B.C. 45, ÆT. 61 For comedy, take the character in the Demiurgus[1]: you know the monologue beginning "Lately by chance," and you remember how Roscius recited, "So naked has she left me": the whole speech is covert in language, in meaning is very immodest. As for tragedy, what do you say to this: "The woman who"—notice the expression—"uses more than one bed." Or again, "He dared intrude upon her bed, Pheres." Or again:
"A virgin I, and sheer against my will
Did Iuppiter achieve his end by force[2]."
"Achieve his end" is a decent way of putting it; and yet it means the same as a coarser word, which however no one would have endured. You see then that though the thing meant is the same, yet, because the words are not so, there is thought to be no impropriety. Therefore obscenity is not in the thing meant: much less is it in the expressions. For if the thing meant by a word is not improper, the word which signifies it cannot be improper. For instance, you call the anus by another name; why not by its own? If mention of it is improper, don't mention it even under another name. If not, do so for choice by its own. The ancients called a tail a penis; whence comes the word penicillus ("paint-brush"), from its similarity in appearance. Nowadays penis is regarded as an obscene word. "But," you will say, "the famous Piso Frugi in his 'Annals' complains of young men being given up to lust (peni)." What you call in your letter by its own name, he, with more reserve, calls penis. Yes; but it is because many use the word in that sense that it has become as obscene as the word you used. Again, suppose we use the common phrase: "When we (cum nos) desired to visit you"—does that suggest obscenity? I remember once in the senate an eloquent consular expressing himself thus:
- ↑ A comedy of Sextus Turpilius (died about B.C. 101). We have no clue to the context of the words, though the few fragments of the play (Ribbeck, p. 78) shew that a meretrix was an important character in it.
- ↑ It is not known from what tragedies these scraps are taken (Ribbeck,
Trg. fragm., p. 217). Cicero quotes the first as from Accius in
Orator, § 156.
