was an emasculated member of the cult of Cybele; according to Taylor (1997), they had much in common with the hijras of India today. The penis was compared to a throat or neck in these lines of Martial (9.27.1–2), which mock a philosopher who has plucked the hairs from his private parts with tweezers (): ("when you carry around depilated balls, Chrestus,and a dick just like a vulture's neck") Similarly Persius in his 4th satire refers to the penis as "neck, gullet". In the following lines he imagines young Alcibiades (or an Alcibiades-like youth) sunbathing in a public bath and comments on the fact that though he now has a full beard on his chin he still "weeds" all the hairs out of his private parts: ("But if after being oiled you take a rest and fix the sun on your skin,near you there is a stranger to nudge you will his elbow and spit scornfully:'What morals! To weed one's penis and the secret parts of one's loinsand to display a withered to the public!And when you comb a balsamed rug on your jaw,why does a shorn stick out from your groin?Even though five gym-attendants pluck at that vegetationand make your boiled buttocks smooth with their curved tweezers,yet that "bracken" of yours can't be tamed by any plough.' ") That here means "throat" or "gullet" is supported by a scholiast (early commentator). However, Adams, the expert on Roman sexual vocabulary, prefers the idea that this word is also a by-form of , a grain weevil. Another scholar Wehrle, pointing to the horticultural imagery, thinks the metaphor refers to the larva of a weevil. The obscure word (gen. ) seems to have meant a sexualized caricature with an abnormally large penis, such as the Romans were known to draw. It appears in Catullus 37: ("I will graffiti the front of the tavern with s") and in a graffito from Pompeii: ("may you guys eat shit, whoever you are who drew sopios!'") The grammarian Sacerdos preserves a quotation about Pompey, that says ("whoever is not ashamed, and does not blush, is not a man, but a .") would appear to describe drawings such as that of the god Mercury in the illustration. Erection The verb meant "to have an erection". Martial (6.36) in one epigram teases a certain friend: ("Your cock is as big as your nose is long, Papylus, so that