Astrological and magic techniques contributed to the already degenerate Romans of the Empire. Old hags practiced procuring and other dubious trades. They prepared drugs and potions and salves for beauty and passion and poisoning. In time, these practices assumed a mysterious aura. They absorbed the secret cults of the Nile and the Ganges and the Euphrates. Some of the practitioners were actually reputable, dignified, eagerly sought after by women. Lucian describes a certain Alexander of Abonuteichos—stately, with well-trimmed beard, penetrating look, modulated voice. He wore a wig of flowing locks. He was dressed in a white and purple tunic, and a white cloak, and in his hand he carried a scythe.
CHAPTER IV
ORIENT
Ancient Hindu literature treats in startling detail every conceivable aspect of erotic manifestations. There are guides and manuals and elaborate treatises and monographs devoted to particular topics: to coital procedures, to male and female characteristics and tendencies, to strange stimuli, and to amatory potions and philtres. Of all these manuals possibly the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Malanaga, who is presumed to belong in the fourth century A.D., is the best known. It is, in fact, the most widely disseminated treatise on all phases of erotic practices.
The Kama Sutra furnishes specific information on the techniques of sexual relationships, the virtues and defects of women, the degrees of sensuality among both men and women, the criteria of beauty and attractiveness, the most effective devices in the matter of dress and hair arrangement, foods and cosmetics, perfumes, and the symbolic language of love.
It also stresses potions, their component elements, their preparation, and the type of philtres that are most favorable to the erotic sensibilities.
The Hindu manuals also make special classifications of women according to the degree and durability of their erotic sensations, their physical appearance, and the osphresiological conditions arising from the pudenda muliebria. Nothing is secretive, nothing is taboo. The primary and universal activity, it is assumed, necessitates wide and deep and exact and revelatory knowledge, so that the man or woman may function to the fullest and most complete extent.
The male is also subjected to analysis, in an amatory direction, according to physiological and erotic categories. The most personal, the most intimate, the most normally cryptic and unspoken matters are subjected to forthright description and comment. For example, one subject discussed with the utmost candor is the intensity of the male erotic potential and his general reactions to sexual conjugation.
Embraces and their varieties of erotic significance, postures and degrees of proximity and physiological contiguity come under observation and exposition. Especially the thirteen types of kissing, each in its own way symptomatic of the intensity of the passion. The art of kissing was itself so important in both ancient classical and Asiatic eroticism that, in the Middle Ages, it reached a literary climax. Johannes Secundus, a Dutch scholar, wrote a passionate amatory sequence of Latin poems entitled Basia, Kisses, in which he exceeded the lyrical surge and sway and the pulsating exultation of the Roman poet Catullus.
In the course of his surgical and medical experiences in various countries, notably in the Orient, Dr. Jacobus X, the French army surgeon who is the author of a voluminous corpus of anthropological matter entitled Untrodden Fields of Anthropology (2 volumes. Paris: Published by Charles Carrington: 2nd. edition, 1898), the author gathered a great deal of unique and miscellaneous and little known information on sexual practices. In discussing potions, he dwells on cubeb pepper, a popular item in the love philtres of the East.