Note 511 — Chapter I · CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY[3] (continued 2)
Reading edition
Suetonius, Nero, 28; Hist. Aug. Hadrian, 14; Heliogabalus, 6, 15, etc.; Statius, Silvae, iii, 4, etc. The adulation of this vice pervaded even the golden age of Latin poetry:
But Virgil’s songs are pure except that horrid one Beginning with “Formosum pastor Corydon.” Byron, Don Juan, i, 42.
For the estimation in which paederasty was held in Crete see Strabo, X, iv, 21; Athenaeus, xi, 20. Old men even wore a robe of “honour” to indicate that in youth they had been chosen to act the part of a pathic. The epigram on Julius Caesar is well known—“omnium mulierum vir, omnium virorum mulier”; Suetonius, in Vit. 52. Anastasius, who seems to have been somewhat of a purist for his time, abolished a theatrical spectacle addressed particularly to the paederasts, against which Chrysostom had vainly launched his declamations; In Psalm xli, 2 (in Migne, v, 157). “Boys, assuming the dress and manners of women, with a mincing gait and erotic gestures, ravished the senses of the observers so that men raged against each other in their impassioned fury. This stain on our manners you obliterated,” etc.; Procopius, Gaz. Panegyr., 16. The saint is much warmer and more analytical in his invective.