The reader sees in the first place that it is not merely expressions peculiar to Dioscorides that are here cited, as we might be led to suppose by Naumann’s statement, but that they are every one of them found, as we shall presently prove more particularly, in _Hippocrates_, the ῥινοκολοῦρος of Erasistratus of course excepted. _Dioscorides_ mentions them only in his commentary on the Second Book of the “Epidemia”, when laying down the passages to be cited immediately, and declares them not to be proper names, but adjectives which all refer to insane indulgence in the pleasures of love; accordingly there can be no question here of _bodily disorders_, let the words in themselves signify what they will. Now if we examine into this more closely, we shall find first of all that we must obviously read στυμάργου in place of στρυμάργου, for not only is this form given by the author of the gloss (under στομάργου[9]), quoted on the preceding page, but the text also of Hippocrates[10] offers it in both passages; whereas στρυμάργου gives no sort of sense.
The word στυμάργος in fact is derived either from στῦμα[11], the act of erecting the penis, and and ἔργον (work), so signifying anyone who performs the work of causing an erection of the penis,—or else from στύω[12], I erect the penis, and μάργος[13], (mad), i. e. one who erects, uses, the penis in a madly lascivious fashion, so an _Irrumator_, and with this _Hesychius’_ interpretation agrees: λεσβιάζειν,—πρὸς ἀνδρὸς στόμα στύειν, (to lesbianize,—to erect the penis in a man’s mouth). Στομάργος on the other hand is formed by a combination of στόμα, the mouth, and ἔργω or ἔργον (I work, work), a word constantly used to express the employment of the genital organs[14], in fact indulgence in love generally, and signifies a man who performs the work (of love) with the mouth, so a _Fellator_[15]. Now since only the most abandoned lust, lust that has really grown into a form of insanity, is capable of undertaking such obscenities, the interpretation of _Dioscorides_ μανικῶς ἐπτοημένον περὶ τὰ ἀφροδίσια (one that is insanely, madly, set on the pleasures of love) is quite satisfactory, assuming a hesitation on the part of the author to set forth the actual fact more explicitly, especially as we have already proved under the head of Paederastia[16] how unnatural sexual desires were commonly regarded as a _Mania_ or form of insanity. Even if we were not in a position adequately to explain the rest of the words, yet the phrase that comes next to them καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον (and many others of the same fashion) at once shows that they bear the same signification as στύμαργος and στομάργος, or at any rate that they must all alike refer to unnatural satisfaction of the sexual impulse, for τρόπος (fashion) is the very word particularly appropriated to imply such-like practices, as we see from the expressions Κρῆτα τρόπον, Ἑλληνικὸν τρόπον[17], (Cretan fashion, Greek fashion) used to indicate paederastia.