Without mentioning the opinion of different savage Nations on that account, who take great pains to paint and adorn that part, we see that the Greeks, who certainly were a well-cultivated and polite People, entertained high notions of its beautifulness. They even seem to have thought that it had the advantage, in that respect, of all the other parts of the human body; for, though we do not find that they ever erected altars to fine arms, fine legs, fine eyes, or even to a handsome face, yet, they had done that honour to the part we mention, and had expressly erected a Temple to Venus, under the appellation of Venus _with fair posteriors_ (Ἀφροδίτη Καλλίπυγη): the above Temple was built, as some say, on occasion of a quarrel that arose between two Sisters, who contended which of the two was most elegantly shaped in the part we mention; a quarrel that happened to make a great noise. To this we may add, by the by, that so little did the Greeks in general think that the part we allude to, was undeserving of attention, that they sometimes drew from it indications of the different tempers of people; and they, for instance, gave the appellation of a _Man with white posteriors_ (Πύγαργος) to a Man whom they meant to charge with having too much softness and nicety. The Latins entertained the same notions with the Greeks, as to the beauty of that part, or those parts, on which Man sits. Horace more than once bestows upon them the appellation of _fair_ (_pulchræ_): he even in one place expressly declares it as his opinion, that, for a Mistress to be defective in those parts (_depygis_) is one of the greatest blemishes she can have,--is a defect equal to that of being with a flat nose (_nasuta_) or a long foot, and is in short capable of spoiling, where it exists, all other bodily accomplishments. (_Hor. Sat. 2. Lib. I._) Among the Moderns, notions of the same kind have prevailed. Rabelais, a well-known Writer, places one of his best stories to the account of a certain Nun, whom he calls _Sister_, or _Sœur Fessue_; which he would not certainly have done, if he had not been of opinion that the size and exact shape of those parts of the Nun’s body from which he denominated her, were in the number of her greatest perfections. In times posterior to Rabelais, other Writers among the French, have expressed opinions exactly alike. La Fontaine, if I mistake not, speaking in one of his Tales, of a certain Beauty whose charms he means to extoll, exclaims, ‘Breasts, Heaven knows, and a rump fit for a Canon!’ _Tetins, Dieu fait, & croupe de Chanoine!_ And the celebrated Poet Rousseau, happening, in one of his Epigrams, to speak of the abovementioned Temple which the Greeks had erected to Venus, declares that it would have been that Temple of Greece which he would have frequented with the greatest devotion.