To assume that Hippocrates was actually acquainted with these in any completeness would up to the present be premature; at any rate we are bound, so far as our study of his writings enables us to judge, to deny him any knowledge of the fact that sexual excesses were the cause of the different affections of the genital organs chronicled by him. Of course he may have supposed all this to be notorious and the knowledge of it common property, but a host of statements would be found to tell against any such supposition. Opportunities of making acquaintance with the vice of the _cunnilingue_ could certainly not have been lacking, it being so familiar a thing in his time that _Aristophanes_[75] again and again derided it in his Comedies. Whatever conclusion we come to on this head, at least the passage of Hippocrates cannot justify anyone in maintaining that the φοινικίη νοῦσος,—(Phœnician disease) was true Elephantiasis, even if, as may be, the preliminary proposition that elephantiasis was a _consequence_ of debauchery be made good,—a point to which we propose later on to return. On the subject of Satyriasis in Crete, we have already expressed our views. Just as the Phoenicians carried the seed of the vice to Greece and other lands, so at a later period was it disseminated from Syria to Italy; and so _Ausonius_ says (Epigr. 128.): Eunus Syriscus inguinum liguritor, Opicus[76] magister (sic eum ducet Phyllis) Muliebre membrum quadriangulum cernit: Triquetro coactu Δ literam ducit. De valle femorum altrinsecus pares rugas, Mediumque, fissi rima qua patet, callem Ψ dicit esse: nam trifissilis forma est. Cui ipse linguam quum dedit suam, Λ est: Veramque in illis esse Φ notam sentit. Quid imperite, Ρ putas ibi scriptum Ubi locari Ι convenit longum? Miselle doctor, Ȣ tibi sit obscoeno, Tuumque nomen Θ sectilis signet. (Eunus from Syria, glutton of the privy parts, Opican (clownish) master (Phyllis teaches him his letters) sees the woman’s organ four-cornered: when compressed to a triangle he makes it out the letter Δ. From the valley between the thighs start two furrows, a pair one on either side, while between them is a line, where lies the opening, the crack of the fissure; this he declares is Ψ; for ’tis three-pronged in outline. Then when he puts in his own tongue to it, lo! it is Λ; and he can feel there is a true Φ marked therein. What, dunce, think you a Ρ is inscribed there, where a long Ι should by rights be placed? Miserable, contemptible scholar, may the Ȣ (a noose) reward your foulness, and the cleft Θ (letter of condemnation, being initial of θάνατος,—death) be set against your name!) The more detailed interpretation of these obscene hieroglyphics the reader may find in the commentators on the passage, as well as in _Forberg_, loco citato p. 335. Diseases of the Cunnilingue. § 24.