SOME RIGHT COCK-UPS
Aphrodisiac vegetables and mustard suppositories
“I wonder what happens with Love Potion Number Ten?” – The Clovers
(Referential frugality: except where otherwise specified, basic sources are Pliny’s Natural History plus Hellenic herbalist Dioscorides and the two great Greek versions of Doc Martin, Hippocrates and Galen. Angus McLaren, Impotence: A Cultural History, Univ. Chicago, 2007, pp1-24, provides a rich repertoire of remedies. And, don’t forget that one-time classic, Norman Douglas’s Venus in the Kitchen, 1952).
Greeks and Romans were firm believers in the natural aphrodisiac properties of herbs, plants, and vegetables – at least they weren’t flogging rhinoceros horn to Oriental hopefuls. Carrots, garlic (worshipped by the Egyptians as a goddess), leeks, lentils, parsnips, rocket – you name it, somebody recommended it.
Emperor Tiberius (AD 14-37), when (as an early devotee of wank-magazines) not resorting to porno – his bedroom contained the sex manuals of Elephantis and Parrhasius’s picture of Atalanta fellating Meleager – pinned his hopes on skirret, imported annually in bulk from Germany. Skirret ( Siser in Latin) is a relative of carrots and parsnips. All ranked high on the ancient Get It Up list; cf. for Tiberius’s erective efforts R Syme’s delightful ‘Diet on Capri,’ Athenæum 77 (1989), 261-71, also AC Andrews on carrots and parsnips, Classical Philology 44 (1949), 182-96; 55 (1958), 145-52 – all online.
Caligula is supposed to have fed his senators an exclusively carrot dinner so that he could watch them “rutting like rabbits”. Some years ago, on Coronation Street, Mavis surreptitiously fed Derek parsnips to re-kindle his interest in her – for most men it’d take a lot more than that. An alternative might be to imitate Curly in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn, who inflamed a girl by shoving a carrot up her twat. Galen, followed by Thomas Aquinas, promoted foods that cause farting – It’s an ill wind....
Not every ancient believed in these priapic panaceas. Ovid ( Art of Love, bk 2 vv415-24) scathingly dismisses a traditional venereal list of herbs and vegetables as “hocus-pocus”. Nettles, pepper, and other urticants are also Ovidian no-nos. He’d have shivered in agreement with Oribasius’s warning ( Medical Collections, b8 ch39) to avoid mustard suppositories that burn your bum – anus horribilis, as Queen E2 almost lamented.
Petronius’s ( Satyricon, ch138) impotent hero Encolpius, after vainly trying all the usual herbs and spices – more than go into Colonel Sanders’s Kentucky Fried Chicken – is finally cured by an old crone flogging his genitals with nettles (worse than Bond’s ordeal by carpet-beater in Casino Royale) and buggering him with a peppered dildo. This apparently successful (text becomes fragmentary) procedure (colloquially known as ‘pegging’) may have inspired the climactic scene – with reverse effect – in GoreVidal’s Myra Breckinridge.
As Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer, “You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet.” The Greek medico-magic text Cyanides (bk1 ch18) recommends wearing an amulet containing a sliver of ostrich gizzard. A Byzantine manual ( Farm Work, bk19 ch5) swears by a paste compounded from the ashes of a deer’s tail mixed with wine – O Deer! Envy the Indians (Theophrastus, On Plants, bk19 ch18) who had an amatory plant – not specified, dammit! – which could inspire you to 70 erections per night, quite eclipsing Cialis andViagra.
Greeks and Romans – poor sods – never had the pleasure of chocolate. As a chocoholic, I’m pinning my hopes on the claim that the dark variety is good for you. In the 18th century, Casanova and the Marquis de Sade believed in its aphrodisiac powers. At erotic extremes, Madame de Pompadour imbibed it to relax her frigidity, Madame du Barry – a regular nympho – plied her gallants with it to help them keep (it) up with her.
Last but definitely not least comes (in both senses) Aztec Chief Montezuma who along with consuming 100 dishes per dinner would drink 50 cups of chocolate before going off to his Milk Tray selection of 100 wives and 4,000 concubines.
I should cocoa!