Letter
Irrumation
22 April 1993
Miles Burrow complains of being rather in the dark about Catullus’s irrumabo (Letters, 27 May). To judge strictly from its etymology this should mean: ‘I shall put a teat (ruma) in your mouth.’ But when the teat is seen as the male organ, and when the spirit is one of angry aggression, the effect is transformed. The standard work on this, and similarly edifying topics, is The Latin Sexual Vocabulary...
