The sexual sophistication of ancient Rome is rarely appreciated in this respect. The declining years of the Empire were profoundly decadent, and the Roman orgy has come down into our language as the quintessence of abandoned perversity. Writers chronicled the alarming sex lives of the Caesars and their wives, and these chronicles are replete with tales of wild promiscuity, orgiastic excesses, extreme sadism, etc. The Empress Messalina has become as synonymous with nymphomania as has the Emperor Caligula with cruelty. Several of the Caesars, most notably Eliogabalus, were almost certainly polymorphously perverse; that is, any sexual aberration was automatically attractive to them, and the more unacceptable an activity might be, the more it therefore appealed.
A basic ingredient of the Roman games was the sexual exhibition. Later, when we consider the topic of bestiality, we will consider at length the manner in which animals were trained to rape women and girls. While bestial spectacles of this nature were surely the most dramatic sexual display of the games, coitus between human beings was a not uncommon feature. In Those About To Die, an exhaustive and well-documented study of the evolution of the Roman games from highly competitive athletic contests to their final state of pure sadism, Daniel Mannix mentions one instance of a prostitute and a pimp offering an exhibition of the many different ways of sexual congress for the entertainment and edification of spectators; for a capper, lions were turned loose and the two were devoured, a typical example of the Roman sense of humor in action.
Although it seems more than probable that Roman literature was rich in erotic writings, little of this sort has come down to us through the ages. The “handbooks of lust” that Tacitus mentions have disappeared for all time, no doubt rejected as impure by the medieval monks who so meticulously copied down ancient manuscripts and preserved Roman culture while making possible the Renaissance. The most important erotic manual of Rome is the most excellent work of the poet Ovid. Born in 43 B.C. Publius Ovidius Naso combined his considerable literary talent with his equally noteworthy interest in sexual behavior to produce The Art of Love.
More concerned with the nuances of sexual attraction and the subtleties of refined adultery than with the mechanics of technique, Ovid counsels both sexes on the best ways to render oneself attractive, the rituals of courtship, the secrets of seduction, and similar topics in keeping with the title of his work. In the book’s final chapter, he does give the following interesting bit of advice in respect to coital postures. He is addressing his female readers.
I am slightly embarrassed by what is about to follow, but encouraged by Venus, I will now proceed to tell the most important thing of all. Make up your mind as to what posture best becomes you when you enter the battlefield of Love. If you have a pretty face, lie on your back; if your hips are comely, find occasion to display them. Remember that Melanion bore Atalanta’s thighs upon his shoulders; if yours can bear comparison with hers, put them in the same place. If you are short, let your lover play the jockey. Andromache, who was as tall as Hector, never did anything like that, but don’t let it worry you. If you are unusually tall try to find a kneeling position; if your legs are good and your breasts without a flaw, stretch yourself sideways upon a couch, and let your hair fly loosely about your shoulders. If the gate of your transgressions has been widened beyond the point of comfort, then by all means turn around and lift your back to the fray. The least fatiguing method is to lie on your side.
The above is particularly interesting in that Ovid approaches the subject of positions not in terms of sensation or variety, but with the idea that an ideal position is one that presents the male with the most attractive view of the female’s body. Thus, an ideal position for a woman is that one which most effectively displays her best features. The second last sentence quoted above suggests a special posture for the woman with a large vagina; the most logical assumption would seem to be that Ovid is recommending anal penetration, but it is also conceivable that he is advocating rear-entry vaginal penetration as likely to constrict the vaginal canal. While the former explanation seems more probable, one would need to refer to the original Latin text to be entirely certain.
Aside from Ovid’s writings, the best evidence of the Roman attitude toward postural variety in coitus is not written but visual. The bordello tokens of Rome and the bordello murals of Pompeii furnish ample assurance that this preoccupation was very much in existence in Roman culture.
Roman bordello tokens, or sphinstriae, were small bronze coins bearing a numeral upon one side and an erotic scene upon the other. Several theories have been advanced as to their original purpose. They were probably contemporary with the Emperor Claudius, A.D. 41-54, Caligula’s successor and Nero’s predecessor. One authority suggested that Claudius had the tokens issued in imitation of coins for his own amusement, but this explanation, though consistent with the Emperor’s character, does not otherwise make much sense. Most probably the tokens were either advertising matter or tickets of admission to the bordellos of Rome. The numbers on the one side were probably addresses or otherwise indicated particular establishments or entertainers in Rome’s red light district, while the sex act portrayed on the other side was either in the nature of a general sexual enticement or, quite possibly, was used to show the particular manner of copulation to which the bearer of the token was entitled.
The relatively few tokens that have survived to the present day are very much in demand among knowledgeable numismatists. Despite the lack of publicity they have experienced, they sell readily at prices ranging from one to two hundred dollars per token. The sex scenes they bear are quite well detailed, although the tokens themselves are crudely struck. Specimens exist showing all the six major coital postures, plus extracoital practices such as fellatio, cunnilingus, and anal copulation. A few other specimens demonstrate some less common variations.
On one, the man reclines on his back upon a couch. The woman lies atop him in the same fashion so that rear-entry copulation is attained, and she has turned the upper portion of her body fully around so that she is able to kiss him on the mouth while he caresses her breasts with his hands.
On another, the male is standing. He holds one of the woman’s thighs in either hand and stands between her parted legs. She in turn is poised head-downward with her hands touching the floor below. No other part of her body comes in contact with the floor, and the couple’s attitude is similar to that of contestants in a wheelbarrow race, except that the two are engaged in coitus.
The ruins of Pompeii, destroyed by a celebrated eruption of Vesuvius, boast several notable brothels containing representative Roman erotic art. The murals were undoubtedly designed to stimulate clients. Some depict the activities of a single couple, while other sections are distinctly orgiastic, with literally dozens of participants engaged in helter-skelter pluralistic sex.
All manner of sexual postures are included, ranging from the more common positions to highly ingenious mechanical systems similar to the rope-and-pulley arrangements described in The Perfumed Garden.
Writers somewhat closer to our own time have also given much attention to varied coital postures. This is less the case with scientific writings than with more frankly erotic and/or devoutly pornographic material. While marriage manuals have been more inclined to discuss the values of the more common basic positions and let it go at that, pornographers have been very much aware of the need to interject endless variations in order to keep the reader’s excitement at a high pitch. Obviously, frequent descriptions of precisely the same form of sexual activity cannot fail to pall after a certain number of pages, and the more astute pornographers have discovered several ways of maintaining interest. As the Kronhausens report in Pornography and the Law,
The characteristic feature in the structure of “obscene” books is the buildup of erotic excitement in the course of the text. An “Obscene” book may start out with a scene which is only mildly erotic and not highly stimulating. In progression, it will then become “hotter” and “hotter” until the story cul
minates in the description of the most sensual scenes, which are highly conducive to the arousal of erotic desires.
To achieve both variety and this buildup effect, several devices are employed. After an initial concentration on simple heterosexual coitus, most pornographers take their readers on a Cook’s Tour of extracoital copulation, pederasty, homosexuality, troilistic and pluralistic sex, with an eventual buildup to an orgiastic finale. In the course of this progression, variety is introduced through the use of unusual settings for sex (religious surroundings such as churches or convents, a parent’s room, an outdoor setting), interracial sex partners (both for variety’s sake and because of the excitement of “forbidden fruit”), taboo combinations (incestuous relationships, priest-nun relationships, etc.), and, finally, postural varietism in coitus itself.
The use of postural varietism is especially pronounced not in works of hardcore pornography but in those contemporary potboilers which skirt the brink of unpublishable pornography. Writers of these efforts are faced with a comparable need to sustain excitement through variety, yet cannot reach either the descriptive heights or the excesses of depravity to be found in hardcore writing. In order to make one act of coitus seem substantially different from the next, different positions are described, sometimes sketchily, sometimes in greater detail. These works generally include variations on the six major positions and only rarely include more exotic postures.
Variation in position is less certain to be a major element in works of erotic realism—the Kronhausens’ term for extremely candid but non-pornographic material. While Frank Harris, Henry Miller, and D. H. Lawrence may all include scenes in which coitus is an unusual position is described, variety for its own sake is rarely present. Harris pays considerable attention to coital and pre-coital technique, but his interest is more often focused upon techniques of pace and movement than upon the positioning of the two combatants. Casanova is more interested in reporting seduction than offering a camera’s view of its results.
In The Battles of Venus, an eighteenth-century bit of English erotica ostensibly translated from the posthumous writings of Voltaire but very definitely a product of some Briton’s imagination, an interesting if somewhat pedestrian observation is offered on the ideal positions for coitus. The book is essentially a leisurely and vaguely philosophical discourse on lovemaking and includes a particularly revealing discussion of the great merit of sex with a virgin, all very much in keeping with the defloration mania so characteristic of Georgian England. After enumerating a variety of sexual postures, the author comes to the conclusion that the two most “natural” ones are the best.
The first and most obvious mode of enjoyment was undoubtedly that practiced by the generality of mankind, and which is perhaps the most conducive to generation. To behold the naked body of a beautiful woman in front, her juicy mouth, her heaving breasts, her firm pouting belly, will be allowed part of the finest gratifications of a voluptuous fancy; and consequently to feel and enjoy those parts must be ranked among the sweetest delights of sensual fruition.
Now, supposing that in the other modes of fruition, a man is in actual enjoyment of the ultimatum (sic) in a woman, and experiences emission either in or out of her body, yet he enjoys not that delightful pressure on those parts above mentioned, he feels not that delicious heaving, neither can he insinuate his tongue within her warm lips, kiss or suck them, nor catch her ardent sighs created by her convulsive motion.
The next in degree of pleasure to this mode is perhaps that of enjoying her in the rear. In this species it must be confessed that, besides the pleasure of novelty and variety, the breast and belly of the woman are not unenjoyed by the roving and pressure of the man’s hands and moreover there are certainly two additional gratifications not known in the former instance, namely the feeling of her plump, warm buttocks planted in his lap, and the pleasure of handling the delightful mount of Venus, at the same time he is fixed in, and enjoying it behind.
It would seem pointless to attempt cataloging the various and sundry positional variations that have been practiced and recorded throughout the course of Western civilization up to the present day. There is, as Dr. Morse has observed, nothing truly new under the sexual sun; every possible form of coitus has been practiced for ages and will no doubt endure far on into the future. The goddess Copulatia is one with Cleopatra, for “Age will not wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
How important, then, is the variety afforded by new and different sexual positions? Several authorities have suggested that it is self-defeating and that a possible result is the development of a de facto fetish for variety in and of itself, to the point where coitus itself becomes invariable and unexciting and the only course open is perversion of one sort or another, either through recourse to deviate acts with one’s usual partner, through promiscuous relations with other partners, or through the two combined.
This would seem to be an extreme result. More important, I would suggest, is that new positions provide relatively little excitement or reward beyond the momentary delight of novelty. There are, to be sure, innumerable sexual techniques that might prove of value to couples with an interest in improving or varying their sexual fare. There are ways to heighten an orgasm, to prolong coitus, and otherwise to increase the pleasures of the sport. Further, there are manners of attaining control over muscles generally presumed to be involuntary, to the point where rather extraordinary sexual feats maybe performed. We will examine these at greater length in the chapter to follow.
Why, then, is the variation of sexual posture so generally thought to be the frontier for sexual expansion? Why do couples, intent upon improving their sexual relationships, search first for a new posture, a new way to do it? I would suggest that a major explanation is that variation in position is the foremost example of sexual technique that lends itself well to the writer and the artist.
Other techniques are perhaps difficult to describe and unexciting to read about, but the new position is good fuel for the erotic writer, whether his intent is to inform or to inflame. It is graphic, it is striking, it is obviously different; it creates an immediate graspable image in the reader’s mind and lingers with him. One cannot well describe the subtleties of sensations or the secret play of muscles or the gradual buildup of sensual excitement; one can easily make an instantaneous impression, whether one’s purpose be scientific or pornographic, by describing just who is doing just what to just whom.
This is not to say that there is no point whatsoever in postural experimentation. In The Marriage Art, a particularly illuminating marriage manual that addresses itself directly to the problem of heightening sexual satisfaction in marriage, Dr. John Eichenlaub gives a certain amount of space to coital postures and provides eminently valid reasons for experimenting in this regard. The area of major sensitivity in a particular woman, for example, may be either clitoral or labial or vaginal; this prime erogenous area may change with age or increased sexual experience; and in different positions stimulation is localized upon different organs of the body, so that certain positions will be more suitable with one woman than with another.
In this sense, there is definite merit in finding one’s way through the various positions for coitus in an effort to select those which may prove most particularly suitable. This is precisely the course advocated in The Perfumed Garden after the endless positions have been duly categorized and described, after such arcane matters as the suitable positions for hunchbacks and cripples have been carefully explained, after the full positional repertoire of sex has been subjected to the most careful scrutiny.
Assuredly in their works the Indian writers have described a great many ways of making love, but the majority of them do not yield enjoyment, and give more pain than pleasure… It is well for the lover of coition to put all these manners to the proof, so as to ascertain which is the position that gives the greatest pleasure to both combatants. Then he will know which to choose for the tryst, and in satisfying his desires retai
n the woman’s affection… Therefore try different manners, for every woman likes one in preference to all others for her pleasure.
A familiarity with basic coital postures and a liberal attitude toward experimentation are probably implicit in the concept of sexual sophistication. But the couple desirous of heightening their sexual prowess need be in no great hurry to attach a ring to the ceiling and swing the wife up by her hands and feet.
Eros and Capricorn
Coital Techniques
The different positions of coitus, as we have seen, constitute “techniques” that are easily visualized and as easily described. For this reason they have had a general impact that is perhaps not entirely warranted, an impact that has worked to one or another degree upon our oral folklore, our erotic literature, and our sexological writings. This has been the case to the extent that the entire concept of coital technique is often equated with coital positions. A good many more subtle matters, many of them apt to be of more practical application to many persons, have consequently been ignored.
In the course of an act of sexual intercourse, both the male and the female are consciously or unconsciously concerned with several considerations. Each tries to derive the maximum sensual pleasure from the act and to ensure maximum pleasure for the partner. The male attempts to avoid reaching climax before bringing the female to orgasm. Both try to be physically comfortable while taking care not to cause the partner discomfort. Often, although not always, the simultaneous orgasm will be a goal. In some cases the male may seek to avoid orgasm entirely, sometimes as a birth-control measure but occasionally to husband his strength for future lovemaking. The heightening of the orgasm itself may be a consideration.
Eros & Capricorn: A Cross-Cultural Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Techniques (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 1) Page 8
