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To the first exhibition of the Royal Academy, which was opened on the 2nd of January 1769, Reynolds sent three pictures: The Duchess of Manchester and her son, as Diana disarming Cupid. Lady Blake, as Juno receiving the Cestus of Venus. Miss Morris as Hope nursing Love. That all of them were, so to speak, "fancy portraits" is not entirely without significance.
That goddess had arrayed herself in all her charms, and, to crown all, had borrowed of Venus her girdle called Cestus, which had the effect to heighten the wearer's charms to such a degree that they were quite irresistible. So prepared, Juno went to join her husband, who sat on Olympus watching the battle.
On the latter medallion is a fury, in the form of a woman; her hair formed of serpents; flames issuing from her cestus of snakes; in one hand a bloody sword, in the other a trident the head of a man, streaming with blood upon one prong, and a human heart upon each of the others; while under her feet is a prostrate, naked, headless man.
"When you get my writing-table out of this corner, my pretty dears, I'd thank you to let me know it." Thus spake I in my blindness, fool that I was. Jupiter might as soon keep awake when Juno came in best bib and tucker, and with the cestus of Venus, to get him to sleep.
So the most beautiful of the goddesses became the wife of the most ill-favored of the gods. Venus possessed an embroidered girdle called the Cestus, which had the power of inspiring love. Her favorite birds were swans and doves, and the plants sacred to her were the rose and the myrtle.
Not so harmless was Lydon's retaliation; he quickly sprang to his feet, and aimed his cestus full on the broad chest of his antagonist. Tetraides reeled the populace shouted. "You are unlucky to-day," said Lepidus to Clodius: "you have lost one bet; you will lose another." "By the gods! my bronzes go to the auctioneer if that is the case. I have no less than a hundred sestertia upon Tetraides.
They are also subject to great danger from some runaway blacks, who infest the coast near the rock Cestus, going out in canoes, and watching their opportunities for plundering any boat or vessel that they are able to overpower.
"That," cries Waller, "That which her slender waist confin'd Shall now my joyful temples bind. Give me but what this ribbon bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round." Have women taste? and can they put off this cestus with which the least attractive of them puts on some of Venus's beauty?
Entellus had, in his younger days, been a great champion with the cestus, having been taught the use of the weapon by none other than Eryx, at that time king of Sicily, and one of the most expert boxers in the world.
The vanquished held up his finger when he acknowledged himself beaten. Boxing was a severer sport, and not much followed except by gentlemen of the "profession." It was practised with the clenched fists, either naked or armed with the deadly cestus. The "science" of the game was to parry the blows of the antagonist, as it is in the "noble and manly" art of self-defence now.
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