It would seem then that artists depicted the postures described by Elephantis, she herself possibly setting the example. Paintings of the sort Lalagé dedicates to Priapus, and asks her lover to have her and see if she is a docile pupil in faithfully imitating all the modes of connection depicted in them. No doubt such representations of licentious postures, taken from the works of Elephantis or Philaenis or elsewhere stimulated the ingenuity of Artists to work out in emulation these enticing motifs to the highest degree of finish. Ovid alludes to such works of art in his Art of Love, II., 680: “They unite in Love in a thousand postures; no picture could suggest any fresh ones ...”; as also the author of an ancient Epigram quoted by Joseph Scaliger in his Commentary on the Priapeia, III.; “And when she has thrown herself into every posture in imitation of the seductive pictures, she may go: but let the picture be left hanging over my bed.” Nothing was commoner with the Romans than to decorate the wall and partitions of rooms with licentious paintings, as may be gathered from Propertius II., vi, 27 sqq.: “The hand that first painted filthy pictures, and exposed foul sights in an honest home, corrupted the pure eyes of young maids, and chose to make them accomplices of his own lubricity. In old days our walls were not daubed with fancies of this vile sort, when never a partition was adorned with a vicious subject.”
[8]. Suidas: “Paxamus wrote the Dodecatechnon; the subject is the obscene postures.” But I think he has no good reason to connect with this the epithet Dodecamechanos given to a certain Cyrené. The said wanton damsel seems to have practised rather than described the twelve postures of Venus. Suidas under Dodecamechanon: “There was a famous hetaera, Cyrené by name, further known as Dodecamechanos, because she practised twelve different postures in making love.”
Aristophanes says in the Frogs, 1361-63: “Do you dare to criticize my songs, you that modulate your cadences on the twelve-fold postures of Cyrené?” Her name occurs also in the Thesmophoriazusae (104), but merely her name. (Our invariable rule is to quote from Burmann’s edition of Aristophanes.) I am doubtful as to whether Musaeus should be counted among writers on the Erotic postures. Martial, XII., 97 recommends Instantius Rufus to read his (Musaeus’) books, as being of the most advanced lasciviousness, vying with those of the Sybarites in obscenity and full of the most suggestive and spicy wit; warning him at the same time to have his girl ready to hand, if he did not want his hands to perform the wedding-march and consummate the marriage without a woman at all.
[9]. Athenaeus, XIV., 13: “Also the Ionic dialect has to show the poems of Sotades and the “Ionic” poems preceding his, those of Alexander the Aetolian, and Pyres of Miletus, and Alexis, and others of the same class. The last mentioned is known as the Cinaedologue. But in this genre the most eminent writer is Sotades, of Maroneia, as is stated by Carystius of Pergamus in his work on Sotades, and by Apollonius, Sotades’ son, who also wrote a work on his father’s poems. “His end was a miserable one. Having assailed Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, with witticisms too independent for the sensitive ears of princes, the king caused him to be enclosed in a leaden casket, and thrown into the sea.”
[10]. Who were these “maids of Didymus.” Nobody knows. Failing any more plausible supposition, it may very well be conjectured that among the four thousand works written according to Seneca (Letter LXXX.-VIII.) by the Grammarian Didymus, there was one on the postures of lascivious girls, worthy to be named side by side with the treatises of Elephantis. Undoubtedly a man who devoted himself to such subtile questions as whether Anacreon was more libertine than drunkard, whether Sappho was a public woman or not, was quite likely to discuss the Erotic postures.
[11]. See Bayle’s Dictionary, article: Pierre Arétin; also Murr’s Journal zur Kunstgeschichte (Year-Book of the History of Art), vol. XIV., pp. 1-72.
[12]. Pierre Bayle, in his Dictionary, under Pierre Arétin: “There is a Dialogue between Maddalena and Giulia, entitled La Puttana Errante (The wandering whore), in which are exhaustively treated i diversi congiungimenti (the different modes of intercourse), to the number of thirty-five. Aretino, though the book has always been printed under his name, disowns it, declaring it to be the work of one of his pupils named Veniero.” Brunet, Manual du Libraire (Book dealer’s Handbook). “The Puttana errante, a little book, very rare, quite worthy of Aretino in view of the obscenities it contains, but which has been erroneously attributed to him. Lorenzo Veniero, a Venetian nobleman, is the real author. He published it to avenge himself on a Venetian courtesan named Angela, whom he designates under the insulting name of Zaffetta, that is to say, in the Venetian dialect, daughter of a police-spy.”
[Bayle, Forberg and many other writers have confused the Puttana errante, a poem by Lorenzo Veniero and a burlesque parody of the Romances of chivalry, with the Dialogue between Maddalena and Giulia, a prose work to which the Elzevirs gave the title properly belonging to the poem. Neither one nor the other is the work of Pietro Aretino. See note at end of vol. VI. of the Dialogues du divin Pietro Aretino (Dialogues of the divine Pietro Aretino), Paris, Liseux, 1879, 3 vols. 18°, and London, 1880, 3 vols. 18°. [Note of French Translation of Forberg, Manuel d’Erotologie classique, Paris, Liseux, 1882.]