Pierre Grimal, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology (Blackwell, 1986, 1996, originally published 1951 in French), pp. 311–312 online.
Charles J. Adamec, "Genu, genus," Classical Philology 15 (1920), p. 199 online; J.G. Frazer, Pausanias's Description of Greece (London, 1913), vol. 4, p. 436 online; Marcel Le Glay, "Remarques sur la notion de Salus dans la religion romaine," La soteriologia dei culti orientali nell' imperio romano: Études préliminaires au religions orientales dans l'empire romain, Colloquio internazionale Roma, 1979 (Brill, 1982), p. 442 online.
Lucinam Nixosque pares, Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.294; M.N. Tod and A.J.B. Wace, A Catalogue of the Sparta Museum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), p. 117 online.
Festus: Nixi Di appellantur tria signa in Capitolio ante cellam Minervae genibus nixibus, velut praesidentes parentium nixibus. Quae signa sunt qui memoriae prodiderint Antiocho rege Syriae superato M'. Acilium subtracta a populo Romano adportasse, atque ubi sunt posuisse. Etiam qui capta Corintho advecta huc, quae ibi subiecta fuerint mensae. Latin text as presented by G. Sauron, "Documents pour l'exégèse de la mégalographie dionysiaque de Pompeii," in Ercolano, 1738–1988: 250 anni di ricerca archeologica («L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 1993), p. 358 online.
W.W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (Oxford University Press, 1912, reprinted 2002), vol. 2, p. 48 online; Frazer, Pausanias's Description of Greece, p. 436.
The idea is that kneeling should tilt the uterus forward and align it with the cervix. For an English translation of the relevant passage, see Soranus' Gynecology, translated by Owsei Temkin (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), p. 184 online. See also p. 177 on lordosis and obesity in pregnancy.
The name is far less likely to have come from Tarentum in Apulia; Erich S. Gruen, "Poetry and Politics: The Beginnings of Latin Literature," in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Brill, 1990), p. 83, note 17 online; Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford University Press, 1995), devotes a chapter to the meaning of tarentum.
For instance, variations in Plautus, Rudens 695; Vergil, Aeneid 3.607; Tibullus 1.2.85f.; Apuleius, the Cupid and Psyche tale, Metamorphoses 6.3. See Sauron, "Documents pour l'exégèse de la mégalographie dionysiaque de Pompeii," p. 358; R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge University Press, 1951, 2000), p. 185 online.
Beth Severy, Augustus and the Family at the Birth of the Roman Empire (Routledge, 2003), p. 58 online.
