We would eftsoones refresh our wearinesse and provoke our pleasure, and renew our venery by drinking of wine.
The primary, uncomplicated fact of life is its continuity through physiological relationships. But on this basis man has erected and developed ponderous and multiple ramifications of such functional associations, involving more than the primary purpose and activity of procreation. He has, in addition, an instinctual urge toward affection, love, desire, and lust. And these emotional manifestations have, in the course of time, become refined or coarsened or diverted into abnormal channels. In his efforts to achieve love or desire or lust and its consummations, he has exposed himself to the natural progressive degradation and impairment of his physiological capacities: and he has no less abused, weakened, or destroyed this force or energy.
Hence his febrile search for some undefined amelioration of his condition or some method or contrivance, however insecure, unwarranted, or barbaric, for recovering his instinctual erotic sensuality.
Gullibly and trustingly man has proceeded in this quest to restore the erosions and defects consequent on time and excess. What direction does this quest take? It is ubiquitous. It leaves no stone unturned, no faint possibility untested. It is prepared to make a trial of every novel fantasy, or any inspired scheme, any exploded myth, or every remote and fragile clue. In temples dedicated for the purpose he will repeat cryptic supplications to unknown, foreign, forbidding gods. Or he assumes on his person, in constant hope, periapts and amulets, inscribed with awesome symbols, gateways to the Mysteries. There arise occasions when he urgently consults aged and knowledgeable enchantresses, who reputedly possess the secrets of life and love. Or he is encouraged to drink certain fertilizing waters, drawn from mystic founts, from underground rivers. He may make silent prayers at wishing wells. Appeals to the deities associated with love or frantic lust, with prostitution and sexual deviations are his constant practices, in all countries, in Boeotia as well as in Bactria, in Egypt no less than in Mesopotamia.
Erotic stimuli sometimes sprang from the human figure itself, without the intrusion of contrived philtres or other adventitious aids. The Greeks, in particular, in drama and comedy, in poetry and sculpture, lavished endless praise on the seductiveness of various areas of the feminine person. The callipygian Greek girl was the subject of exultant erotic paeans. Contests were held in which callipygian rivals vied for public recognition and acclamation. There was no sense of shamefulness, no prudish primness, and, equally, there was no stimulated prurience, for beauty per se had no restrictions, no taboos, no amorality attached to it.
The theme of callipygia, in fact, runs through Greek life. The encyclopedist Athenaeus mentions two young country girls whose attractions in marriage rested with their callipygian forms. The citizens actually called these women callipygoi. Even Aphrodite, in her temple at Syracuse, was called Aphrodite Kallipygos. In one of the lively, revealing letters of Alciphron, two girls, Myrrhine and Thryallis, dispute over their own personal charms in this respect, while a number of poems, including one in the Greek anthology, laud the same area.
Sculptors and poets dwelt with an appreciative eye, free from personal lustfulness, on the rhythmic flow and alluring harmony of hip and thigh, of neck and ankles. The female breasts were figuratively described as apples, or the fruit of the strawberry tree. In the pastoral poet Theocritus, who belongs in the third century B.C. a young lover, Daphnis, speaks of the heaving apples of his girl friend.
There is the story of the famous Athenian courtesan Phryne, who was condemned to death in a court of law. Her life was saved, however, when her counsel, who was also her lover, Hyperides, exposed her beautiful bosom before the overwhelmed judges.
The term potion was in itself so closely associated with amatory proficiency or, on occasion, as a medicinal remedy for some other physiological condition, that its use was rarely questioned. The potion, however, might be deadly and might be concocted as a rapid means for the elimination of a rival, or a husband, or some enemy. Such a situation occurs in Book 10 of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: