CHAPTER VIII
INGREDIENTS OF POTIONS. RECIPES. ANECDOTES.
Ingredients
What were the elements that, in combination, constituted the potion? Was there a formal, hieratic prescription for its composition, faithfully followed, scrupulously administered, uniformly conclusive? Or was it a more or less haphazard matter of collecting various essences and grasses, roots and drugs and far-sought items, and then hopefully thrusting them upon the tremulous suppliant, the desperate lover, the urgent princeling or vagrant poet? The ancients, both in the Mediterranean area and in the far-flung Asian territories, used virtually the same species of ingredients, the same or analogous roots and extracts, enwrapped, to strengthen the efficacy, in goetic chants, in awesome invocations, supplications, persistent pleas, and even menaces.
Sometimes the ingredients were abominable and repulsive in character, for all growing and living things were grist to the occultist’s mill. Animal and human excreta and genitalia were frequently brought under contribution. Not rarely, exotic spices were garnered: or leaves from trees that grew in distant regions: or objects otherwise difficult to obtain? such as the hair, or nail parings, or even more intimate and less mentionable items from the human body. The traditions associated with the ingredients were manifestly read and studied and pondered over and memorized through the ages, and subsequently transmitted to later centuries. So that by the Middle Ages there had been accumulated an immense reservoir of available constituents: human and animal matter, herbs, genitalia, liquefied elements, excrement of ox and pig, of wolf, goat, dog, and goose, of sheep, hen, mice, pigeon, and cow. To ensure the validity of the potion, there would be a bewitchment of the entire compound, accompanied by certain formal rituals. Formulas would be inscribed on certain phials and objects. Frog’s bones were popular in this regard. The mandrake, that mystic root that was associated with sinister human origins and characteristics, the plant that was reputedly endowed with male and female properties, was a popular ingredient in the love potion. Bryony was long used for the purpose, and, in later days, tobacco as well. Entrails of animals were no rarity. The more repellent the object, the more salacious and lewd and priapic would be the effect. For the gasping, excited recipient, nothing was too foul, nothing too obnoxious, nothing too horrendous. What did matter was its aphrodisiac value. Hence the powdered heart of a roasted humming bird had its potency. Or the liver of a sparrow. The kidney of a hare was a frequent addition to the sum total of decayed and decaying tissue. Or the womb of a swallow, that itself required minute preparation, was a prompt aid. Human blood came into the picture, and the human heart and the fingers, as well as viscera, excrement, and urine, brain and skin and marrow. Even the Roman poets give a literary shudder at the mention, and in the medieval chroniclers and encyclopedists there is equally a sense of repulsion yet attraction. For love and passion generated from death and offal, and desire sprang from decay. Sappho, that ancient Greek poetess of Lesbos, knew the supremacy of this passion. She called Aphrodite deathless, because love and life are co-eval and co-existent. The sweetest thing of all, she declares in one of her pieces, is to find one’s lover. Ages later, Titus Lucretius Carus, the Roman Epicurean poet who, in the first century B.C., produced that remarkable, profound epic, De Rerum Natura, The Nature of Things, begins his poem with an invocation to fostering Venus, the delight of men and of gods.
The Orient, permeated by the same passions, had its own range of contributory aphrodisiac elements. Betel-nut, chewed and blood-red, was commonly a base for the philtre. Ambergris, touched with something mystic and elusive, played its creative, kinetic part. Some concoctions had more earthy associations: for instance, the brains of a hoopee, pounded into a cake, and devoured with hopeful zest. Or the wicks of lamps were inscribed with thaumaturgic invocations and then burned to ensure their amatory efficacy.
Despite the motivating force of love, it was, in some instances, an object of dread. For it was a widely disruptive agent, involving elements and features dangerous to the succumbing man and also to man’s supremacy in his masculine context, his virile world. Hence in Euripides’ tragedy Medea the chorus, speaking for the heroine, chants:
When in excess and past all limits Love doth come, he brings not glory or repute to man; but if the Cyprian queen in moderate might approach, no goddess is so full of charm as she. Never, O never, lady mine, discharge at me from thy golden bow a shaft invincible, in passion’s venom dipped.
Again, in confirmation of this view of passion, in Sophocles’ Antigone the tragic and cataclysmic impact of love is bewailed by the murmurous chorus:
Love unconquered in the fight, Love, who makest havoc of wealth, who keepest thy vigil on the soft cheek of a maiden; thou roamest over the sea, and among the homes of dwellers in the wilds; no immortal can escape thee, nor any among men whose life is for a day; and he to whom thou hast come is mad.
Thessaly, a region in northern Greece, was anciently known for sorcery and magic potencies. It was associated with witches and mystic practices, and its reputation for goety was so widespread, so deeply embedded in the region, that it continued far down into the Roman Imperial age.
At night, the dead had to be guarded with great care, as these witches were in the habit of tearing off pieces and shreds of flesh from the corpse, and using them in concocting their potions.
Necromancy, the multiple phases of the black arts, were normally believed to have come from Thessaly or to have found their sources there. Thessaly, in fact, is, throughout ancient Greek literature, the fountain-head of magic. The Greek tragic poet Sophocles, for instance, and, later, the comic writer Menander allude to Thessalian magicians.
The Thessalian witch became almost a stock character, in bucolic poetry, in the drama, in legend. She is the supreme adept, and is so acknowledged. Among the later Romans, in particular, her stature is established. The elegiac poets Tibullus and Propertius, as well as Ovid, Vergil, Horace, and Lucan cite her for her ubiquity, her constant participation in furtive manoeuvres, her intimacy with the foul and obscene and malevolent forces of the cosmos.
The Thessalian witch had notable skill in the selection and preparation of love potions. One of the most effective elements in such philtres was catancy, a plant often mentioned in this connection. It should here be observed that many factors in the composition of the potion are no longer completely identifiable. Organic matter of course has universal denotations: but obscure herbs, roots, spices, drugs belonged to a secretive traditional pharmacopoeia that is no longer available in its original intact form.
In the obscure depths and the furtive sinuosities of folk traditions and transmitted superstitions and rites and formulas that succeeding generations accepted and cherished, the sex motif was always pervasive, unalterably dominant. The quest for amatory power, for refreshment and recovery of the physiological apparatus, was uniformly directed to the tenebrous forces, the prescriptions and suggestions that would arouse the erotic faculties and effect consummation of the passions of love or affection or desire.
In the slow progression of time this oral corpus of knowledge and these secretive means of amorous enchantment and invigorating processes were coordinated. They became imprinted in the written word. They were now established, durable. These compilations, that were in essence erotic handbooks, were primarily intended for all the love-sick, the yearning youth, the disappointed and effete libertine, the persistent aged debauchee, the warped, distorted, and maleficent pursuers of Eros in his most naked identity, of Priapus exultant and self-perpetuating. Nor was this search for the remedial elixir delimited by time or circumstances. It has, on the contrary, been continuous, and has flowed down from shadowy ancientness through the complexities of the Middle Ages, the tumultuous era of the Renaissance, which made life and letters complementary concomitants, down into these very present days, when the search is no less unending, in the laboratories, in mystic and pseudo-mystic cults, in fantastic devices in the Chinese hinterland, in the steaming Congo, in Haiti and in scattered and sundered islands in the Pacific wastes.
In the misty ages, the formula for recovering or stimulating sexual vigor was comparatively simple. In Accadian and Chaldean, in Hittite and Sumerian rituals there was the spell, the enchantment involving mystic terms, a sacred logos, a philtre of recognized potency, a particular herb or food enwrapped in entreaty and threats and injunctions to the impalpable controlling forces and agencies.
Under the impact and influence of the esoteric science of the lands of Asia Minor and of Egypt, the prescriptions were extended, and assumed a variety of forms and ultimately were collected and embodied in corpora of relevant matter, destined for consultation, for succeeding ages.
Most of this matter, inscribed on papyrus, dates in the fourth century A.D., and is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris.
A characteristic prescription gives directions for winning and ensuring a girl’s love. Hecate is the motivating force: Hecate, the triple goddess, the sorceress, equated with the moon-goddess Selene, with Artemis, and with Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld. The goddess Hecate then is invoked with a plea: to ensnare the girl’s love by means of torture, so that she will ultimately succumb to the urgencies of the panting lover.
Once the ingredients are accumulated, the next step is for the pleading lover to extol the effectiveness of the recipe. In the ancient Greek magic papyri, and in papyri containing particulars of love-charms, the offering itself is described in detail and its virtues are enumerated. Scrupulous adherence to the method of administering or treating the charm is enjoined. There is now the supplicative prayer to be intoned, while incense is sprinkled upon the sacrificial flames. Warnings are uttered, precautions are postulated, to prevent anything untoward from affecting the suppliant himself and bringing down upon his head any malefic consequences. Directions are given for preparations of the potion. Prayers and chants to the goddess Actiophis follow. In her semi-oriental designation the goddess is again invoked: Actiophis Ereschigal Nebutosualethi Phorphorbasa Tragiammon. Emphasis is placed on wresting the girl into a state of unconditional passion.
In mythological contexts, certain divinities, such as Hecate, certain seers and warlocks, sorceresses and thaumaturgic adepts, are associated with rejuvenative powers. The ancient witch Medea belongs in this category. She is foremost in her capacity for restoring masculine virility and potency by means of her goetic techniques, her magical charms, potions, and incantations.
Medea, the cunning one, as her Greek designation indicates etymologically, is the universal witch par excellence. She can renew the youthful vigor of Aeson by boiling him in herbs endowed with special virtues. Thus she is described by the Roman poet Ovid in Book 7 of the Metamorphoses. She can re-create Aegeus, the aged king of Athens, and bestow virility on him by virtue of her secret philtres. In Medea, the tragic drama of the Greek poet Euripides, she makes such an assertion and a promise:
Medea: I am undone, and more than that, am banished from the land.
Aegeus: By whom? fresh woe this word of mine unfolds.
Medea: Creon drives me forth in exile from Corinth.
Aegeus: Doth Jason allow it? This too I blame him for.
Medea: Not in words, but he will not stand out against it. O, I implore thee by this beard and by thy knees, in suppliant posture, pity, O pity my sorrows; do not see me cast forth forlorn, but receive me in thy country, to a seat within thy halls. So may thy wish by heaven’s grace be crowned with a full harvest of offspring, and may thy life close in happiness! Thou knowest not the rare good luck thou findest here, for I will make thy childlessness to cease and cause thee to beget fair issue; so potent are the spells I know.
Hedylus was a Greek epigrammatist of the third century B.C. In one of his pieces a girl makes her confession that she was overcome and succumbed to wine and words of love. The wine, in fact, was the operative potion.
Another Greek epigrammatist, chanting of love and women, warns that man’s origin is lust itself.
The lyric poet Anacreon, who was born c. 570 B.C., suggests the attendant circumstances favorable to amatory exercise:
Among the vast productions of the ancients, that included poetry and memoirs, biographies and chronicles, essays and dialogues, there are anecdotes, references of various kinds, subtle hints and mere verbal references to domestic or social life, from which we may glean items that are relevant to our present purpose.
This is the case with Plutarch, the Greek philosopher and biographer. He had a long, productive span of life, extending from c. 46 A.D. to 120 A.D. Primarily he is a biographer, and he is commonly so known. But he also produced a series of literary, political, religious, and ethical studies that are comprehensively included under the heading of Moralia.
One of these pieces consists of marriage precepts, Advice to Bride and Bridegroom: Polianus and Eurydice. It is, as Plutarch himself states, a compendium of marital conduct, and is packed with high ethical counsel, sober injunctions, sprinkled and reinforced with pertinent comments, apothegms, and anecdotes. Yet the matter of amorous stimuli is confronted straightforwardly and adroitly. The bride, Plutarch enjoins, should, according to the wise old statesman Solon, nibble a quince before getting into bed. It was an old tradition that quince, and particularly quince jelly, exercised erotic effects. Plutarch continues:
Fishing with poison is a quick way to catch fish and an easy method of taking them, but it makes the fish inedible and bad. In the same way women who artfully employ love-potions and magic spells upon their husbands, and gain the mastery over them through pleasure, find themselves consorts of dull-willed, degenerate fools. The men bewitched by Circe were of no service to her, nor did she make the least use of them after they had been changed into swine and asses.
Evidently the normal procedure in Plutarch’s day was to employ the love-potion without hesitation. It must have been highly popular, a regular instrument of amorous stimulation. Further, in addition to sexual excitation, the potion manifestly induced other and less acceptable results, and it also intruded on normal physiological and emotional conditions. It was, in short, a malefic instrument. The most wholesome advice, then, that Plutarch could now offer was to shun such adventitious amatory aids, to rely primarily on the inherent amorousness of the two marrying partners.
In medieval Spain, in the thirteenth century, a certain Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, published a book entitled Book of Good Love. Good love, that is, buen amor, is spiritual love, divine love. Loco amor is the frenzied, carnal love of women that St. Thomas Aquinas terms amor naturalis.
Ruiz, familiar with the concept and practices of both types of love, refers to the large body of erotic stimulants, that the Arabs introduced into Europe. Among such potions and aphrodisiacs were: citrus fruits, ginger, cloves, cummin seeds, and carrots.
The actual composition of love-potions and analogous amatory fortifiers is not known in each case in specific detail. Erotologists, historians of ethnic mores, chroniclers, authors of amatory manuals, and writers on similar topics make frequent casual references to the fact of the potion itself, with the implication that the individual ingredients, their relationship to each other, the sources of supply, and the method of compounding them into one medicament are either so well established in public knowledge as to dispense with the enumeration of the component elements, or are merely in the nature of traditional information, transmitted to the reader without further comment, without the personal or necessary intrusion of the writer.
Despite such strictures, however, there remains a sufficiently substantial corpus of knowledge relative both to the potion as such and to the elements of such a compound elixir.
An immediate, rational, and fundamental explanation of the dearth of details about the potion is that the draught had a high economic value. The possessor of the mysterious ingredients collected and compounded and distilled for monetary gain. The selling of potions was a lucrative business: in the Middle Ages it was a flourishing industry, an indispensable production. And thus it was to the extreme advantage of the dispenser of the amatory cup to guard and retain the secret recipes with the most scrupulous care.
Perfumes and spices and aromatic roots were often included in the composition of philtres, to give a particular fragrance to the unguent or medicament. This was usually the case among the Romans, who often, in large and luxurious families, had special laboratories where the essences were distilled. These essences contained, among other ingredients, myrrh, cinnamon, marjoram, or spikenard.
Some philtres consisted of testicular and related matter, as: the sperm of deer and other animals, and even menstrual blood. The belief was that an intimate causal relationship existed between the elements of the philtre and the anticipated sexual implications.
One of the basic ingredients for a compound conducive to amatory vigor is mastic, recurrently recommended in the Arab manuals. Mastic is a gum or resin used nowadays in the manufacture of varnish. In some countries bordering the Mediterranean, particularly in Greece and Turkey, mastic is used to flavor a liquor.
The mastic shrub is an evergreen, multiple-branched, and indigenous to the Greek island of Chios. In the Orient mastic has been used as a kind of chewing gum. The fruit itself is a red berry. This fruit, crushed and pounded and mixed with honey, produces a drink that is reputed to be of great amatory potency.
Garlic, too, is an amatory stimulant, and has been so used in composition. It is repeatedly included in the enumeration of aphrodisiac elements, in both Western and Oriental erotic manuals. Among the aboriginal Ainu of Northern Japan, garlic has the same gastronomic status as nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods, among the ancient Greeks.
Similarly with syrup of vinegar, and nutmeg, with cardamom, which, in a compound of onions, ginger, cinnamon and peas, is reputed to be particularly efficacious in Arab countries. Peppers, both white and red varieties, are credited with arousing intense sexual inclinations.
In the Arab manuals laurel-seeds are frequently mentioned: Indian cachou, cloves, gilly-flower. Instructions are given for pounding various items together into some consistency, then liquefying the compound with a broth, or honey, or goat’s milk.
In all ages, alcohol has appealed to men for its aphrodisiac possibilities. In moderate amounts, it has been at various times and in varied circumstances commended as a stimulant. In excessive doses, however, it appears to act as a decided anaphrodisiac.
The French King Louis XIV, whose reign was marked by the utmost sexual liberties, was accustomed to encourage his amatory inclinations with a drink of alcohol sweetened with sugar.
Throughout the European countries, there was a folk tradition that required a bride and a bridegroom to consume cakes steeped in alcohol and sugar, to ensure nuptial consummation.
According to some authorities, small doses of spirits depress the higher centres of the brain and thus release emotional inhibitions.
Biblical literature is full of allusions to alcoholic drinks and spirits, and to their frequent use, but uniformly with the proviso of due moderation.
A relevant allusion occurs in Romans 14.21:
Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.
Since fish contain phosphorus and other elements highly productive in amatory inducements, brews and soups and chowders compounded of fish will equally contribute to aid energizing vigor.
Curries and sauces may act as excitants and hence be provocative, though by indirect means, of amatory urgencies.
The consumption of garlic, in any considerable quantity, may readily and normally repel intimate contacts. But in antiquity, and through the middle centuries, it was widely in use as a pronounced aphrodisiac. This was and still is especially so in the countries of the Mediterranean littoral. In a fluid form, as distilled oil of garlic, it appears that it has its use also, but with less invigorating effect.
Anise, which flourishes in the Eastern Mediterranean region, is used at the present time for gastronomic purposes. But it was also reputed to increase amatory excitation.
In the cyclic search for erotic reinforcements, the most horrific ingredients and means have been utilized. Even the human body. One medieval compound, for instance, consisted of the flesh of a human corpse, in a putrefied condition, along with ovaries and testes, both human and animal, soaked in alcohol.
The Marquis de Sade, author of Justine, Les 120 Journées de Sodome, and other novels dealing with sexual orgies and perversions, presents a character called Minski, a giant, who is himself anthropophagous and who eulogizes the consumption of human flesh, dwelling with inhuman relish on the texture, the taste, the continuous appeal of the human body in a sexual sense:
Minski’s potency is such that, at the age of forty-five, his faculty for lubricity is able to induce in one evening ten manifestations. He admits that this physiological energy is largely due to the quantity of human flesh that he consumes. He advises this same regimen to those who would like to triple their capacity, apart from the strength and health and vigor that he will acquire through this diet. Once human flesh is tasted, one will disdain all other foods. No animal meat, no fish can compare with human flesh. Once the initial repugnance is overcome, one can never have enough of it.
That is the substance of Minski’s argumentation. In this century, William Seabrook, the American writer who adventured in West Africa, the Caribbean Islands, and Arabia, himself describes the eating of human flesh in one of his personal narratives.
In the opinion of the medieval Italian physician Johannes Benedict Sinibaldus, author of the Geneanthropoeia, a compound of dried black ants was a frequent means of creating amatory desire. The ants were soaked in oil and stored for use in a glass jar.
Incense, particularly in the Orient, has immemorially been considered a priapic stimulant. In Biblical literature, in Exodus, the Lord gives directions for the preparation of a sacred, divine incense. It is to be composed of onycha and galbanum, stacte, pure frankincense, and spices: the whole to be reduced to a fine powder.
The most potent philtre or potion is the instinctive, natural, physiological desire. This maxim has been postulated by many erotologists and sexologists. It is forcefully so asserted by Robert Burton, the seventeenth century encyclopedist who, while searching for a clue to the cure of melancholy, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, simultaneously searched through all the chronicles, histories, and treatises of his predecessors.
Philtres, he asserts, and charms, amulets and figurines, periapts and unguents are basically unlawful means: they are, actually, the last resort in the amatory quest. Panders and bawds and the attendants on erotic provocations give some meagre aid in this respect. Beyond that, there is nothing but magic enchantments, Satanic assistance. ‘I know,’ confesses Burton, ‘that there be those that denye the devil can do any such things, and that there is no other fascination than that which comes by the eyes.’ He then quotes from Pietro Aretino, the Italian erotic poet, in relation to Lucretia’s amatory power:
Lucretia’s erotic faculty was such that she could accomplish, merely by kissing and embracing, her sole philtre, as she admitted, more than all the philosophers, astrologers, alchemists, necromancers, and witches.
Lucretia used neither potions nor herbs. With all my science, she said, I could never stir the hearts of men: only by my embraces, the warmth of my lips. I forced men to rave like wild beasts, and countless among them I drove into bestial stupefaction, with the result that they adored me and my love like an idol.
In the weird and confused history of human mores, there are noteworthy episodes and anecdotes, some apocryphal and traditional, others warranted by authenticity and verifiable historicity, relating to amatory experiences and their effects. Many of such anecdotes, prevalent in Oriental and classical literature, describe the amazing consequences of the consumption of love-potions and similar concoctions.
There is the story of the wayward and untrustworthy but brilliant Alcibiades, the fifth century B.C. political leader in Greece. His amorous bouts, his erotic intrigues, were so frequent, so forceful, and so indiscriminate that, as personal insignia, he bore the design of Eros, the god of love and son of Aphrodite. Eros was, in this instance, depicted as hurling lightning bolts. Of this same Alcibiades the tale ran, according to a later chronicler, that as a young man Alcibiades had the faculty of diverting wives from their husbands.
Alcohol, like wine, in moderation, has regularly been used as an amatory complement. King Louis XIV of France, for instance, was accustomed to take alcohol, with the addition of sugar, to arouse his jaded sensuality.
Brides and bridegrooms, too, in medieval Europe, followed a folk custom of eating a cake dipped in alcohol and sugar.
The embattled women known anciently as Amazons, on taking prisoners in battle, broke the captives’ arms or legs. The belief was that, by the deprivation of a limb, the erotic functions of the captive would correspondingly be strengthened. One of the Amazon queens, Antiara by name, was the author of a kind of apothegm, that the lame best performed the amatory act.
Certain foods have urgent amatory reactions. Brillat-Savarin, the arch gourmet who is the author of The Physiology of Taste, a standard gastronomic classic, relates that as a result of a repast that included truffles and game, erotic manifestations among the guests were immediate and evident.
Although the mandrake root involved amatory performances, it was often used for analgesic effects. Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who ruled in the fifth century A.D., used to order mandrake to be inserted in wine, and the drink to be administered to victims doomed to crucifixion.
In order to stimulate him doubly, both visually and fluidly, Anaxarchus devised a suitable diversion. He was a fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher, who was a friend of Alexander the Great, accompanying him on his Eastern expeditions. At the usual Greek symposium, which included drinking, entertainment, and discussion on various themes, Anaxarchus had his wine poured out for him by a young and beautiful female attendant, in puris naturalibus.
In classical antiquity, apples were associated with amatory connotations. Apples were regularly exchanged as gifts among lovers. This custom is mentioned by the Roman elegiac poet Catullus, and by Vergil in the Eclogues: Galatea is after me with an apple. Again:
Propertius, the elegiac poet, similarly writes:
In the story of Ala-al Din abu-al, in the corpus of The Arabian Nights, there is an incident that relates how a druggist prepared a love-potion. He bought from a vendor of hashish two ounces of concentrated Roumi opium, and equal parts of cinnamon, Chinese cubebs, cardamoms, cloves, ginger, and mountain shiek—which is a lizard with aphrodisiac properties, and white pepper. After pounding these varied ingredients together, he boiled them in sweet olive oil, adding three ounces of male frankincense and a cup of coriander seed. The mixture was then macerated, and made into an electuary with bee-honey. The directions given by the druggist were as follows: After a dinner of house pigeon and mutton, well spiced, take a spoonful of this electuary, wash it down with sherbet of rose conserve, and await results.
King Henry IV of France, like other Gallic rulers, had pronounced erotic tendencies, resulting in the possession of many mistresses. On every occasion, before confronting one of them, he fortified his system with a glass of armagnac, a brandy distilled from wine.
An ancient Classical warning relating to the powerful dominance of love is contained in the tragic story of Arsinoe. Daughter of the King of Cyprus, she rejected her lover Arceophon. In a fit of dejection, he committed suicide. But Arsinoe was punished for her disdain. She was turned into stone by Aphrodite herself.
Certain animals, in classical and Oriental mythology, were associated with erotic symbolism. This was the case with the stag, the ass, the bull, the camel, the deer, the mare. During a festival in honor of Dionysus, god of wine and in general of fertility, Priapus, the god who represented the active male principle, was on the point of exercising his potency with the nymph Lotis. At the crucial moment, however, an ass brayed, and saved Lotis. As a consequence, the ass was doomed to become a sacrificial victim to Priapus.
Women were more rarely involved in experimenting with invigorating agents. One woman, however, has gained historical notoriety and infamy in this respect. She was the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a seventeenth century Hungarian. In her passion for recovering her youthful energy, she was said to have strangled some eighty peasant girls and to have bathed in their blood. Retribution overtook her in the act, and she was sentenced to imprisonment for life.
Flagellation, as an erotic symbol, was known to the ancients and was frequently practiced in the Middle Ages. Galen of Pergamum, the Greek gladiator-physician who flourished in the second century A.D. under the Roman Emperors, asserts that slave merchants used this practice in order to make their slaves more appealing to prospective buyers.
Many historical personalities have been addicted to flagellation for their own purposes. Cornelius Gallus, administrator of the Roman province of Egypt and a friend of the Roman epic poet Vergil, resorted to scourging for the purpose of amatory excitation.
One Italian, a noted libertine of the times, had the scourge soaked in vinegar, to give the lashes greater pungency.
There is a strong probability that Abelard also used flagellation. For he declares, addressing Héloise:
Verbera quandoque dabat amor non furor, gratia non ira, quae omnium unguentorum suavitatem transcenderent. Again, he reminds her of his own lascivious and libidinous ways: With threats and scourges I often compelled thee who wast, by nature, a weaker vessel, to comply, notwithstanding thy unwillingness and remonstrances.
Tamerlane, the Asiatic master of the universe, the subject too of one of Christopher Marlowe’s tremendous dramas, was both a flagellant and a monorchis.
Finally, Jean Jacques Rousseau, in his Confessions, acknowledges his condition:
I had discovered in pain, even in shame, a mixture of sensuality that left me with a greater desire, rather than a fear, of experiencing it again.
Sexual license, although restrained among the Semites, among the Greeks and Romans under certain conditions, and among other ancient nations, often broke all bounds under particular circumstances, with resultant orgies involving almost incredible erotic experiences. The Biblical episode of the Golden Calf illustrates this situation, for it was an absorption of pagan eroticism and then of pagan idolatry.
The wife of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, Faustina, became enamoured of a gladiator. The Emperor consulted the court magicians, who suggested, to diminish or eliminate her passion, that she be required to drink the gladiator’s blood. They promised that, as a consequence, Faustina would conceive a lasting hatred for her erstwhile lover. She drank the blood, and the magicians were justified in their prediction.
As an erotic performance, and, notably, as a means of curing sterility in women, certain practices associated with the phallic symbol were in force in many countries, in all ages. The women of Brittany practiced phallic rites for centuries, in order to end their sterility. In one town a public phallic figure was often the scene of a peculiar act. The women gathered some of the dust at the base of the image and swallowed it, anticipating, through this form of sympathetic symbolism, the favorable outcome of the priapic implications.
There was an old legend that King Philip of Macedon had been bewitched by a Thessalian maiden who had used philtres to effect her passionate purpose. When Olympias, the Queen, observed the girl’s beauty and breeding and deportment, she declared that these qualities alone were the philtres that had ensnared King Philip.
Antiquity consistently associated sexual performances with sacred and divine rituals. So with the ancient Canaanites. The Hebraic tribes that lived in contiguous regions adopted this practice. They cohabited with the women of Shittim, and associated with the daughters of Moab. They went even further, and did obeisance to the gods of their neighbors, particularly to the god Baal-peor. The full text of this episode appears in Numbers 25, verses 1–3.
There was so much rivalry among the mistresses of King Louis XV of France that each one resorted to the most extreme means to hold his affection, or to regain his love. Madame de Pompadour, for example, used a tincture of cantharides. Cantharides is the beetle Mylabris or Lytta Vesicatoria. The active principle of this insect is a white powder called cantharidine: used as an amatory stimulant, but dangerous, and, when taken internally, fatal to the victim.
For Madame de Pompadour, however, and for many personalities notorious in history for their ruthless determination, there was the old but still meaningful adage about fairness in war and in love.
It is a popular belief that castration eliminates all amatory inclination as well as capacity. The Greek author of the encyclopedic Banquet of the Philosophers, however, Athenaeus, states that the Medes practiced this operation with their neighbors, for the purpose of arousing lustful excitations.
Pearls, and other precious stones, were anciently credited with amatory properties. In this connection, there was a legend that Cleopatra used to dissolve pearls in vinegar. She drank this mixture to excite her erotic sensualities.
Visual aphrodisiacs are virtually amatory philtres. The girls of ancient Sparta wore a short knee-length garment that was slit high at the side. The appellation given to these girls, thigh-showers, confirmed their amorous allurement.
There was an ancient Greek named Ctesippus, who had a notorious reputation for amorous exercises. He was so libidinous that, frantic in his lustful urgencies, he sold the stones from his father’s grave to purchase the wherewithal for his pleasures.
Apuleius, the Roman philosopher and novelist, author of the romantic tale entitled The Metamorphoses, who flourished in the second century A.D., was involved in a public trial. Accused of practicing witchcraft to win a widow’s love, he was also credited with preparing love-potions for this purpose. The love-potions, it was charged, contained as ingredients highly erotic elements: spiced oysters, sea hedge-hogs, cuttlefish, and lobsters. Apuleius, however, in a speech that is still extant, defended the innocuous nature of his offerings.
Dancing among the Romans had erotic implications. According to the Roman historian Sallust, a certain Sempronia danced with more zest than a respectable matron should.
Democritus, the Greek philosopher who belongs in the fifth century B.C., was credited with the preparation of love philtres.
The tyrant of Syracuse, in Sicily, Dionysius, who belongs in the fourth century B.C., was reputed to be an extreme libertine. He once filled a house with the fragrant herb thyme, which is an erotic stimulant, and with roses in profusion. Then he invited the young women of the city to participate in an orgiastic sequence of libidinous performances.
Madame du Barry, eager to retain the royal favor at the court of France, often prepared dishes that had amatory possibilities. These dishes involved: stewed capon, terrapin soup, crawfish, ginger omelettes, shrimp soup, and sweetbreads: all of which are reputed to be salacious provocatives.
The goddess of the dawn, who in Greek mythology was Eos, rhododactylos, rosy-fingered, was a divinity endowed with such amorous intensity that, whomever she observed favorably, she carried off for her amatory purposes. The youth Tithonus, who became her husband, was so treated. So with Clitus, Orion, and Cephalus.
There were, in antiquity, lascivious dances that were sexually provocative. One such dance was the Sicinnis, during which, in addition to lewd gestures, the clothes of the dancer were stripped off. Another dance was called the Dance of the Caleabides: also the Cordax, which involved amatory exhibitionism, denudation, and erotic motions.
Herodotus, the first major Greek historian, relates an episode connected with terpsichorean performances. Cleisthenes, ruler of Sicyon, had a daughter named Agariste. Her beauty brought her numerous suitors, all unsuccessful, in turn. Finally a wealthy young Athenian, a certain Hippoclides, appeared, as a guest at a banquet given by Cleisthenes. Having imbibed too generously, Hippoclides mounted on a table, and performed several lascivious dances. Cleisthenes was so shocked by the obscene movements that he declared to Hippoclides: You have danced away your bride.
Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, was widely worshipped throughout the Hellenic territories, both on the mainland of Greece, in Asia Minor, and in the Aegean Islands. At Paphos, in Cyprus, an annual festival, attended by both men and women, was held in her honor. The ceremonials conducted during the festival included frenzied sexual performances. In token of the goddess’ favor, each member left for Aphrodite a coin, in return for which they received a phallus and some salt.
Phallic figures were a common feature in ancient religious cults. But even as late as the eighteenth century the phallus appeared in public demonstrations. At the annual three-day fair held in Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples, reproductions of a phallus were on sale. The customers were usually barren women, who, through this phallic symbolism, anticipated a favorable outcome for their sterility.
In classical mythology, erotic inducements were used even by the divinities themselves. In the Greek epic poem the Iliad, Hera, wife of the supreme deity Zeus, employs such excitants, to arouse her husband. From Aphrodite, the goddess of love, Hera secures Aphrodite’s magic girdle of love and longing ‘which subdues the hearts of all the gods and of mortal dwellers upon earth.’
Aphrodite ‘loosed from her bosom a broidered girdle, wherein are fashioned all manner of allurements; therein is love, therein is longing and dalliance—beguilement that steals the wits of the wise.’
And, however wise he might be, Zeus’ wits were thus stolen.
Although the search for amatory potency is one of the most dominant factors in human history, there are cases where the opposite effect was desired. A Roman matron, to cite one instance, named Numantina, wife of Plautius Sylvanus, was charged with having effected incapacity in her husband by magic means.
Magic played a part in medieval history too. Gregory of Tours, the sixth century A.D. churchman and historian, tells of a certain woman who was spell-bound by a number of concubines. She had become the wife of Eulatius, and had thus inspired the concubines of this Eulatius into jealous retaliation.
Again, according to the chronicles, the medieval king Theodoric was incapacitated by a magic spell.
Among the most lascivious women in all history was Catherine II of Russia. Married to the grandson of Peter the Great, and still childless, she was informed by her advisers that an heir was urgent in order to preserve the Empire.
Catherine consequently made a realistic decision. She ordered a sturgeon, and caviar, to be prepared for a banquet. Then she invited one of the officers of the Guard, named Sattikoff. The outcome of the invitation, and of the piscatory repast, was an heir to the Russian Empire.
The Emperor Saladin is concerned in a story that is pointed in confirmation of the amatory value of a fish diet. To verify the degree of continence of some holy dervishes, the Emperor invited two of them to an entertainment in his palace, at which rich food was served. Odalisques too took part in the banquet: but the dervishes succeeded in resisting the female blandishments. Saladin, however, dissatisfied with this reaction of the dervishes, and rather astonished, ordered another repast to be prepared. This consisted entirely of fish dishes. The dervishes were again invited, and the odalisques were present as entertainers. This time, Saladin was completely satisfied with his piscatory experiment, for the dervishes reacted to the odalisques as the Emperor had expected.
Francis I, King of France during the sixteenth century, was, apart from his cultural interests, noted for his erotic experiences, that he extended by provocative foods, drinks, and concoctions of various kinds designed to prolong his capacity. His mistresses were innumerable, and he died exhausted by his amatory excesses.
George IV, King of England, was a gourmet who appreciated the priapic properties of truffles. His Ministers at the Courts of Naples, Florence, and Turin were given special and unusual directions. They were to forward to the Royal Kitchen in London any truffles that they discovered to be of superior quality in delicacy or flavor or size.
King Edward VI of England was the victim, according to old historical chronicles, of bewitchment. The accused was the scholarly but tragic Lady Jane Grey, who was charged with concocting magic potions and employing amatory charms to the King’s detriment.
An ancient view on incapacity derives from Hippocrates. This famous Greek physician, who died in the same year as Socrates, in 399 B.C., attributed the prevalence of genesiac incapacity among the Scythians to the fact of their wearing breeches. He considered this sartorial custom as at least a predisposing cause: and modern views largely confirm his postulate.
Glorification of the sexual motif manifested itself on the island of Cyprus, where the birth of Aphrodite was celebrated riotously. The divine image was bathed in the sea by the women of the island: then decked with garlands. There was a session of bathing in the river by both sexes: but this performance was a mere preliminary to subsequent orgiastic licentiousness.
Brasica eruca has long been considered a provocative agent. In a medieval monastery it was grown in the garden, and used by the monks in a daily infusion. The intention was to be roused from sluggish inactivity by this stimulating beverage. The concoction, however, had such physiological effects in an amatory sense that the monks climbed the walls of the monastery and pursued their urgencies at the expense of their devotions. They transgressed both ‘their monastery walls and their vows,’ comments the medieval chronicle.
Passion knows no bounds, no formalities, no conventions. An anecdote related by the Greek philosopher and biographer Plutarch illustrates this point. King Ptolemy II, who reigned in the third century B.C., was so enamoured of his mistress Belestiche that he built a temple in her honor. Then he dedicated it and named his mistress Aphrodite Belestiche, implicitly attributing to her divine characteristics.
Mixoscopy is an erotic perversion that involves secret observation of amatory performances.
In Homer’s Greek epic, the Odyssey, there is an instance of this aberration, in the form of invited voyeurism. Hephaestus, the husband of Aphrodite, goddess of love, surprised his wife in intimacy with Ares, the war god. In revenge, he summoned all the deities to observe the sight of his wife in the amatory embrace of the god.
Another case of mixoscopy is related by Herodotus, the first major Greek historian. King Candaules, proud of his wife’s beauty, persuaded his friend Gyges to hide in the sleeping chamber and observe the Queen while she was preparing for bed. The Queen caught Gyges in the act of observation and offered him this ultimatum: Either to kill the King and become her husband and the ruler of the Kingdom of Lydia: or to die on the spot. Gyges accepted the first alternative, slew the King, married the Queen, and became King of Lydia.
The sacred nature of the phallus as a symbol was transmitted from antiquity into modern times. In the Kingdom of Naples, for instance, at Trani, a Carnival was held in which there was carried processionally a huge figure of Priapus, ithyphallically posed, and termed by the participants in the celebration Il Santo Membro, The Holy Member. An ecclesiastical ordinance banished this pagan ceremony at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
In Greek mythology Orion, represented as a hunter or a monstrous giant, was so lascivious that when Oenopion, King of Chios, was his guest, he ravished the King’s daughter. Orion’s passion drove him to attack the goddess Artemis, who punished him by sending a scorpion, that stung Orion to death. There are other versions of this myth, but basically they represent the forcefulness and pervasiveness of the erotic motif in ancient Greek life.
The Duc de Richelieu, apart from his statesmanship, had other, more unique interests. One of these concerned amatory matters. He often entertained his guests and their mistresses at repasts called petits soupers. These little suppers provided dishes so prepared as to be conducive to amatory intimacies. In addition, the guests all appeared at the meals in puris naturalibus.
Osphresiological conditions often have amatory reactions. Henry III of Navarre, for example, inspired Maria of Cleves with intense erotic inclinations on account of a perspiration-soaked handkerchief. Such was the case also with Henry IV of France and Gabrielle.
In the seventeenth century Katherine Craigie, a Scottish witch, prepared love-potions for her clients. One such petitioner was a widow who had conceived a passion for a particular person. The witch promised her an herb that would make the man exclude all other interests, all other forms of affection, except love for the widow.
Titus Lucretius Carus, the first century B.C. Roman epic poet, author of the remarkable De Rerum Natura, was, according to legend and to the statement of St. Jerome, poisoned by a love philtre administered by Lucretius’ own wife.
The Roman Emperor Caligula, according to ancient chronicles, was given a potion by his wife Caesonia. Her object was to induce in the Emperor amatory stimulation, but the drink threw him into a fit.
Even animals may be affected by amatory potions. There is an incident of a drake that belonged to a chemist. In the chemist’s house there was some water in a copper vessel that had contained phosphorus. Phosphorus has aphrodisiac properties. When the drake drank the water, it was affected with amatory tendencies that manifested themselves until its death.
When Louis XIV of France approached old age and the disintegrating physiological effects associated therewith, he still retained his libidinous inclinations. As an invigorating drink, he was advised to take a mixture of distilled spirits, orange water, and sugar.
The lewd and perverted Roman Emperor Tiberius was so eager to experience all varieties of erotic possibilities that, when he became familiar with the plant known as Sandix ceropolium, he exacted from his Germanic subjects a tribute that was partly paid in the form of the plant.
The Assyrian King Sardanapalus was known for his forthright, unrestrained mode of living. He perpetuated his memory in an inscription on a stone statue of himself: