“... naked in the light of the lantern, plied with wanton wiles and moving buttocks the horse beneath her” (Sat. II. vii, v. 50).
As to the matron spoken of v. 64 of the same satire as “never having sinned above”, no doubt this posture did not suit her. Women have not all the same taste.
Evidently, it was as little to the taste of the girl whom Xanthias in Aristophanes’ Wasps (v. 499) asked to ride him; for she asks him indignantly, and playing on the double meaning of the word (Hippias and ——, a horse), if he was for re-establishing Hippias’ tyranny: “Irritated she asked me if I wanted to revive the tyranny of Hippias.”
Again in his Lysistrata (v. 678) this master of wanton wit points to the same thing, declaring the female sex to be very good at riding and fond of driving: “Woman loves to get on horseback and to stick there.”
Aristophanes mocks similarly those, of whom he says, in verse 60 of the same play, that “They are aboard their barks.” “They are mounted on their chargers.” For —— signifies both a ship and a horse. Plango in Asclepiades, Brunck’s Analecta, vol. I., 217, affects the same figure.
“When she in horsemanship vanquished the ardent Philaenis, whilst her Hesperian coursers foamed under her reins.”
Yet more expert in this kind of amorous riding than Philaenis herself, this ardent votary of pleasure thanks Venus in this epigram, that she has been able so to exhaust certain Hesperian gallants, whom she had mounted, that they had left her with wanton members all drooping, and feeling no desire left in them. To bestride men was also the favourite pastime of Lysidicé, who was never tired in the service of Venus, of whom the following epigram of Asclepiades treats:
“Many a horse has she ridden beneath her, yet never galled her thigh with all her nimble movements.”
Courtesans consecrated to Venus a whip, a bit, a spur, in order to signify, that with their clients they like best to pose themselves in that way, and that they preferred riding themselves to being ridden,—nothing more.
It is the same when in Apuleius, Fotis satiated her Lucius with the pleasures of the undulating Venus: