[120] Noteworthy is the explanation of _Isidore_, Etymol. bk. IV. ch. 9. 17., _Oscedo_ est, qua infantum ora exulcerantur, dicta a languore oscitantium. (_Oscedo_ is a complaint whereby children’s mouths become ulcerated, so called from the languor of those gaping); the latter part is unintelligible. Were these _oscitantes_ (gapers) possibly _fellators_? _Lucian_, Pseudolog. ch. 27. says of Timarchus, ἀναπετάσας τὸ στόμα, καὶ ὡς ἔνι πλατύτατον κεχηνὼς, ἠνείχου τυφλούμενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τὴν γνάθον. (and with a gape as wide as is possible to make, you were borne away, your jaw blocked by him). [121] _Horace_, Odes III. 27. 11. _Ausonius_, Idyll. XI. 15. [122] _Luxus_ in the sense of sexual excess occurs not unfrequently in ancient writers, e. g. in _Tacitus_, Hist. IV. 14., _Suetonius_, Nero 29. _Capua luxurians_ is well known from the history of Hannibal. It is worth noting that _Paracelsus_ gives the name _luxus_ to Venereal disease; he says, De causis et origine luis Gallicae, (Of the Causes and Origin of the French Contagion), bk. I. ch. 5.: _Luxus_ autem nomen quod attinet, illud ab influentia, id est, efficiente causa desumptum esse intelligendum est. Est autem _luxus_ irritatio quaedam ac titillatus spermatis, ad perficiendum actum venereum, a morbis in corpore latentibus causata, itaque Veneris impressione a morbo in actu ipso facta, tum ex vulgari luxu fit _luxus morbi_ seu _morbidus_. Proinde _luxus_ hic non naturalis sed _Satyricus_ dicendus erit. (But _luxus_ the name that is applied to it, this name must be understood as being taken from the influencing circumstance or efficient cause. Now _luxus_ is a certain irritation or tickling of the seed, leading to the performance of the Venereal act and caused by diseases latent in the body, and so a strong motion of love being made in consequence of the disease in the act itself, then from the common expression _luxus_, is formed _luxus_ of the disease, or morbid _luxus_. It follows this _luxus_ will have to be called not natural, but _Satyric luxus_). [123] Possibly a _double entendre_ lurks even in the _ad pugnam venere_ (they came to the fight). _Festus_, under the word, says: Osculana pugna in proverbio, quo significabatur victos vincere, (An Osculan—otherwise Asculan,—fight a proverbial saying that signified the vanquished being victorious). The Roman general Laevinus was beaten by King Pyrrhus at Asculum, soon after at the same place the King was himself beaten by Sulpicius. [124] Ovid, De arte amandi bk. III. v. 778., Nunquam Thebais Hectoreo nupta resedit equo, (Never did his Theban bride—Andromaché,—sit on the Hectorean stallion). Comp. _Martial_, bk. XI. Epigr. 105. [125] It is worthy of note that _Rhazes_, Elchavi seu Continens, Brescia 1486. fol., p. 276., mentions certain ulcers on the verge, that come from _ascensio mulieris supra virum_ (the woman getting on the man)!