Elephantis  

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"We read in ancient Writers of a great courtesan and procuress of the days of old Rome, by name Elephantis, who did make and invent postures or modes of the same sort as those of Aretino, but even worse, the which the great ladies and princesses of yore, following the ways of harlotry, did study as being a very excellent book." --Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies (1665-66) by Brantôme

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Elephantis or Elephantine was a Greek poetess apparently renowned in the classical world as the author of a notorious sex manual. Her works have not survived.

According to Suetonius, the Roman Emperor Tiberius took a complete set of her works with him when he retreated to his resort on Capri.

One of the classical epigrams of the Priapeia collected by Sir Richard Burton refers to her books:

Obscenas rigido deo tabellas
dicans ex Elephantidos libellis
dat donum Lalage rogatque, temptes,
si pictas opus edat ad figuras.

("Lalage dedicates a votive offering to the God of the erect penis, bringing shameless pictures from the books of Elephantis, and begs him to try and imitate with her the variety of intercourse of the figures in the illustrations.")

And the Roman poet Martial wrote:

Quales nec Didymi sciunt puellae,
Nec molles Elephantidos libelli,
Sunt illic Veneris novae figurae

("Such verses as neither the daughters of Didymus know, nor the debauched books of Elephantis, in which are set out new forms of lovemaking.") "Novae figurae" has been read as "novem figurae" (i.e., "nine forms" of lovemaking, rather than "new forms" of lovemaking), and so some commentators have inferred that she listed nine different sexual positions.





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