medieval chroniclers and encyclopedists there is equally a sense of repulsion yet attraction. For love and passion generated from death and offal, and desire sprang from decay. Sappho, that ancient Greek poetess of Lesbos, knew the supremacy of this passion. She called Aphrodite deathless, because love and life are co-eval and co-existent. The sweetest thing of all, she declares in one of her pieces, is to find one’s lover. Ages later, Titus Lucretius Carus, the Roman Epicurean poet who, in the first century B.C., produced that remarkable, profound epic, _De Rerum Natura_, The Nature of Things, begins his poem with an invocation to fostering Venus, the delight of men and of gods. The Orient, permeated by the same passions, had its own range of contributory aphrodisiac elements. Betel-nut, chewed and blood-red, was commonly a base for the philtre. Ambergris, touched with something mystic and elusive, played its creative, kinetic part. Some concoctions had more earthy associations: for instance, the brains of a hoopee, pounded into a cake, and devoured with hopeful zest. Or the wicks of lamps were inscribed with thaumaturgic invocations and then burned to ensure their amatory efficacy. * * * * * Despite the motivating force of love, it was, in some instances, an object of dread. For it was a widely disruptive agent, involving elements and features dangerous to the succumbing man and also to man’s supremacy in his masculine context, his virile world. Hence in Euripides’ tragedy _Medea_ the chorus, speaking for the heroine, chants: When in excess and past all limits Love doth come, he brings not glory or repute to man; but if the Cyprian queen in moderate might approach, no goddess is so full of charm as she. Never, O never, lady mine, discharge at me from thy golden bow a shaft invincible, in passion’s venom dipped. Again, in confirmation of this view of passion, in Sophocles’ _Antigone_ the tragic and cataclysmic impact of love is bewailed by the murmurous chorus: Love unconquered in the fight, Love, who makest havoc of wealth, who keepest thy vigil on the soft cheek of a maiden; thou roamest over the sea, and among the homes of dwellers in the wilds; no immortal can escape thee, nor any among men whose life is for a day; and he to whom thou hast come is mad. * * * * * Thessaly, a region in northern Greece, was anciently known for sorcery and magic potencies. It was associated with witches and mystic practices, and its reputation for goety was so widespread, so deeply embedded in the region, that it continued far down into the Roman Imperial age. At night, the dead had to be guarded with great care, as these witches were in the habit of tearing off pieces and shreds of flesh from the corpse, and using them in concocting their potions.