(On the figures of Venus) is an anthology of ancient Greek and ancient Roman writings on erotic topics, discussed objectively and classified and grouped by subject matter. It was first published by the German classicist Friedrich Karl Forberg in 1824 in Latin and Greek as a commentary to Antonio Beccadelli's (1394âÂÂ1471) (commonly referred to as ), an erotic poem sequence of 1425 in Renaissance Latin, though it was later also published as a separate work.
Forberg's work was later also translated into English in 1899 and published by Charles Carrington as De figuris Veneris, Manual of classical erotology, and again in 1907 by Charles Hirsch, and into French, German and Spanish. The French edition by Alcide Bonneau was titled . One French edition of 1906 was illustrated by ÃÂdouard-Henri Avril, which concludes with a list of 95 sexual positions. Most of the editions were restricted to high society or censored; one of the copies edited in France was immediately deposited on the secret shelves of the . The Spanish translation was titled .
In Robert A. Heinlein's last novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987), Dr Ira Johnson uses the book for sexual education. Later, Maureen Johnson does the same.