03-23-2004, 07:28 PM
The sex-with-animals stuff appears in Daniel P. Mannix's book "Those About to Die," which was published in the 50s. Mannix was a veteran writer for the men's adventure magazines of the day, not a historian, and the book was lurid even considering the subject. I don't know of any period references to back up the story and he may have been playing a riff on the infamous, popular and possibly apocryphal college-boy legend of the Tijuana donkey show. It's certainly something a Roman audience might have enjoyed, but most animals have little interest in mating with anything but their own species, though dogs are nototiously undiscriminating. <p></p><i></i>
