42 Aretaeus, De causis et signis acutorum morborum, (Of the causes and symptoms of Acute Diseases). Comp. De Curatione acut. morb., (Of the treatment of Acute Diseases), Bk. I. ch. 9.

43 Martial, bk. X. Epigr. 56.,

(Fannius does not use the knife, yet removes the dripping uvula).

44 Martial, Bk. IV. Epigr. 42. Bk. XI. Epigr. 14.: Urbis deliciae salesque Nili. (Darling of the City, savour of the Nile).

45 The fact that, according to Prosper Alpin De Medicina Aegypt.—(Of Egyptian Medicine, Bk. I. ch. 14.), gangrenous sore-throat prevails all the year round among children in Egypt, need not prejudice our conclusion; in fact it rather helps to explain how the sore-throat brought on by fellation was able so readily and quickly to assume the malignant type described.

46 Aëtius, Tetrab. I. Serm. IV. ch. 21. Perhaps the “Cancer oris” (cancer of the mouth) in boys, of which Celsus, VI. 15., makes mention, belongs to the same category.

47 Herodotus, Bk. II. ch. 60.

48 Plutarch, De superstitione II. 170 D., Τὴν δὲ Συρίαν θεὸν οἱ δεισιδαίμονες νομίζουσιν ἂν μαινίδας τὶς ἢ ἀφύας φάγῃ τὰ ἀντικνήμια διεσθίειν, ἕλκεσι τὸ σῶμα πιμπλάναι, συντήκειν τὸ ἧπαρ. (for translation see text above). We may add that μαινίδας is the maena (sprat) of the Romans, for which Hesychius has σαραπίους, while Plautus uses deglupta maena (skinned sprat) as a contemptuous name for a vicious debauchee (above p. 238. Note 1.). By the Dea Syra some have understood the goddess Derceto, who was worshipped at Ascalon under the image of a maiden, whose lower half ended in a fish. To her the fishes were sacred, and for this reason the Syrians were forbidden to eat fish. Comp. Lucian, De Dea Syra p. 672. Diodorus Siculus, II. 4.

49 Porphyrius, De Abstinentia bk. IV. ch. 15.,

(As an example take the Syrians: These people, when they have eaten fish, in consequence of some unwholesome quality in themselves, swell in feet and belly. Then they take quickly a wallet; and down they sit by the road-side on dung, and so appease the goddess by their exceeding humbleness). At Athens ἕλκη ἔχειν ἐν τοῖς ἀντικνημίοις (to have sores on the shin-bones) would seem to have been a usual thing, according to Theophrastus, Charact. XIX.

50 Athenaeus, Deipnosoph. bk. VIII. p. 346. d. Indeed it would seem that the Stoic Antipater of Tarsus related how a Syrian Queen Gatis was excessively fond of eating fish, and accordingly forbad anyone ἄτερ Γάτιδος (except Gatis) in the whole country to indulge in it, and from this circumstance came the name of Atergatis—the Syrian Venus!

51 Martial, Bk. I. Epigr. 79. Possibly also the passage in Hippocrates, Epidem. bk. VII., Vol. III. 691 of Kühn’s ed., ὁ τὸ καρκίνωμα τὸ ἐν τῇ φάρυγγι καυθεὶς ὑγιὴς ἐγένετο ὑφ’ἡμέων, (The patient who was cauterized for cancer of the throat recovered under our treatment), which Jöhrens in a quotation to be given presently (below § 25.) refers to Venereal disease, as is also done by him in the case of the throat-ulcers mentioned in the Tract of Hippocrates, De Dentitione (On Teething), Vol. I. p. 484. of Kühn’s ed.

52 A striking analogy to this suicide is to be found in the well-known passage of Pliny (Epist. bk. VI. epist. 24.), one of much importance in connection with affections of the genitals, which may therefore very well be quoted here by anticipation:

C. Plinius Macro Suo S. Quam multum interest, quid a quo fiat! Eadem enim facta claritate vel obscuritate facientium aut tolluntur altissime, aut humillime deprimuntur. Navigabam per Larium nostrum, quum senior amicus ostendit mihi villam, atque etiam cubiculum, quod in lacum prominet. Ex hoc, inquit, aliquando municeps nostra cum marito se praecipitavit. Causam requisivi. Maritus ex diutino morbo circa velanda corporis ulceribus putrescebat: uxor, ut inspiceret, exegit: neque enim quemquam fidelius indicaturam, possetne sanari. Vidit, desperavit: hortata est, ut moreretur, comesque ipsa mortis, dux immo et exemplum et necessitas fuit. Quod factum ne mihi quidem, qui municeps, nisi proxime auditum est; non quia minus illa clarissimo Arriae facto, sed quia minor est ipsa. Vale. (Caius Pliny to his friend Macer, Greeting.—What a vast difference it makes, by whom a particular thing is done! For the very same actions in virtue of the fame or obscurity of the doers are raised to the topmost pinnacle or brought down to the lowest depth. I was sailing along our Lake of Larius, when my companion and elder pointed out a certain country house to me, nay, a particular bed-room, which projects into the Lake. From this chamber, he said, some time ago a fellow-countrywoman of ours threw herself, along with her husband. I asked the reason. The husband, it seemed, in consequence of a disease of long standing was rotting with ulcers on the private parts of the body. The wife demanded a right to look; for she thought no one else likely to give a more conscientious opinion than herself as to whether he could be cured. She saw, and despaired of recovery; so she urged him to die, and herself was companion of his death, giving in fact at once incitement, example and compulsion to the deed. This achievement I had never, though a man of the country, heard of till that moment; not because it was a whit less glorious than Arria’s renowned exploit, but solely because the doer was less famous. Farewell).

53 Catullus, Carm. 57:

(An excellent understanding exists between the vile cinaedi, the pathic Mamurra and Caesar).

54 Suetonius, Vita Jul. Caesaris chs. 49, 51, 52., where Curio, the Elder, calls him (Caesar) “omnium mulierum virum, et omnium virorum mulierem” (husband of all women, and wife of all men). The same indeed was said also of Alcibiades. In Athenaeus, Deipnos. bk. XII. p. 535., we read in a fragment of the Comic Poet Pherecrates:

(For not being a man at all, Alcibiades, it seems, is now husband of all our women).

55 Catullus, Carm. 80.:

(Would you have me tell, Gellius, why those rosy lips grow whiter than the winter’s snow, when you sally out from home in the morning, and when the eighth hour of the long summer day wakes you from gentle sleep? Nay! I know not what it is for sure. Does report say true, that whispers you mouth the swollen member of a man’s middle? So at any rate declare the deboshed vigour of poor feeble Virro, and your own lips marked by the humour you draw out). Martial, Bk. VII. Epigr. 94.:

(’Tis winter time, and the shuddering chill of December is upon us. None the less, Linus, you dare to greet with your frosty salute all men you meet here and there, and to kiss all Rome. What more disagreeable or more cruel could you do, if you had been struck or thrashed? With an embrace so chilling may no wife kiss me, or unripe maid with wheedling lips. But you,—you think yourself more attractive and more pleasing, you from whose dog-like nose a blue icicle hangs, whose beard is frozen stiff, such a beard as the Cilician shearer crops with his upward-pointing clippers from the chin of a Cinyphian he-goat. I had rather meet a hundred cunnilingues; I am less afraid of a Gaul new come to town. Wherefore, if you possess any sense or any shame, I do beseech you, Linus, defer your wintry salutes till April is come). Now Linus is designated by Martial, bk. VII. Epigr. 9, as a fellator, and bk. XI. Epigr. 26., as a cunnilingue.

56 Whence also the proverbial saying in Suidas: κύνα δέρειν δεδαρμένην· τὸ τοῦ Φερεκράτους· σχῆμα δέ ἐστι ἀκόλαστον εἰς τὸ αἰδοῖον· εἴρηται δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ, ἄλλο πασχόντων αὖθις ἐφ’οἷς πεπόνθασιν ἡ παροιμία. (to skin the skinned bitch; expression of Pherecrates; is an abominable practice in connection with the private parts; the proverb is spoken of such as suffer something a second time over, after having suffered it once already). Similarly Plautus, Trinum. II. 4. 27., Edepol mutuum mecum facit (By my faith, he plays give and take with me). Again κυνάμυια (shameless fly) is found in Suidas, which he explains by ἀναιδεστάτη· παρεσχημάτικε τὸ ὄνομα ἀπὸ τοῦ κυνὸς καὶ τῆς μυίας· ὁ μὲν γὰρ κύων ἀναιδής, ἡ δὲ μυῖα θρασεῖα, (a most shameless woman: name borrowed figuratively from the dog and the fly; for the dog is shameless, and the fly audacious)—probably with a reference to Homer, II. XXI. 394., where κυνόμυια is found, and the Scholiast observes: ἀναιδής ὡς μυῖα, ἐκ δύο ἀναιδῶν τελείων, τοῦ τε κυνός καὶ τὴς μυίας, διὰ τὸ ὑπερβάλλον τῆς ἀναιδείας. (shameless as a fly; from two completely shameless creatures, the dog and the fly; on account of the excessive degree of their shamelessness). Further there is in this connection the word κυναλώπηξ (fox-dog), which was a nick-name of Philostratus, as we see from Aristophanes, Knights 1078., on which passage the Scholiast observes: λέγει δὲ αὐτὸν καὶ πορνοβοσκὸν καὶ καλλωπιστὴν (now he calls him both brothel-keeper and dandy). If we derive the word from τὸν κύνα (frenulum praeputii,—ligament of the prepuce,—Paulus Aegineta, VI. 54.) ἀλωπίζειν, it would designate the fellator, as ἀλωπὸς, ἀλωπίζειν, ἀλωπηκίζω is formed from α privative (negative) and λῶπος, λώπη (the covering, skin, wool); and ἀλωπηκία is to be explained in the same way,—but not from the scab or mange of the fox, nor yet as the Etymologicum Magnum would have it, because the places where the fox discharges his urine die, the grass e.g. dries up and withers. Hence ἀλώπηξ might be taken as bald-headed, and then the further meaning of licentious dissoluteness given to it, for in Antiquity baldness was very usually looked upon as a consequence of sexual excesses, and as every one knows, Caesar was called by his soldiers moechus calvus (the bald-headed adulterer). But old men, who in particular are bald-headed, especially practised, owing to their lack of the power of erecting the penis, the vice of irrumation and of the cunnilingue, which makes Martial say (IV. 50.) Nemo est, Thai, senex ad irrumandum (No one, Thais, is too old a man for irrumation). κυναλώπηξ would then be a bald-headed cunnilingue. Possibly however this idea was also partly due to a reminiscence of the fox’s habit, when desirous of following up a scent, of sticking his head to the ground (Aelian, Hist. Anim. VI. ch. 24.),—a manœuvre he also adopts, as is generally known, when dying. In evidence of this view may be quoted what Cicero, Orat. pro Domo ch. 18., says to Sextus Clodius: ligurris (you are a licker), and ch. 31. Quaere hoc ex Sexto Clodio, iube adesse, latitat omnino; sed si requiri iusseris, invenient hominem apud sororem tuam (Publii Clodii) occultantem se capite demisso (Require this of Sextus Clodius, bid him appear; he lurks entirely out of sight. But if once you order him to be sought out, they will find the man at your sister’s house (Publius Clodius’s) hiding himself with head held down.) Comp. Catullus, 87. In Martial, Bk. IV. Epigr. 53., canis is used in same sense as κύων in Greek,—apparently? Perhaps the women of Antiquity made use of dogs as well to serve as cunnilingues. According to Brockhusius on Tibullus I. 7. 32., II. 4. 32. they were usual companions of “ladies of pleasure” at Rome, whence too suburanae canes (bitches of the Subura) in Horace, Epod. V. 58. and Subura vigilax (the watchful Subura) in Propertius, IV. 7. 15. During the Middle Ages at any rate such an employment of dogs was nothing unusual. This is stated by Panormita, Hermaph. Epigr. XXX., Epitaphium Nichinae Flandrensis, Scorti egregii:—

(Epitaph on Nichette the Fleming, a famous Harlot:—There stood a basin in middle of the chamber, in which I would many a time wash myself, the while my fawning bitch-pup licked her mistress’s dripping thigh).

and Epigr. XXXVII.,

(Jeannette shall visit you, her bitch-pup accompanying her; complacent is the hound to its mistress, the lady complacent to men).

57 Galen, De simplic. medicament. temperamentis ac facultat. Bk. X. ch. 1., edit. Kühn Vol. XII. p. 249.

58 κοπροφάγος (Excrement-Eater). To this Martial, bk. III. Epigr. 77., seems to allude, when he says:

(I suspect there exists some secret vitiation of the stomach; else why, Baeticus, do you eat putrid meat?)

59 It is evident from this that Meier in his above mentioned Article on Paederastia is wrong in citing the expression αἰσχρουργὸς (worker of obscenities) as being used for the direct equivalent of cinaedus. Incidentally we would take this opportunity of further observing that the word παιδοκόραξ (boy-raven, i.e. a person ravenous after boys), which is also mentioned in the same Article as synonymous with cinaedus, is wrongly referred to paederastia, for it really, like the Latin corvus (raven), signifies a fellator. Its true explanation is given in Pliny, Hist. Nat. bk. X. ch. 15., Corvi pariunt cum plurimum quinos. Ore eos parere aut coire vulgus arbitratur. (Ravens produce at most a brood of five each pair. The vulgar believe these birds produce or copulate with the mouth).—Aristoteles (De gen anim. Bk. III. ch. 6.) negat,—sed illam exosculationem, quae saepe cernitur, qualem in columbis, esse. (Aristotle denies this,—but adds that there is the same billing, which is often noticed, as with doves). Hence also Martial, bk. XIV. Epigr. 74.,

(You raven that salute your mate, why are you thought to be a fellator? No member ever penetrated into your head). Greek Anthology, bk. II. Tit. 9. 13., λευκὸν ἰδεῖν κόρακα (a white crow to all appearance).

60 Instead of ᾧ φαίνεται Rost has proposed to read ὧν φαίνεται. (Forbiger, on the Hermaphrod. of Panormita, p. 281. Note b.)

61 Brunck, Analecta Vol. III. p. 334.,

(Demonax, be not for ever looking downwards, and be not complacent with your tongue; that organ—the pudenda muliebria—has a sharp thorn. And indeed you live with us, but you sleep in Phoenicia, and though no child of Semelé, are thigh-bred).

62 In particular it is the following Epigram in Brunck’s Analecta that has given occasion to this explanation:

(Fly the Alpheus’mouth; he loves the bosom of Arethusa, falling headlong into the salt sea). Forbiger might have further cited the following passage from Aristophanes, Knights 1086, 87.,

(Verily for me you shall be judge over earth and the Red Sea to boot and all the realm of Ecbatana, licking up comfit-cakes,—? pickles). Here ἐπίπαστα is, as probably also in v. 103., the Salgama (pickles in brine) of Ausonius, Epigr. 125.; which moreover affords at any rate a partial explanation of the passage in Pollux, Onomast. bk. VI. ch. 9. p. 61., bk. X. ch. 24. p. 96. Still, even if according to this Phoenicia were used in the sense of the genital organs of women at time of menstruation, it by no means follows that φοινικίζειν meant only to have dealings with women in menstruation, any more than it does that it is identical with καταμηνίου πίνων (drinking of menstrual blood), as it has been shown just above not to be. In fact Galen says explicitly: φαίνεταί μοι παραπλήσιον, (it appears to me to be something similar!)

63 Seneca, De beneficiis bk. IV. ch. 31.

64 Seneca, Epist. 87.

65 Galen, Works, edit. Kühn, Vol. XIX. p. 153.

66 Naumann, Handb. der Klinik (Text-book of Clinical Medicine), Vol. 7. p. 88.

67 The author at any rate is more cautious than Sprengel, who (Th. Batemann), Prakt. Darstellung der Hautkrankheiten (Practical Exposition of Diseases of the Skin), Halle 1815., p. 427. Note, writes: “Hippocrates appears to mention it (Elephantiasis) under the name φοινικίη νόσος (Phoenician disease), which Galen (Explan. voc. Hipp.) distinctly and definitely explains as Elephantiasis.”

68 Hippocrates, edit. Kühn Vol. I. pp. 223, 233., Λειχῆνες δὲ καὶ λέπραι καὶ λεῦκαι, οἷσι μὲν νέοισιν ἢ παισὶν ἐοῦσιν ἐγένετό τι τούτων, ἢ κατὰ μικρὸν φανὲν αὔξεται ἐν πολλῷ χρόνῳ, τούτοισι μὲν οὐ χρὴ ἀπόστασιν νομίζειν τὸ ἐξάνθημα, ἀλλὰ νόσημα· οἷσι δὲ ἐγένετο τούτων τι πολύ τε καὶ ἐξαπίνης, τοῦτο ἂν εἴη ἀπόστησις· γίνονται δὲ λεῦκαι μὲν ἐκ τῶν θανατωδεστάτων νοσημάτων, οἷον καὶ ἡ νοῦσος ἡ φθινικὴ καλεομένη. αἱ δὲ λέπραι καὶ οἱ λειχῆνες ἐκ τῶν μελαγχολικῶν. ἰῆσθαι δὲ τουτέων εὐπετέστερά ἐστιν ὅσα νεωτάτοισί τε γίνεται καὶ νεώτατά ἐστι, καὶ τοῦ σώματος ἐν τοῖσι μαλθακωτάτοισι καὶ σαρκωδεστάτοισι φύεται. (for translation see text above).

69 J. W. Wedel, Progr. de Morbo phoeniceo Hippocratis, (Graduation Exercise on the Phœnician disease of Hippocrates), Jena 1702. 4to., reprinted in E. G. Baldinger, Selecta doctorum virorum opuscula in quibus Hippocrates explicatur, denuo edita, (Select Tracts of Learned Men dealing with the Interpretation of Hippocrates,—Second ed.), Göttingen 1782., pp. 215-222. The Author does not seem to be really self-consistent; he wavers between Elephantiasis and Purpura.

70 Rayer, Maladies de la peau. Bruxelles 1836. p. 385. Et quoique les termes de la description du λεύκη se rapportent assez bien à la leucopathie partielle, la plupart des interprètes et des critiques, se fondant sur une passage d’Hippocrate (Prorrhet. lib. II.) ont pensé, que sous ce nom les anciens avoient indiqué une maladie grave, l’éléphantiasis anesthétique ou la lèpre des juifs. (Rayer, Diseases of the Skin. Brussels 1836., p. 385., And although the terms in which this λεύκη is described are pretty well consistent with the symptoms of partial leucopathy, still the majority of interpreters and critics, taking their stand on a passage of Hippocrates (Prorrhet. bk. II.) have held that under this name the Ancients indicated a serious disease, viz. anaesthetic elephantiasis or the leprosy of Jews).

71 Celsus, Bk. V. ch. 27. 19., λεύκη habet quiddam simile alpho, sed magis albida est et altius descendit: in eaque albi pili sunt, et lanugini similes. (λεύκη has some resemblance to alphus, but is more white in colour, and penetrates deeper; also in it there are white hairs of a woolly appearance). In these last words the interpreters have supposed themselves to find the ἁλὸς ἄχνη (sea-foam) of Pollux, Onom. IV. 193., expressed!

72 Galen, Isag., edit. Kühn Vol. XIV. p. 758.,—De symptomat. differ. Vol. VII. p. 63.—De symptomat. caus. bk. II. ibid. pp. 225 sqq., where the λεύκη is described as a consequence of nutritio depravata (morbid nutrition), whereby τὴν σάρκα γίνεσθαι φλεγματικωτέραν (the flesh becomes over phlegmatic). Comp. Aetius, Tetrab. IV. I. ch. 133. Paulus Aegineta, bk. IV. ch. 5. Actuarius, Meth. med. II. 11. VI. 8. Oribasius, De morb. curat. III. 58. Scip. Gentilis, Comment. in Apuleii apologiam, note 524.—Suidas s. v. λεύκη· παρὰ Ἡροδότῳ πάθος τι περὶ ὅλον τὸ σῶμα, (under word λεύκη: in Herodotus, a complaint affecting the whole surface of the body). In Alexander, Aphrodis. Problem. I. 146, λεῦκαι signify the white flecks on the finger-nails.

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. Again this shows us the reason why Priapus is so frequently called “ruber hortorum custos” (the red keeper of gardens),—Priapeia Praef. 5.; and why he is said, “Ruber sedere cum rubente fascino,” (to sit, red with his ruddy verge),—Horace, Odes 84. Sat. I. 8. 5. Now as the blight in grain was regarded specially as a consequence of the dew (mildew), and ros (dew) again is used in the sense of the male semen, as well as for the moisture secreted in the female vagina during coition, we might draw yet another analogy from this, and at the same time a proof of the verecundia loquentium (shamefacedness in speech),—p. 43., of the old Romans. Thus it would seem the Greeks too indicated by their φθινὰς the same thing as the Romans by robigo. That it was a human disease, is clearly enough shown by the passage from Pollux, and besides we can see it was so from another in Plutarch in his Life of Galba (ch. 21.), where he says: Τιγελλῖνον μὲν οὐ πολὺν ἔτι βιώσεσθαι φάσκοντος· χρόνον, ὑπὸ φθινάδος νόσου δαπανώμενον, (For he said that Tigellinus would not live much longer, being exhausted by a wasting disease),—a quotation proving at the same time the deadliness of the malady. Once more, Hesychius has for φθινὰ also φοινία, saying, φοινία.ἐρυσίβη (φοινία: red blight, and as the adjective corresponding would necessarily be φοινικίος or φοινίκινος, it follows that φοινικίη νόσος and φθινικὴ νόσος,—φθινικὴ being the adjective from φθινὴ or φθινὰς, (which however would more strictly speaking be φθινακή), would mean exactly the same thing, viz. an “Ulcus rubrum et rodens ex coitu cum foeda muliere natum” (red eating ulcer, coming from coition with an unclean woman), the fatal event of which affection was a matter of common observation among the Ancients. Now if this interpretation is the right one in the passage of Hippocrates, it is clear that λεῦκαι were the consequences of this malady, and accordingly we should have a proof that in Antiquity, no less than in modern times, primary ulcers not only preceded secondary affections of the skin, but were actually recognized as such. However as the proofs for this aperçu are still too fragmentary on the side of the ancient Physicians, we must suspend our immediate judgement on the point, and content ourselves for the present with saying, that φοινικίη νοῦσος stood originally in the text in the sense of cunnilingere (to be a cunnilingue), whereas a later inquirer put φθινικὴ into its place, inasmuch as in his time their meanings had become identical as that of a bodily ailment, and so the consequence of the vice instead of the vice itself found its way even into the text. For granted φθινὰς has the meaning of robigo (blight), there is no doubt this only came to be the case as late as in the time of the Alexandrine critics. Besides this, φοινικιστὴς is also found in the Etymologicum Magnum for Cunnilingus; we read: γλωττοκομεῖον, ἐν ᾧ οἱ αὐληταὶ ἀπετίθεσαν τὰς γλώττας· εἴρηται δὲ καὶ τὸ γυναικεῖον αἰδοῖον ὑπὸ Εὐβούλου φοινικιστὴν σκώπτοντος· (γλωττοκομεῖον, tongue-hole, place in which fluteplayers insert their tongues); the female privates also called so by Eubulus, making a scoff at the φοινικιστὴς,—cunnilingue). The Etymologicum Magnum further has as synonyms for cunnilingere: γλωττοστροφεῖν, περιλαλεῖν καὶ στωμύλλεσθαι· γλωττοδεψεῖν, αἰσχρουργεῖν (to ply the tongue: to talk excessively, to babble; to work or soften with the tongue: to do obscenely), and for cunnilingus, γλώσσαργον, στόμαργον (tongue-busy: mouth-busy).]

74 Hippocrates, περὶ παθῶν, edit. Kühn Vol. II. p. 409. It is true this Work is reckoned among the spurious ones, and Galen (Vol. XI. p. 63.) ascribes it to Polybius.

75 Aristophanes, Acharnians 271.

(For ’tis much pleasanter, Phales, Phales! when you have found a blooming woodcutter girl filching wood, say Strymodorus’Thracian maid from Phelleus, to take her round the middle and lift her up and throw her down and take the kernel right away),—where perhaps we should read Στυμοδώρου for Στρυμοδώρου. Knights 1284.,

(For he pollutes his own tongue with foul delights, in the stews licking up the abominable dew, defiling the hair on the upper lip, and tumbling the girls’nymphae). Peace 885.,

(Falling upon her he will suck up her broth).

76 Juvenal, Satir. VI. 455.:

(And rebukes the expressions of her clownish (Opican) friend, things not worth men’s notice. Surely a husband should be allowed to make a solecism).

77 Martial, bk. I. Epigr. 78.,

(Charinus is in excellent health, and yet he is pale. Charinus drinks moderately, and yet he is pale. Charinus digests well, yet he is pale. Charinus takes the sun, yet he is pale. Charinus dyes his skin, yet he is pale. Charinus licks a woman’s organ, yet he is pale).

78 Martial, bk. XI. Epigr. 86. As to this Zoilus see Martial, bk. XI. Epigr. 61.

79 Martial, Bk. III. Epigr. 61.

80 Greek Anthology bk. II. Tit. 13. Note 19.,

(Homer taught you to utter your voice and speak whole words, but, pray! who taught you to have your tongue in a hole?) Here ὀπὴ (hole) obviously stands for the female organ,—a meaning omitted in the Lexicons.

81 So too in the following Epigram of Ausonius (127.),

(Eunus, you lick the flabby organs of your pregnant wife; is it you are in a hurry to give learned explanations to your babes unborn?) we should explain the putria inguina not so much as rotten, ulcerous, but rather as laxata or laxa (relaxed, flabby). Similarly Horace, Epod. VIII. 7., speaks of mammae putres (the flabby dugs) of an old woman.

82 Martial, IX. 63.,

(All the cinaedi, Phoebus, invite you to dinner: a man the penis feeds is not, I think, a clean man).

Petronius, Sat., Non taces, nocturne percussor, qui ne tum quidem, quum fortiter faceres, cum pura muliere pugnasti. (Silence, stabber by night, who not even when you were at your best, ever faced a clean woman).

83 Martial, Bk. IV. Epigr. 43.

84 Persius, Satir. V. 186-188.

85 Wendelinus Hock de Brackenau entitled his Treatise on the Venereal Disease: Mentagra, sive Tractatus de causis, praeseruatis, regimine et cura Morbi Gallici, vulgo Mala Francosz., etc., (Mentagra, or a Treatise on the Causes, Preventives, Treatment and Cure of the so called French Disease, etc.). Strasburg 1514. 4to. Sartorius Frid. praes. Conrad. Johrenio, Diss. de mentagra ad loc. Plinii Secundi hist. nat. lib. XXVI. cap. 1. (Dissertation on mentagra in connexion with the passage of Pliny Secundus’ Hist. Naturalis bk. XXVI. ch. 1.). Frankfurt-on-Oder N. D. 49 pp. 4to. Gives a sort of exegesis of the passage, speaks in first place of new diseases in general, passes on to the Venereal Disease, the antiquity of which the author upholds, and finally discusses Mentagra, which he holds to be a leprous-syphilitic affection. The work is still quite worth reading, more especially as the author quotes some passages from the Chronicle of Anhalt von Beckmann, at that time still unprinted, and which we find mentioned hardly anywhere else.

86 Hensler, “Vom abendländischen Aussatze im Mittelalter”, (On Occidental Leprosy in the Middle Ages). Hamburg 1790. pp. 67, 206, 307.

87 Pliny, Hist. Nat. Bk. XXVI. chs. 1, 2, 3.

88 Galen, De comp. med. secundum locos, edit. Kühn Vol. XII. p. 841. προσχαριζόμενον τῇ ἐξωτάτῳ γραμμῇ τοῦ λειχῆνος μικρόν τι τῶν ἀπαθῶν σωμάτων. (giving up to the external mark of the scab yet another small part of the bodies hitherto unaffected).