Among erotic pieces that are no longer extant are certain elegiac poems, of an amatory type, attributed formerly to Plato the philosopher. An ancient Roman poet named Laevius wrote an erotopaegnion. Apuleius, the Roman philosopher and novelist, produced a number of amatory epigrams. These references, together with others that include Vergil’s _Aeneid_ and the _Georgics_, are made by the Roman poet Ausonius himself. He adds, also, that, like Martial and other poets, his life is unblemished though his verses may be dubious: Igitur cui hic ludus noster non placet, ne legerit: aut cum legerit, obliviscatur: aut non oblitus, ignoscat. * * * * * Phallic priests were called phallobatai. Not only Priapus, but other deities as well in ancient Greece, were worshipped with erotic fervor. Among these were Phanes, Lordon, and Orthanes. * * * * * [Illustration: Metropolitan Museum of Art LOVE AND PSYCHE _by Rodin_ ] [Illustration: Philadelphia Museum of Art THE ABDUCTOR _by Rodin_ ] Philodemus of Gadara, who flourished in the first century B.C., was a Greek poet who settled in Rome. He became an intimate of powerful political forces, and also gathered around him a coterie of Romans interested in philosophy and literature. Among other works, mostly of a philosophical nature, Philodemus produced erotic pieces marked by extreme lewdness. Some twenty-five of these epigrams are still extant, collected in the corpus known as the _Anthologia Palatina_. These poems became popular in Rome and were imitated by both Horace and Ovid. * * * * * As an erotic stimulus, Greek women wore diaphanous thin-spun robes made of silk from the island of Cos. In Rome, similarly, prostitutes sometimes wore a toga vitrea—a glassy or transparent toga. There were, too, vestes sericae—silk dresses, in feminine use. All such robes, of course, were of a purposely revealing and tantalizing nature, acting upon the viewer in a marked amatory direction. Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher, makes blunt and condemnatory remarks on the custom. * * * * * In Athens, there was an old quarter of the city dedicated to prostitution of the lowest type. This area was known as the Ceramicus. * * * * *