[FN#376] The word is from numbness, torpor, narcotism:  the flowers, being loved by the infernal gods, were offered to the Furies.  Narcissus and Hippolytus are often assumed as types of morose voluptas, masturbation and clitorisation for nymphomania:  certain mediaeval writers found in the former a type of the Saviour, and ’Mirabeau a representation of the androgynous or first Adam:  to me Narcissus suggests the Hindu Vishnu absorbed in the contemplation of his own perfections.

[FN#377] The verse of Ovid is parallel’d by the song of Al-Zahir al-Jazari (Ibn Khall. iii. 720).

          Illum impuberem amaverunt mares; puberem feminae. 
          Gloria Deo! nunquam amatoribus carebit.

[FN#378] The venerable society of prostitutes contained three chief classes.  The first and lowest were the Dicteriads, so called from Diete (Crete), who imitated Pasiphae, wife of Minos, in preferring a bull to a husband; above them was the middle class, the Aleutridae, who were the Almahs or professional musicians, and the aristocracy was represented by the Hetairai, whose wit and learning enabled them to adorn more than one page of Grecian history.  The grave Solon, who had studied in Egypt, established a vast Dicterion (Philemon in his Delphica), or bordel whose proceeds swelled the revenue of the Republic.

[FN#379] This and Saint Paul (Romans i. 27) suggested to Caravaggio his picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati.

[FN#380] Properly speaking, “Medicus” is the third or ring finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses,

          Est pollex Veneris; sed Jupiter indice gaudet,
          Saturnus medium; Sol medicumque tenet.

[FN#381] So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput.  The modern Italian does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and medius to suggest the clitoris.

[FN#382] What can be wittier than the now trite Tale of the Ephesian Matron, whose dry humour is worthy of The Nights?  No wonder that it has made the grand tour of the world.  It is found in the neo-Phaedrus, the tales of Musaeus and in the Septem Sapientes as the “Widow which was comforted.”  As the “Fabliau de la Femme qui se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari,” it tempted Brantome and La Fontaine; and Abel Remusat shows in his Contes Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom.  Mr. Walter K. Kelly remarks, that the most singular place for such a tale is the “Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying” by Jeremy Taylor, who introduces it into his chapt. v.—­“Of the Contingencies of Death and Treating our Dead.”  But in those days divines were not mealy-mouthed.