“Haec Dea veluti etiam ceteri, sua sacrificia praetermitti non aequo animo ferebat: quae cum Lemniae mulieres Veneris sacrificia sprevissent, Deae maxime iram in se concitasse creditae sunt, quod etiam non impune putantur fecisse. _Nam tantum foetorem illis excitasse feminis Dea perhibetur, ut a suis maritis contemnerentur._” (This goddess, no less than other deities, could not bear the neglect of her proper sacrifices with equanimity. Thus the women of Lemnos, having omitted to perform these sacrifices of Venus, are believed to have brought down on themselves the most serious anger of the goddess, and this they are accounted not to have done with impunity. _For the goddess, as is related, caused such a foul odour to arise among the women, that they were scorned by their husbands._) If the view mentioned just above as taken by the Apostle Paul and by St. Athanasius is the right one, it would seem that the Lemnian women had suffered themselves to be used by their husbands for purposes of paederastia; then as a consequence there had been set up the evil odour of the mouth and breath, and this had driven the men to desert their wives to live with the captive Thracian slave-women (_Apollonius_). But indeed the Ancients generally, or at any rate the Greeks and Romans, seem to have always held the opinion that unnatural coition, as well as all the similar forms of indulgence taking its place, were a consequence of the wrath of Venus, against whom the individuals had offended[311]. This appears also from the play of _Philoctetes_, of whom the _Scholiast_ to _Thucydides_[312] says: “Moreover Philoctetes, having on account of the death of Paris fallen sick of the _feminine disease_, and being unable to bear the shame of it, left his country and founded a city, which in memory of his misfortune he named Malacia—Effeminacy.” _Martial_[313] had the same myth in his mind when he wrote: In Sertorium Mollis erat, facilisque viris Paeantius heros, Vulnera sic Paridis dicitur ulta Venus. Cur lingat cunnum Siculus Sertorius, hoc est, Ex hoc occisus, Rufe, videtur Eryx. (To Sertorius.—The Hero, son of Paeas (Philoctetes), was effeminate and easy of access to men; in this way Venus is said to have avenged the murder of Paris. Why should Sicilian Sertorius lick the pudendum of women? this is why, because it would appear, he was the slayer, Rufus, of a man of Eryx.) Of course there can be no question here of the disease which detained Philoctetes at Lemnos and prevented his taking part in the expedition to Troy; and if the older legend says nothing as to the νοῦσος θήλεια of Philoctetes, it is clear from this (as Meier, loco citato, has shown) that only in times when paederastia was becoming prevalent, were all these legends invented, to get as it were a sort of excuse by alleging a distinguished predecessor in the practice. So _Martial_ says, addressing _Gaurus_:[314]