Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

APHRODISIACS

mentioned, a stitching-needle (fibula) was drawn through the prepuce, in order to render copulation impossible, but I cannot remember to have read of this in any Greek author.

3. APHRODISIACS

Many means of achieving erection and curing impotence were known in antiquity, and in classical authors the oldest passage is perhaps in Euripides, where Medea tells the old A®geus, that she has medicaments that will enable even him to procreate (Medea, 718). The ancients had many nostrums for the promotion of frequent copulation, such as satyrion (probably a kind of orchis), or pounded pepper mixed with nettle-seed, or old wine to which triturated pyrethron (feverfew, or pellitory) had been added. ‘These methods were pointed out by Ovid (Ars, 11, 415) as injurious to the organism; those he considers harmless are onions, wild cabbage (drassica erica), eggs, honey, and stone-pine apples.

All these as well as many other aphrodisiacs were also known to the Greeks. In the Greek papyri of charms numerous recipes having for their object a strengthening of the capacity for erection are preserved. Abundant material for such lovecharms is also to be found in the great Louvre papyrus and Anastasy (Brit. Mus., Gk. pap., 1, 90), both edited by Wessely.

It would serve no useful purpose to enumerate all the aphrodisiacs used by the Greeks or to discuss them more in detail, but we may offer a few samples.

Pyrethron by its name is to be recognized as a plant ‘“‘ that kindles the flame of love”’. The onion is the most frequently named among Greek erotic stimulants, and, together with mussels, crabs, snails, and eggs, it is mentioned by the comic writer Alexis (CAF, II, 399) as specially effective. Diphilus says: “ Bulbs (onions) are hard to digest, though nourishing and strengthening to the stomach ;

513 Ll