male role than Bassa and Philaenis. Both authors purported to describe actual persons and conditions immediately preceding the Christian era. A couple of centuries later we find fictional contributions from the minor Greek authors, Lucian and Alciphron, both of whom claimed to be writing about a period nearer that of Plato. Though doubtless they had at hand more literature from the century in question than has been available since, a glance at historical fiction from medieval romance to modern novel will remind us that the life pictured is probably much nearer to that of their own time. Lucian, in his _Dialogues of Hetaerae_,[45] presents a tale told to her lover by a flute-girl hired as entertainer by two wealthy lesbians, one a Corinthian. After the banquet the hostesses persuade Leana to stay and share their bed, sleeping between them. The Corinthian removes a feminine wig to display close-cropped hair, and vaunts her ability to give amatory satisfaction. Physically she is entirely feminine, but she protests that “in my feelings and passions I am altogether a man.” Leana admits to have received proof of this, but when pressed for detail by her lover she says, “Now you want to know too much. It was rather nasty business. No, by the Goddess! I won’t tell you any more.” She has already gone far enough, however, to imply tribadism and to hint at cunnilingus.