Piercing body parts has a long history. For example, Caesar ’s bodyguards were said to have worn nipple rings as a sign of their virility. In ancient America, the Maya and other cultures practiced ritual piercing. Sculptures show cords studded with thorns being passed through the tongue or penis. This was a religious rite related both to fertility and penitence. Seventeenth-century buccaneers often pierced their ears and wore a gold piece, sometimes a coin taken from the treasure hold of some hapless galleon that had fallen captive. Each earring commemorated a ship the pirates had helped capture. German U-boat sailors during World War I also marked their “kills” in this fashion. Piercing is but one form (albeit the most common) of body decoration, a practice that also includes tattooing, scarification, and more lately, branding. Devotees of piercing explain that it is like tattooing, whose practitioners treat the human body as a canvas upon which colorful art is etched. In piercing, the human body serves as an armature to which metal sculpture is attached.