No doubt _Stark_, p. 19, is quite right in saying this passage has nothing to do with the θήλεια νοῦσος; but the poet has by no means, as he puts it in his note, _temporum ordine lapsus_,—committed an anachronism. He makes no mention whatever of any vengeance of Venus, saying nothing more than that loneliness led the inheritor (of the arrows) of Hercules to Onanism. This is not merely advancing a conjecture, as _Stark_ does, but (to say nothing of the _Lemnia egestas_—Lemnian loneliness), admits of being legitimately developed from the whole sequence of thought in the Epigram. Crispa’s vices are mentioned in the order of their shamefulness. The least disgraceful is Onanism, such as Philoctetes practised, next comes the vice of the _cinaedus_ and of the _pathic_, for which Afranius serves as example, and lastly _fellation_. Thus it shows a complete want of comprehension, when the commentators quote the scholion to Thucydides given a little above as an explanation. Had Philoctetes been referred to as a _pathic_, the succeeding verse would be entirely superfluous; which verse does not receive a word of notice from the expositors, presumably because they failed to understand the allusion. The true explanation is afforded by a passage in _Quintilian_:[316] “Togatis excellit Afranius, _utinamque non inquinasset argumenta puerorum foedis amoribus_, mores suos fassus.” (Afranius excels in _fabulae togatae_ (polite comedies), and it were to be wished he had not defiled his plots by disgusting intrigues with boys, thereby discovering his own morals). _Forberg_, loco citato p. 283, quotes this passage indeed, but explains (both here and on p. 343) the _libido_ (lust) of Philoctetes as being that of the _pathic_. To prove that Venus manifested her wrath in the way specified, we may further cite the race of the daughters of Helios, whom she punished by the infliction of licentious love. Thus _Hyginus_ says:[317] Soli ob indicium (concubitus cum Marte) Venus ad _progeniem_ eius semper fuit inimica, (Because of the Sun’s revelation (of her intrigue with Mars) Venus was ever a bitter enemy of his posterity); and Seneca:[318] Stirpem perosa Solis invisi Venus Per nos catenas vindicat Martis sui Suasque: _probris_ omne Phoebeum genus Onerat _infandis_. (Venus, loathing the posterity of the hated Sun, punishes on us the fetters that bound her lover Mars and her. _With abominable and disgraceful practices_ she afflicts the whole race of Phoebus).