Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores

In ancient Greece, the climatic conditions, the long unending summer days, the broad spaciousness of the sea, wine-dark and loud-sounding, as Homer describes it, the secluded po...

What were the elements that, in combination, constituted the potion? Was there a formal, hieratic prescription for its composition, faithfully followed, scrupulously administere...

In the earlier Christian centuries, misogynistic attitudes were markedly prevalent, especially among the dogmatizing Church Fathers, and despite the traditions of the _agape_. C...

In the first century B.C. the licentiousness of the Roman matron was already a subject for grim condemnation. Horace, who was virtually the Poet Laureate of the Augustan Age, la...

You that would last long, list to my song, Make no more coil, but buy of this oil. Would you be ever fair and young? Stout of teeth, and strong of tongue? Tart of palate? quick...

Eros is triumphant in the twentieth century, in every social frame, in every milieu, and in every country. Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who is associated with the conce...

India is a spacious land of astounding contrasts and variations. It is a land of mystery and mysticism, and at the same time it investigates reality with infinite patience. It i...

Ancient Hindu literature treats in startling detail every conceivable aspect of erotic manifestations. There are guides and manuals and elaborate treatises and monographs devote...

Plato (c. 429–347 B.C.), the Greek philosopher who developed his metaphysical and cosmological theories through a series of some twenty-five dialogues and the _Apology_, has a g...

Alciphron, an Athenian writer who flourished during the second century A.D., composed a number of light, unpretentious letters dealing with simple daily occupations and subjects...

The potion is primarily the instrument of lust. Lust is the universal driving force, the cosmic mainspring. The pudenda muliebria, states the Bible, are among the insatiable thi...

François Villon, the fifteenth century French lyric poet, was not too happy in his loves. In his _Double Ballade_ he makes his personal confession on amatory exercises, and give...

Troilus: What will it be When that the watery palate tastes indeed Love’s thrice repured nectar?—death, I fear me, Swooning distraction, or some joy too fine, Too-subtle potent,...