This three-volume work fascinatingly illustrates how people's attitudes towards sexuality are reflected in written documents. Adalbert Podlech's meticulous research demonstrates that throughout the millennia, it has been men who determined how sex, love, and eroticism were expressed. Podlech uses detailed etymological explanations to show how the handling of desire and the relationship between the sexes changed from the 1st millennium BC to the Middle Ages in India, the Mediterranean countries, and Central Europe. He describes how social, legal, and religious developments affected the interactions between men and women. One thing is made very clear in this fundamental work: while lifestyles have changed and societal structures have evolved over the millennia, one thing remained constant until the last century.