CHAPTER VIIOF INTERCOURSE WITH ANIMALS
IT will not be out of place to say something here of the incontinence of those who have carried out carnal intercourse with animals. It appears that in Egypt the Mendesians, who paid divine honors to a he-goat[136], prostituted to him publicly women, even against his inclination, in celebrating his rites. Herotodus II., 46:
“A monstrous affair was connected with this district (viz., the Mendesian) in my time; a he-goat covered a woman in public.”
Strabo, XVII., p. 802:
“Mendes, where they worship Pan, and a live he-goat; the latter in that place have intercourse with women[137].”
The Jews also knew something of the practice; as we know from the law of Moses, Leviticus xx., 15-16:
“And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast. And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death” ...
How should Juvenal have come to tell us, Satire VI., 332-33:
“... no more delay is there; she hastens to make a donkey ride her from behind,” if it had not been known that women sometimes submitted themselves to asses? Would Apuleius have thought of describing to us with no less minuteness than wit the scene in which Lucius, changed into an ass by a mistake of Fotis, effects intercourse with a matron?Metamorphoses, book X., p. 249:
“But I was a prey to grave apprehensions; I asked myself how I, with my long and coarse legs, could mount a delicate woman, clasp with my hard hoofs her soft and tender limbs that looked like milk and honey; how could I with my enormous mouth, furnished with teeth as big as tomb-stones, kiss those small, rosy, scented lips; how lastly this lady, although in rut to her very finger nails, could take in such a big genital verge.... She, however, doubled her tender allurements, her endless kisses, her sweet murmurings, interspersed with sweet glances like stings: ‘I hold you at last,’ she cried, ‘I hold my dove, my sparrow!’ and having said this, she showed me how vain my fears had been for embracing me as closely as she could, she received me inside entirely, out and out. Even more than that, whenever I drew back in order to spare her, she pushed closer to me, and clasping my backbone like mad, she clung to me so closely that, by Hercules, I began to think that I was not well enough furnished to assuage her passion completely.”
A young girl of Tuscany got herself covered by a dog in the time of Pius V., the Roman Pope, as reported by Venette II., iv., ch. 3; and according to a note of Elmenhorst on the above quoted passage of Apuleius, a woman was discovered in Paris, in October, 1601, to have had connection with a dog. The law was appealed to, and in conformity with the unanimous verdict pronounced by the parliament, the adulterous woman and the dog were both burnt alive. Nay! more, a woman has been known to submit to a crocodile, if we may believe Plutarch, who reports in his treatiseOn the Sagacity of Animals(p. 976, vol. II., of the complete Works):
“Quite lately our excellent Philinus, on returning from a long voyage to Egypt, told me that he had seen at Antaeopolis an old woman sleeping with a crocodile stretched comfortably beside her on her pallet.”
Nor have men despised the vulva of animals. Plate III of theMonuments du Culte Secret des Dames Romaines, shows the picture of a man working away in a goat, though the annotator ought not to have quoted in illustration of it a passage of Virgil (BucolicsIII., 8.), which has nothing whatever to do with this matter:
“We know who (pedicated) you, while the he-goats looked at you askance.”
In our countries legal cases show that not only goats, but also sheep, cows, and mares, have sometimes charmed shepherds and other people of low breeding.