XVI. v. 17). The Lesbian women are said to have used
such instruments, made of ivory or gold with silken stuffs and linen.
Aristophanes (_Lysistrata_, v. 109) speaks of the manufacture by the
Milesian women of a leather artificial penis, or olisbos. In the British
Museum is a vase representing a _hetaira_ holding such instruments, which,
as found at Pompeii, may be seen in the museum at Naples. One of the best
of Herondas's mimes, "The Private Conversation," presents a dialogue
between two ladies concerning a certain olisbos (or nbon), which one of
them vaunts as a dream of delight. Through the Middle Ages (when from time
to time the clergy reprobated the use of such instruments[191]) they
continued to be known, and after the fifteenth century the references to
them became more precise. Thus Fortini, the Siennese novelist of the
sixteenth century, refers in his _Novelle dei Novizi_ (7th Day, Novella
XXXIX) to "the glass object filled with warm water which nuns use to calm
the sting of the flesh and to satisfy themselves as well as they can"; he
adds that widows and other women anxious to avoid pregnancy availed
themselves of it. In Elizabethan England, at the same time, it appears to
have been of similar character and Marston in his satires tells how Lucea
prefers "a glassy instrument" to "her husband's lukewarm bed." In
sixteenth century France, also, such instruments were sometimes made of
glass, and Brantome refers to the godemiche; in eighteenth century Germany
they were called _Samthanse_, and their use, according to Heinse, as
quoted by Duehren, was common among aristocratic women.
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