CHAPTER IIIOF IRRUMATION[60]
TO put the member in erection into another’s mouth is called toirrumate, a word, which in its proper sense means to give the breast; in fact, according toNonius, p. 579 (Gottfried’s edition), the Ancients called the bosomruma. The verge, introduced into the mouth, wants to be tickled either by the lips or the tongue, and sucked; the party who does this service to the penis is a fellator or sucker, for with the Ancientsfellaremeant to suck, also according toNonius, p. 547. The equivalent tofellarein Greek is ——.
The Lesbians are believed to be the inventors of this particular nastiness. The Scholiast, in verse 1337 of theWaspsof Aristophanes, cites Theopompus as vouching for the fact.
This is the reason why the Greeks apply the expression “Lesbianize” or “Lesbize” to those who imitated the Lesbian usages, either asirrumants, or asfellators. Suidas: “Lesbianize—to defile the mouth; the Lesbians are in fact believed to give themselves to these shameful acts.” The same author says under the word, “Siphnianize,—toLesbianize, that is to use the mouth abominably.”[61]Aristophanes has employed the word in the sense ofsucking(Wasps, 1337).
“Look, how cleverly I kept you away, when you wanted to Lesbianize the guests.”
And again in theFrogs1343:
“Has this Muse never used the Lesbian mode?”[62]
But Hesychius has employed it forirrumate: “Lesbianize, to defile a man’s mouth.”
Lesbianize and Phœnicianize are generally used conjointly, as though this practice had been equally common among the Phœnicians. Lucian says in hisApophras(ch. 26):
“In the name of the Gods tell me what you are thinking of, when it is bruited about publicly that you Lesbianize and Phœnicianize?”
What the difference between the two may be is not known. At any rate Timarchus, who is so bitterly attacked by Lucian, was afellator, as may be readily gathered from the following. Timarchus, having arrived at Cyzicus to be present at a wedding feast, was turned out of doors (ibid., ch. 26), the mistress of the house upbraiding him in these words for the impurity of his mouth: “I would not have in my house a man who must have a man himself!” The passage preceding the above is still plainer and more to the point: What does the man reproach Timarchus with, who has surprised him kneeling before a young lad (ibid., ch. 21), and who says farther on, “that he had seen him at work”, if this does not apply to afellator? Besides, what is the meaning of that sore throat contracted by him in Egypt (ibid., ch. 27), where according to rumour, he had been nearly suffocated by a sailor, who fell upon him and stopped his mouth? Whence that nickname of the Cyclops (ibid., ch. 28), which was given to him, because one day, when he was lying drunk on the ground, a young man, “with an upstanding stake exceeding well sharpened”, threw himself upon him, to force it into his mouth, as Ulysses did with the eye of the Cyclops, “A new Cyclops, with the mouth open at full stretch, you let him burst your cheeks.” It is useless to add to this the passages with respect to those who repel his kisses (ch. 23), or as to the use to which he puts his tongue (ch. 25), for it is doubtful whether they are addressed to afellatoror acunnilingue(a licker of the vulva). That Timarchus was no stranger toirrumation, seems implied (ch. 17) by the apostrophe, “Are you not all that?” the more so as previously Lucian’s saying: “If any one sees a cinede do or suffer the shameful act...” makes it apparent that the active part was also one of the vices of Timarchus. Lucian could therefore justly say of this Timarchus, that he Lesbianized and Phœnicianized, if he wanted to imply by one of these words, “sucking”, and by the other, “irrumating.” But it is uncertain which of these words means “to suck”, and which “to irrumate.” But what does this matter? There is no doubt that Lucian intended to make this distinction. Phœnicianize might even be applied to acunnilingue[63], an expression which we shall dilate upon presently. Needless therefore in this place to give examples of women who allowed their vulvas to be licked.
Very remarkable is a passage of Galen in book X.,De vi simplicium, in which he makes a distinction between Lesbianize and Phœnicianize, demonstrating that the one is more shameful than the other:
“It is worse for an honest man to be spoken of as an eater of excrements than as being a defiler or a cinede; and amongst the defilers we execrate such as Phœnicianize more than those who Lesbianize. The latter I consider to be doing what is as bad as the habit of drinking menstrual discharge.[64]”
Galen means by this that the man who uses human excrements as medicine is considered worse than a fellator or a cinede; that amongst the fellators the Phœnicianists are more abominable than the Lesbianists. There can therefore be no doubt that he designates the action of thefellatorsby the word Phœnicianizing, and by Lesbianizing that of theirrumants. In fact, as he judges those the worst who come nearest to the eaters of excrements, he could not detest less those who defile their mouths by fellation than those who defile the mouths of other people by irrumation; similarly he could not help holding in abhorrence thecunnilinguesand the drinkers of menses, of whom more later on.
But the Lesbians found imitators. The inhabitants of Nola were in bad repute amongst the Ancients in that respect; in Ausonius,Epigr.LXXI., Crispa, a fellatrix, is said to practice the business “with which an unprecedented effeminacy inspired the people of Nola.” However, here is this spirited epigram in its entirety:
“Over and above the intimate joys of legitimate love, hateful lust has found out other foul modes of pleasure, of the sort the loneliness of Lesbos taught Hercules’ heir, of the sort smooth tongued Afranius in his actor’s gown displayed upon the stage, of the sort an unprecedented effeminacy inspired the men of Nola with. Crispa, with but one body, yet practises them all: masturbates, fellates, works by either orifice,—dreading to die in vain before she has tried every mode.”
To explain,—of course Crispa did not neglect to have herself entered in the usual way; these are “the intimate joys of legitimate love.” Then she allowed herself to be pedicated; this is the vice of Philoctetes, the inheritor of the arrows of Hercules, as also Afranius, of whom Quintilian says: “He excelled in the Roman comedy; a pity that he polluted his plays with infamous masculine amours! He thus bore witness against his own morals” (Inst. Orat., X., I). Further Crispa did not fail to allow herself to beirrumated, this is, “the vice their unprecedented effeminacy instilled into the men of Nola.” Lastly the whole is recapitulated quite plainly in the last line but one; to masturbate is the genus, while to fellate, and to work by one and the other orifices are so many species, three altogether.
There are authors who think that the celebrated riddle of Coelius in Quintilian:Clytaemnestram quadrantariam, in triclinio coam, in cubiculo nolam(Instit. Orat., VIII., 6 p. 747), refers to a woman of the name of Nola, she being afellatrixafter the fashion of the Nolans. But I prefer the interpretation of Alciatus; he believes that the woman in question was Clodia, the notorious sister of Clodius, and wife of Metellus, calledCoa, because she liked coitus on the open triclinium, andNolabecause she refused the same in bed. Spalding evinces surprise at the want of exactitude, which the wordquadrantariawould have in that case. To me that appears like looking for knots in a rush. Why should we not suppose Clodia, disgusted, like Messalina, by the facility of her adulteries, to have been drawn into extraordinary excesses[65]to such a point that she would no longer have commerce with men in the dark, but only in the glare of lighted torches, as Martial confesses in speaking of himself (XI., 104):
“You love the game in the dark, I like it by lamp-light; my delight is to make my entry with light to see by,”—and in the presence of living witness, that she might be seen, if not actually on her back, at any rate going away for it or just coming back afterwards. Do you think that indecency could not possibly go so far? What did Augustus do, whom Marc Anthony, according to Suetonius, “reproached for having at a festival taken the wife of a Consular from the triclinium to a bedroom, in the presence of her husband, and afterwards conducted her back to the table with her face all on fire and her hair in disorder?” (Augustus, ch. 69). And Caligula, according to the same Suetonius, “when a guest at a wedding-feast said to Piso, who was sitting close by him: “Do not push up so close to my wife!” and immediately after made her rise from the table and took her away with him” (Calig., ch. 25). The same author, (Calig., ch. 36), speaking of the most illustrious Roman ladies, tells us that Caligula “invited them to dinner with their husbands, passing them in review before him, he examined them with the minute attention of a slave dealer, lifting their heads up if any of them bowed them down with shame. As often as he felt inclined, he left the triclinium and took the chosen fair one aside with him; then after returning to the room with the traces of his doing still upon him, he would praise or criticize these ladies openly, speaking of the beauties or blemishes of their bodies, and even how often he had repeated the enjoyment.” Horace again speaks of an adulterous woman (Odes, III., vi, 25-32):
“Soon she looks out for fresher adulterous pleasures, while the husband is drunk; and does not care to whom she grants the furtive forbidden pleasures, which with the torches extinguished, she is ready to give and take. Nay! she does not care for her very husband’s presence, and with his knowledge she rises to meet whosoever may call, say a merchant, say the commander of a Spanish ship in harbour, who buys her favours by tariff!”
Again look at the feast of the Pope, Alexander VI., whom we have already mentioned for your profit and amusement in ourHermaphroditus[66].
Is this evidence enough to satisfy you as to theseCoaeof the triclinium? Well! it was after this fashion Clodia preferred to be had. Alone with a solitary lover in bed and no one by, she refused (nolebat); in public on the triclinium, she was willing enough for coition (volebat coire). Hence the jest; she wasCoaandNola. Coelius might have put it still more plainly; on the triclinium she wasVola, in bedNola.
It was not the inhabitants of Nola only who were addicted to the Lesbian vice, the Oscans[67]generally were considered to be very much given that way, so much so that certain authors trace to them (the Osci), in earlier times called the Opsci or Opici, the etymology of the word “Obscene”, Festus, p. 553:
“In almost all the old treatises the word is writtenOpicuminstead ofOscum; it is from the name of this people that shameless and impudent expressions are called obscene, because indulgence in filthy debauchery was very common among the Oscans.”
The Ancients employed many forms of circumlocution to convey the meaning of their filthy practices. For instance, instead ofirrumate, they said: to offend the mouth[68], corrupt the mouth[69], to attack the head[70], to defy to the face[71], insult the head, not to spare the head[72], to split open the mouth[73], gain the heights[74], mount to loftier regions[75], compress the tongue[76], to indulge in abominable intercourse[77], and instead of receiving the member into the mouth they said: to lend the mouth in kind complaisance[78], work with the mouth[79], lick men’s middle parts[80], lick simply[81], or lastly to be silent[82]. Just as Persius has employed the wordcevere, to wriggle in the sense of flattering, so Catullus usesirrumateas meaning to treat ignominiously[83].
It is thus he complains of having been irrumated by Memmius XXVIII., 9, 10:
“Oh, Memmius, well and long and leisurely, laid on my back all the length of that beam, you irrumated me.”
He had, in fact, experienced in Bithynia the meanness and avarice of this Praetor, Memmius, who had not cared a rap for his comrades’ honour, and who is alluded to inEpigr.X., 12, “Praetor and irrumator.” InEpigr.XXXVII., he threatens his boon companions in debauchery, with whom his mistress has taken refuge:
“... Do you think I dare not irrumate alone, as I stand here, two hundred pothouse-heroes?” And he adds that he would write on the front of the tavern the infamy of these blackguards:
“... Your names I shall chalk up all over the tavern’s front.”
Other passages of Catullus, XXI., 12, and LXXIV., 5, are also quoted to prove the various employment of the wordirrumate; but they do not seem to me to bear upon the question.
The epithetshamelesswas especially given to the man who allowed himself to be pedicated or irrumated.PriapeiaLIX.:
“If you come to steal, you will returnshameless.”
Cicero,De Oratore, II., 257:
“If you areshamelessbefore and behind....”
Horace,Epistle, I., xvi., 36:
“If he calls me a thief, he denies that I am chaste.”
Lampridius,Commodus, ch. 10:
“Already as a child he was a glutton andshameless, which is explained by what he says in ch. 5: “He gave himself up to the infamous abuses of young men and to their assaults”, and ch. i: “From his tenderest age he was depraved, mischievous, cruel, a libertine; he allowed his mouth to be soiled and defiled.”
On the other hand, a woman who had never submitted to a man, was calledchaste(PriapeiaXXXI.):
“You are allowed to be as chaste as Vesta;” The same epithet was given to a wife that was faithful to her husband such a one as is praised by Martial inEpigr.X., 63.
“My couch is lighted by the rarest glory,—one member, one mentula alone has known my chastity.”
To the preceding examples offellatorsandfellatriceswe will now add, from Aloysia Sigaea’s book, that of Crisogono, who cleverly persuades Sempronia to lend him her mouth:
“The day before yesterday (it is Ottavia speaking), Crisogono came to see my mother in the afternoon. All was quiet and silent. He had scarcely begun to wanton a little with her, when he became very importunate. “Yesterday morning”, he said, “I learned a new kind of pleasure. 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; what he thinks right she thinks proper, and abets all the caprices of her husband; so she lends him the service of her mouth. What would you do, Sempronia, if I asked you? If you were to refuse I should say that you have forgotten all your promises and your pledged faith. 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. What matter whether you fulfil your duty through that pure canal (kissing her mouth), or through that other (touching below), which is infect?” He persuaded her to what she was willing to do without persuasion. “Oh!” she said, smiling, “what an air you want me to play, and upon what a flute, in our concert!” taking in her hand his member, which began to rise. She seized the point of his dart between her lips and turning her tongue around it, caused novel transports of delight to the member that slid into its new receptacle. But feeling that the fountains of the brine of Venus were on the point of bursting forth, she recoiled with horror. “You would not degrade me so far”, said my mother, “as to make me drink a man in a liquid form?” She had scarcely spoken, when an abundant shower fell upon her robe. He showed some anger, “How could you be so foolish,” he cried, “as to spoil such good work!” She replied: “Forgive me, the next time you will find me more obedient.” She kept her word, and actually drank men in a liquid state,—a spicy thing, for indeed the seed is spicy with salt!” (Dial. VII.)
Mancia also proved complaisant in that way to Marino; Eleanor tells it in Aloysia Sigaea:
“My cousin, Mancia, has married a Neapolitan of the name of Marino. Marino is burning all over with debauchery. 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.”” (Dial. VII.)
So too Alfonso tries to engage Eleanor herself in the same fashion:
“Look you! Ottavia”, added Eleanor, “how passionately loving Alfonso is. Some days ago, after having several times plied his javelin in the legitimate way, he presented it to my mouth. “Your catapult, my Alfonso”, said I, “is not made for breaching this door; you are mad, and you want to make me the same.” “No! I would fain have you mad, not myself; for that you love me, I owe to your madness, not to any merits of my own. If I get delirious, I may forget the respect which I owe you, and I would rather die than cease to live for you alone.” These words softened my heart, and decided me to assist him in that game. I seized his inflamed dart with a good heart between my lips. But that was all, his member returned voluntarily to the place it had left, and finished its exploits, which it had impudently begun above, properly in the region of the middle.” (Dial. VII.)
Gonzalvo of Cordova was another amateur of this mode. Aloysia Sigaea:
“Gonzalvo of Cordova, a celebrated general, is said to have taken very much to this kind of voluptuousness in his old age.” (Dial. VII.)
The prurient ingenuity of Tiberius invented a new species offellation.
“His turpitude went still farther, to such infamous excesses, that it is as difficult to relate them as to listen to them; they are scarcely credible. He caused little children, of the tenderest age to be taught to play between his legs, while he was swimming in his bath, calling them his little fishes, to touch him lightly with tongue and teeth, and like babies of some little strength and growth, though not yet weaned, to suck his privates as they would their mother’s breast. His age and his inclination predisposed him for this sort of pleasure before all others.” (Suetonius,Tiberius, ch. 44).
A representation of this ingenious libertine while tickled by what he called his little fishes, is to be seen on plate XVIII. of theMonuments de la vie privée des douze Césars.
Men advanced in age, whose member will no longer obey their will, are more inclined to irrumate than others. To this circumstance the passage in Martial, IV., 50, refers:
“No man is too old to irrumate.”
XI., 47:
“Gain the heights; there your old member will revive.”
And III., 75:
“Your mentula, Lupercus, has long ceased to stiffen; nevertheless, in your folly you strive to make it rise. You are fain now to corrupt pure lips for gold; but even so your Venus is stimulated in vain.”
For this reason irrumators are less feared by married men. Thus Martial dealt more lightly with Lupus, whom he had surprised while irrumating his Polla, in the passage (X., 40) quoted previously. The husband of Glycera, if so be that she had one, also need not have feared that Lupercus would do duty for him, Martial, XI., 41:
“Lupercus loves the beautiful Glycera; he is her lord and master, and he alone. He was complaining bitterly he had not loved her for a month; Aelianus asked the reason,—he replied Glycera had the toothache.”
Lepidinius, in theHermaphroditus(I., 13), is of opinion, that anyone who has once irrumated can never get rid or renounce the habit. I must leave it to experts to decide upon this. So also thinks Aloysia Sigaea: “Such as have once tasted it, are mad after this pleasure.” (Dial. VII.)
No wonder that after fellation, the mouth has to be washed out with water. Martial alludes to this, II., 50;
“You lend your mouth, and then drink water, Lesbia; quite right,—where your work is, there you take water.”
Priapeia, XXX., says:
“Walk in the vineyards, and if you steal any of the grapes, you shall have water, stranger, to take in another way.”
Priapus means: “You came to get water to drink; but if you pluck any grapes, I shall irrumate you, and then you will want water to rinse your mouth rather than to drink.” Martial says as much to Chioné inEpigramIII., 87, quoted before.
To ask for the loan of the mouth is to demand a thing much more shameful than the other two orifices. Martial, IX., 68:
“All the night long I possessed a lewd young girl; I never knew anyone more naughty. Tired of a thousand postures, I asked for the puerile service; before I had done asking, she turned at once in compliance. Laughing and blushing, I asked something worse than that,—the wanton consented instantly”[84].
Those that found themselves thus situated took good care not to be surprised; Martial, XI., 46:
“When you have crossed the threshold of a chamber with name on signboard, whether it be boy or girl that smiled on you in welcome, doors and hangings and locks do not content you, and you want to be yet more certain you are not watched. Mystery is what you want; you look suspiciously on the smallest crack in the door and stop it; the same with the tiniest pinhole made by some inquisitive hand. Nobody can be more modest or circumspect in his doings, Cantharus, than the man who wants to pedicate or copulate.”
However, the old Romans did not blush to irrumate, as is evident by the use Catullus makes of that word, contemptuous though it be. What theywereashamed of wasfellation. Indeed there is a certain bold audacity in playing the active part, but none in the passive one, particularly when the mouth, the noblest organ of the body, has to perform such vile offices. Add to this that a fetid breath was acquired by this habit, whichfellatorstook every means to hide, afraid of putting to flight fellow-guests at table and acquaintances who should greet them with a kiss in the street.
Fellatorswere so repugnant to the guests at table, that no cups[85]were offered to them, or when they had been offered, they were afterwards broken[86], and that it was only with the greatest unwillingness any one would kiss their mouth[87], when presented for salute. Thus it was preferable to be taken for acinedeto being taken for afellator[88], like Phœbus in Martial, III., 73:
“You sleep with youths whose members are full size, and what rises with them, will not rise with you. Pray, Phœbus, tell me, what must I suspect? If I could think that you were but effeminate! But rumour says, you are not acinede!”
The case of Callistratus, in XII., 35 of our author, is a similar one:
“You are very frank, Callistratus, with me, and you tell me that they often do it to you. You are not quite so simple, as you would appear; the man that tells such things does not tell of others worse.[89]”
For the same reason, as Charidemus will not be called apatient, and shows his legs and chest covered with hair. Martial tells him (VI., 56), to arrange himself in such a way as to appear a minion rather than afellator:
“Because your legs are covered with bristles, your chest with hair, you think, Charidemus, to hand down your words to posterity; take my advice, and pluck the hair from all over your body, and get it certified you depilate your buttocks. Why so? you ask.—You know the world tells many tales; try to make them believe you are merely pedicated.”
Fellation, as was but fair, received payment, and high payment. Martial, XI., 67 shows this:
“Informer you are and blackmailer, swindler and trickster,fellatorand bully. The wonder is you have no money.”
And again, III., 75:
“Your member, Lupercus, has long ceased to stiffen; nevertheless in your folly, you strive to make it rise. Of no avail is cole-wort or salacious onions, of no use to you the provocative savory. You are fain now to corrupt pure lips for gold; but even so your Venus is stimulated in vain. But,—a thing to be marvelled at and scarce believed,—what will not rise, Lupercus, does rise if you pay a heavy fee.”
But when on the subject of fellation, we must not pass over in silence the raven, whom our standing authority (Martial, XIV., 74), calls afellator:
“Saluting raven[90], why do they call theefellator? Never a mentula entered your beak.”
The fact is ignorant people believed the raven fulfilled the coitus with his beak:
Pliny says: “The vulgar herd believes that it operates the coitus and procreates with its beak. Aristotle denied this, saying that ravens merely exchange kisses in the same way, familiar to everybody, that pigeons do.” (Natural History, X., 12.)
Erasmus denies in hisAdagia, under the wordLesbiari(p. 409 of the Frankfort edition, 1670), that in his time the obscene practice of irrumation was still known:
“A**** (to lick), if I am not mistaken, is with the Greeks the same thing asfellarewith the Latins. The word indeed remains; but the thing itself has been, I think, long done away with.”
I fear this is not really the case. At any rate I am informed that this practice is not entirely opposed to the habits of libertines of the present day; those must decide whose opportunities take them to great cities. Plate XXI., in theMonuments de la vie privée des douze Césarsrepresents afellator. However the graceful picture in question really belongs more properly to the category of “spintrian postures”, of which more anon, than to the present chapter.