Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (38 page)

“
the growing frequency”:
Lee Siegel, “What the Internet Unleashes,” in “Why Do Educated People Use Bad Words?”
Room for Debate
(blog),
New York Times
, April 12, 2010.

Some studies have shown that:
Timothy Jay, “The Utility and Ubiquity of Taboo Words,”
Perspectives on Psychological Science
4, no. 2 (2009): 153–61.

Chapter 1

“
There’s a horrible boor”:
Martial,
Epigrams
, ed. and trans. D. R. Shackle-ton Bailey, Loeb Classical Library 480, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 3.82. Most translations of Martial in this chapter are from the Loeb edition, as is the Latin. This loose translation is mine, however.

fascini:
J. N. Adams,
The Latin Sexual Vocabulary
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 63; David M. Friedman,
A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis
(New York: Free Press, 2001), 25.

the “Big Six”:
This list of the “Big Six” comes from Ruth Wajnryb’s
Expletive Deleted: A Good Look at Bad Language
(New York: Free Press, 2005), 55. Geoffrey Hughes’s
Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) has a slightly different list:
shit, piss, fart, fuck, cock
, and
cunt
(20).

Its etymology is unknown:
Alastair Minnis, “From
Coilles
to
Bel Chose
: Discourses of Obscenity in Jean de Meun and Chaucer,” in
Medieval Obscenities
, ed. Nicola McDonald (Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2006), 156; Jan M. Ziolkowski, “Obscenity in the Latin Grammatical and Rhetorical Tradition,” in
Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages
, ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 44.

Cassell’s Latin Dictionary
defines: Cassell’s Latin Dictionary
, ed. D. P. Simpson (New York: Macmillan, 1968).

obscene words are dirty:
Jeffery Henderson,
The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3.

The Romans, on the other hand, strove:
The other image we have of the Romans is that of sex-mad degenerates who bay for blood at gladiatorial contests, which maybe doesn’t sound so unfamiliar either.

The Old English
cwithe
: Wajnryb,
Expletive Deleted
, 67; John Ayto,
Word Origins
, 2nd ed. (London: A. & C. Black, 2005).

just as it gave
con
to French
: Adolf Zauner,
Die romanischen Namen der Körperteile
(Erlangen: Junge & Sohn, 1902), 186.

But the British were different:
Nicholas Ostler,
Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin
(New York: Walker, 2007), 138–43.

Gropecuntelane:
“Cunt,”
OED
online, June 2012.

Some proper names:
Russell Ash,
Morecock, Fartwell & Hoare: A Collection of Unfortunate but True Names
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 100; Geoffrey Hughes,
An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World
(New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 110.

“
Corus licks
”: Antonio Varone,
Erotica Pompeiana: Love Inscriptions on the Walls of Pompeii
, trans. Ria P. Berg (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2002), 80.

“
Jucundus licks”:
Ibid., 80.

“
It is much better”:
Ibid., 60.

might even employ a
picatrix
: John Younger,
Sex in the Ancient World from A to Z
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 75.

“
Why do you pluck
”: Martial,
Epigrams
, 10.90.

“
Here I bugger”
: Corpus Inscriptiones Latinarum IV 3932; Varone,
Erotica Pompeiana
, 134–35.

Rome had lots of nouns:
Adams,
Latin Sexual Vocabulary
, 231–39.

It was shit:
I have translated
merda
as “shit” here, instead of using the Loeb “filth,” as it seems better able to convey the slight shock Martial seems to be going for in using
merda
to end the epigram.
Epigrams
, 3.17.

The houses of the wealthy might have private privies:
Richard Neudecker,
Der Pracht der Latrine: zum Wandel öffentlicher Bedürfnisanstalten in der kaiserzeitlichen Stadt
(Munich: Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, 1994); Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, “Finding Social Meaning in the Public Latrines of Pompeii,”
Cura Aquarum
, ed. Nathalie de Haan and Gemma C. M. Jansen (Leiden: Stichting Babesch, 1996), 79–86; Alex Scobie, “Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality in the Roman World,”
Klio
68 (1986): 399–433.

People called fullers:
Miko Flohr, “
Fullones
and Roman Society: A Reconsideration,”
Journal of Roman Archaeology
16 (2003): 447–50.

The basic Latin terms for urination:
Adams,
Latin Sexual Vocabulary
, 245–49.

Hic ego puellas multas futui:
Craig A. Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 296–97.

Hic ego cum veni futui:
Ibid., 28; Judith Harris,
Pompeii Awakened: A Story of Rediscovery
(London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 122–23.

“
Fortunatus, you sweet soul”:
Varone,
Erotica Pompeiana
, 68. (The English translation given for
perfututor
is “mega-fucker.”)

“
Because Antony fucks Glaphyra”:
Augustus’s epigram appears in one of Martial’s, 11.20.

the penis is a weapon:
Adams,
Latin Sexual Vocabulary
, 19–22.

sex is depicted as brutal:
Ibid., 145–50.

The opposing sides lobbed sling bullets:
Judith P. Hallett, “
Perusinae Glandes
and the Changing Image of Augustus,”
American Journal of Ancient History
2 (1977): 151–71.

Fututa sum hic:
Harris,
Pompeii Awakened
, 122.

Lesbian
comes from the Greek:
Kenneth Dover,
Greek Homosexuality
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 182–84.

tribade
was still the ordinary word:
Charlotte Brewer,
Treasure-House of the Language: The Living OED
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 205.

So I confess I thought: Martial,
Epigrams
, 1.90.

Eupla laxa landicosa:
Adams,
Latin Sexual Vocabulary
, 96; Diana M. Swancutt, “
Still
Before Sexuality: ‘Greek’ Androgyny, the Roman Imperial Politics of Masculinity and the Roman Invention of the
Tribas
,” in
Mapping Gender in Ancient Religious Discourses
, ed. Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 30; Werner Krenkel, “Tribaden,”
Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Wilhelm-Pieck-Universität Rostock
38 (1989): 49–58.

most likely a misrepresentation:
Scholars who have addressed Roman ideas of the
tribas
and whether they have any basis in reality include Judith P. Hallett, “Female Homoeroticism and the Denial of Roman Reality in Latin Literature,” in
Roman Sexualities
, ed. Marilyn Skinner and Judith P. Hallett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 255–73; Pamela Gordon, “The Lover’s Voice in
Heroides
15: Or, Why is Sappho a Man?” in
Roman Sexualities
, ed. Marilyn Skinner and Judith P. Hallett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 274–91; Marilyn B. Skinner,
Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 252–53; Bernadette J. Brooten,
Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

They thought that both the male and female partners:
Fouad R. Kandeel and Jeannette Hacker, “Male Reproduction: Evolving Concepts of Procreation and Infertility Through the Ages,” in
Male Reproductive Dysfunction: Pathophysiology and Treatment
, ed. Fouad R. Kandeel (New York: Informa Healthcare USA, 2007), 4; David M. Halperin, “Why Is Diotoma a Woman? Platonic
Eros
and the Figuration of Gender,” in
Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World
, ed. David M. Halperin et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 278–79.

They were plenty misinformed about sex:
Ann Carson, “Dirt and Desire: The Phenomenology of Female Pollution in Antiquity,”
Constructions of the Classical Body
, ed. James I. Porter (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 78–87; Adrian Thatcher,
God, Sex, and Gender: An Introduction
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 8–11, 29–31.

Vir
carried with it a set of cultural expectations:
Holt N. Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid,” in
Roman Sexualities
, ed. Marilyn Skinner and Judith P. Hallett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 47–65; Craig Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
; Jonathan Walters, “Invading the Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought,” in
Roman Sexualities
, ed. Marilyn Skinner and Judith P. Hallett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 29–46.

“
Catching me with a boy”:
Martial,
Epigrams
, 11.43.

irrumare:
Werner A. Krenkel, “Fellatio and Irrumatio,”
Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Wilhelm-Pieck-Universität Rostock
29 (1980): 77–88; Amy Richlin, “The Meaning of
Irrumare
in Catullus and Martial,”
Classical Philology
76 (1981): 40–46.

Bene caca:
John R. Clarke,
Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 315
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 172.

beginning one poem
, Pedicabo ego vos: Catullus,
Catullus, Tibullus, and Pervigilium Veneris
, trans. Francis Warre Cornish, Loeb Classical Library 6, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 16.

“
Suillius, cross-examine your sons”:
Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 180.

Integral to this priapic model:
Amy Richlin,
The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor
, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 57; Williams,
Roman Homosexuality
, 169.