LXXV.

“Avoid Alpheus’ mouth, he loves Arethusa’s bosom, plunging head-first into the salty sea.”

In this epigram also the poet draws upon the ambiguity of the words mouth, bosom (bay), head-first, salt sea, which may refer to the river Alpheus in Arcadia and to Arethusa, a spring near Syracuse, but also to the mouth of a _cunnilingue_, that goes and plunges into the vulva of a woman; not to mention yet another idea connected with this, to which we shall return presently.