“ The libertine looks for the woman in Mancia even above the breasts; he wants her mouth, as though the vulva of the young wife had taken refuge there, or as if the mouth had made a bargain with the vulva to participate in the games of Venus. I blamed her for allowing so unnatural an act. “What would you have?” she said. “Marino’s instrument occupies my mouth, so I cannot complain. We please our husbands only by reason of being women. Never mind where she is taken, if a woman only proves that she is a woman, she will please.”” ”

“ You know that Socrates said, the beautiful body of a pretty woman is nothing but a living treasure chamber of voluptuousness, the storehouse whereto men resort to find their pleasures, whereto they direct the burning floods of their lubricity. ”

“ 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, Letter LXVI.:
“Would I rather offer my limbs for shampooing to my superannuated minions? or to some little woman, or some weakling man, more woman than man, to draw and crack my fingers? Should I not rather envy yonder Mucius, who put his hand in the fire with the same equanimity as though he tendered it to a shampooer.”
Martial, III., 82:
“A woman shampoos your body all over with nimble skill; her trained hand manipulates all your members.” ”

“ One may judge what such avowals must have cost me, considering that all through my life, seized in the presence of those I loved by the fury of a passion which bereft me of voice, hearing and sense, and made me tremble all over convulsively, I never could venture to tell them my folly, and ask them to add the one familiarity which I wanted to the other ones. ”

“ But for whom do you depilate your posteriors?”
And IX., 28:
“While you, Chrestus, appear thus with your parts all hairless, with a mentula like a vulture’s neck, and a head as shining as a prostitute’s buttocks with never a hair appearing on your leg, and with your pallid lips all shorn and bare, you talk of Curius, Camillus, Numa, Ancus, of all the hairy heroes we have ever read of in history, and spout big words and threatenings against theatres and the times. Let but some big-limbed man come into sight, you call him with a nod, and take him off....” ”

“ Knowing as you do the honest walk and fidelity of your husband, and that he never misuses your bed with concubines, why, foolish woman, torment yourself about those venal boy lovers,—brief and fugitive is the pleasure from their complaisance! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ CUNNILINGUES WE have now said enough about the work of Venus performed by the virile member; it remains for us to explain how a sacrifice may be offered to Venus without one. This may be done by means of the tongue or of the clitoris. We have accordingly first to treat of the cunnilingues, those who lick women’s privates and then of the tribads.
As it is the office of the fellator or fellatrix to suck the virile parts, so it is the business of cunnilingues to lick the female. The cunnilingue operates by introducing his tongue into the vulva. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In the first place intolerable sufferings are inflicted upon the patient, for in most cases he is invaded by too large a stake; hence frightful infirmities, incurable by all the art of Aesculapius. The confining muscles are ruptured, and consequently the excrements cannot be held back and escape. What could be more disgusting? I have known noble ladies afflicted with cruel maladies to such a degree by eruptions and ulcers, that it took them two or three years to recover their health. I myself (Tullia) have not escaped scot free from the accursed embraces of Aloysio and Fabrizio. ”

“ After one or two strokes I felt myself melting away with incredible titillation, and my knees all but gave way. “Stop”, I cried—“stop my soul, it is escaping!” “I know”, he replied, laughing, “from where. No doubt your soul wants to escape through this lower orifice, of which I have possession; but I keep it well stoppered.” Whilst speaking he endeavoured, by holding his breath, still further to increase the already enormous size of his swollen member. “I am going to thrust back your escaping soul”, he added, poking me more and more violently. ”

“ As soon as ever I could, I served the filthy Venus, for the hand of Pederasts had drawn me to it; a thousand members and big ones, churned in my inside, and day and night my anus was in quest. If only my passive action could have profited my member, when erect it would have touched my head, when limp my feet; but nothing did it good, it never grew. And what I did, perhaps only made it worse. Every boy likes to see his member grow, get big enough to amply fill his hand.”
But enough of pedication; irrumation is our next business. ”

“ When a rich libertine turns in his luxurious ways to effeminacy, a youth with frizzled hair takes before all the world his feet while he is lying on his couch, and shampoos them and his legs, not to go further, with his delicate hands. ”

“ As he could not see unaided everything distinctly when, pedicated by one man, he had his head between the thighs of another, he saw by his mirrors what he was doing and how. He saw the lewd work of his mouth, and watched himself absorbing men by every orifice. Sometimes placed between a man and a woman, playing both ways the passive part, he was able to see the greatest abominations. ”

“ Nothing is more frequent than conjunction whilst standing, the woman with her back to the man; it is indeed very easy to do it that way in any place, as you have only to lift up the fair one’s petticoats, and out with your weapon; it is, therefore, the best manner for those who have to make instantaneous use of an opportunity, when it is important to be sharp about it, as may happen, when you take your pleasure in secret. Thus Priapus complains of the wives and daughters of his neighbors, who came incessantly to him burning with ticklish desires. ”

“ And our own treatise will no doubt in its turn meet with both these classes. It is a man’s book; we have written it, fearless of censure, for men,—not for such as are wont with growning brow “to pitchfork nature out of doors”, but rather for such as have once for all dared to live their lives, who neither wish to lurk in darkness nor yet to defy the open day with effrontery, in one word for those who think that in Love as in all else the golden mean is the course to choose. ”

“ Elegy XIV (p. 128) :
“One day Etruscus brought to me a youth, so fair as is seldom seen at Jupiter’s board: “I give him up to you”, he said, “lay hold of him, that he may cling to you both day and night. May the gods grant you love him well; he will be wise if you but pedicate him.” ”

“ A singular reason for the necessity of encountering a woman backwards is given by Aloysia Sigaea, with her usual sagacity:
“For pleasure, one likes a vulva which is not placed too far back, so as to be entirely hidden by the thighs; it should not be more than nine or ten inches from the navel. With the greater number of girls the pubis goes so far down, that it may easily be taken as the other way of pleasure. With such coition is difficult. Theodora Aspilqueta could not be deflowered, till she placed herself prone on her stomach, with her knees drawn up to her sides. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It is rather surprising that the same Quintilian, whose bile is stirred by curled hair, has let it pass by patiently, that women should bathe together with men:
“If it is a sure sign of adultery for a woman to bathe with men, why! it will be adultery to dine with young friends of the male sex, to have a male friend. ”

“ Of a surety, Zoilus, you must now use your member.”
Bæticus, the castrated priest of Cybelé, against whom Martial has directed Epigram III., 81, was a cunnilingue:
“What have you, Bæticus, a priest of Cybelé to do with the female pit? That tongue of yours by rights should lick men’s middles. For what was your member amputated with a Samian potsherd, if the woman’s parts had so much charm for you? You must have your head castrated; true, you are a castrated Gallus in your secret parts, but none the less you violate the rites of Cybelé; you are a man so far as concerns your mouth.” ”

“ The fingers hasten virility and make them prematurely men. Hence the goaty smell, the quick-coming hairs, and the beard that make the mother wonder, while they no more love to bathe in the open light of day. ”

“ 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] . ”

“ One of our grand personages, who had certainly tasted it, says that there is nothing so disgusting and repulsive as those parts of his wife which stamp her as a woman,—and he has a very pretty wife, mind! In that sink every thing is foul, while in this (kissing my mother on the mouth) , dwells the true Venus. He therefore abominates that illfavoured cavern, and adores that pure mouth, that charming head. He looks to nothing else, his member rises for nothing else. His wife is as spirited as she is beautiful, and even more obliging. She knows no other pleasure than her husband’s ”

“ Is what the pedicon loses in the anus of the cinede anything else but the substance of a man, which the masturbator wastes between his fingers?
As it is in the nature of the virile member to rise at the mere sight of a pretty woman’s naked body, the amorous desire in that state often craves imperiously for relief, for “man in erection is not overwise.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ No naughty words! He who praises the buttocks, slanders the vulva! You know better, Ottavia! Her greedy vulva has swallowed your bristling member whole, Rangoni.
Ottavia: Quick, Rangoni, it is coming!... quick, quick, help me!
Rangoni: I am coming, Ottavia,—I am come! Are you?—Are you, darling!
Tullia: How now? Are you so quickly done up, you two? (Aloysia Sigaea, Dial. VI) .
The pygiacic [15] mysteries, to which Eumolpus in Petronius (Satires, ch. cxl) , invites a young girl, refer to the posture practised by the man lying on his back, with the woman upon him, her back turned towards him. ”