EXCERPT In the eighth book of Aeneid (483-88), Evander attributes an outlandishly atrocious form of punishment to Mezentius, the Etruscan King. However, it is not Virgil who first speaks of this punishment, for before Virgil, Cicero cites from Aristotle an analogy which compares the twofold composite of the body and soul with the torture inflicted by the Etruscan pirates. Revived during the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus Macrinus, the notoriety of this atrocity survives antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the sixteenth century, the horror of this torture is expressed, once again, by a popular emblem called Nupta Contagioso showing a woman being tied to a man plagued by syphilis, at the King’s order. Widely distributed throughout Europe, the emblem continues to reappear in different contexts during the Renaissance and even toward the nineteenth century. Nupta Contagioso or Nupta Cadavera literally suggests a marriage with the diseased or the dead…