OF INTERCOURSE WITH ANIMALS
IT will not be out of place to say something here of the incontinence of
those who have carried out carnal intercourse with animals. It appears
that in Egypt the Mendesians, who paid divine honors to a he-goat[136],
prostituted to him publicly women, even against his inclination, in
celebrating his rites. Herotodus II., 46:
“A monstrous affair was connected with this district (viz., the
Mendesian) in my time; a he-goat covered a woman in public.”
Strabo, XVII., p. 802:
“Mendes, where they worship Pan, and a live he-goat; the latter in
that place have intercourse with women[137].”
The Jews also knew something of the practice; as we know from the law of
Moses, Leviticus xx., 15-16:
“And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and
ye shall slay the beast. And if a woman approach unto any beast, and
lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they
shall surely be put to death” ...
How should Juvenal have come to tell us, Satire VI., 332-33:
“... no more delay is there; she hastens to make a donkey ride her
from behind,” if it had not been known that women sometimes
submitted themselves to asses? Would Apuleius have thought of
describing to us with no less minuteness than wit the scene in which
Lucius, changed into an ass by a mistake of Fotis, effects
intercourse with a matron? _Metamorphoses_, book X., p. 249:
“But I was a prey to grave apprehensions; I asked myself how I, with
my long and coarse legs, could mount a delicate woman, clasp with my
hard hoofs her soft and tender limbs that looked like milk and
honey; how could I with my enormous mouth, furnished with teeth as
big as tomb-stones, kiss those small, rosy, scented lips; how lastly
this lady, although in rut to her very finger nails, could take in
such a big genital verge.... She, however, doubled her tender
allurements, her endless kisses, her sweet murmurings, interspersed
with sweet glances like stings: ‘I hold you at last,’ she cried, ‘I
hold my dove, my sparrow!’ and having said this, she showed me how
vain my fears had been for embracing me as closely as she could, she
received me inside entirely, out and out. Even more than that,
whenever I drew back in order to spare her, she pushed closer to me,
and clasping my backbone like mad, she clung to me so closely that,
by Hercules, I began to think that I was not well enough furnished
to assuage her passion completely.”
A young girl of Tuscany got herself covered by a dog in the time of Pius
V., the Roman Pope, as reported by Venette II., iv., ch. 3; and
according to a note of Elmenhorst on the above quoted passage of
Apuleius, a woman was discovered in Paris, in October, 1601, to have had
connection with a dog. The law was appealed to, and in conformity with
the unanimous verdict pronounced by the parliament, the adulterous woman
and the dog were both burnt alive. Nay! more, a woman has been known to
submit to a crocodile, if we may believe Plutarch, who reports in his
treatise _On the Sagacity of Animals_ (p. 976, vol. II., of the complete
Works):
“Quite lately our excellent Philinus, on returning from a long
voyage to Egypt, told me that he had seen at Antaeopolis an old
woman sleeping with a crocodile stretched comfortably beside her on
her pallet.”
Nor have men despised the vulva of animals. Plate III of the _Monuments
du Culte Secret des Dames Romaines_, shows the picture of a man working
away in a goat, though the annotator ought not to have quoted in
illustration of it a passage of Virgil (_Bucolics_ III., 8.), which has
nothing whatever to do with this matter:
“We know who (pedicated) you, while the he-goats looked at you
askance.”
In our countries legal cases show that not only goats, but also sheep,
cows, and mares, have sometimes charmed shepherds and other people of
low breeding.
FOOTNOTES - OF INTERCOURSE WITH ANIMALS
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Footnote 136:
Plutarch, _Of Animals that have Reason_, p. 989, vol. II., of his
works: “It is reported in Egypt the he-goat Mendes, shut up with a
great number of women, all of them beautiful, refused to have anything
to do with them, and prefers goats by far.”
Footnote 137:
If we may believe Venette (II., iv. 3), there is nothing more common
in Egypt at the present day than for young women to have intercourse
with he-goats.
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