Our predecessors, whether the more modern, or those of Antiquity whom we have cited, and all whose works alas! envious time has robbed us of, did not lack severe critics, nor yet studious readers. And our own treatise will no doubt in its turn meet with both these classes. It is a man’s book; we have written it, fearless of censure, for men,—not for such as are wont with growning brow “to pitchfork nature out of doors”, but rather for such as have once for all dared to live their lives, who neither wish to lurk in darkness nor yet to defy the open day with effrontery, in one word for those who think that in Love as in all else the golden mean is the course to choose. Let others go their way, and arrogate to themselves the title of sages! * * * * * THE work of Venus may be accomplished with or without the help of the _mentula_ (virile member). If with the mentula, the friction of this organ, in which friction the whole pleasure consists, can be effected either in the _vulva_ (female organ), in the _anus_ (arse-hole), in the mouth, by the hand or in any cavity of the body. If without the mentula, the vulva may be worked either with the tongue, with the clitoris, or with any object resembling the virile organ. FOOTNOTES - THE Metamorphoses Of Venus ----- Footnote 4: Ovid, _Art of Love_, I., 435, 36: “To fully expose the ungodly wiles of harlots, ten mouths, and as many tongues to boot would not suffice.” Aloysia Sigaea: “The body in sacrificing to Venus can take as many postures as there are ways in which it can bend and curve. It is equally impossible to enumerate all these, as it is to say which is best fitted to give pleasure. Each acts in this respect according to his own caprice, according to place, time, and so on, choosing the one he prefers. Love is not identical for each and all.” (Dialogue VI.) Footnote 5: Suidas under _Astyanassa_: “Astyanassa, maid of Helen the wife of Menelaus, who was the first to invent the different positions in the act of love. She wrote “Of Erotic Postures”; and was followed and imitated by Philaenis and Elephantine, who carried further the series of suchlike obscenities.” Footnote 6: _Priapeia_, LXIII: “To her a certain girl (I very nearly gave her name) is wont to come with her paramour; and if she fails to discover as many postures as Philaenis describes, she goes away again still itching with desire.” Philaenis has found a champion of her good name in Aeschrion, who wrote an epitaph for her that is still extant in _Athenaeus_, bk. VIII. ch. 13: The last lines read: “I was not lustful for men nor a gad-about; but Polycrates, by race an Athenian, a mill clapper of talk, a foul-tongued sophist, wrote—what he wrote; I know nought of it all.”