If we may believe Venette (II., iv. 3), there is nothing more common in Egypt at the present day than for young women to have intercourse with he-goats. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII OF SPINTRIAN POSTURES IN the sundry kinds of voluptuous enjoyment which we have studied so far, there are almost always only two persons in action. It happens, nevertheless, that more than two, three or even more, may enjoy themselves together; this is what we call after Tiberius, the spintrian kind. Suetonius, _Tiberius_, ch. 43: “In his retreat at Capri he had a _sellaria_, the scene of his secret debaucheries, in which chosen groups of young girls and worn-out voluptuaries, the inventors of monstrous conjunctions, called by him _spintries_, formed a triple chain, surrendered themselves to mutual defilements in his presence, so as to reanimate by this spectacle his languishing desires.” This _sellaria_, by the etymology of the word, was evidently a room furnished with seats; those who prostituted each other on these seats were called “_sellarii_,” from the place, and “_spintriae_,” from the chain they formed. Spinter, according to Festus, p. 443, signified, “a kind of bracelet worn by women on the upper part of the left arm.” The word is probably a corruption of _sphincter_, the Greek **** from ****, “I clasp,” as for instance, a band surrounding the arm. Tacitus, _Annals_, VI., ch. 1: “Then there were invented names never known before, as for instance, _sellarii_ and _spintriae_, names taken from the turpitude of the place or from the complicated infamies undergone.” Spintries then are those who, linked like the rings of a bracelet, thus accomplish the pleasures of Venus. Three can link themselves thus, two and two, in such a way that while the middle one is a fornicator or a pedicon, in front is a woman or a cinede, behind a pedicon. Such was the chain formed by those Ausonius (_Epigram_ CXXIX.) describes[138]: “Three in one bed; two submit to the infamous act, two perform it.—Four there are, I suppose.—Wrong! to the outermost ones give a villainy apiece; count the man in the middle twice, for he both acts and submits.” Do you want to see the one in the middle working a woman? Plate XL. of the _Monuments de la Vie Privée des douze Césars_ shows you an example. Do you wish to see the middle one pedicating? Look at plate XXVII.