(On Labienus.—To buy boys Labienus sold his gardens; nought but a _fig-garden_ does Labienus now possess.)
Cum dixi _ficus_, rides quasi barbara verba. Et dici _ficos_, Caeciliane, iubes. Dicemus _ficus_, quas scimus in arbore nasci, Dicemus _ficos_, Caeciliane, _tuos_.
(To Caecilianus.—When I have said _ficus_, you laugh, Caecilianus, as though I had committed a solecism, and declare _ficos_ should be the word. We will say _ficus_, meaning the figs that we know grow on the tree, but your figs, Caecilianus, we will call _ficos_).
Now too we shall understand the _medico ridente_ (the doctor grinning) in the following passage of _Juvenal_ (II. 12):
Sed podice laevi Caeduntur _tumidae_, medico ridente, _mariscae_.
(But from your smooth posterior are cut, the doctor grinning the while, _the bloated swellings_). Just as it admits of no doubt that in the passage of _Horace_[274]:
Nam, displosa sonat quantum vesica, pepedi Diffissa nate _ficos_.
(For as loud as a burst bladder sounds, I farted my swellings (ficos—figs) away, splitting the rump), _ficos_ and not as commonly _ficus_ must be read.
That these morbid growths were not entirely free from contagious matter seems to be indicated by the following passages. In the _Priapeia_ (Carm. 50) we read:
Quaedam, si placet hoc tibi, Priape, Ficosissima me puella ludit, Et non dat mihi, nec negat daturam; Causasque invenit usque differendi. Quae si contigerit fruenda nobis, Totam cum paribus, Priape, nostris Cingemus tibi mentulam coronis.
(A certain girl, if it please you to listen, Priapus, is playing with me. Most sorely afflicted is she with swellings; and she will not give herself to me, yet does not say she never will, and ever finds excuses for putting off and putting off. Now if ever she shall be mine to enjoy, I and my comrades with me, will wreath all thy _penis_, Priapus, with garlands). The girl, who was badly affected with these swellings, and that presumably in the secret parts, refuses her lover coition. The latter does not insist, but prays to Priapus, as was habitually done in all cases of affections of the genitals (see p. 74 above) and vows to deck his penis with garlands. It follows that the lover was aware these swellings would be injurious to him, if he should constrain the girl, of whom the poet says, _nec negat daturam_ (yet does not say she will _not_ give herself), to lie with him. Still clearer evidence of this may be found in the following Epigram of _Martial_, where a whole family is affected with these swellings or tumours: