The Latin term ars erotica, while sometimes referring to works of fine art with overtly erotic content, is more notably used to designate skilled methods or styles of lovemaking that are thereby elevated with the honorific term “art.” This notion of the art of love – with its various techniques, strategies, and aims – is the principal focus of this study. In what way, however, is such art truly artistic in the aesthetic sense that theorists of art and beauty have traditionally identified with art and have persistently sought to explain? This book, an exploratory essay of philosophical somaesthetics, provides materials for answering this question by examining the most influential ways that ars erotica has been theorized in different historical cultures and periods.1 To what extent those past cultures actually practiced such erotic methods lies beyond our scope of inquiry, which is essentially theoretical. Though historically informed, the book aims at exploring key philosophical ideas and arguments rather than providing a full-blown cultural history of lovemaking. Its study of past theory has the forward-looking goal of helping us to avoid possible blind spots in our current understanding of lovemaking by revisiting some elements of ancient erotic thought.