Of all potions, satyrion is associated, in legend and mythology, with the most numerous and consecutive effects. There was a story of an oriental king. It is related in Book 9 of the _Enquiry into Plants_, by Theophrastus, who flourished in the third century B.C. The king had sent a gift of satyrion to Antiochus, ruler of Syria. The slave-messenger who carried the plant was himself so affected by it that he performed seventy coital operations in succession. In respect of this same root there was another anecdote about a certain Proculus. After drinking a satyrion concoction, Proculus performed on one hundred women in fifteen days. * * * * * Wines, liqueurs, and in general all kinds of spirits are, both in fictional contexts and in the chronicles of the eighteenth century, considered as salacious tonics, and were so used specifically. Even an occasional drink of wine had an erotic repute. * * * * * In the salacious and scatological novels of the Marquis de Sade, especially in Justine and in Les 120 Journées de Sodome, food is repeatedly stressed as immediately contributory to high amatory potency. Repletion, it appears, corresponds directly to amatory responses. De Sade describes, in lavish and appreciative detail, with a kind of personal gusto and even participation, dinner after dinner, in which courses follow each other in almost numberless and uninterrupted sequence: roasts of all varieties, game in season, and also out of season, hors d’oeuvre, pastries of fantastic shape and ingredients, ices and chocolates. Each course is accompanied with appropriate wines and brandies. Rhenish and Greek and Italian vintages, burgundy and champagne, tokay and madeira. * * * * * And, both synchronously with the meal, and as an aftermath of the banquets, the plenitude of food and drink and the total satiety of the diners produce an enormously exciting, urgent, and effective erotic reaction, in which not only the guests but the maidservants as well are involved. A soup compounded of celery and truffles was a favorite and popular dish in eighteenth century France, when every possible aphrodisiac aid was eagerly sought and tested. No less so was lentil soup in great demand for the same purpose. Bean soup, also, pea soup, and other vegetable assortments were regularly employed in culinary ways, but with a decided erotic suggestiveness. * * * * * Eighteenth century France, in fact, experimented in both amatory and gastronomic directions, for one practice was manifestly associated with the other. All manner of compounds, then, prepared for amatory vigor, were produced on a large scale. These concoctions invariably included vinegars, perfumed lotions, electuaries, and strengthening elixirs. * * * * *