In Roman antiquity the color yellow was associated with prostitutes, and was a symbol of their profession. Yellow still retained this significance in the Central European countries in later ages. In Tsarist Russia, the yellow ticket was the official prostitute’s occupational token. Alexander Kuprin’s Yama the Pit describes the situation in a vivid and grim narrative.
Figurae Veneris is a Latin expression meaning positions of Venus. This phrase refers to the range of sexual positions. The Greeks were familiar with some seventy such permutations and manipulations. There were the symplegma and the catena, which involved more than two partners, and the dodekamechanon. Hesychius the Greek lexicographer, Philaenis, and, among the Romans, the poet Martial mention these contortions. In the Middle Ages, the licentious poet Pietro Aretino produced a poetic commentary on the entire extent of erotic possibilities.
Among periapts and amulets that were credited with promoting erotic activity were charms in the shape of an extended hand, a wild boar, the head of a bull, astrological signs; magic formulas too, inscribed on various objects; the crux ansata, and genitalia.
Among erotic pieces that are no longer extant are certain elegiac poems, of an amatory type, attributed formerly to Plato the philosopher. An ancient Roman poet named Laevius wrote an erotopaegnion. Apuleius, the Roman philosopher and novelist, produced a number of amatory epigrams. These references, together with others that include Vergil’s Aeneid and the Georgics, are made by the Roman poet Ausonius himself.
He adds, also, that, like Martial and other poets, his life is unblemished though his verses may be dubious:
Igitur cui hic ludus noster non placet, ne legerit: aut cum legerit, obliviscatur: aut non oblitus, ignoscat.
Phallic priests were called phallobatai. Not only Priapus, but other deities as well in ancient Greece, were worshipped with erotic fervor. Among these were Phanes, Lordon, and Orthanes.