A quote from Urn-Burial, a strange book by the 17th-Century author Thomas Browne:

“What Song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling Questions are not beyond all conjecture . . .”

The painting above is by Herbert Draper, a good example of Victorian soft-core pornography.  They were better at it than we are.

The example below is by John William Waterhouse.  The Victorians knew that marrying restraint and indirection to perversity produced a more delirious kind of eroticism.