Tribadism is frequently mentioned by the writers of classical antiquity, especially by those of Greece, where the cult of naked beauty encouraged sexual excitement of this character. This form of unchastity was common among the flute-playing girls of Greece, and at the secret festivals of such associates Aphrodite Peribasia was invoked. _Lucian_, in his dialogues of hetairai, depicts the intensely passionate nature of these homosexual unions between girls. _Lombroso_ reproduces _Juvenal’s_ description of such a love-feast. “When the flute calls to the dance, the mænads, inflamed with wine and beer, loosen their long tresses, they sigh languishingly and eagerly, and an ardent desire draws them one to another, the desire and the passion of the dance gives their voices an alluring sound; nothing now can serve to bridle their unrestrained desires. _Lacasella_ swings her wreath, which she has won in the contest of lascivious gestures and movements, but even she must give way before Medullina with her ardent postures. About these games there is no trace of unreality, and the most rigid Spartan, hardened from the very cradle, even old Nestor himself, notwithstanding his hernia, could not fail to be stimulated by such an inflammatory spectacle.”
In the present day, also, the practice of tribadism is more widely diffused than people in general imagine. I have often encountered instances of it in ladies of good position, who were past their first youth, who would not or could not marry, and who undertook extensive and long-enduring journeys with a female “companion,” of similar age, or perhaps a little younger. Their erotic needs, which could not be gratified in normal fashion, led to this sexual perversion—a tendency observable especially in persons with neuropathic predisposition, or with a liability to hysteria or to epilepsy. Sometimes such girls, even before puberty, show an inclination to wear boys’ clothes, to avoid all feminine manual occupations, and to examine and to handle the genital organs of their playmates. Even after puberty, such tribadists like to make a parade of masculine attitudes, they have their hair cut short, wear clothes of a masculine cut, smoke a great deal, and show in their conversation, and still more in their letters, great exaltation of the passions. It not infrequently happens that an elderly lady who has lived well in her day, and from youth upward has had much intercourse with men, comes at last to lament her worthlessness to men, and from this proceeds to the idea of obtaining sexual enjoyment by means of tribadism. The tribadistic union sometimes lasts for several years, but in most cases the alliances are quickly and frequently changed.