Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing

by Melissa Mohr

  “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.

  Many epigrams from the Priapea: The Priapus Poems: Erotic Epigrams from Ancient Rome, trans. Richard W. Hooper (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 18–19.

  Virgil… was more inclined to boys: Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 89; Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars and The Lives of Illustrious Men, ed. J. C. Rolfe, vol. II, Loeb Classical Library 38 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), Verg. 9.

  “I hate those embraces”: Ovid, The Love Books of Ovid, trans. J. Lewis May (London: J. Lane, 1925), 150.

  The emperor Claudius was: Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Claud. 33.2.

  Not everyone, however, was fair game: Julia Haig Gaisser, Catullus (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 12–13; Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 17–19, 103–9.

  25 to 40 percent of people were slaves: Different scholars occasionally give vastly different estimates of the number of slaves, but most estimates range from 25 to 40 percent of the population, as in Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 99–132; Peter Lampe, Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries: From Paul to Valentinus (London: Continuum, 2003), 172–73; Mary T. Boat-wright, Peoples of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 22, 25; Arthur A. Ruprecht, “Slave, Slavery,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald Hawthorne et al. (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 881–83.

  special clothing, the toga praetexta: Judith Lynn Sebesta, “Symbolism in the Costume of the Roman Woman,” in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 46–53.

  necklace called a bulla: Ann M. Stout, “Jewelry as a Symbol of Status in the Roman Empire,” in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 77; Oskar Seyffert, A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, trans. Henry Nettleship and J. E. Sandys (New York: Macmillan, 1901), 234.

  This is in direct contrast to the Greeks: Williams Armstrong Percy, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996); Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 274–99.

  As with stereotypes: Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 191–208; Amy Richlin, “Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law Against Love Between Men,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 (1993): 523–73; Rabun Taylor, “Two Pathic Subcultures in Ancient Rome,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 7 (1997): 319–71.

  “a man who daily is adorned”: Gellius, Noct. Att. 6.12.5, quoted in Richlin, Garden of Priapus, 93.

  The most surefire way to identify: Juvenal, “Satura IX,” The Latin Library (online), accessed October 23, 2012: 133; Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 199; Younger, Sex in the Ancient World, 44; Catherine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 63–64; Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 139.

  The cinaedus or catamitus is not gay: Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid,” 51–52; Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 218–30.

  The worst insult you could throw at a Roman: Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid,” 51–52; Swancutt, “Still Before Sexuality,” 40–41.

  the “most sacred part of the body”: Cicero of Gabinius, quoted in Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 219.

  “Zoilus, why are you”: Martial, Epigrams, 2.42.

  “You sleep with well-endowed boys”: Martial, Epigrams, 3.73.

  “They are twin brothers”: Martial, Epigrams, 3.88.

  What is the flip side of cunnilingus? Parker, “The Teratogenic Grid,” 51–52.

  Even the Forum of Augustus: Barbara Kellum, “The Phallus as Signifier: The Forum of Augustus and Rituals of Masculinity,” in Sexuality in Ancient Art, ed. Natalie Boymel Kampen and Bettina Bergmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 170–83.

  According to Freud: Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, trans. A. A. Brill (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1918), 30.

  things that would taint a religious rite: Richlin, The Garden of Priapus, 9; Celia Schultz, “Juno Sospita and Roman Insecurity in the Social War,” in Religion in Republican Italy, ed. Celia E. Schultz and Paul B. Harvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 207–9; Otto Kiefer, Sexual Life in Ancient Rome (London: Constable, 1994), 113.

  There was also the mysterious Mutunus Tutunus: Kiefer, Sexual Life in Ancient Rome, 109; Karen K. Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 269–72.

  Wedding guests would sing fescennine songs: Hersch, The Roman Wedding, 151–57.

  an epithalamium… by Catullus: Catullus, Poems 61–68, ed. and trans. John Godwin (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1995), 24–39.

  the ludi florales: Richlin, The Garden of Priapus, 10; Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans, 134–35.

  Obscene words were thought to be magical: Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 13–14; William Fitzgerald, Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 61–64.

  Victorious generals were serenaded: Barton, Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, 142–43; Adams, Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 4.

  When Julius Caesar returned to Rome: Suetonius, Lives, vol. I, Caes. 49.

  Some verses were even more specific: Fitzgerald, Catullan Provocations, 62.

  does the government still have “good reason”: Adam Liptak, “TV Decency Is a Puzzler for Judges,” New York Times, January 10, 2012.

  As Lenny Bruce supposedly noted: These lines are from the Dustin Hoffman movie about Bruce, Lenny, quoted in Pinker, Stuff of Thought, 346.

  Roman curses were much more elaborate: The best introduction is John Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

  “Malchio son/slave of Nikon”: Henk S. Versnel, “An Essay on Anatomical Curses,” Ansichten Griechischer Rituale, ed. Fritz Graf (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1998), 223.

  Gladiators and charioteers: Florent Heintz, “Circus Curses and Their Archaeological Contexts,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998): 337–42.

  On the back of Malchio’s tablet: Versnel, “An Essay on Anatomical Curses,” 223.

  the hierarchy of genres: Adams, Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 2, 218–25; Michael Coffey, “The Roman Genre of Satire and Its Beginnings,” Latin Verse Satire: An Anthology and Reader, ed. Paul Allen Miller (New York: Routledge, 2005), 327–31.

  The most taboo words: Varone, Erotica Pompeiana; Rex Wallace, An Introduction to Wall Inscriptions from Pompeii and Herculaneum (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2005); J. A. Baird and Claire Taylor, eds., Ancient Graffiti in Context (New York: Routledge, 2011).

  “Oh wall, I am amazed”: Wallace, An Introduction, xxiii.

  “The goldsmiths unanimously urge”: Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, eds., Roman Civilization
Selected Readings: The Empire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 2:237.

  “Dickhead recommends”: John F. DeFelice, Roman Hospitality: The Professional Women of Pompeii (Warren Center, PA: Shangri-La Publications, 2001), 117.

  “Eulale, may you enjoy”: Varone, Erotica Pompeiana, 164.

  Since the surviving graffiti is so florid: For a quick summary of both the “lower classes” and the “well-educated” view, see Kristina Milnor, “Literary Literacy in Roman Pompeii: The Case of Vergil’s Aeneid,” Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, ed. William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 291–92.

  “Crescens’s member is hard”: Varone, Erotica Pompeiana, 87.