A visual spectacle may virtually act as a potion. This is the view of a physician named Theodorus Priscianus. He flourished in the fourth century A.D., and was the author of a medical handbook, still extant, in which he gives realistic advice for a cure of incapacity. Let the patient, he counsels, in Book 2, be surrounded by beautiful girls or boys. Also, give him books to read that arouse lust and in which love stories are insinuatingly treated.
Virtually, such treatment approximates a visual love-potion.
Physical therapy may be as affective as a potion. Hence local massage, in the inguinal area, was often performed as an aid in inducing virility. This was a highly popular manipulation. It is alluded to in ancient writers, and particularly so in the Greek comic poet Aristophanes. Petronius, too, the author of the Latin novel entitled the Satyricon, describes such an operation performed by an old beldam on one of the characters, named Encolpius.
Blood has sinister and calamitous implications: yet it is also associated with erotic deviations. Blood, the mere visual presentation of it, may produce strong amatory symptoms. The public brothels in ancient Rome, for instance, were established over the Circus in which gladiatorial contests were on view. The sight of the violent scenes enacted in these conflicts manifestly bestirred the blood lust, and equally the sexual urge of the masses of spectators, who subsequently thronged the lupanaria. Similarly, in Spain, brothels were built in close proximity to the bull-rings. There was, here too, a manifest association between the frenzy of the tauromachia and the resultant lustful esurgence among the spectators.
Again, the perversion of flagellation involves blood. The resultant flow of blood, after whippings and lashings had been inflicted upon more or less willing victims by perverts and sadists, produced extraordinary erotic excitations. Scenes of this type are the stock in trade of the novelists the Marquis de Sade and Sacher-Masoch.
Describing an amorous intrigue with the maid Fotis, Lucius, the protagonist of the Metamorphoses, Apuleius’ Roman novel, adds, in respect of the effect of wine;