How _Stark_, following the lead of an anonymous French author quoted by _Larcher_[309], can maintain there is no question of punishment here, as in that case Venus would be acting against her own interest, we fail to understand; and _Larcher_ himself calls this unknown writer _un homme d’esprit, mais peu instruit_ (witty but superficial). This is proof sufficient in our opinion that only a jest is intended, but one that _Stark_, p. 7 (notes 19 and 20.), has taken with the utmost seriousness.
However our view is _directly_ supported by another myth, which _Dio Chrysostom_ mentions, speaking of the sweating at the armpits with which the Lemnian women were afflicted. According to this legend Venus punishes the women of Lemnos[310]:
“Haec Dea veluti etiam ceteri, sua sacrificia praetermitti non aequo animo ferebat: quae cum Lemniae mulieres Veneris sacrificia sprevissent, Deae maxime iram in se concitasse creditae sunt, quod etiam non impune putantur fecisse. _Nam tantum foetorem illis excitasse feminis Dea perhibetur, ut a suis maritis contemnerentur._” (This goddess, no less than other deities, could not bear the neglect of her proper sacrifices with equanimity. Thus the women of Lemnos, having omitted to perform these sacrifices of Venus, are believed to have brought down on themselves the most serious anger of the goddess, and this they are accounted not to have done with impunity. _For the goddess, as is related, caused such a foul odour to arise among the women, that they were scorned by their husbands._) If the view mentioned just above as taken by the Apostle Paul and by St. Athanasius is the right one, it would seem that the Lemnian women had suffered themselves to be used by their husbands for purposes of paederastia; then as a consequence there had been set up the evil odour of the mouth and breath, and this had driven the men to desert their wives to live with the captive Thracian slave-women (_Apollonius_).
But indeed the Ancients generally, or at any rate the Greeks and Romans, seem to have always held the opinion that unnatural coition, as well as all the similar forms of indulgence taking its place, were a consequence of the wrath of Venus, against whom the individuals had offended[311]. This appears also from the play of _Philoctetes_, of whom the _Scholiast_ to _Thucydides_[312] says: “Moreover Philoctetes, having on account of the death of Paris fallen sick of the _feminine disease_, and being unable to bear the shame of it, left his country and founded a city, which in memory of his misfortune he named Malacia—Effeminacy.” _Martial_[313] had the same myth in his mind when he wrote: