Mixoscopy is an erotic perversion that involves secret observation of amatory performances.
In Homer’s Greek epic, the Odyssey, there is an instance of this aberration, in the form of invited voyeurism. Hephaestus, the husband of Aphrodite, goddess of love, surprised his wife in intimacy with Ares, the war god. In revenge, he summoned all the deities to observe the sight of his wife in the amatory embrace of the god.
Another case of mixoscopy is related by Herodotus, the first major Greek historian. King Candaules, proud of his wife’s beauty, persuaded his friend Gyges to hide in the sleeping chamber and observe the Queen while she was preparing for bed. The Queen caught Gyges in the act of observation and offered him this ultimatum: Either to kill the King and become her husband and the ruler of the Kingdom of Lydia: or to die on the spot. Gyges accepted the first alternative, slew the King, married the Queen, and became King of Lydia.
The sacred nature of the phallus as a symbol was transmitted from antiquity into modern times. In the Kingdom of Naples, for instance, at Trani, a Carnival was held in which there was carried processionally a huge figure of Priapus, ithyphallically posed, and termed by the participants in the celebration Il Santo Membro, The Holy Member. An ecclesiastical ordinance banished this pagan ceremony at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
In Greek mythology Orion, represented as a hunter or a monstrous giant, was so lascivious that when Oenopion, King of Chios, was his guest, he ravished the King’s daughter. Orion’s passion drove him to attack the goddess Artemis, who punished him by sending a scorpion, that stung Orion to death. There are other versions of this myth, but basically they represent the forcefulness and pervasiveness of the erotic motif in ancient Greek life.
The Duc de Richelieu, apart from his statesmanship, had other, more unique interests. One of these concerned amatory matters. He often entertained his guests and their mistresses at repasts called petits soupers. These little suppers provided dishes so prepared as to be conducive to amatory intimacies. In addition, the guests all appeared at the meals in puris naturalibus.