Even in our own days[56] the taste for the male Venus has not disappeared, witness the Persians, who are very much addicted to this kind of pleasure, as is related by those who have travelled in their country. Amongst others there is Adam Lhuilier, chapter 15, book V., of his _Itinerary_. If we may trust to Aloysia Sigaea, the Italians and Spaniards did it; also the Dutchmen, with whom towards the middle of the XVIIIth. Century, as J. David Michaëlides tells us in his _Treatise on the Law of Moses_ (in Dutch), §258, this habit was so much in vogue, that the punishment of death was hardly of avail against it; also the Parisians, according to the Author of the _Gynaeology_ (in German, vol. II., p. 427), a fully competent authority, who adds that in almost all the great cities of Europe there are to be found plenty of people who, either being satiated with the ordinary pleasure, or afraid of infectious diseases, prefer the posterior to the anterior Venus,—the English always excepted, who abominate this practice. Not to be for ever talking generalities and never giving definite instances, the cases of Gonzalvo of Cordova[57] and of Vendôme[58], both of them excellent Generals, have been made notorious enough by historical documents; to these we could add other still more illustrious examples, taken from our own time and made known by a heedless fame; that of a great author, of a great king, the father of his country, and of a man, who during his life gained general admiration by the penetration of his intellect, and the splendour of his language, and whose knowledge embraces all branches of knowledge, not only the ordinary ones, but the profoundest and most abstruse[59],—a man that might well propose the riddle of the Sphinx to his eminent confrère in whom we delight to admire the power of a truly Ciceronian eloquence, unknown in Germany since the death of the great Ernesti. These examples, I say, we could easily allege, were we not apprehensive of raising, quite contrary to our purpose and intention, a feeling of odium against the pious memory of most distinguished men. Do you wish for any more? Pacificus Maximus offers a goodly number, both of the active and the passive parties. _Elegy_ I., p. 107. of the Paris edition: “The sole cause of my badness was my master,—the man my father and mother incautiously entrusted me to. He was the king of pedicons; not one escaped his lust, so artful and winning was he. Many a thing I learned, I had better have left unknown; much did I absorb through my rectum, much through my lips.” _Elegy_ II., to Ptolemy (p. 110): “For you, ungrateful boy, I keep my treasures all, and no one shall enjoy them but yourself; my mentula is growing: while it used to measure seven inches, now it measures ten.” _Elegy_ IV., to Marcus (p. 113):