This sort of snake served also to amuse men. Suetonius, _Tiberius_, ch. 72: “He kept for amusement a snake; one day, when he went as usual to feed it, he found it devoured entirely by ants, which he took as a warning to guard against being attacked by a mob.” Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ XXIX., ch. 4: “The Aesculapian serpent was brought to Rome from Epidaurus; it was kept in the public edifices, and also in private houses.” Seneca, in the _De Ira_, II., ch. 31, speaks of: “Those snakes that glide harmlessly amid the cups and into the bosoms of the guests.” They were not of a small size; this appears from what Philostratus says in his _Heroics_, VIII., 1: “Ajax had a tame snake of five cubits length, which kept close to him, guided him on his way, and followed him about like a dog.” This kind of snake was very common at Pella, in Macedonia, as Lucian says in a passage quoted in the text: “There are many such in their country.” They are still to be found in Italy, according to Justus Lipsius in his Notes to Seneca. Footnote 135: “Sabina, or the Morning Toilette of a Roman Lady at the end of the First Century,” translated into French by Clapier, 1813, 8vo. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII OF 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: