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

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In Greece, the phallus was so pervasive as a genesiac symbol in every phase of daily life, that there were loaves baked in phallic form. These loaves were known, for another erotic reason, as olisbokolices.

Drillopotae were glass vessels in phallic form. They were used, in ancient Rome, as drinking cups: and thus were an added erotic reminder at banquets and similar gatherings.

In Roman antiquity the color yellow was associated with prostitutes, and was a symbol of their profession. Yellow still retained this significance in the Central European countries in later ages. In Tsarist Russia, the yellow ticket was the official prostitute’s occupational token. Alexander Kuprin’s Yama the Pit describes the situation in a vivid and grim narrative.

Figurae Veneris is a Latin expression meaning positions of Venus. This phrase refers to the range of sexual positions. The Greeks were familiar with some seventy such permutations and manipulations. There were the symplegma and the catena, which involved more than two partners, and the dodekamechanon. Hesychius the Greek lexicographer, Philaenis, and, among the Romans, the poet Martial mention these contortions. In the Middle Ages, the licentious poet Pietro Aretino produced a poetic commentary on the entire extent of erotic possibilities.