CHAPTER VI

OF TRIBADS

THE tribads, also called frictionists[116] from the Greek ****, I rub, are women, with whom that part of the genital apparatus which is called the clitoris, attains such proportions, that they can use it as a mentula, either for fornication or pedication. The clitoris,[117] which is a very sensitive caruncle (a small fleshy cone), capable of movement and resembling the verge, gets into erection with all women, not only during the coitus, the delights of which it is said to enhance immensely by increased titillation, but also in consequence of mere amorous longing; with tribads, either by a freak of nature or in consequence of frequent use, it attains immoderate dimensions[118]. The tribad can get it in erection, enter a vulva or anus, enjoy a delicious voluptuousness, and procure if not a complete realization of cohabitation, at least something very near to it, to the woman who plays the passive part. What more is there to say? She plays the man’s part with the omission of the ejaculation of the semen, not that this sort of coitus is an altogether dry affair, as women are in the habit of emitting their liquid during the joys of love[119].

This depravity of voluptuousness, whether caused by the warmth of the climate, or by a peculiarity of the soil or waters, or other reasons unknown to us, was especially common with the women of Lesbos; this is attested by all the old writers. Lucian, in his “Dialogues of courtesans,” No. V. (Works, vol. VII., p. 349.): “This is one of those tribads, as they are to be found in Lesbos, who will have nothing to do with men, and do the men’s business with women.” If such things were an every day occurrence with the Lesbian women, we must believe that they were pushed to them by natural instigation[120], and to allay an intolerable pruriency. Who has not heard of that most celebrated queen of all tribads, Sappho, herself a Lesbian? Some authors, Maximum of Tyre the first among them, have with the best intention tried to exonerate her from his infamous vice; but hear her in Ovid (and he represents the Ancients in sentiment and feeling), repudiating her would be apologists, _Heroides_, XV., 15-20:

“Neither the maidens of Pyrrha, nor those of Methymna[121], nor all the host of Lesbian beauties please me. Vile to me seems Anactoria, vile the fair Cydno, Atthis is no more so dear to my eyes as once she was, nor yet a hundred others I loved not innocently[122]. Villain! yours is now what belonged to many women....”

and verse 201:

“Lesbian women, beloved, who made me infamous!”

Sappho speaks first in general of those that have submitted to her caresses, the maidens of Pyrrha and Methymna; then she mentions by name Anactoria, Cydno and Atthis,—to whom Suidas adds Telesippa and Megara:

“Her favorites, whom she loved well, were three in number, Atthis, Telesippa, Megara, and for those she burnt in impure passion.”

These passages from the Ancients are clear enough, and do not admit of any doubt; they even assist us in explaining other sentences, which otherwise seem obscure or ambiguous; for instance the “masculine Sappho” of Horace (_Epistles_ I., XIX., 28); “making plaint against the maids of her country” (_Odes_ II., XIII., 25); also Ovid, _Art of Love_, III., 331.

“Sappho should be well known, too; what more wanton than she?” _Tristia_, II., 363:

“What was the lore Lesbian Sappho taught, but to love maids?”

and Martial, VII., 68[123].

“Sappho, the amorous, praised our poetess; the latter was more pure, the former not more perfect in art.”

Lucian’s witty and licentious pen has made famous another tribad, Megilla, in the above quoted Dialogue. This Dialogue is not outrageously obscene, for it breaks off just at the moment when things would have had to be said very plainly; nevertheless, the virginal modesty of our Wieland has not dared to translate it into German. The philosopher of Samosata brings Leaena upon the scene, and makes her disclose by what artifices Megilla gained her consent. Leaena asks Megilla:

“Are you then made like a man, and do with Demonassa (whom Megilla used after the manner of tribads), as men do?” “I have not got exactly all that, my Leaena,” answers Megilla, “but I am not entirely without it. However, you will see me at work, and in a very pleasant manner. I have been born like all of you, but I have the tastes, the desires and something else of a man. Let me do it to you, if you do not believe me, and you will see that I have everything that men have. Give me leave to work you, and you will see.” Leaena confesses that she at last consented, moved by her solicitations and promises, and no doubt also by the novelty of the thing. “I let her have her way,” she says, “yielding to her entreaties, seconded by a magnificent necklet and a robe of fine linen. I took her in my arms like a man; she went to work caressing me, panting with excitement and evidently experiencing the extreme of pleasure.” Clonarion asks her inquisitively:

“But what did she do to you Leaena, and how did she manage?” But Leaena eludes the question. “Do not ask me anything more; these are nasty doings; by Urania, I shall not breathe a word more!” she answers, to the great regret of the reader, who would like to penetrate further this mystery.

Amongst the tribads is still to be named Philaenis, the same, no doubt, who according to Lucian (_Amores_, ch. 28—Works vol. V., p. 88), wrote about erotic postures: “Let our women’s apartments be filled by women like Philaenis, dishonored by androgynic[124] loves!”—Sophoclidisca in Plautus, to whom Paegnion says: “Do not caress me, subagitatrix!” (_Persa_, act II., 41);—and Folia of Ariminum, who according to Horace (_Epodes_, V., 41) was “of masculine lubricity.” However writers as a rule touch upon these points more lightly than is agreeable to the curiosity of the reader. For the same reason the too great reserve of Seneca (_Controversia_, II) is to be regretted, where he says at the end:

“Hybreas having to plead in favor of a man who had surprised and killed a tribad, described the grief of the husband; on such a subject one must not ask for a too particular investigation.”

Much more complete, full and explicit is our good friend of Bilbilis (Martial). Hear him! he is disclosing the tribadic doings of Balba, so clearly that it could not be done better; I., 91:

“As no one, Bassa, ever saw you go with men; as rumor never assigned you a lover, as every office about you was fulfilled by a troop of women, no man ever coming nigh you, you seemed to us, I admit, a very Lucretia. But, oh! shame on you, Bassa, you were a fornicator all the time! You dare to conjoin the private parts of two women together, and your monstrous organ of love feigns the absent male. You have contrived a miracle to match the Thebian riddle: that where no man is, there adultery should be!”

Surely it is clear enough what Bassa did, in conjoining the privates of two women together. By no means! There are expounders, and very good ones, too, who have quite misunderstood this very easy passage, and have imagined that Bassa misused women by introducing into their vagina a leathern contrivance, an olisbos, a _godemiche_; we shall speak at the end of this chapter of this kind of pleasure, but it was quite unknown to Bassa, who simulated the man in her own person.

Nothing could be more monstrous than the libertine passion of Philaenis; she did not content herself with introducing her stiff clitoris in the vulva of tribads, Martial, VII., 69:

“Tribad of tribads, you, Philaenis, you are well justified in calling her your mistress whom you work;” or in those of other young girls, and to get a dozen of them under her in a day; but she even pedicated boys; Martial, VII., 67:

“Philaenis the tribad pedicates boys[125], and stiffer than a man in one day works eleven girls.”

In order to leave nothing untasted in the way of virile lusts she was also a _cunnilingue_; same epigram, at the end:

“After all that, when she is in good feather,—she does not suck, that is too feminine; she devours right out girls’ middle parts. May all the gods confound you, Philaenis, who think it manly work to lick the vulva.”

Philaenis, when overmuch in rut, caused herself also to be served by _cunnilingues_; this is clear enough from Martial, IX., 41:

“When Diodorus, wanting the Tarpeian crowns, left Pharos behind and sailed for Rome, Philaenis vowed that to celebrate her mate’s return an innocent maid should lick her, such a one as the chaste Sabine women still cherish.”

She vowed if her husband returned to have her vulva licked by a young girl, well-known for her innocence and chastity; to have it done by prostitutes was for Philaenis nothing new; she wanted on that occasion to experiment with a virgin, exactly like men, who always want something new and strange to spur their lust. How rare it was for women to use other women for that purpose appears from Juvenal II., 47-49:

“... There will no other instance be found so abominable in our sex; Taedia does not lick Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla.”

But what could you find stronger, more energetic and plainer to enlighten the reader completely on this subject than the following verses in _Satire_ VI., 308-333, where Juvenal’s ire against the tribadic orgies in Rome breaks out in words of fire?

“At night they stop their litters here, make water here, and flood with long syphons the Goddess’ statue, and ride turn and turn about and go through the motions under the eye of the conscious moon; then they make for home. When the morning light returns, you walk through your wife’s piss, to visit your great friends. Known are the secret rites of the _Bona Dea_, when the flute excite their wanton loins, when drunk with music and with wine they rush along, whirling their locks and howling, these Maenads of Priapus! How they yearn for instant copulation! how their voice trembles with passionate longing! what floods of old wine gush down their dripping thighs! A prize is offered, and Laufeia challenges the brothel-master’s girls, and wins the first place for nimble hips; while herself is mad for the pleasure Medullina’s artful movements give her. Amongst these dames merit carries off the palm from noble blood. There nothing must be feigned, all must be done in very truth and deed,—enough to set on fire, however chilled with age, Laomedon’s son and old Nestor with his rupture! Then is seen mere lust that will brook not a moment’s more delay, women in her bare brutality, while from every corner of the subterranean hall rises the reiterated cry: “The hour is come, admit the men.” Is the lover asleep? she bids the first young man to hand snatch up his hood and come at once. Is none to be found? resort is had to slaves. No hope of slaves? a water-carrier will be hired to come. If he comes not, and men there are none, she will not wait an instant more but get an ass to mount her from behind.”

The tribadic orgies were divided into two kinds; in one of them the Roman dames, giving free course to their lust, defiled the altar of chastity; in the other they celebrated the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_. You see in the first place the tribads go at night in litters to the altar of chastity, there pass their water[126] against the statue of the Goddess, and having perhaps spirted their urine up to her face[127] they at all events wet the area all about, (their husbands walking right through it in the morning, when they go to see their patrons), and then they ride or allow themselves to be ridden alternately; here we have more than one Philaenis, tribad of tribads! Other ladies go to celebrate the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_, well known to the public since the adventures of Clodius[128]. You observe them rousing themselves with the sounds of flutes and trumpets, as also with fumes of wine, to undergo valiantly the jousts of mutual love; you see their amorous frenzy, their hair flying in the wind; you note their sighs of longing, and how they piss with excitement. A prize is set, as in the feast of Pope Alexander VI., to be given to the most intrepid tribad: Laufeia calls upon the brothel-girls to let her ride them, and carries off the crown[129]; there is none there of better heart than Medullina, expert in plying her loins and buttocks; there all etiquette ceases, mistresses and servants alike contest for the palm of obscenity; there is no sham, all is tribadic reality[130]; but, after all, finally nature got the upper hand again, the tribad disappeared, and the woman became again a woman, leaving alone tribadism, as a phantom only of pleasure, and not satisfying them; from all parts a cry is raised: “Now is the time for the men to come in: go and find young men; if you cannot find any, then slaves will do; if they are lacking, bring the first men you can find in the streets.” And if all fails, in their shameless wantonness, they will offer their buttocks to an ass[131]. On the origin of tribads[132] Phaedrus has a fable, IV., 14:

“Another asked the reason why tribads and cinedes were created. The old man thus explained: The same Prometheus, modeller of the human clay, that if it knock against Fortune is shivered in pieces, once when he had been fashioning all day long separately those parts that modesty keeps hidden beneath a garment, to fit them presently to the bodies he had made, was unexpectedly invited to supper by Bacchus. There he imbibed the nectar in large drafts, and returned late home with unsteady foot; then what with fumes of wine and sleepiness, he joined the female parts to male bodies, and fixed male members on to the women. Thus it is we find lust indulging in depraved pleasures.”

The masculine member applied to women is evidently that clitoris of such proportions in erection, that the tribads can use it like a penis; the female apparatus fitted on to man is nothing else but the posterior orifice, which itches in the case of cinedes, just as the vulva titillates women. Tribads were not wanting in the times of Tertullian; he calls them frictrices. _De Pallio_, ch. 4:

“Look at those she-wolves who make their bread by the general incontinence; amongst themselves they are also frictrices.”

The same author says in the _De Resurrectione Carnis_, ch. 16: “I do not call a cup poisoned which has received the last sigh of a dying man; I give that name to one that has been infected by the breath of a frictrix, of a high-priest of Cybelé, of a gladiator, of an executioner, and I ask if you will not refuse it as you would such persons’ actual kisses.”

Nor was the trade of tribad out of date in the time of Aloysia Sigaea:

“Nay! do not think me”, says Tullia, Dialogue II., “worse than others. This taste is spread almost over the universe. Italians, Spaniards, French, are all alike as to the tribadism of their women; if they were not ashamed, they would always be rutting in each other’s arms.”

More, she quotes herself some examples of the hot transports of tribads, Dialogue VII.:

“Enemunda, the sister of Fernando Porcio, was very beautiful, and not less so was a friend of hers, Francisca Bellina. They frequently slept together in Fernando’s house. Fernando laid secret snares for Francisca; the latter knew that he desired to have her, and was proud of it. One morning the young man, stung by his desires, rose with the sun, and stepped out upon the balcony to cool his hot blood. He heard the bed of his sister in the next room cracking and shaking. The door stood open; Venus had been kind to him and had made the girls careless. He enters; they do not see him, blinded and deafened by pleasure. Francisca was riding Enemunda, both naked, full gallop. ‘The noblest and most powerful mentulas are every day after my maidenhead,’ said Francisca, ‘I should select the finest, dear, but for you; so fain am I to gratify your tastes and mine.’ Whilst speaking she was jogging her vigorously. Fernando threw himself naked into the bed; the two girls, almost frightened to death, dared not stir. He draws Francisca, exhausted by her ride, into his arms and kisses her: ‘How dare you, abandoned girl,’ he says, ‘violate my sister, who is so pure and chaste? You shall pay me for this; I will revenge the injury done to our house; answer now to my flames as she has answered to yours.’ ‘My brother! my brother!’ cries Enemunda, ‘pardon two lovers, and do not betray us to slander!’ ‘No one shall know anything,’ he answered, ‘let Francisca make me a present of her treasure, and I will make you both a present of my silence.’”

The conversation of Ottavia with Tullia, acting as tribad, in the same work (Dialogue II) is still bolder and more to the point:

TULLIA: Pray do not draw back; open your thighs.

OTTAVIA: Very well! Now you cover me entirely, your mouth against mine, your breast against mine, your belly against mine; I will clasp you as you are clasping me.

TULLIA: Raise your legs, cross your thighs over mine, I will show you a new Venus; to you quite new. How nicely you obey! I wish I could command as well as you execute!

OTTAVIA: Ah! ah! my dear Tullia, my queen! how you push! how you wriggle! I wish those candles were out; I am ashamed there should be light to see how submissive I am.

TULLIA: Now mind what you are doing! when I push, do you rise to meet me; move your buttocks vigorously, as I move mine, and lift up as high as ever you can! Is your breath coming short?

OTTAVIA: You dislocate me with your violent pushing; you stifle me; I would not do it for any one but you.

TULLIA: Press me tightly, Ottavia, take ... there! I am all melting and burning, ah! ah! ah!

OTTAVIA: Your affair is setting fire to mine—draw back!

TULLIA: At last, my darling, I have served you as a husband; you are my wife now!

OTTAVIA: I wish to heaven you were my husband! What a loving wife I should make! What a husband I should have! But you have inundated my garden; I am all bedewed! What have you been doing, Tullia?

TULLIA: I have done everything up to the end, and from the dark recesses of my vessel love in blind transports has shot the liquor of Venus into your maiden barque.

Leo Africanus, in his _Description of Africa_, p. 336 (edition Elzevir, of 1632), mentions the tribads of Fez:

“But those who have more common sense, call these women (he is speaking of witches) “Sahacat,” a word which corresponds with the Latin _fricatrices_, because they take their pleasure with each other. I cannot speak more plainly without offending decency. When good-looking women visit them, these witches fall at once in hot love with them, not less hot than the love of young men for girls, and they ask them in the guise of the devil to pay them by suffering their embraces. So it happens that very often when they think they have been obeying the behests of demons, they have really only had to do with witches. Many, too, pleased with the game they have played, seek of their own impulse to enjoy intercourse again with the witches, and under pretence of being ill, summon one of them or send their unfortunate husbands to fetch her. Then the witches, seeing how matters stand, asseverate that the wife is possessed by a demon, and can only be liberated by joining their association.”

You ask whether tribads are still to be found in our days? If there are none now, there certainly were some in existence in Paris only a short time before the Great Revolution, if we are to trust the author of _Gynaeology_, III., p. 428. There was a veritable college of tribads in Paris, who went by the names of Vestals, holding regular meetings in particular localities. There were a great many members, and of the highest classes; they had their statutes with respect to admission; the affiliated were divided into three degrees: aspirants, postulants, the initiated. Before the postulant could be admitted to the secret of the order, she had to undergo for three days a difficult probation: shut up in a cell tapestried with lewd pictures, and ornamented with carved Priapi of magnificent proportions, she had to keep up a fire with I do not know how many ingredients, and arranged in such a manner that it would go out if there was taken too much or too little of any of the materials; on the four altars of the temple, which was adorned with statues of Sappho, of the Lesbians she had loved, and of the Chevalier d’Eon, who for so many years successfully dissimulated his sex, and with splendid hangings, perpetual fires were burning. Kept English women, too, did not recoil at tribadism, as the same author states, III., p. 394. He affirms that not long before the close of the last century, confederacies of tribads, called Alexandrine confederacies, were still in existence in London, though in a small number only.

Enough now of those who are, strictly speaking, included under the name of tribads; but the word has a more extended signification. The term is also applied to those women who in default of a real mentula, make use of their finger or of a leathern contrivance, which they introduce into their vulva, and so attain a fictitious enjoyment. Germany, I have lately heard, has been ringing with complaints about this abuse. As regards the leathern engine[133], called by the Greeks olisbos, the women of Miletus, above all others, made it their instrument of pleasure. Aristophanes, in the _Lysistrata_, 108-110:

“For since the day the Milesians left us in the lurch, not an olisbos have I set eyes on, eight inches long,—that might give us its leathern aid....”

Suidas under the word “****”:

“A virile member made of leather which was used by Milesian women, as being tribads and immodest. It was also made use of by widows.”

The same author under the word “****”:

“Cratinus also says on this head: _Lewd_ women will be using the olisbos.”

Hesychius quotes the same passage.

If you ask whether modern women, who have suffered the wrong of seeing their beauty slighted, actually have recourse to this leathern substitute, Aloysia Sigaea (Dialogue II) shall answer you:

“The Milesian women made for themselves imitations in leather, eight inches long and thick in proportion. Aristophanes tells us that the women of his day habitually made use of such. And to this very day Italian, Spanish and Asiatic women honor this instrument with a place in their toilet apparatus; it is their most precious possession, and one very highly appreciated.”

It is an undoubted fact that the Roman matrons cherished a species of inoffensive snake[134], the cold skin of which served as a refrigerator in summer, Martial, VII., 86:

“If Glacilla winds an icy serpent round her neck....”

Lucian _Alexander_ (Works, vol. IV., p. 259):

“In that country one sees serpents of an enormous size, but so quiet and mild that they are fondled by women, sleep with the children, do not get angry on being trodden on or handled, and suck the nipples of the breast like a nursling.”

This being so, our eminent Bottiger was probably right, when he wrote page 454 of his _Sabina_[135] a profoundly scientific work in German, that very likely snakes were used as instruments to satisfy the lubricity of amorous women. You may understand now what happened, or what might have happened to Atia, the mother of Augustus, of whom Suetonius (_Augustus_, ch. 94) wrote:

“I read in the treatise of Asclepiades of Mendé called the _Theologumena_, how Atia the mother of Augustus, having gone at midnight to the temple of Apollo, to assist at a solemn sacrifice, fell asleep, and so did the other women present; how a serpent suddenly glided close to her, and after some little time withdrew again, and how on waking she purified herself, as though she had left the arms of her husband.”

There would be nothing surprising in the fact that a serpent of that sort should have investigated even without incitation on Atia’s part, a certain locality which was well known to it by the lubricity of other women, and that Atia felt on awakening the very same sensation as though she had undergone a real coitus.

FOOTNOTES - OF TRIBADS

Footnote 116:

They were also called hetairistriae:—Hesychius: “Hetairistriae tribads”—and likewise dietairistriae, according to the same author: “Dietairistriae, women who go after prostitutes (hetairae) for carnal intercourse, just as men do; same as tribads.”

Footnote 117:

Aloysia Sigaea, Dialogue III.: “But I forgot (Tullia speaking) to tell you of the clitoris. This is a membranous body, situated at the bottom of the pubis, and representing in a reduced form the virile verge. As is the case with the verge, the amorous desire excites it to erection, and in certain women of an ardent temperament it inflames them with pruriency to such a degree that by the mere caressing of it with the hand they very often discharge their fluid without the help of a rider at all.”

Footnote 118:

If that woman whom Plater saw, according to Venette in his _Tableau de l’amour conjugal_, vol. I., ch. 1, 3, was not a tribad, she might well have been one; her clitoris, which with other women attains in its utmost erection the length of the half of the little finger or thereabouts, was as long as the neck of a goose. Is it surprising that women furnished with such an implement should wish to get rid of it? Amputation is however dangerous. Plater did not venture to finish an amputation which he had commenced, and Rodohamides, an Egyptian physician of the XIth century, had not courage to even undertake one, although commanded by a queen to perform the operation (Venette, IV., 2). Those whom Adramytes, the king of the Lydians, order to castrate women, were they more courageous? Athenæus, XII., 2: “Xanthus states in the second book of his Lydiacs, that Adramytes, king of the Lydians, was the first to have women castrated and employ them as eunuchs.” However that may be, these female eunuchs have very much exercised the commentators. Some suppose that straps and buckles did in their case the same service as the chastity-belts, which, it is said, Spaniards and Italians to this day compel their wives to wear if they think they have reason to be jealous: others believe that it was a question of suture, as is the case with the natives of Angola and the Congo, who stitch the vulvas of young girls for the protection of their maidenheads; but I believe that nobody knows anything certain in this respect. Nor does it appear that these women had to submit to an operation, which is certainly practised upon the young girls by the Arabs, Copts, Ethiopians, in some parts of Persia and Nigritia, and which consists in cutting off the prepuce of the clitoris; this is proved by abundant evidence, and reported in the Encyclopedia of Ersch and Gruber under the word: “Beschneidung” (Circumcision); how indeed could Athenæus describe as _Eunuchize_ that which is calculated to increase the fecundity of women. I thought first that these women were tribads changed into eunuchs by the removal of their immoderately large clitoris; I am now inclined to believe that the king caused that to be done to these women, which according to Aristotle, _Nat. Hist._ IX., 50, was done to sows: “Sows are castrated, so that they shall no longer desire the coitus and get quickly fattened. They are castrated, suspended by their hind legs, after fasting two days, by an incision in that place where with a man the testicles are situated, in fact in the female matrix.” Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, VIII., 51: “Sows are castrated in the same way as female camels, after a fast of two days, suspended by their hind legs, by an incision in the vulva; they thus fatten much quicker.” Columella, VII., IX. 5: “Sows are also castrated by incision in the vulva; the wounds cicatrics, and they cannot conceive any more.” This practice has by no means disappeared; Schneider notes it in the passage of Columella; sows, cows, mares, sheep, are still castrated by excising their ovarium. Why should we not believe that Adramytes wanted the same process to be applied to the fair sex, in order to make women sterile? However the ancient Egyptians, who (see Strabo, book XVII., p. 824) undoubtedly circumcized themselves, and also their women, appear to me to have had in view not so much ovariotomy as the circumcision of the prepuce of the clitoris, a practice still in use with them, as stated above; cutting the female parts being thus something like circumcision, it is to be assumed that a similar operation was intended rather than any other one.

Footnote 119:

Let us consult again Aloysia Sigæa, Dialogue III.: “It has happened sometimes to myself (Tullia), when Callias tries on me his lubricities, when he tickles me and excites me. Then I sometimes water his too libertine hands with an abundant dew from my pleasure grounds. And that gives him an opportunity for letting off a whole sheaf of sarcasms and jokes. But what can I do? I begin to laugh, and so does he; I tell him he is too impudent, he tells me I am too lewd; we call each other names right and left, and in the midst of our mutual recrimination he will throw himself upon me, turn me on my back, and force me to submit to his assault, saying he will give me his dewdrops for those he has drawn from me, so that I may not be a loser.” Further on, Dial., IV.: “Callias, pressing me more closely to him, buried his weapon deeper into my belly, almost as though he were trying to get himself in altogether. Soon a delicious stream spirted into me, and at the same time I felt my liquid boiling over, causing me such delight that I forgot all reticence, and myself excited Callias more and more, pressing him against me and begging him to quicken his pace. Thus we expired both together with our muscles relaxing at one and the same instant.” You will understand by this the meaning of the epigram to Sosipator in the _Analecta_ of Brunck, I., p. 504:

“Until the white liquor ran over with both of them, and Doras unwound her wearied limbs.”

Reiske thought the “white liquor” in this passage meant drops of perspiration. Nonsense! it means the virus secreted by both sexes, and liberated in the last spasms of lust. Aloysia Sigæa, Dialogue IV.: “As I finished speaking” (it is still Tullia that speaks), “he got upon me, and collecting all his strength he pushed the arrow into me, he filled my womb with his fecundating dew, and I also shed the rivulet of white liquid. Incapable of enduring any longer so intense a voluptuous feeling, we sank back exhausted in each other’s arms.” We have quoted besides on different occasions extracts from the rich treasures of Aloysia Sigæa, on this subject.

Footnote 120:

Women, whose clitoris is too prominent, are thus prevented from having intercourse with men, so that when they are seized with amorous designs they cannot well find any other way of satisfying their desires than by playing tribadism. (Venette IV., ii, 4.)

Footnote 121:

Pyrrha and Methymna are towns in Lesbos. Pomponius Mela, II., 7: “In the Troad is Lesbos, and in Lesbos there were formerly five cities, viz.: Antissa, Pyrrha, Eresos, Methymna, Mytilene.”

Footnote 122:

Not innocently, or rather, “not without crime”; some read “which I loved not without crime” others, “which I loved here without crime,” but the difference is not great. If you prefer “which I loved here,” the excuse itself is a confession. All we want is the admission that the tribad-tastes of Sappho are no modern invention, but originated, how we know not, and prevailed in very early times. The love of woman for woman was never known under any other name than the notorious one of tribadism.

Footnote 123:

See whether it is with good reason or no that the succeeding epigram, no. 69, calls Philaenis the tribad of tribads.

Footnote 124:

To make yourselves quite sure about what the author means by androgynic loves, look at the passage as a whole: “Come, you man of the new age, you lawgiver of unknown amours, if you open out new ways to the lubricity of men, you may grant to the women equal license. Let them cohabit together as the men do; let woman lie with woman, and simulate with their lascivious organs conjunctions, sterile though they be, as man lies with man! Let the word one hears so very rarely, and which I am ashamed to pronounce, let the lubricity of our tribads triumph without blushing.” Observe in the first place how tribads were seldom spoken of, and that they kept themselves in the dark; in the second place how the immoderate clitoris of the tribad is said to simulate lascivious organs in conjunction. Seneca, _Controversia Secunda_, in a similar sense, calls such a monstrosity *****, an _artificial man_; lastly the epithet “sterile” is applied to the clitoris, and points to the dry unproductiveness of the tribadic coitus.

Footnote 125:

Instead of “pedicating boys,” Martial might have said, if the metre had allowed it, “entering boys.” Seneca’s expression (Letter XCV), “_viros ineunt_,” which was a source of great trouble to the great Justus Lipsius, signifies nothing else: “The women will contest for the crown of lubricity with the men. May the gods confound them! one of their refined lubricities reverses the laws of Nature: they have connection with men!” There you have in plain words the turpitude which Justus Lipsius considered worthy of the infernal regions: tribads pedicating.

Footnote 126:

When women are in rut they pass their water, nature wills it so, Juvenal, VI., 63-65: “Let lewd Bathyllus dance the pantomime of Leda” (representing Leda receiving Jupiter in a dance with wanton gestures:

“Tuscia cannot command her bladder, Appula is sighing as if in amorous trance....”)

The same XI., 166-168:

“The other sex however feels more pleasure, is much sooner fired, and lets the water off, excited through eyes and ears.”

(What Juvenal says here as to this greater enjoyment on the part of the opposite sex is connected with his general opinion that women experience more pleasure in Love than men do. So his words in VI., 254: “For how insignificant is our pleasure!” Tiresias, called upon to arbitrate on this point in Lucian (_Amores_, p. 85), declared women’s enjoyment to be double that of men: “Unless indeed we are to agree with Tiresias’ arbitrement, that the woman’s pleasure is twice that of the man”).

Martial, XI., 17:

“How often will your rigid nerve lift up your tunic, though you be as stern as Curius or Fabricius! You too have to read our pages, be they ever so lascivious, young maiden, though you come from Padua.”

Footnote 127:

There is some ambiguity about the “long syphons.” They are rivulets of urine passed near the statue, or perhaps Juvenal means, to use the expression of Grangé, “Urine spirted right up into the Goddess’ face, which may be done by impudent women compressing with the hands their parts, and thus retaining for some time the water; thus collected it will spurt out with greater force.”

Footnote 128:

Verse 335-339.

“But all the Moors and Indians well know the flute-girl who showed a bigger penis than great Caesar’s two anti-Catos, in that place from which a rat will fly, conscious of possessing testicles....”

Footnote 129:

The “nimble hips” are those of the tribad, who is riding another in the posture of Apuleius’ Fotis, _Metamorph._ II., p. 122, when she gratified Lucius with the joys of a superincumbent Venus.

Footnote 130:

All this was actually represented in Paris, 1791, on the stage of a theatre, where, according to the author of the _Gynaeology_ III., 423, a man completely naked had connection with a woman as naked as himself, both representing savages, accompanied by the plaudits of both sexes. There is however nothing new under the sun. With the Romans it had long been customary, after the public games were finished, to bring prostitutes into the arena, and set them to work, so that the spectators might have an opportunity to perform what they had been looking at with greedy eyes; a herald proclaimed what was to come. Tertullian, _De Spectaculis_, ch. 17: “Prostitutes, the victims of public incontinence, are brought upon the stage, shamefaced with respect to the women only; to the men they were known; they are exposed to the laughter of all, high and low; their dwellings, their prices, even their recommendations were proclaimed by the crier.” Isidorus, _Origines_, XVIII., 42: “The theatre is like a brothel; when the games are over, public women are prostituted there.” The rape of the Sabines described in Livy (II., 18) would seem to have been a not dissimilar form of amusement: “In this year young Sabines in Rome having, in the midst of the games, abducted some prostitutes, the tumult ensuing thereupon degenerated into a riot, in fact nearly into a battle.”

Footnote 131:

Observe the subtlety of the expression adopted by the poet: “offers her buttocks to an ass to get on them.” Juvenal knows that a woman has no chance to have an ass’s mentula in her except by turning her back to the beast.

Footnote 132:

Plato, _Symposium_ (Works, Zweibrücken edition, vol. X., p. 205) imagines another origin; in the passage where he relates the celebrated fable, according to which Jupiter had cut the men in halves, he says: “As to those women who are halves of women, they are not much harassed by desires after men; but are much more given to amuse themselves with women; the hetairistriae descend from their category.”

Footnote 133:

Another use of these leathern engines has been noted in ch. II.

Footnote 134:

This sort of snake served also to amuse men. Suetonius, _Tiberius_, ch. 72: “He kept for amusement a snake; one day, when he went as usual to feed it, he found it devoured entirely by ants, which he took as a warning to guard against being attacked by a mob.” Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ XXIX., ch. 4: “The Aesculapian serpent was brought to Rome from Epidaurus; it was kept in the public edifices, and also in private houses.” Seneca, in the _De Ira_, II., ch. 31, speaks of: “Those snakes that glide harmlessly amid the cups and into the bosoms of the guests.” They were not of a small size; this appears from what Philostratus says in his _Heroics_, VIII., 1: “Ajax had a tame snake of five cubits length, which kept close to him, guided him on his way, and followed him about like a dog.” This kind of snake was very common at Pella, in Macedonia, as Lucian says in a passage quoted in the text: “There are many such in their country.” They are still to be found in Italy, according to Justus Lipsius in his Notes to Seneca.

Footnote 135:

“Sabina, or the Morning Toilette of a Roman Lady at the end of the First Century,” translated into French by Clapier, 1813, 8vo.