There is some indication that violent sexual encounters, like other mythological scenarios, were acted out as punitive entertainments in the arena. The poet Martial praises a scenario for its fidelity to the Pasiphaë myth. The logistics of staging a sex act between a woman and a bull is a matter of speculation; if "Pasiphaë" were a condemned criminal to be tortured and killed, the animal may have been induced by the application of "vaginal secretion from a cow in season". In Apuleius's novel, a female poisoner condemned "ad bestias" is scheduled to appear in the arena for intercourse with the protagonist in his bestial form.