APPENDIX C΄ ON DEPILATION: BODY COSMETICS IN CLASSICAL ...

586 APPENDIX C΄
the proconsul of Lucian, Demonax, 50: qÓ ÌbÓ ÁaÚ ÙáÓ appleÈÙÙÔ˘Ì¤-
ÓˆÓ Ùa ÛΤÏË Î·d Ùe ÛáÌ· ¬ÏÔÓ (where notice the irony of
Demonax’ intervention and final remark). The priests of Cybele, the
°¿ÏÏÔÈ, castrated and satirized as effeminate, also indulged in this
habit according to the injunctions of the Great Mother; Ovid, Ars
Amatoria, I 505-8:
sed tibi nec ferro placeat torquere capillos,
nec tua mordaci pumice crura teras.
Ista jube faciant, quorum Cybeleia Mater
concinitur Phrygiis exululata modis.
The significance of this fact is a matter of theological symbolism.
Cf. the hair-abhorence of the Egyptian priesthood.
Whole cities were famous for their homosexual practices, which
were associated in general with depilation, especially in the relevant
areas. Catana in Sicily was one of them: Juvenal, VIII, 16
si tenerum attritus Catinensi pumice lumbum etc.
Pumice stone was used to rub the body to make it smooth, probably
after resin or some other depilatory has been applied. (Cf. Juvenal, IX
95; Martialis XIV, 205; Ovid, Ars Amat. 506; Plinius XXXVI, 21).
The scholia to the passage have: Catana oppidum Siciliae, usque ad
probra dissolutum notatur, ut Bibalcus (probably Bibaculus, the
famous satiric iambographer):
Osce senex, Catinaeque puer, Cumana meretrix.
(To the youth of those available for pleasure in Catana alludes the
tenerum lumbum of Juvenal). Catinenses was one of Lentulus’ mimes
certainly treating of the Catanian homosexual proclivity or effeminate
behaviour, if we can judge by the example given in it teste Tertulliano,
De Pallio 1042B (vol. II PG). The Balbius about whom Juvenal is
speaking in our passage impurissimum et obscaenissimum mortalium
fuisse, says Seneca, De Benef. IV, 30.
Greeks as a whole seem to have been addicted to these practices.
Juvenal, VΙII, 112 sqq. implies so much. (We should not naturally
deduce from this that Romans were unspoilt, but that, as usually, a