productive in Romance. The word is of uncertain etymology, according to Adams. Usage In the texts appears to be used mainly of humans. It was associated with both defecation and with sex. Catullus (23) mocks a certain Furius with these words: ("Because your arsehole is purer than a salt-cellarand you don't shit even ten times in a whole year,and the shit is harder than beans and pebbles;which, if you were to rub it and crumble it with your hands,you could never dirty your finger") Martial (2.51) mocks a passive homosexual in these terms: ("Though you often have only one denarius in your whole money-chest, Hyllus, and that rubbed smoother than your arsehole,yet it's not the baker, nor the innkeeper, who will take that away from you, but anyone who is proud of his over-sized penis.Your unlucky stomach looks at the banquets of your arsehole, and the former is always hungry, poor thing, while the latter devours.") In a verse fable of Phaedrus, the word is used of dogs: ("Whenever (a dog) sees a new one coming, he smells its anus.") The word was synonymous with , "arsehole". This word is thought to be an o-stem version of the same root as "to fart", identifying it as the source of flatulence. Lewis and Short's Dictionary cites only two instances. In an unattractive picture of an old woman Horace (Epodes 8.6) writes: ("And (when) there gapes between your wrinkled buttocksan ugly arsehole like that of a cow with diarrhoea.") Juvenal (2.12), writing of outwardly virile but in practice effeminate philosophers, writes: ("Your hairy limbs and the tough bristles along your armspromise a stern spirit, it's true, but from your smooth arseholeswollen figs (i.e. piles) are cut out as the doctor laughs.") The implication is that the piles have been caused by anal sex; that such anal piles or sores are caused by sex is a common theme in the poems of Martial. Martial uses both and synonymously in the following poem (6.37): ("Of his arsehole cut open right up to his navelCharimus has no trace left;and yet he itches right up to his navel.O, under what great urges the poor man labours!He has no anus, and yet he's still a fag!") seems to have been rather a rarer word than . It is not used by Catullus, and only twice by Martial. It is not found in Pompeii, and did not produce