(TULLIA speaking): “He opened my thighs—I do not dislike Conrad, though I am not particularly partial to him. I neither consented, nor refused. As to him, he fancied a novel posture, and not at all a bad one. I was lying on my back; he raised my right thigh on his shoulder, and in this position he transfixed me, while I was awaiting the event, without greatly desiring it. He had at the same time extended my left thigh along his right thigh. His tool plunged into the root, he began to push and poke, quicker and quicker. What need to say more? Picture the conclusion for yourself” (Dial. VI). Last of all, a man can get into a woman turning her back to him after the manner of the quadrupeds, who can have no connection with their females otherwise than by mounting upon them from behind[17]. Some authorities have held that a woman conceives easier while on all fours. Lucretius says: “... Women are said to conceive more readily when down after the manner of beasts, as the organs can absorb the seed best so, when the bosom is depressed and the loins lifted” (_Of the Nature of Things_, IV., vv. 1259-1262). Also Aloysia Sigaea: “Some people pretend that the fashion to make love indicated by Nature is that one where the woman offers herself for copulation after the manner of the animals, bent down with the hips raised; the virile ploughshare penetrates thus more conveniently into the female furrow, and the seminal flow waters the field of love.... The doctors, however, are against this posture; they say it is incompatible with the conformation of the parts destined for generation.” (Dial. VI.) However this may be, it happens frequently, that women cannot be managed in any other way. Given an obese man and a woman likewise obese or with child, how are they to do the thing otherwise? This is the reason why, so they say, Augustus having married Livia Drusilla, divorced wife of Tiberius Nero and already six months gone in pregnancy, had connection with her after the manner of animals. Plate VII of the _Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars_ will give you an idea of the posture assumed by both of them. But why should we not give you the annotations whereby the learned editor has elucidated the plate? Here they are: