[73] _Pollux_, Onomast IV. ch. 25. p. 187., mentions among forms of wasting-diseases φθίνης νόσος, for which some editors, and quite rightly, prefer to read φθίνας νόσος (wasting disease). _Suidas_ also says φθίνας ἡ νόσος, but without giving any further explanation; on the contrary in _Hesychius_ we find: s. v. φθινὰ[ς] ἡ ἐρυσίβη, καὶ εἶδος ἐλαίας (under word φθινὰ; the red blight, also a species of olive). But by ἐρυσίβη is signified _mildew_, _blight_, _smut on grain_, the same thing therefore as the Romans called _rubigo_ or _robigo_, on which _Servius_, on Virg. Georg. I. 151., has the following observation: Robigo genus est vitii, quo culmi pereunt, quod a rusticanis calamitas dicitur. Hoc autem genus vitii ex nebula nasci solet, cum _nigrescunt et consumuntur_ frumenta. Inde Robigus deus et sacra eius septimo Kalendas Maias Robigalia appellantur. Sed _haec abusive_ robigo dicitur; nam _proprie robigo est_, ut Varro dicit, _vitium obscoenae libidinis quod ulcus vocatur: id autem abundantia et superfluitate humoris_ solet nasci, quae Graece σατυρίασις dicitur. (_Robigo_ is a sort of blight, that kills the corn-stalks, which is spoken of as a _disaster_ by the peasants. Now this kind of blight commonly springs from a mist or exhalation, the crops blackening and being burnt up. Hence the god Robigus, and his feast-day on the seventh day before the Kalends of May (April 24.), known as the Robigalia. But this is called _robigo_ only by a misnomer; for properly speaking _robigo_ is, as Varro says, a vitiation due to abominable licentiousness and is called an ulcer, and it commonly springs from that abundance and over-copiousness of the humour, which in Greek is called Satyriasis). These words are for our purpose pose of the highest importance, teaching us as they do, that _a distinctive form of ulceration, that the patient had brought on himself by sexual excesses, was not only familiar among the Romans_ but actually bore the _special_ name of _robigo_. It must have displayed a distinctive redness, and have consumed the parts affected similarly to the smut or rust of grain, or the rust of iron. It is surely a sufficient indication to call the chancre-ulcer a blight, a burning: Comp. anthrax, carbo (malignant pustule, carbuncle). To this day in Germany it is vulgarly said of any one attacked by the primary forms of Venereal disease, “the man has burned himself”. _Festus_, (edit. Dacier p. 451.) says: _Robum_ rubro colore et quae rufo significare, at bovem quoque rustici appellant, manifestum est, unde et _materia quae plurimas venas eius coloris habet_ dicta est rubor, (_Robus_ clearly indicates things of a red or reddish colour,—now countrymen even speak of an ox as _robus_; hence _any substance having manifold veins of this colour_ is called _rubor_). Now such is habitually the case with the penis attacked by phimosis or paraphimosis and under the morbid condition of constant erection (Satyriasis) superinduced by these.