Читать книгу Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores онлайн

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Still another species of satyrion was erithraicon. This plant had a peculiar virtue. The mere holding of it, or carrying it, in the hand, occasioned a lustful desire. This fact is attested by Pliny, in his Natural History, in Book 26, 96 and 98, as well as by Dioscorides in his Materia Medica 3. 134. When the libido became too intense, lettuce was eaten to mitigate the effect, to allay the erotic provocation.

Greek mythology abounds in references to satyrion as an efficacious stimulant. The prowess of Hercules, the lusty warrior, as the Roman Petronius, Arbiter Elegantiarum, calls him, is attested in an amatory sense by the story of his visit to a certain Thespius. Entertained lavishly as a guest, Hercules, fortified by satyrion, repaid the host’s entertainment by having intercourse with all fifty daughters of Thespius.

In Roman times the effectiveness of the root in arousing erotic excitation was common knowledge. Petronius, the voluptuary attached to the court of the Emperor Nero and the author of the remarkable picaresque novel entitled the Satyricon, alludes to the matter. One of his characters, describing the frenzied activities in a brothel, remarks: