SUBSCRIPTUM PICTURAE CRISPAE MULIERIS IMPUDICAE
Praeter legitimi genitalia foedera coetus, Repperit obscoenas Veneres vitiosa libido. _Herculis haeredi quam Lemnia suasit egestas_, Quam toga facundi scenis agitavit Afrani, Et quam Nolanis capitalis luxus inussit; Crispa tamen cunctas exercet corpore in uno: Deglubit, fellat, molitur per utramque cavernam, Ne quid inexpertum frustra moritura relinquat.
(Inscribed beneath a Portrait of Crispa,—an immodest woman.—Over and above the natural modes of intercourse in legitimate coition, vicious lust has discovered impure ways of love: the way that his loneliness at Lemnos taught the heir of Hercules (Philoctetes), that which the comedies of eloquent Afranius displayed on the stage, and that which deadly luxury branded on the men of Nola. But Crispa practises them all in her sole person: she skins, she sucks, she works by either aperture, that she may not leave anything untried, and so have lived in vain!)
No doubt _Stark_, p. 19, is quite right in saying this passage has nothing to do with the θήλεια νοῦσος; but the poet has by no means, as he puts it in his note, _temporum ordine lapsus_,—committed an anachronism. He makes no mention whatever of any vengeance of Venus, saying nothing more than that loneliness led the inheritor (of the arrows) of Hercules to Onanism. This is not merely advancing a conjecture, as _Stark_ does, but (to say nothing of the _Lemnia egestas_—Lemnian loneliness), admits of being legitimately developed from the whole sequence of thought in the Epigram. Crispa’s vices are mentioned in the order of their shamefulness. The least disgraceful is Onanism, such as Philoctetes practised, next comes the vice of the _cinaedus_ and of the _pathic_, for which Afranius serves as example, and lastly _fellation_. Thus it shows a complete want of comprehension, when the commentators quote the scholion to Thucydides given a little above as an explanation. Had Philoctetes been referred to as a _pathic_, the succeeding verse would be entirely superfluous; which verse does not receive a word of notice from the expositors, presumably because they failed to understand the allusion. The true explanation is afforded by a passage in _Quintilian_:[316] “Togatis excellit Afranius, _utinamque non inquinasset argumenta puerorum foedis amoribus_, mores suos fassus.” (Afranius excels in _fabulae togatae_ (polite comedies), and it were to be wished he had not defiled his plots by disgusting intrigues with boys, thereby discovering his own morals). _Forberg_, loco citato p. 283, quotes this passage indeed, but explains (both here and on p. 343) the _libido_ (lust) of Philoctetes as being that of the _pathic_.