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

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We saw many persons of both sexes, at work in the cells, so much every one of them seemed to have taken satyrion.

In a more general direction, important testimonies to manipulative and mechanistic means of arousing vigor are the references in Petronius, particularly the episode involving Quartilla:

Quartilla came up to me to cure me of the ague, but finding her self disappointed, flew off in a rage, and returning in a little while, told us, there were certain persons unknown, had a design upon us, and therefore commanded to remove us into a noble palace.

Here all our courage fail’d us, and nothing but certain death seem’d to appear before us.

When I began, “If, madam, you design to be more severe with us, be yet so kind as to dispatch it quickly; for whate’er our offence be, it is not so heinous that we ought to be rack’d to death for it”: Upon which her woman, whose name was Psyche, spread a coverlet on the floor. Sollicitavit inguina mea mille iam mortibus frigida. Ascyltos muffled his head in his coat, as having had a hint given him, how dangerous it was to take notice of what did not concern him: In the mean time Psyche took off her garters, and with one of them bound my feet, and with the other my hands.