bout
a quarter of their clients desire to exercise this, and that in
France and Italy the proportion is higher; the number of women
who find _cunnilinctus_ agreeable is without doubt much greater.
Intercourse _per anum_ must also be regarded as a vicarious form
of coitus. It appears to be not uncommon, especially among the
lower social classes, and while most often due to the wish to
avoid conception, it is also sometimes practiced as a sexual
aberration, at the wish either of the man or the woman, the anus
being to some extent an erogenous zone.

The ethnic variations in method of coitus were briefly discussed
in volume v of these _Studies_, "The Mechanism of Detumescence,"
Section II. In all civilized countries, from the earliest times,
writers on the erotic art have formally and systematically set
forth the different positions for coitus. The earliest writing of
this kind now extant seems to be an Egyptian papyrus preserved at
Turin of the date B.C. 1300; in this, fourteen different
positions are represented. The Indians, according to Iwan Bloch,
recognize altogether forty-eight different positions; the _Ananga
Ranga_ describes thirty-two main forms. The Mohammedan _Perfumed
Garden_ describes forty forms, as well as six different kinds of
movement during coitus. The Eastern books of this kind are, on
the whole, superior to those that have been produced by the
Western world, not only by their greater thoroughness, but by the
higher spirit by which they have often been inspired.

The ancient Greek erotic writings, now all lost, in which the
modes of coitus were described, were nearly all attributed to
women. According to a legend recorded by Suidas, the earliest
writer of this kind was Astyanassa, the maid of Helen of Troy.
Elephantis, the poetess, is supposed to have enumerated nine
different postures. Numerous women of later date wrote on these
subjects, and one book is attributed to Polycrates, the sophist.

Aretino--who wrote after the influence of Christianity had
degraded erotic matters perilously near to that region of
pornography from which they are only to-day beginning to be
rescued--in his _Sonnetti Lussuriosi_ described twenty-six
different methods of coitus, each one accompanied by an
illustrative design by Giulio Romano, the chief among Raphael's
pupil