(But from your smooth posterior are cut, the doctor grinning the while, _the bloated swellings_). Just as it admits of no doubt that in the passage of _Horace_[274]: Nam, displosa sonat quantum vesica, pepedi Diffissa nate _ficos_. (For as loud as a burst bladder sounds, I farted my swellings (ficos—figs) away, splitting the rump), _ficos_ and not as commonly _ficus_ must be read. That these morbid growths were not entirely free from contagious matter seems to be indicated by the following passages. In the _Priapeia_ (Carm. 50) we read: Quaedam, si placet hoc tibi, Priape, Ficosissima me puella ludit, Et non dat mihi, nec negat daturam; Causasque invenit usque differendi. Quae si contigerit fruenda nobis, Totam cum paribus, Priape, nostris Cingemus tibi mentulam coronis. (A certain girl, if it please you to listen, Priapus, is playing with me. Most sorely afflicted is she with swellings; and she will not give herself to me, yet does not say she never will, and ever finds excuses for putting off and putting off. Now if ever she shall be mine to enjoy, I and my comrades with me, will wreath all thy _penis_, Priapus, with garlands). The girl, who was badly affected with these swellings, and that presumably in the secret parts, refuses her lover coition. The latter does not insist, but prays to Priapus, as was habitually done in all cases of affections of the genitals (see p. 74 above) and vows to deck his penis with garlands. It follows that the lover was aware these swellings would be injurious to him, if he should constrain the girl, of whom the poet says, _nec negat daturam_ (yet does not say she will _not_ give herself), to lie with him. Still clearer evidence of this may be found in the following Epigram of _Martial_, where a whole family is affected with these swellings or tumours: De familia ficosa.[275] Ficosa est uxor, ficosus et ipse maritus, Filia ficosa est, et gener atque nepos. Nec dispensator, nec villicus, _ulcere turpi_, Nec rigidus fossor, sed nec arator eget. Cum sint ficosi pariter iuvenesque senesque, Res mira est, ficus non habet unus ager. (On a tumourous household.—The goodwife is tumourous, tumourous the goodman her husband, tumourous the daughter of the house, and the son-in-law and the grandson. Neither house-steward nor factor is free of the foul ulcer, nor the rugged ditcher, nor yet the ploughman. Now when all alike, young and old have tumours (ficos, ficus), the strange thing is, not a single field has fig-trees (ficus)). For the rest the words _ulcere turpi_ (foul ulcer) show that _ficus_, like σύκος and σύκωσις (fig, fig-like swelling) in Greek, signifies not only a fig-shaped swelling, but also an ulcer with granulous surface, like a fig cut in two. Or possibly it would be better to understand here swellings that have passed into the ulcerated stage[276].