The name satyrion is evidently associated with the Greek satyr, a wood spirit, partly goat-like, and partly human. Attendants to the rustic god Pan, the satyrs were known as bestial and lustful creatures, symbolic of the basic sexual passion of man. Botanically, satyrion is a plant with smooth leaves, red-tinted, and equipped with a two-fold root. The lower part of this root was credited anciently with promoting male conception, while the other part was conducive to female conception. In its modern counterpart, satyrion has been associated with the Iris florantina. There is another variety of satyrion, called Serapias. This has pear-shaped leaves and a tall elongated stem. Its root consists of two tubers that have the appearance of testes. Unquestionably, the association of the plant as an aphrodisiac derives from the orchidaceous configuration of the root. Remarkable properties were attributed to the root of satyrion. When it was dissolved in goat’s milk, the erotic effect was so vigorous and urgent that, as the Greek philosopher Theophrastus asserts in his _Enquiry into Plants_, the potion produced, on a particular occasion, some seventy consecutive coital performances. Still another species of satyrion was erithraicon. This plant had a peculiar virtue. The mere holding of it, or carrying it, in the hand, occasioned a lustful desire. This fact is attested by Pliny, in his _Natural History_, in Book 26, 96 and 98, as well as by Dioscorides in his _Materia Medica_ 3. 134. When the libido became too intense, lettuce was eaten to mitigate the effect, to allay the erotic provocation. Greek mythology abounds in references to satyrion as an efficacious stimulant. The prowess of Hercules, the lusty warrior, as the Roman Petronius, Arbiter Elegantiarum, calls him, is attested in an amatory sense by the story of his visit to a certain Thespius. Entertained lavishly as a guest, Hercules, fortified by satyrion, repaid the host’s entertainment by having intercourse with all fifty daughters of Thespius. In Roman times the effectiveness of the root in arousing erotic excitation was common knowledge. Petronius, the voluptuary attached to the court of the Emperor Nero and the author of the remarkable picaresque novel entitled the _Satyricon_, alludes to the matter. One of his characters, describing the frenzied activities in a brothel, remarks: We saw many persons of both sexes, at work in the cells, so much every one of them seemed to have taken satyrion. In a more general direction, important testimonies to manipulative and mechanistic means of arousing vigor are the references in Petronius, particularly the episode involving Quartilla: Quartilla came up to me to cure me of the ague, but finding her self disappointed, flew off in a rage, and returning in a little while, told us, there were certain persons unknown, had a design upon us, and therefore commanded to remove us into a noble palace.