FIRST SECTION. (continued 2)

The information here collected, imperfect as it may be in many respects, is yet sufficient to throw some light on the external relations of brothels and courtesans. It shows convincingly that in the entire absence of police supervision on the sanitary side, such diseases as arose generally in Antiquity consequent upon coition must have had their especial home and chief focus in the brothels and their denizens. But of what nature these diseases were, and what parts of the body they attacked, we shall only then be able to determine, when we come to consider more precisely the actual excesses that led to them, whether within or without the walls of the brothels.

Paederastia.

§ 12.

In the preceding investigations we have shown how the natural aim and object of coition, viz. procreation of children, fell more and more into the background, in order to make way for sensual gratification; and we have made acquaintance with the establishments that grew up in course of time for its indulgence. The facility with which the bestial instinct could be satisfied and the titillation of carnal pleasure procured, was bound to rob the customary manner of sexual indulgence of the charm of novelty, and to set the depraved imagination of the voluptuary at work to solve the problem of how to import manifold variations into the simple act of copulation. This stage reached, it inevitably followed that the natural ways of union of the sexes began to appear insufficient, and the methods of so-called unnatural Love (Venus illegitima) grew up, wherein at last almost every trace of the specific purpose of the genital organs was lost sight of.

The “figurae Veneris legitimae” (modes of natural Love) are not altogether without interest for the physician230, but their study is less necessary for our particular purpose. The modes of “Venus illegitima” (unnatural Love) are what concern us here. The major part of these have unfortunately never been included by writers on the history of Venereal disease within the range of their enquiries. Hence it has come about that while on the one hand they have given quite false interpretations of various morbid affections, they have on the other mistaken for the names of diseases expressions signifying nothing more than forms of the unnatural sensual indulgence alluded to. The historical enquirer into these subjects must indeed tread very slippery ground. Supposing him to rise superior to the possible reproaches of morality, fortified by the words of St. Paul231, still he can find absolutely nowhere in his investigations any secure stopping-place, he must make up his mind to dispense with all external help and to be thrown utterly on his own resources. Not only do the best and fullest Dictionaries of the Greek and Latin languages leave him almost completely in the lurch, but above and beyond this he has very often to struggle with positive errors both in the Dictionaries and on the part of the professional Philologists in their annotations to the writings of the Ancients. These mistakes he must first of all discover, and afterwards correct. What such an undertaking involves, what powers it demands, will be obvious to anyone who is in any degree conversant with the systematic study of Antiquity. Nevertheless the task should not remain unattempted, if that is, we wish ever to come to a clear understanding of the relations of words and things in this connection; and on this ground the following researches no less than others find a legitimate place here. These we offer as the best that the limitation of our powers allowed,—at the same time gladly acknowledging the no small assistance we have received from the Treatises of Forberg and Meier232.

Paederastia appears, as is the case with all sexual perversions, to owe its origin to the stimulation of the Asiatic climate, the mother of exuberance and voluptuousness. The primary condition of its genesis may be easily traced, if side by side with the dictum of Forberg (loco citato, p. 235): “Et voluptas quidem paediconis facile intelligitur, cum omnis voluptas mentulae pendeat ex frictione” (And the pleasure indeed of the sodomite is readily intelligible, since all voluptuous pleasure depends on friction of the penis), we take into consideration the fact that the genital organs of Asiatic women,—a fact true also of Italian and Spanish women233—like their whole bodies, exhibit great looseness, and further note that the “Sphincter ani”234 muscle far and away surpasses the “Constrictor cunni” in strength. So it is by no means improbable that the Apostle Paul is accurate when he says235: “Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonoured among themselves; for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness.”

In Asia natural copulation formed a part of the Temple service of Venus, and in course of time Paederastia as well was joined with it, as is seen from the following passage of St. Athanasius236: “Sane olim Phoeniciae mulieres in idolorum templis prius prostabant, suique meretricii quaestus primordia diis, qui illic colebantur, consecrabant, suam deam stupris propitiam reddi, benevolamque hoc pacto effici ratae. Viri quoque propriam ementiti naturam, nec amplius mares se esse patientes, in feminas se converterunt, pergratum et honorificum matri deorum se ita facturas arbitrati. Omnes denique una cum perditissimis vivunt, et secum ipsi pugnant ut peiores quotidie evadant, atque ut dixit sanctus Christi minister Paulus:—(Here follows the passage just quoted from the Epistle to the Romans.)—Haec autem et similia agendo, fatentur certe et arguunt deos, quos ipsi colunt, huiusmodi vitam duxisse, scilicet ex Jove puerorum corruptiones atque adulteria, ex Venere meretriciam vitam ... ex aliis alia didicere, quae quidem cum leges puniunt, tum probi homines abhorrent.”

(Indeed the Phoenician women used in former times to prostitute themselves for hire in the temples of their idols and to offer up the gains of their fornication as first-fruits to the deities that were worshipped therein, deeming that in this way they won the favour and goodwill of their goddess. Moreover men, perverting their own proper nature, and no more enduring to be males, turned themselves into the likeness of women, supposing that by so doing they rendered a service most grateful and honourable to the Mother of the Gods. In one word they all consort with the most abandoned of mankind, and strive one with the other how they may grow worse and worse day by day; and as St. Paul the Apostle of Christ says:—(Here follows the passage just quoted from the Epistle to the Romans.)—By such and such-like acts they verily confess and show forth that those gods that themselves worship led lives of a like kind. Thus from Jupiter they learned to seduce boys and to commit adultery, from Venus harlotry, and so on from the other gods other vile practices,—practices which are at once punished by the laws and abominated by every honourable man). The same passage explains also how the Old Testament comes to designate Cinaedi (on pathic Sodomites) by the expression קָדֵשׁ (kadêsh, sanctus,—holy, consecrated). This originally implied nothing more than a person who devoted himself for the glory of a God as a servant in his Temple; and we have good reason for believing we can establish the conjecture that the whole cult of the Priests of Cybelé, etc., who had to practice emasculation and who were known by the name of Galli, rests originally on a simple misunderstanding of the expressions εὐνοῦχοι and ἀνδρόγυνοι (eunuchs, men-women),—expressions which will be discussed later on,—these words having meant at first nothing more than Cinaedi (sodomites). It was only in later times that Paederastia became a motive for Castration, as by this means the body of the male could be made to preserve for a longer period the youthful boyishness that approximated it to the female form. This is shown in the following passage of Lucian237, a passage of special interest for the history of Paederastia:

“So at first when men still lived the old heroic life and reverenced virtue that brought them nearer the gods, they obeyed the laws that nature had laid down and marrying in due proportion of age became the fathers of noble children. But little by little the age degenerated from that high level to the pit of sensual indulgence, and struck out new and abnormal modes of gratification. Soon a reckless licentiousness broke the very laws of nature; and for the first time a lover looked on a man as on a woman to lust after him, and worked his wicked will either by superior force or by dint of artful persuasions. So in one bed came together one and the same sex. And each seeing himself in the other, took no shame in anything they did or in anything they suffered to be done. Wasting their seed on barren238 rocks, as the saying goes, they bought a brief pleasure at the cost of deepest infamy. Indeed with some to such a height of overmastering force did their reckless passion rise that they actually violated nature with the knife; and only when they had emptied men of their manliness did they attain the summit and acmé of their gratification.

“But the wretched and unhappy creatures, that they may remain longer boys, suffer themselves to be no more men,—an ambiguous riddle midway between the sexes, neither preserving the sex they were born to, nor yet having any other to belong to. The bloom that was kept a while in youth withers in old age and makes them wither with it in premature decay. At one moment they are counted as boys, then lo! they are old men; there is no middle time of manhood between the two. Thus wanton luxury, the foul mother of every evil thing, contriving shameful pleasures one to cap the other, fell into the slough of that disease that cannot even be named with decency, (μέχρι τῆς οὐ ῥηθῆναι δυναμένης εὐπρεπῶς νόσου) that no province of impurity might remain unexplored.”

In later times indeed castration was resorted to after the attainment of man’s estate, in order that the Eunuchs might be able to appease the titillation of sensual desire in the women without fear of impregnating them239.

In Syria, where this vicious practice of paederastia was especially in vogue, the Jews also appear to have been acquainted with it240. From Asia, whether through the instrumentality of the Phoenicians, or as Welcker241 maintains, through that of the Lydians, Paederastia came in the first instance to Crete, and spread from thence over the whole of Greece242.

Just as was the case with the cult of Venus in that country, so the “love of boys” assumed quite a different form in Greece. As Paedophilia (Affection for boys) it took rank as one of the means of education, being consecrate to the heavenly Eros, while Paederastia (Carnal love of boys) fell to the province of the common Eros. Down to quite modern times Paedophilia has been confounded with Paederastia, and in this way a shameful stigma attached to the Greek nation,—a stigma that Meier, following the initiative of Jacobs and K. O. Müller (loco citato), was the first to free the Greeks from. Granted, the two things approached very near each other; still Paederastia was never approved by the Greeks243. At Sparta the violation of boys was punished by loss of civil rights, exile or death244, and it was the same at Athens, as Meier (loco citato) pp. 167 sqq. has sufficiently proved. The fact that the laws relating to this offence were promulgated at Athens only after the time of Solon shows that paederastia, as well as brothels, did not come into use there till about that time. True Athens in later times was quite as notorious for the prevalence there of paederastia as Corinth was for its Gay Women245; and Aristophanes’ Comedies show only too abundantly how much occasion he could find for scourging the “Pathics”, and how the Gymnasia and Palaestrae (Wrestling-grounds) also were responsible for a great deal of the harm done.

For, as Aristophanes246 says:

(Of old when boys sat at the trainer’s, they were bound to throw out the thigh, so as not to expose to the spectators’ gaze anything unbecoming; then again when they got up again, they had to scrape out the mark in the sand, and take care not to leave behind a model of their youthful shape,—an incitement to lovers).

Besides the Gymnasia and Palaestrae, the barber’s shops (κουρεῖα)247, perfumers’ shops (μυροπωλεῖα)248, Surgeries (ἰατρεῖα)249, Money-changers’ counters (τράπεζαι)250, bath-houses251, and to a greater or less extent all kinds of workshops (ἐργαστήρια)252, particularly when in situations handy to the Market, served as trysting-places of the paederasts and pathics. Here the former sought victims for their vicious desires, and the latter opportunities to sell their persons; while many of the proprietors of such places may well have acted as Procurers (προαγωγοί, μαστροποί,—Procurers, Pandars) for this purpose. The vice itself was chiefly practised in lonely, obscure parts of the town, and particularly on the Pnyx hill253.

The Eleans and Bœotians are not only reproached with paederastia, but the violation of boys is alleged to have been allowed among these peoples254. Megara it is true is charged with ὕβρις (shameful violence), a common designation for paederastia255, but we may certainly doubt whether the temple of Ἀφροδίτη πρᾶξις there, which Pausanias256, mentions, had anything to do with this vice. The author in question says: “After the sanctuary of Dionysus is shown a temple of Venus. The image of Venus is of ivory, and is called Aphrodité Praxis. It is the most ancient image in the temple.” No other author however mentions any such cult as existing in Megara, and even though the word πρᾶξις (intercourse), as Meier (loco citato p. 153, note 49) has shown by examples, is used specially of paederastia, yet at the same time the passage of Euripides, Ion 894.

(Thou, god, partner of my bed, didst lead me, in shamelessness doing favour to Cypris—Love), clearly proves that πράσσειν (to do, to have intercourse) was used of coition generally257.

Moreover in the passage of Plutarch quoted a little above paederastia is called χάρις ἄχαρις (a grace that is without grace) and further down Ἔρως, Ἀφροδίτης μὴ παρούσης,—Ἔρως χωρὶς Ἀφροδίτης, (Love—Eros—where Aphrodité is not, Love without Aphrodité); so how can it have been regarded by the Greeks as under the patronage of Venus? Undoubtedly πρᾶξις is here synonymous with πόρνη (harlot), and the Ἀφροδίτη πρᾶξις at Megara is nothing else than the Ἀφροδίτη πόρνη of other cities.

Chalcis had gained such notoriety for paederastia258, that χαλκιδίζειν (to act the Chalcidian) was said proverbially for παιδεραστεῖν (to practise paederastia). It was the same with Chios and Siphnos, as the expressions χιάζειν and σιφνιάζειν (to play the Chian, the Siphnian) in Hesychius prove. Hesychius says indeed σιφνιάζειν: i.e. to finger behind; for the Siphnians are ill-spoken of as enjoying boy-lovers. To act the Siphnian then means, to poke with the finger. But the first explanation by καταδακτυλίζειν (to finger behind), as well as the gloss of Suidas259, show clearly that the inhabitants of the island of Siphnos,—one of the Cyclades, practised a species, if we may use the expression, of Onania postica (back-door, posterior masturbation),—like the cobbler at Vienna, who to allay the Prurigo ani (itching of the anus) pushed his hammer up his posterior, and then alas! could not pull it out again. In the same way the Siphnians used the fingers260.

The inhabitants of Italy were according to Suidas (under the name Θάμυρις—Thamyris) inventors of paederastia; and Etruscans, Samnites and Messapians, as well as the Greeks dwelling in Magna Graecia, lay under the reproach of practising the most vicious forms of love with men and violation of boys261. In all probability the vice spread from here to Rome, where it is found as early as the year 433 A.U.C.262. To such an extent did it increase that in 585 A.U.C. (B.C. 169), as Meier has demonstrated, the Lex Scantinia had to be passed against it. Yet all this amounted as yet to nothing in comparison with the scenes of horror that were enacted under the Emperors Tiberius, Caligula, etc., of whom Martial263 says:

(As though it were a small wrong done our sex to make males prostitutes264 to be debauched by the crowd, cradles now became a part of the brothel-keeper’s stock in trade, that the baby-boy torn from the breast might solicit a sordid wage by his wailing, and immature bodies paid horrible penalties. Horrors such as these the great Father of Italy (Domitian) would not suffer: that same good Emperor who of late came to the rescue of tender youths, that raging lust might not make men unfruitful. Heretofore boys loved him,—and young men and old; now the very infants too love thee, Caesar).

Yet this was of little avail; the vice descended from generation to generation, and passed on to the Christian nations, just as the Roman punishments did in their legal codes.

Diseases consequent on Paederastia.

§ 13.

If we consider, first that the contractile power of the Sphincter ani muscle offered great resistance to the paederast, a resistance only to be overcome by the exertion of considerable force, secondly that the glands of the rectum exude a malodorous secretion, which under the influence of climate,—a subject to be dealt with more precisely later on,—assumes a more or less acrid quality, it will not surprise us to find that manifold forms of disease showed themselves in Ancient times both among paederasts and cinaedi (pathics). These were no doubt all the more serious in cases where the one set of organs or the other was already morbidly affected. As to the paederast indeed the direct evidence is scanty, yet it is not entirely wanting, as may be seen from the following Epigram of Martial265:

In Naevolum.

(To Naevolus.—When I see pained and sore the boy’s penis and your posterior, Naevolus,—I’m no wizard, but I know what it is you do). Here we see both parts suffering from disease, the paederast in his penis, the pathic in his posterior: and Martial concludes Naevolus was a cinaedus.

But more especially must phimosis and paraphimosis have had a tendency to be set up in the case of the paederast. These at first, because the continuous state of erection of the penis which is a feature of these affections was obviously the most visibly conspicuous symptom, were designated by the name Satyriasis, the usual appellation of the latter condition. This will also give a probable explanation of the mortality from this cause observed by Themison in Crete266,—a locality notorious, as we have seen, for the dishonouring of boys,—and generally for the frequency of Satyriasis, which often took an almost epidemic character in that island. Paraphimosis it should be noted in passing had already been only too frequently noted as affecting masturbators. Physicians indeed say nothing as to the predisposing causes, and explain the disease as arising from an Acrimonia humorum (Acridness of the humours) or from drinking a Philtre (Love-potion). Naumann267 appears to wish to make the Satyriasis that prevailed in Crete some form of leprous affection, but for this view we can find absolutely no ground.

Much more frequent mention is found of affections of the rectum among the pathics as consequences of paederastia. First come fissures, and in their train ulcers of the rectum; whence the expressions sectus, percisus (cut), and the like are applied so often in Roman writers to the pathic, and to his vice generally. So Martial268 says:

In Carinum.

(To Carinus. —Carinus has no relics left of his fundament, cut up to the very navel; and yet he itches with desire up to the very navel. Oh! what a vile itch torments the unhappy man! He possesses no posterior, and nevertheless is a cinaedus (pathic).)

In Lesbiam269.

(To Lesbia.—As oft as you rise from your chair, Lesbia, I have many a time noticed the fact, your undergarments, poor lady, play the paederast with you. You endeavour to pluck them away first with the right, anon with the left hand; finally you release them with tears and groaning. So drawn together are the twin Symplegades of your fundament, and enter in between Minyan and Cyanean buttocks. Would you fain cure this ungraceful defect? I will tell you how: I think, Lesbia, you’d better not get up, nor yet sit down!)

Usually indeed the Pathic tried to conceal his complaint, and to make it pass under some other name, as does Charisianus:

De Charisiano270.

(On Charisianus.—Charisianus says, Lupus, that for many days he has been unable to indulge in paederastia. When his comrades asked the reason; his bowels, he said, were relaxed!)

But most frequently of all are the fig-like swellings on the fundament (Ficus, Mariscae,—figs, large figs) mentioned by Ancient authors as a consequence of paederastia.

De se Priapus271.

(Priapus on Himself.—I am not hewn of fragile elm, nor is my pillar that stands bent back with penis stiffly erect of any chance wood, but born of the living cypress.—Beware this image, thief, whoe’er thou art; for should you damage with plundering hand the tiniest clusters of this stem, there shall grow a fig, deny it if you will, of cypress-wood inserted up your fundament.)

De Labieno272.

(On Labienus.—To buy boys Labienus sold his gardens; nought but a fig-garden does Labienus now possess.)

Ad Caecilianum273.

(To Caecilianus.—When I have said ficus, you laugh, Caecilianus, as though I had committed a solecism, and declare ficos should be the word. We will say ficus, meaning the figs that we know grow on the tree, but your figs, Caecilianus, we will call ficos).

Now too we shall understand the medico ridente (the doctor grinning) in the following passage of Juvenal (II. 12):

(But from your smooth posterior are cut, the doctor grinning the while, the bloated swellings). Just as it admits of no doubt that in the passage of Horace274:

(For as loud as a burst bladder sounds, I farted my swellings (ficos—figs) away, splitting the rump), ficos and not as commonly ficus must be read.

That these morbid growths were not entirely free from contagious matter seems to be indicated by the following passages. In the Priapeia (Carm. 50) we read:

(A certain girl, if it please you to listen, Priapus, is playing with me. Most sorely afflicted is she with swellings; and she will not give herself to me, yet does not say she never will, and ever finds excuses for putting off and putting off. Now if ever she shall be mine to enjoy, I and my comrades with me, will wreath all thy penis, Priapus, with garlands). The girl, who was badly affected with these swellings, and that presumably in the secret parts, refuses her lover coition. The latter does not insist, but prays to Priapus, as was habitually done in all cases of affections of the genitals (see p. 74 above) and vows to deck his penis with garlands. It follows that the lover was aware these swellings would be injurious to him, if he should constrain the girl, of whom the poet says, nec negat daturam (yet does not say she will not give herself), to lie with him. Still clearer evidence of this may be found in the following Epigram of Martial, where a whole family is affected with these swellings or tumours:

(On a tumourous household.—The goodwife is tumourous, tumourous the goodman her husband, tumourous the daughter of the house, and the son-in-law and the grandson. Neither house-steward nor factor is free of the foul ulcer, nor the rugged ditcher, nor yet the ploughman. Now when all alike, young and old have tumours (ficos, ficus), the strange thing is, not a single field has fig-trees (ficus)). For the rest the words ulcere turpi (foul ulcer) show that ficus, like σύκος and σύκωσις (fig, fig-like swelling) in Greek, signifies not only a fig-shaped swelling, but also an ulcer with granulous surface, like a fig cut in two. Or possibly it would be better to understand here swellings that have passed into the ulcerated stage276.

Seeing how plainly the passages just quoted from non-medical Writers point to these swellings being a consequence of paederastia, it is surprising that not one of the Ancient physicians, spite of Juvenal’s medico ridente (the doctor grinning the while), ever so far as we know, alleges this form of licentiousness as cause of affections of the sort. On the other hand we cannot help remarking that the frequency of these swellings in the time of Martial and Juvenal can hardly be explained as arising solely from the general prevalence of paederastia. More probably, then as now, the Genius epidemicus (Epidemic influences) bore no unimportant share in bringing about the result, just as was the case (see later) with Mentagra (Eruption of the chin).

However not merely primary affections of the posteriors were the punishment of the Cinaedus, but also secondary ones of the mouth and throat. First and foremost was hoarseness of the voice, to which Martial277 alludes, when he makes the champion of the baths the cinaedus Charinus speak raucidulo ore (with a weak, hoarse voice). This we find, following Reiske’s278 indication, more explicitly dealt with in Dio Chrysostom279:—

“But this is surely worth mentioning, and it is a thing no one can deny. I mean the noteworthy fact that a disease has attacked so many in this city,—one which I used to hear of as prevailing much more frequently with others than amongst you. What is it I mean? Even though I could explain myself no more clearly, yet you might easily guess the answer. Do not think I am speaking of secrets, of hidden doings, when the astounding fact itself speaks plainly enough. For there are many in this city that are asleep, even while they walk and stand and speak; though they may appear to most observers to be awake, yet it is not really so.

“Now they give, in my opinion, the clearest proof that they are asleep,—they snore (ῥέγχουσιν). I cannot, by heaven, express myself more clearly with decency. True only a few of the sleepers are suffering from the complaint I mean, and of the others it affects only the drunken, the overfed and such as have lain ill. But I maintain this vicious practice (ἔργον) shames the city and brands it publicly. The grossest ignominy is brought down upon their native city by these sleepers by day, and they ought, I say, to have been expelled your borders, as has been their fate everywhere else. For it is not now and then, nor here and there, they are met with; but at all times and in all places in the city occasion may be found to threaten, scorn or deride them. For the rest the practice has actually penetrated now to boys still young, and adults that yet would fain be reputable, suffer themselves to be led away into regarding the matter as a trifle, and if they refrain from the decisive step, yet it was their wish to take it.

“If there were a city in which wailing were to be heard all day long, and no one could walk about in it, no! not one minute, without listening to the sound of lamentation, tell me, what man would willingly stay here? Now wailing, as all agree, is a sign of unhappiness; but that other sound is the sign of shamelessness and lewdness the most scandalous. Surely one would much rather choose to associate with unhappy men than with paederasts280. I might avoid listening, if a single man were to be blowing the flute everlastingly, but if in a particular place there is an everlasting noise of flutes, singing or guitar-playing,—such as might be where the rocks ever ring with the Syrens’ song,—I could not, having arrived there, endure to remain. And this unmusical and harsh tone of voice281, what man of any virtue can abide it? If a man passes in front of a home in which he catches the sound, he says, “Of a surety there is a brothel there!” Now what shall be said of a city where nothing but this tone of voice prevails universally, so that no exception can be made of time or day or place whatever? For in streets and houses, in public places, in the theatre and in the Gymnasium, paederastia is rife282.

“Again I have never yet heard a flute-player of a morning in the city, but this horrible sort of din is raised283 from earliest dawn.

“I do not indeed shut my eyes to the fact that it will be said I am talking silly nonsense most likely, in making such allegations, and that there is nothing in it. Nay! but surely you are only carrying pot-herbs in your cart, and behold with indifference profusion of white bread on the road, as well as salt and fresh meat. But just consider the thing (πρᾶγμα i. e. paederastia) in this way too: If any one of these objectors should come into a city, where all men, when they point to a thing, point at it with the middle finger284, when any one gives the right hand, gives it with this same gesture, and when he stretches out the hand, as the people does in voting or the judges in giving decisions, does so in the same way, what, pray will he think of such a city? What, if further all men walk in this city with skirts up-raised, as if wading in a quagmire? For do you not really and truly know what has given occasion to the defamation you suffer; what it is has offered matter to such as are unfriendly disposed to you for censure on our city? Tell me, what is the reason they nickname you “hawks” (κερκίδες)285?

“Well, but you opine the question is not what others say of you, but what you really do yourselves? Good; but if a single disease of such a sort attacks a people that they all of them acquire women’s voices, and no man, neither stripling nor grey-beard, can utter a word in a man’s voice, is not this a horrible thing, and harder to bear, I should suppose, than any Plague? For it is not shameful to have a fever, nor even to die.

“Nay! but to speak with women’s voice is after all to speak with human voice, and no one is filled with aversion when he hears a woman. But, tell me, whose is this voice; does it not belong to the Androgyni (men-women), the Cinaedi? or to such as have had the genitals amputated? True it is not invariably found with all such, but it is characteristic of them and a sign of what they are.

“Well then! suppose a stranger from a distance to judge from your voices, what kind of men you are, and what are your pursuits (πράττειν,—what it is you do). You are not fit, I tell you, to be neatherds or shepherds. I wonder would any one take you for descendants of the Argives, as you profess to be, or indeed for Greeks at all,—you who outdo the Phoenicians in lubricity? At any rate I do think it would behove a man of any morality in such a city to close his ears with wax far more than if he were sailing past the Syrens’ shore. There he would run the risk of death, but here of foulest licence, of violation, of the vilest seduction.

“Once Ionic harmony was in vogue, or Doric, or yet another sort, the Phrygian and Lydian, now it is the music of Aradus and the Phoenician modes that please you; you love this rhythm par excellence, as others do the Spondaic. Was ever a race of men that were good musicianers—through the nose?!

(p. 409). “But such a rhythm must needs have something to follow. You would seem not to know what; just as with other nations the wrath of the gods overtook some single part, the hands, the feet or the face286, in the same way among you an endemic disease has attacked the nose. Just as the angry Aphrodité they say made the Lemnian women’s armpits abominable, know now that the gods in their anger have played havoc with the noses of most of your fellow citizens, and that is why they have this characteristic voice of their own. Indeed from where else could it have come?

“But I say this thing is the mark of most infamous lewdness, of most infamous madness, of contempt for all decency (all morality), and (a proof) of the fact that there is no more any single thing held to be disgraceful. Their speech, their gait, their look, proclaim it.”

From this passage of Dio Chrysostom, who lived at the end of the First and beginning of the Second Century A.D., we see that at that period the vice of paederastia prevailed at Tarsus to an appalling extent; and very possibly it is this circumstance that gave occasion to the declaration of the Apostle St. Paul287, whose native town of course Tarsus was, when he says:

“Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonoured among themselves.... For their women288 changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due.” This recompense was no doubt the ῥέγχειν (snoring), which according to Reiske was the consequence of an affection of the throat and nose in which the breath was exhaled with a characteristic noise. To corroborate this view he quotes in his edition of Dio Chrysostom the following passage from Ammianus Marcellinus289, who picturing the habits of the Romans in the middle of the Fourth Century, wrote thus: “Haec nobilium instituta. Ex turba vero imae sortis et pauperrimae, in tabernis aliqui pernoctant vinariis: nonnulli velabris umbraculorum theatralium latent, quae Campanam imitatus lasciviam Catulus in aedilitate sua suspendit omnium primus; aut pugnaciter aleis certant, turpi sono fragosis naribus introrsum reducto spiritu concrepantes.” (Such are the usages of the nobles. But of the masses, those of lowest and poorest lot, certain spend the night in wine-taverns, some lurk under the curtains of the theatre awnings,—which Catulus in his aedileship, imitating Campanian luxury, was the very first to erect; or quarrel and fight at dice, making an ugly rattling sound the while by drawing in the breath through their rough nostrils).

Now we know that paederasts had foul breaths, as Martial290 indeed noted, consequently the mucous membrane of the mouth was morbidly affected in its action, and further that they spoke raucidulo ore (with hoarse voice)291, which must have been with many the ordinary consequence of a thickening of the tissues by previous ulceration; and at this fact this Speech of Dio Chrysostom, as Reiske understands it, may very well hint. But to take the main gist of his speech, the author of the “Tarsica” signifies by ῥέγχειν (to snort) something quite different from this, as the whole context shows clearly.

It was in fact a signal or mode of solicitation, by which the pathics sought to allure the paederasts to them and invited them to lewdness, as comes out more plainly in the following passage of Clemens Alexandrinus292: Αἱ δὲ ἀνδρογύνων συνουσίαις ἥδονται· παρεισῥέουσιν δὲ ἔνδον κιναίδων ὄχλοι, ἀθυρόγλωσσοι· μιαροὶ μὲν τὰ σώματα, μιαροὶ δὲ τὰ φθέγματα, εἰς ὑπουργίας ἀκολάστους ἠνδρωμένοι, μοιχείας διάκονοι, κιχλίζοντες καὶ ψιθυρίζοντες, καὶ τὸ πορνικὸν ἀναίδην εἰς ἀσέλγειαν διὰ ῥινῶν ἐπιψοφοῦντες ἐπικιναίδισμα, ἀκολάστοις ῥήμασι καὶ σχήμασι τέρπειν πειρώμενοι, καὶ εἰς γέλωτας ἐκκαλούμενοι, πορνείας παράδρομον· ἔστι δ’ὅτε καὶ ὑπεκκαιόμενοι διὰ τὴν τυχοῦσαν ὄργην, ἤτοι πόρνοι αὐτοὶ ἢ καὶ κιναίδων ὄχλον εἰς ὄλεθρον ἐζηλωκότες, ἐπικροτοῦσι τῇ ῥινὶ, βατράχων δίκην, καθάπερ ἔνοικον τοῖς μυκτῆρσι τὴν χολὴν κεκτημένοι. (But they delight in the assemblies of the Androgyni (men-women); and crowds of pathics hurry along to join them within, everlasting chatterers, abominable in person and abominable in voice; reared up to manhood for unchaste ministrations, servants of adultery; tittering and whispering, and sounding though their nose the debauched cinaedus’ call to shameful licentiousness, striving to please with indecent words and gestures, and challenging to laughter, a race and competition in harlotry. Then again at times kindled by some chance gust of anger, whether debauchees themselves or roused to a fatal emulation with the crowd of pathics, they make a rattling sound with the nose, like frogs, as though they kept their stock of gall up their nostrils).

But possibly the Tarsians were also Fellatores (ii qui penem alienum in os admittunt, ibique eo sugunt ut voluptas quaedam libidinosa paretur,—those who allow another’s penis to be put in their mouth, and suck it) (see later), and snorted as fellatores did at their task,—for the word ῥέγχειν (to snort) is manifestly used in several different senses. It only remains to mention that a pale complexion was also reckoned one of the signs of a Cinaedus, a fact to which Juvenal’s (II. 50.) words refer: Hippo subit iuvenes et morbo pallet utroque. (Hippo submits to men, and is pale with two-fold disease). Of these marks of the Cinaedus we shall speak in greater detail directly.

Νοῦσος Θήλεια (Feminine Disease)293.

§ 14.

The passage of Dio Chrysostom discussed in the preceding section brings us, in virtue of a variety of hints it contains, to the much canvassed Νοῦσος Θήλεια (feminine disease) of the Scythians. Stark has collected with the greatest care everything that has so far been adduced by different authors in explanation of the subject; and on his Work we must base our own efforts in the investigations that follow.

Herodotus294 relates how the Scythians had made themselves masters of all Asia, and how some of them on their homeward march had plundered the very ancient temple of Venus Urania at Ascalon, a town of Syria; and then proceeds as follows:

“On such of the Scythians as plundered the temple at Ascalon, and on their posterity for successive generations, the goddess inflicted the θήλεια νούσος—feminine disease. And the Scythians say themselves it is for this cause they suffer the sickness, and moreover that any who visit the Scythian country may see among them what is the condition of those whom the Scythians call Ἐναρέες”. (a Scythian word, probably having the same meaning as Greek ἀνδρόγυνοι—men-women).

The different views that have been formulated at different times as to the nature of the νοῦσος θήλεια may be readily classified as follows. It was regarded as:—

1. a Vice, this vice being,

a) Paederastia; manifestly the oldest explanation,—already alluded to by Longinus, but specially championed by Bouhier295, also entertained by the interpreters of Longinus, Toll and Pearce, as well as by Casaubon (Epistolae) and Costar296;

b). Onanism (Self Masturbation),—a view Sprengel297 is inclined to decide in favour of.

2. a bodily Disease,—to wit,

a). Haemorrhoids (Piles); an opinion maintained by Paul Thomas de Girac298, Valckenaar in his Notes to Herodotus, Bayer299, and the authors of the “General History of the World”300;

b). actual Menstruation, for which le Fèvre and Dacier would seem to have declared;

c). Gonorrhoea (Clap), which Patin301, Hensler302 and Degen303 understood to be meant;

d). actual loss of the Testicles, true Eunuchs, Mercurialis304 considered must have been implied; and with this view Stark’s conclusion in part coincides, who understood a disease involving complete loss of virile power, both corporeal and mental, and producing an actual metamorphosis of the male type into the female.

(3). a mental Disease, in fact a form of Melancholia. This is the view adopted by Sauvages305, Heyne, Bose, Koray306 and Friedreich.

It would naturally be our task to examine the reasons alleged for and against these separate views. Supposing however we succeed in satisfactorily proving one of them to be the right one, then ipso facto all the rest come to nothing; and so we propose here to essay the advocacy of the oldest of them,—the view that makes the νοῦσος θήλεια to be the vice of paederastia. En passant we must call attention to the fact that under the name of paederastia must be understood not only the vicious habit of the paederast pure and simple, of the man that is who practices the act, but also of the pathic, who offers opportunities for its commission. This is a point which above all others has been quite left out of sight by the adversaries of the view in question.

The next question we have to answer would seem to be this: Could paederastia be regarded as a consequence of the vengeance of Venus? As it is the Scythians that are in question, the first thing would naturally appear to be to determine what conception the Scythians had of Venus. But inasmuch as the data are lacking for any demonstration of the sort, while the Scythians themselves ascribe the νοῦσος θήλεια to the vengeance of Venus, we may very well refer for a reply to this first question to the general character of the cult of the goddess307 and what has been said on the whole subject above; and herein there seems to exist no reason why we should not answer the query asked above in the affirmative. Granted that Venus was regarded as goddess of fruitfulness or as dispenser of the joys of Love, then in either aspect it was but natural she should withdraw the marks of her favour from the culprits (the paederasts). These neither wished for posterity nor enjoyed the delights connected with natural coition, but were equally indifferent towards the one and towards the other308; and the first sign of the vengeance of the goddess consists in the withdrawal of her benefits.

How Stark, following the lead of an anonymous French author quoted by Larcher309, can maintain there is no question of punishment here, as in that case Venus would be acting against her own interest, we fail to understand; and Larcher himself calls this unknown writer un homme d’esprit, mais peu instruit (witty but superficial). This is proof sufficient in our opinion that only a jest is intended, but one that Stark, p. 7 (notes 19 and 20.), has taken with the utmost seriousness.

However our view is directly supported by another myth, which Dio Chrysostom mentions, speaking of the sweating at the armpits with which the Lemnian women were afflicted. According to this legend Venus punishes the women of Lemnos310:

“Haec Dea veluti etiam ceteri, sua sacrificia praetermitti non aequo animo ferebat: quae cum Lemniae mulieres Veneris sacrificia sprevissent, Deae maxime iram in se concitasse creditae sunt, quod etiam non impune putantur fecisse. Nam tantum foetorem illis excitasse feminis Dea perhibetur, ut a suis maritis contemnerentur.” (This goddess, no less than other deities, could not bear the neglect of her proper sacrifices with equanimity. Thus the women of Lemnos, having omitted to perform these sacrifices of Venus, are believed to have brought down on themselves the most serious anger of the goddess, and this they are accounted not to have done with impunity. For the goddess, as is related, caused such a foul odour to arise among the women, that they were scorned by their husbands.) If the view mentioned just above as taken by the Apostle Paul and by St. Athanasius is the right one, it would seem that the Lemnian women had suffered themselves to be used by their husbands for purposes of paederastia; then as a consequence there had been set up the evil odour of the mouth and breath, and this had driven the men to desert their wives to live with the captive Thracian slave-women (Apollonius).

But indeed the Ancients generally, or at any rate the Greeks and Romans, seem to have always held the opinion that unnatural coition, as well as all the similar forms of indulgence taking its place, were a consequence of the wrath of Venus, against whom the individuals had offended311. This appears also from the play of Philoctetes, of whom the Scholiast to Thucydides312 says: “Moreover Philoctetes, having on account of the death of Paris fallen sick of the feminine disease, and being unable to bear the shame of it, left his country and founded a city, which in memory of his misfortune he named Malacia—Effeminacy.” Martial313 had the same myth in his mind when he wrote:

(To Sertorius.—The Hero, son of Paeas (Philoctetes), was effeminate and easy of access to men; in this way Venus is said to have avenged the murder of Paris. Why should Sicilian Sertorius lick the pudendum of women? this is why, because it would appear, he was the slayer, Rufus, of a man of Eryx.) Of course there can be no question here of the disease which detained Philoctetes at Lemnos and prevented his taking part in the expedition to Troy; and if the older legend says nothing as to the νοῦσος θήλεια of Philoctetes, it is clear from this (as Meier, loco citato, has shown) that only in times when paederastia was becoming prevalent, were all these legends invented, to get as it were a sort of excuse by alleging a distinguished predecessor in the practice. So Martial says, addressing Gaurus:314

(That you love to prolong the night with excess of wine, I can excuse; you have the vice, Gaurus, of Cato. That you write verses with no inspiration of Muses and Apollo, for this, you should be praised; it is a fault of Cicero’s you have. That you vomit, well! ’twas a habit of Antony’s; that you are a gourmand, ’twas Apicius’ weakness.—That you suck (as a fellator), whose vice have you here, pray tell me!) The above Epigram of Martial’s (To Sertorius) shows very clearly how the poets represented each form of unnatural indulgence of the sexual impulse as vengeance of Venus. It is a cunnilingus that is in question here, and his vice is accounted for in this way:—just as Philoctetes on account of the slaying of Paris had been punished by Venus with paederastia, so the Sicilian Sertorius probably became a cunnilingus because he had killed an inhabitant of Eryx, where was situated a famous temple of the goddess. Similarly it will not surprise us if besides paederastia Philoctetes was saddled with the vice of Onanism at a later period, as is implied in the following poem of Ausonius:315

Subscriptum picturae Crispae mulieris impudicae

(Inscribed beneath a Portrait of Crispa,—an immodest woman.—Over and above the natural modes of intercourse in legitimate coition, vicious lust has discovered impure ways of love: the way that his loneliness at Lemnos taught the heir of Hercules (Philoctetes), that which the comedies of eloquent Afranius displayed on the stage, and that which deadly luxury branded on the men of Nola. But Crispa practises them all in her sole person: she skins, she sucks, she works by either aperture, that she may not leave anything untried, and so have lived in vain!)

No doubt Stark, p. 19, is quite right in saying this passage has nothing to do with the θήλεια νοῦσος; but the poet has by no means, as he puts it in his note, temporum ordine lapsus,—committed an anachronism. He makes no mention whatever of any vengeance of Venus, saying nothing more than that loneliness led the inheritor (of the arrows) of Hercules to Onanism. This is not merely advancing a conjecture, as Stark does, but (to say nothing of the Lemnia egestas—Lemnian loneliness), admits of being legitimately developed from the whole sequence of thought in the Epigram. Crispa’s vices are mentioned in the order of their shamefulness. The least disgraceful is Onanism, such as Philoctetes practised, next comes the vice of the cinaedus and of the pathic, for which Afranius serves as example, and lastly fellation. Thus it shows a complete want of comprehension, when the commentators quote the scholion to Thucydides given a little above as an explanation. Had Philoctetes been referred to as a pathic, the succeeding verse would be entirely superfluous; which verse does not receive a word of notice from the expositors, presumably because they failed to understand the allusion. The true explanation is afforded by a passage in Quintilian:316 “Togatis excellit Afranius, utinamque non inquinasset argumenta puerorum foedis amoribus, mores suos fassus.” (Afranius excels in fabulae togatae (polite comedies), and it were to be wished he had not defiled his plots by disgusting intrigues with boys, thereby discovering his own morals). Forberg, loco citato p. 283, quotes this passage indeed, but explains (both here and on p. 343) the libido (lust) of Philoctetes as being that of the pathic.

To prove that Venus manifested her wrath in the way specified, we may further cite the race of the daughters of Helios, whom she punished by the infliction of licentious love. Thus Hyginus says:317 Soli ob indicium (concubitus cum Marte) Venus ad progeniem eius semper fuit inimica, (Because of the Sun’s revelation (of her intrigue with Mars) Venus was ever a bitter enemy of his posterity); and Seneca:318

(Venus, loathing the posterity of the hated Sun, punishes on us the fetters that bound her lover Mars and her. With abominable and disgraceful practices she afflicts the whole race of Phoebus).

An example of such vengeance is afforded by Pasiphaë, of whom the Scholiast on the passage of Lucian cited below relates how, Ἡλίου οὖσα ἐκ μήνιδος Ἀφροδίτης ταύρου ἠράσθη, (being a daughter of the Sun, she became enamoured of a bull through the influence of angry Aphrodité), a fable which might very well be explained—for ταύρος (a bull), like κένταυρος (a Centaur), occurs in the sense of paederast—as meaning that she had become a female pathic. So Theomnestus says in Lucian:319 “So lecherous a look resides in the eyes, that compelling all beauty to its will, it can find no satiety. And often was I uncertain whether this were not some spite of Aphrodité. Yet am I none of the children of Helios, neither a natural heir of the Lemnian women, nor puffed up with the scornful insensibility of Hippolytus, that I could have provoked against me such an implacable hatred on the part of the goddess)”. Philo Judaeus320 also represents paederastia as a punishment of such men as married a woman legally repudiated, and the like: πρὸς δὲ συμβάσεις εἴ τις ἐθέλοι χωρεῖν ἀνὴρ τῇ τοιαύτῃ γυναικὶ, μαλακίας καὶ ἀνανδρίας ἐκφερέσθω δόξαν, ὡς ἐκ τετμημένος τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ βιωφελέστατον μισοπόνηρον πάθος.... δίκην οὖν τινέτω σὺν τῇ γυναικί. (But if any man should wish to enter into contracts with such a woman, let him bear the ill-repute of softness and effeminacy, as having eradicated from his soul that sentiment of hatred for ill-doers which is most useful for life,—So let him pay his penalty along with the woman). In Athenaeus one of the speakers exclaims (Deipnos., XIII. p. 605 D.): Ὁρᾶτε οὖν καὶ ὑμεῖς, οἱ φιλόσοφοι παρὰ φύσιν τῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ χρώμενοι, καὶ ἀσεβοῦντες εἰς τὴν θεὸν, μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν διαφθαρῆτε τρόπον. (Beware then ye too, philosophers who indulge the pleasures of Aphrodité against nature, and act impiously towards the goddess, that ye be not destroyed in the same way).

According to Diodorus (V. 55) the sons of Neptune in consequence of the wrath of Venus plunged into such madness that they violated their mother. The Propontides, who had denied the godhead of Venus, were cast by her into such an amorous phrenzy that they publicly gave themselves to men, and they were subsequently turned into stones.321 Myrrha, whose mother proclaimed herself to be fairer than Venus, was driven by the goddess into unchastity with her own father.322

In later times this idea was even transferred to the Star of Venus. The following appears in Firmicus “In octavo ab horoscopo loco, Mercurius cum Venere, si vespertini ambo, inefficaces et apocopos reddent, et qui nihil agere possint.” (In the eighth place of the horoscope, Mercury in conjunction with Venus, if both are evening stars, will make men impotent eunuchs and such as can effect nothing.)—a notion that first arose perhaps from the name Hermaphroditus323.

Thus there would be nothing inconsistent with the views universally held in Antiquity in considering the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease) of the Scythians, and equally that of Philoctetes, as consequences of the wrath of Venus. That paederastia was invariably regarded as a Vice by the Ancients (and particularly by the Greeks) we have already, following the lines laid down by Meier, we think sufficiently proved. Stark, who repeatedly (pp. 12, 16, 20.) denies this, has been led into error merely by the mistake that was generally prevalent in his time of confusing paedophilia and paederastia; and it is on this misapprehension he bases his argument. How the Scythians came to hold this belief that the wrath of Venus was to blame for what they suffered, must indeed be left an open question. But it should be remembered it was not the pathics themselves who advanced this opinion, but only the rest of the Scythians; for Herodotus says expressly, λέγουσί τε οἱ Σκύθαι διὰ τοῦτο σφεας νοσέειν (and the Scythians say that for this cause they were afflicted). Again it was only ὀλίγοι τινὲς αὐτῶν ὑπολειφθέντες (a few of the Scythians who were left behind), a few of the stragglers, who would seem to have plundered the temple of Aphrodité; and it certainly was only later that this act of impiety was brought into connection with the vice,—in the same way as the killing of Paris by Philoctetes was with the legend of his lewd practices.

§ 15.

The second question we have to answer will be this: how could Herodotus write that the descendants of these few stragglers alive in his time suffered from the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease)? From the fact that, while descendants are named, strictly speaking only male descendants can be in question, it is clear the statement is only a general one, and must not be understood to imply more than that certain members of these families were Cinaedi, not of course that the whole posterity was afflicted with the νοῦσος θήλεια. We see at the present day how the impurity of the father passes on to the son; so it need be matter for no surprise whatever to find the vice of the cinaedi descending in the same way among certain members of a family. As a matter of fact these Scythian temple-robbers are by no means the only examples Antiquity holds up to us of such a thing, for the Orator Lysias324 says of the family of Alcibiades, that most members of it had become prostitutes.

What is more, the opinion was avowedly and directly held by the Ancients, that pathics were born with the predisposition to the vice. In particular Parmenides (509 B.C.) expressed this view in a Fragment, which Caelius Aurelianus325 has preserved in a chapter of his Work. This chapter treats solely of the vice of the pathic, and is of the greatest importance for our subject. We could not forgo quoting it in full, particularly as it is the sole authority for the views held by physicians on this vice, and up to now appears to have been entirely overlooked.

De mollibus sive subactis; quos Graeci μαλθακοὺς VOCANT.

“Molles sive subactos Graeci μαλθακοὺ vocaverunt, quos quidem esse nullus facile virorum credit. Non enim hoc humanos ex natura venit in mores, sed pulso pudore, libido etiam indebitas partes obscoenis usibus subiugavit. Cum enim nullus cupiditati modus, nulla satietatis spes est, singulis Sparta non sufficit sua. Nam sic nostri corporis loca divina providentia certis destinavit officiis. Tum denique volentes alliciunt veste atque gressu, et aliis femininis rebus, quae sunt a passionibus corporis aliena, sed potius corruptae mentis vitia. Nam saepe tumentes [timentes], vel quod est difficile, verentes quosdam, quibus forte deferunt, repente mutati parvo tempore virilitatis quaerunt indicia demonstrare, cuius quia modum nesciunt, rursum nimietate sublati, plus quoque quam virtuti convenit, faciunt et maioribus si peccatis involvunt. Constat itaque etiam nostro iudicio, hos vera sentire. Est enim, ut Soranus ait, malignae ac foedissimae mentis passio. Nam sicut feminae Tribades326 appellatae, quod utramque Venerem exerceant, mulieribus magis quam viris misceri festinant et easdem, invidentia pene virili sectantur, et cum passione fuerint desertae, seu temporaliter relevatae, ea quaerunt aliis obiicere, quae pati noscuntur, iuvamini humilitate [iuvandi voluptate ex] duplici sexu confecta, velut frequenti ebrietate corruptae in novas libidinis formas erumpentes, consuetudine turpi nutritae, sui sexus iniuriis gaudent, illi comparatione talium animi passione iactari noscuntur. Nam neque ulla curatio corporis depellendae passionis causa recte putatur adhibenda, sed potius animus coercendus, qui tanta peccatorum labe vexatur. Nemo enim pruriens corpus feminando correxit, vel virilis veretri tactu mitigavit, sed communiter querelam sive dolorem alia ex materia toleravit. Denique etiam a Clodio historia curationis data ascaridarum esse perspicitur, quos de lumbricis scribentes vermiculos esse docuimis longaonis327 in partibus natos. Parmenides328 libris quos de natura scripsit, eventu, inquit conceptionis molles aliquando seu subactos homines generare. Cuius quia graecum est epigramma et hoc versibus intimabo [imitabo]: Latinos enim, ut potui, simili modo composui, ne linguarum ratio misceretur.

Vult enim seminum praeter materias esse virtutes, quae si se ita miscuerint et [ut] eiusdem corporis [vim unam] faciant, unam congruam sexui generent voluntatem. Si autem permixto semine corporeo virtutes separatae permanserint utriusque Veneris natos adpetentia sequatur. Multi praeterea sectarum principes genuinam dicunt esse passionem et propterea in posteros venire cum semine, non quidem naturam criminantes, quae suae puritatis metas aliis ex animalibus docet: nam sunt eius specula a sapientibus nuncupata: sed humanum genus, quod ita semel recepta tenet vitia, ut nulla possit instauratione purgari, nec ullum novitati liquerit locum, sitque gravior senescentibus mentis culpa, cum plurimae genuinae, seu adventitiae passionis corporibus infractae consenescant, ut podagra, epilepsia, furor et propterea aetate vergente mitiores procul dubio fiant. Omnia et enim vexantia validos effectus dabunt firmitate opposita subiacentium materiarum, quae cum in senibus deficit, passio quoque minuitur, ut fortitudo; sola tamen supra dicta, quae subactos seu molles efficit viros, senescenti corpore gravius invalescit et infanda magis libidine movet, non quidem sine ratione. In aliis enim aetatibus adhuc valido corpore et naturalia ventris [veneris] officia celebrante, gemina luxuriae libido non divititur, animorum nunc faciendo, nunc facie iactata [animo eorum nunc patiendo nunc faciendo iactato]: in iis vero qui senectute defecti virili veneris officio caruerint, omnis animi libido in contrariam ducitur appetentiam, et propterea femina validius Venerem poscit. Hinc denique coniiciunt plurimi etiam pueros hac passione iactari. Similiter enim senibus virili indigent officio, quod in ipsis est nondum, illos deseruit.” (On effeminate men or subservients, called μαλθακοὶ—soft, effeminate, by the Greeks.—Effeminate men, or subservients, were called by the Greeks μαλθακοὶ. A man finds it difficult to believe in the existence of such creatures. For it was not nature prompted the introduction of this as part of human habits; rather was it lust that, expelling shame, subjected to foul uses parts of the body that should never have been so employed. For no limit being set to passion, and no hope of satiety being entertained, the several members find each its own realm insufficient; whereas divine providence destined the different portions of the body to perform definite functions. In fine they go out of their way to allure by dress and gait and other feminine attributes, things unconnected with bodily emotions, being rather due to a corrupted mind. For often, moved by fear, or (however difficult to believe) by shame, towards persons whom they happen to respect, they change of a sudden and for a brief space seek to show marks of manly power; but not knowing where to put the limit, they are again carried away by excess, and going beyond what is fit for an honest man are involved in yet greater offences. Thus it is evident, in our opinion, that such men have a sense of the true state of things. For theirs is, as Soranus declares, the passion of a corrupt and utterly foul mind. For as women that are called Tribades, because they practise the love of either sex, are eager to have intercourse with women more than with men, and pursue these with a jealousy almost as violent as a man’s, and when they have been deserted by their love or for the time being superseded, seek to do to other women what they are known to suffer, and winning from their double sex a pleasure in giving pleasure, like persons deboshed by constant drunkenness, being nurtured on evil habitude, delight in wrongs to their own sex,—even so these men (pathics) are seen by a comparison with women of this sort to be tormented with a passion that is of the mind. For no bodily treatment it is rightly deemed should be adopted to expel the passion, rather must the mind be disciplined which is afflicted with such a pollution of vices.

For no man ever remedied a prurient body by foul practices as a woman, nor got mitigation by contact of the male member, but concurrently he suffered some complaint or pain from a different (material) cause. So in fact the history of a cure given by Clodius is found to be really a case of recovery from “ascaridae”, which writers on intestinal worms have shown are a kind of worm born in the region of the rectum or straight gut. Parmenides in his books on natural science says “Effeminate men or subservients occasionally bring forth as a result of conception.” But as his Epigram is in Greek, I will imitate it in verse; so I have composed Latin lines like the original so far as I could make them, that there might not be a mixture of the two languages:—“When a woman and a man together mingle in the veins the seeds of love, the formative virtue that moulds of the diverse blood, if it keep due proportion, makes well-framed bodies. But if the virtues are discordant in the commingled seed, and have no unity, in the commingled body furies will torment the nascent sex with two-fold seed.” He means that over and above the material seed there are certain virtues residing in it; and if these have commingled in such a way as to have one and the same operative force in the same body, then they produce one single will that tallies with the sex. But if when the bodily seed was commingled, the virtues remained separate, the appetite for love of both kinds must pursue the offspring.

Many leading doctors of the schools moreover declare that the passion is innate, and therefore passes on with the seed to descendants, not indeed hereby incriminating nature, which teaches men the bounds of its purity by the example of other animals (for animals are called by wise men nature’s mirrors), but rather the human race that retains so obstinately vices once adopted, that by no renewal can it be purified, and has left no room for change. Similarly a mental depravity grows graver as men advance in life, whereas most affections of the body, whether innate or adventitious, get weaker as men get older, for instance gout, epilepsy and madness, and so as age advances undoubtedly grow milder. For all troublesome factors will produce strong effects in proportion to the firmness to resist possessed by the affected parts, and as this firmness is deficient in old men, so the complaint or passion diminishes in intensity, as does the general strength. But that passion which makes men subservient or effeminate, grows stronger and more serious as the body grows old and stirs the sufferers with yet more abominable lustfulness,—and not without a reason. For at other ages, the body being still strong and capable of performing the natural offices of love, there is no division of lust into double forms of wantonness, through their mind being tossed to and fro now by passive now by active lewdness. But in such as have failed from age, and become incapable of the manly office of love, all the wantonness of the mind is directed on the appetite for the opposite form of gratification; and for this cause a woman demands love more strongly than a man. In fact many conjecture it is for this reason that boys also are tormented by this passion. For they resemble old men in lacking power for the virile function. It is not yet born in boys; old men have lost it.)

To leave on one side for the present the many inferences of various sorts that this passage of Caelius Aurelianus must necessarily lead us to, as they will find a more suitable place later on, and to return to our question,—the mere fact of Herodotus mentioning posterity at all ought of itself to be sufficient to negative any idea of actual eunuchs, of loss of the generative power. For had the Scythians returning from Ascalon lost this power, they could have had no more descendants, and therefore the νούσος θήλεια could not have passed on to these, but must have become extinct with the original sufferers. On the other hand children already begotten by them before that period could have been in no way influenced by a disease communicable through the act of generation. Accordingly the νοῦσος θήλεια cannot possibly have affected these Scythians so as to annihilate the power of generation. Both must have co-existed side by side; and the contrary can never be proved from anything Herodotus says. As to another passage of Herodotus that might seem to demand some notice here, where the expression ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman) is put side by side with ἐνάρεες, we will speak subsequently.

§ 16.

But, it is maintained by those who take a different view,—the individuals who suffered from the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease) could be recognized as doing so by their looks; thus it cannot have been a mere vice, it must have been an actual bodily complaint. We will not say a word more insisting on the declarations general amongst ancient writers, for example the words of Ovid: Heu! quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu (Alas! how difficult it is not to betray a vice by the look), but will simply ask the question,—had the Ancients really no bodily marks of identification by which they could recognise in an individual the vice of the pathic or cinaedus? On this point we must look to the Physiognomists for information, and as a matter of fact they supply it in considerable completeness. First of all Aristotle329:

“Distinguishing Masks of the Cinaedus:

“An eye broken-down, as it were, knees bent inwards, inclination of the head to the right side; movements of the hands always back downwards and flaccid, the gait double, as it were, one leg being crossed over the other in walking, the gaze wandering; such a man for example was the Sophist Dionysius.” Polemo enters into greater detail330:

“Distinguishing Marks of the Androgynus (Man-woman): “The man-woman has a lecherous and wanton look, he rolls his eyes and lets his gaze wander; forehead and cheeks twitch, eyebrows are drawn together to a point, neck bent, hips in continual movement. All the limbs twitch spasmodically, knees and hands seeming to crack; like an ox he glares round him and fixes his eyes on the ground. He speaks with a thin voice, at once croaking and shrill, exceedingly uncertain and trembling.” In very similar terms the pathic is sketched by Adamantus331. Dio Chrysostom in his speech cited a little above332 relates how “a physiognomist had come into a certain city, in order to give an exhibition of his art there, and declared he could tell by looking at any individual whether he were brave or timid, a boaster or a debauchee, a cinaedus or an adulterer. A man was brought to him who had a meagre body, eyebrows grown together, a dirty look, who was in evil condition, with callosities on his hands, and dressed in coarse gray clothing, one that was overgrown with hair to the knuckles, and ill-shaved, and the physiognomist was asked, what sort of a man he was. When he had looked at him a considerable time, and at the end was still uncertain, as it seems to me, what he should finally say, he declared he did not know and ordered the man to go. But when the latter sneezed, just as he was going, he cried out instantly he was a cinaedus. Thus the sneeze betrayed the man’s habits, and prevented them, in spite of all the rest, from continuing hid.” No doubt the man’s walk had already given the Physiognomist an indication, and the gesture he made when he sneezed, quickly confirmed his Diagnosis. In fact the cinaedus probably made a grip at his posterior as he sneezed, so as to close the orifice, the weakened or possibly ruptured Sphincter ani no longer being able to perform this office (χαυνοπρώκτος,—wide-breeched, in Aristophanes!). Indeed with a healthy Sphincter it is often hardly possible during a sneeze to keep back the out-rush of wind and even of the more liquid faeces.333

Further the following passage of Lucian should be quoted in this connection:334

“But I tell you, pathic,—your habits are so obvious that even the blind and the deaf cannot fail to recognise them. If you only open your mouth to speak, only undress at the baths, nay, if you do not yourself undress, but only your slaves put off their garments, what think you,—are not all your secrets of the night at once revealed? Now just tell me, if your Sophist Bassus, or the flute-player Batalus, or the cinaedus Hemitheon of Sybaris, who wrote your beautiful laws, how you must polish the skin, and pluck out the hair (with tweezers), how you must submit to the performance of paederastia, and how yourselves perform it,— now if one of these men should throw a lion’s skin round him, and enter with a club in his hand, what would the spectators really believe?—that it was Hercules? Surely not, unless they were utterly blear-eyed. A thousand things betray such a masquerade,—gait, look, voice,335 the bowed neck, the ceruse, the mastich, the paint on the cheeks that you make yourselves up with; in a word it were easier, as the proverb says, to hide five elephants under your armpit than to conceal one cinaedus!”

Now if the natural marks of identification that have been specified were sufficient to betray the cinaedus, even when he was devoid of all external adornment from art,336 how much more readily recognizable must the pathic become, if he arranged his get-up and costume to match his shameful practices,337 and that this was so Martial affords evidence in countless places. In fact these male whores used to have the beard quite clean shaven (ἐξυρημένοι close-shaven) and not merely on the posteriors but generally all over the body, with the exception of the head, carefully removed the hair, so as make themselves more like women.

(Directly, if a man play women’s parts, the body must have its share in the characterization), Aristophanes makes Agatho say at the Thesmophoria, where Mnesilochus has been transformed into a woman by means of depilation, so as to be able to back up the women in opposition to Euripides in their attacks on him at that festival.

On the other hand cinaedi let the hair of the head grow long338 (comae,—long locks), and dressed altogether like women. Hence the reply of the Cynic Diogenes339 to a young man clothed after this fashion, who had asked him a question on some subject or other; he would not answer, he said, till his questioner had lifted up his clothes, and shown him his sex! Equally important is the conversation of Socrates with Strepsiades in the “Clouds” of Aristophanes:340

(Strepsiades.—Now tell me, how comes it that, if these are really and truly clouds, they resemble women? Common clouds are not like that.... Socrates.—They can easily make themselves anything they please. And so, if they but catch sight of one of those long-haired, ruffianly, shaggy fellows, such a man as Xenophantus’ son for example, straightway in derision of their folly they change into Centaurs. And now when they beheld Cleisthenes, see you? they became women!) Cleisthenes was a notorious cinaedus at Athens, whom Aristophanes had made a special butt for his wit; for example, he makes Mnesilochus, mentioned just above, after his transformation into a woman, say,—he looks just like Cleisthenes now.

The evidence adduced will, we think, be sufficient to show that the Scythians had good reason for saying, that with persons in this case (cinaedi) it was easy to recognise by looking at them what stamp of men they were: and that Juvenal341 was right when he wrote:

(More truly then and more candidly Peribomius says: the man I consider a victim of fate, who in face and gait betrays the disease he suffers from.)—a passage that strongly confirms what has been advanced. Peribomius is quite candid, he confesses to being a pathic, for in any case his appearance would betray the fact. He finds the less reason to deny it, as he regards the vice which has mastered him as an infliction of providence (fatis imputo). Here is proof that the opinion of the Greeks as to the pathic’s being one who had incurred the anger of the gods, was still commonly held in Juvenal’s time, though perhaps less as a matter of conviction than in order to provide an excuse for indulgence. So we must further read hoc for hunc in the passage (hoc ego fatis imputo,— this I regard as an infliction of fate); unless indeed we construe thus, ego, qui morbum vultu incessuque fatetur, hunc (sc. morbum) fatis imputo. “I in truth,—as for the man who confesses by look and gait his disease, this disease I regard as an infliction of fate.” The words are obviously Peribomius’ own expression of opinion; and directly afterwards the poet goes on:

(These men’s simplicity moves our pity; their very infatuation craves pardon. But worse are they who enter such courses with Hercules’ words on their lips, and prating of manly virtue, heave the wanton buttocks.)

§ 17.

But the passage just quoted from Juvenal is of still greater importance for another reason. In it the vice of the cinaedus is called morbus (a disease); and in virtue of its explicitness it is sufficient by itself to settle all doubts as to this being a usual mode of expression with the Romans, who ordinarily designated any vice by this name342. The only question remaining will be, Did the Greeks also use this form of expression? Any scholar possessed of a special acquaintance with the Greek language will most certainly not hesitate an instant to answer this question in the affirmative, the Lexicographers having long ago collected an exhaustive list of examples of such use343.

Plutarch344 says, comparing the action of the Sun with that of Love:— Καὶ μὴν οὔτε σώματος ἀγύμναστος ἕξις ἥλιον, οὒτε Ἔρωτα δύναται φέρειν ἀλύπως τρόπος ἀπαιδεύτου ψυχῆς· ἐξίσταται δ’ ὁμοίως ἐκάτερον καὶ νοσεῖ, τὴν του θεοῦ δύναμιν, οὐ τὴν αὑτοῦ μεμφόμενον ἀσθένειαν.—(ch. XXIII.) Τὴν μὲν πρὸς ἄῤῥενα ἄῤῥενος ὁμιλίαν, μᾶλλον δὲ ἀκρασίαν καὶ ἐπιπήδησιν εἴποι τις ἂν ἐννοήσας,

Ὕβρις τάδ’ οὐχ ἡ Κύπρις ἐξεργάζεται.

Διὸ τοὺς μὲν ἡδομένους τῷ πάσχειν εἰς τὸ χείριστον τιθέμενοι γένος κακίας, οὔτε πίστεως μοῖραν, οὔτε αἰδοῦς.... Ἀλλὰ πολλὰ φαῦλα καὶ μανικὰ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐρώτων· Τὶ δὲ οὐχὶ πλείονα τῶν παιδικῶν; Ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τοῦτο παιδομανία τὸ πάθος, οὐδέτερον δὲ Ἔρως ἔστιν. (And in fact neither can an untrained body bear the sun, nor can any fashion of uneducated soul bear Love (Eros) without pain; but each equally is disorganized and grows sick, having to blame the power of the god, not its own weakness.—ch. XXIII.—Now intercourse of male with male one would rather call, after due reflection, incontinence and violent assault.

“’Tis overmastering insolence works this result, not love (Cypris).”345

Wherefore such as take pleasure in pathic lust, devoting themselves to the vilest kind of wickedness, have no portion in honour or in modesty.—Indeed much there is base and insane in amours with women; how much more so in those with boys! Now the name of the latter passion is paedomania—346madness for boys,—but neither kind is Love—Eros).

These passages are of the highest importance in connection with our subject, as confirming in the most distinct manner what has been said above as to the wrath of Venus; but for the sake of greater clearness they had to be held over for discussion till now. It is clearly stated in them: that paederastia is no work of Venus, i.e. not an expression or consequence of the customary activity of the goddess, but a ὕβρις (act of insolent violence) and the consequence of ὕβρις i.e. of some act that has roused the anger of the gods. Here we have the oldest view of all: that paederastia is a consequence of the vengeance of Venus, arising in consequence of a ὕβρις, and again in turn itself constituting a ὕβρις.347

But besides this the later view of a more enlightened time is also implied. According to this it was not any δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ (operation of a god’s might), but simply an ἀσθενεία or ἀκρασία348 (weakness, incontinence) of the individual that was in question, (and it is for this reason Plutarch quotes the line of Manetho, an old and obscure poet, in this sense); Paederastia was called a πάθος, a form of insanity (παιδομανία—madness for boys), and was not looked upon in any sense as a consequence of the power of Eros—Love. That the vice was also called νόσος (a disease) is shown,—not to mention the expression νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease), which we have yet to fully explain,—by the Speech of Dio Chrysostom cited above, as well as by a number of passages quoted in the course of our investigation,—e.g. on p. 125. In the “Wasps” of Aristophanes, Xanthias relates how a son had confined his father and put him under surveillance, and then goes on (vv. 71 sqq.):

(For his father is sick of a portentous sickness, one that no one would ever know or conjecture the nature of, unless he should have learned it from us; for if you doubt me, guess yourselves.)

Love of play is suggested, and love of drink, love of sacrifice and finally love of winning guests and seeing them at his house (φιλόξενον—lover of guests), which last conjecture Sosias understands in an obscene sense as implying a cinaedus, and (vv. 84 sqq.) says:

(No! no! by heavens! Nicostratus, not a lover of guests (φιλόξενος) for our friend Philoxenus is a man given to unnatural lust,) where φιλόξενος and καταπύγων are explained as being synonymous. Now if paederastia had not been a disease, how should they have come to call a man φιλόξενος, when guessing the form his sickness took? For the rest there was a well-known cinaedus Philoxenus, to whom allusion is made. The scholiast quotes a very noteworthy line from Eupolis (in the “Urbes”) or else from Phrynichus (“in the Satyrs”) as follows:

ἔστι δέ τις θήλεια Φιλόξενος ἐκ Διομείων. (And there is a certain female Philoxenus of Diomeia);

The healthy good sense of the Greeks could not possibly regard the vice of the Pathic otherwise than as a deviation from Nature, an unnatural appetite; and every unnatural appetite (ἀκολασία—“intemperance”) was a νόσος or πάθος (disease, or suffering, passion), or a consequence of these, as the passages quoted from Aristotle and elsewhere show conclusively. From the point of view of the paederast reasons perhaps were to be discovered, that appeared to justify his peculiar taste; and the mode in which he obtained the titillation of sensual pleasure was looked upon merely as one way of getting rid of the semen, as a figura Veneris (mode of Love) standing in close relationship with Onanism. The paederast was relegated to the category of voluptuaries, but without his incurring any special condemnation. On the other hand for the pathic who lent himself as subject of the vice, no excuse of this sort was forthcoming. His lust was not seen (this was impossible at the time) to have a bodily origin in “prurigo ani” (itching of the anus), and could only be regarded as springing from a depraved imagination (ἀνίατον νόσον ψυχῆς ἡγούμενος—deeming it an incurable disease of the soul); it must be that a demon had dragged him along irresistibly in his train, and drove his victim who was incapable of helping himself (ἀσθενής—“weak”) to degradation.

All men thus held in thrall by evil demons were supposed to have offended against the gods, to have roused their anger, and were avoided and shunned by their fellows. If in addition they showed any traces of mental aberration, madness, epileptic convulsions, or the like, rude peoples saw in these the manifestation of a god’s influence, and took the victim’s sayings and dreams for oracles. So Herodotus relates (IV. 67.) that the Scythians considered the ἐναρέες to have received the gift of prophecy from Aphrodité,—οἱ δὲ ἐναρέες οἱ ἀνδρόγυνοι, τὴν Ἀφροδίτην σφισι λέγουσι μαντικὴν δοῦναι (now the ἐναρέες, the men-women, declare that Venus brought madness on the object of her anger), and held the vice of the pathic to be due to the goddess’s wrath, or at a later time to be an (incurable) disease of the soul (ψυχή),—as is proved again by the passage of Caelius Aurelianus already quoted; but they did not ascribe to such men the power of prophecy, though in a certain sense every actual madman was supposed to possess it349. For the vice of the pathic was not in the eyes of the Greeks actual madness, but rather a vice (νόσος—disease) that robbed the sufferer of the power of governing himself350, in the same sense as they called sexual love a madness. From this point of view therefore the commentators who saw in the νοῦσος θήλεια a mental affliction, had some grounds for their view; but should not have lost sight of the fact of its being a vice at the same time.

But why did the νοῦσος (disease) receive the epithet θήλεια (feminine)? Taking the word to be used passively,—as obviously is done by those who make out the νοῦσος θήλεια to have been an affection similar in character to menstruation,—we might find its explanation in the dictum of Tiresias, who, as is well known, ascribed to the woman the greater pleasure in the act of coition. From this fact,—if it is a fact,—a greater longing on the part of the woman for coition may be deduced; for which reason Plato compared the uterus (womb) to a wild beast. Thus the νοῦσος θήλεια would be feminine concupiscence. Just as the woman longs intensely for natural coition with the man, in the same way and with a like intensity does the pathic long after unnatural351. Thus the punishment inflicted by Venus would have consisted in the goddess having implanted in the man the concupiscence of a woman.

If on the other hand θήλεια (feminine) is taken in an active sense, as it is by Stark and other interpreters,—and with greater correctness, then the νοῦσος θήλεια is a form of lust that transforms men into women,—and this can be said of paederastia in several senses, as is manifest from what has been said already on preceding pages. The Pathic becomes a woman, because he renounces his man’s prerogative, as being the stronger, to play the active part352, and assumes instead the passive rôle of the woman353, Entering into competition as he does with the ladies of pleasure in courting the favour of men, he has recourse to all the arts they invoke to gain their object; and seeks by artificial means to bring his body into as close a resemblance as possible to the female form. He dresses himself out like a woman of pleasure, adopts female dress, and lets the hair of the head grow long, whilst at the same time he carefully eradicates by the process of dropacismus (use of pitch-ointment as a depilatory) every trace of hair on other parts of the person, even sacrificing what was the chief ornament of a man in Ancient times,—his beard354. All this was done by the hero of Aristophanes’ “Thesmophoriazusae”, and without a doubt an underlying irony à propos of the pathics was at the bottom of the poet’s conception. Care of the skin, such as women adopt, by means of baths, friction with pumice-stone, etc. complete the feminine appearance355,—hence the expressions μάλακος, μαλθακός (soft or effeminate) for the pathic, μαλακία, μαλθακία (softness, effeminacy) for the pathic’s vice; and outraged Nature avenges herself by seconding his endeavours. In consequence of the stretching of the fundament, the buttocks become broader towards the lower part, and the space between them wider, causing the hips to take more the shape they have in a woman, the pelvis itself seems to be enlarged, while the legs lose their straightness and the knees bend more and more inwards (γονύκροτος—knock-kneed,)—in short the whole of the lower half of the body assumes the feminine type.

Deterioration of body is followed by deterioration of mind, and the character also grows womanish.356 The pathic despises intercourse with women, and will not enter into marriage, so long as he continues to find his lust satisfied. When this ceases to be the case as years advance, Nature herself forbids his propagating his race; the genital organs that have withered through disuse and refuse their office.357 Driven from the society of men, he takes refuge, neither woman nor man himself, with the women, who in contempt use him as a slave, and like Omphalé of old with Hercules, put the distaff into his hands! Thus from the νοῦσος θήλεια, the vice, an actual disease has sprung; and we can now see that Longinus358 was surely right in calling the expression of Herodotus ἀμίμητος,—an inimitable one, for certainly in no more concise or better way can the facts and the consequences of the vice of the Pathic be characterized.

However if any one should consider all this still insufficient to prove the case, and regard the indication given by Longinus as not explicit enough, he may learn from Tiberius the Rhetorician359 that as a matter of fact the Ancients understood the νοῦσος θήλεια in Herodotus in this and in no other sense. He says:

“Now a paraphrase is when authors alter a simple, straightforward statement of fact that is complete, for the sake of style or effect or sublimity of phrase, and express the matter in other words, and these more forcible and suitable; as e.g. in Herodotus, when he wrote ἐνέσκηψεν ἡ θεὸς θήλειαν νόσον (the goddess afflicted them with feminine disease) instead of “made them men-women or cinaedi”. The word ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman) is used here in the same way as in another passage where Herodotus says360, οἱ δὲ ἐνάρεες, οἱ ἀνδρόγυνοι (and the ἐνάρεες, the men-women). The false interpretation of this word has more than anything else led to misunderstanding as to the νοῦσος θήλεια, for it was supposed that by ἀνδρόγυνοι (men-women) actual eunuchs were intended, whereas pathics are meant and nothing more. How the case really stood might have been seen from Suidas, who tells us: ἀνδρόγυνος· ὁ Διόνυσος, ὡς καὶ τὰ ἀνδρῶν ποιῶν καὶ τὰ γυναικῶν πάσχων· ἢ ἄνανδρος καὶ Ἑρμαφρόδιτος· καὶ ἀνδρογύνων, ἀσθενῶν. γυναικῶν καρδίας ἐχόντων. (man-woman: Dionysus, as both performing a man’s part and suffering a woman’s. Synonyms, “unmanly”, and “Hermaphrodite”. Also of men-women, weakly men, having the hearts of women.) Dionysus361 then performed the act of coition as a man, and suffered himself to be used as a woman, and for this reason was called ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman). We find the word used in the same way in Plato362, in the passage of Dio Chrysostom quoted a little above, in various places in the Writers on Physiognomy, in Philo, loco citato, and in Artemidorus363. From the last we quote a passage highly interesting for our purpose:

“A man saw in a dream his penis covered with hair to the extreme tip, shaggy with very thick hair that grew all of a sudden on it. He was a notorious cinaedus, indulging in every abominable pleasure, effeminate and a man-woman; only never using his member as a man does. In this way it happened that that part was so little employed, that through not being rubbed against another body hair actually grew on it.” The same author relates in another place364: “A man saw in a dream the rôle365 of a man-woman played on the stage; his privy member fell sick. A man thought he saw a priest of Cybelé (a castrated man); his privy member fell sick. This happened in the first instance because of the name, in the second because of the coincidence of the fact with the spectator’s condition. And indeed you know what κωμῳδεῖν (to represent in comedy) signifies in dreams, and what it means to see a priest of Cybelé. You remember too that if any one dreams he sees a Comedy or Tragedy and remembers it afterwards, the event can be predicted according to the plot of the piece dreamed of.”

The passage affords us yet another proof as to the causes that were supposed in Antiquity to condition the rise of diseases of the genitals, and we need certainly feel no surprise if we find the ætiological relations of these complaints even in professional writers wrapped in all but impenetrable obscurity.

Now what is the word ἐναρέες? Some scholars take it to be Greek; and accordingly would read ἐναγέες (persons who have sinned against the godhead), as Bouhier did, and perhaps Caelius Rhodoginus even in his time, or else ανάριες (imbelles, ad luctum veneream inepti,—unwarlike, i.e. unfit for the struggle of love), which was Coray’s emendation. Stark does not believe in any corruption of the word, but thinks it should be derived from ἐναίρω (spolio,—I rob, spoil), ἔναρα (spolia,—spoils), making it signify virilitate spoliati,—men robbed of their virility. But ἐναίρω according to Buttmann’s Lexilogus, p. 276., means “to send down to Hades”, to slay, ἔναρα the spoils taken from the slain, and from this comes the idea of spoliation, deprivation. The word undoubtedly occurs (Homer, Iliad XXIV. 244.) in the sense of “to be slain”, but the meaning virilitate spoliari (to be deprived of virility) without the addition of some supplemental word can certainly not be authenticated in old Writers. Supposing this derivation to be correct, ἐναρέες might signify simply (Temple) robbers, and as a matter of fact the glosses give ὁπλίται (warriors) as an explanation. It is a surprising thing that those who make out the νοῦσος θήλεια to have been gonorrhœa (clap), should not have derived the word from ἐάρ, the sap, the seed, with inserted ν.

However a Greek origin of the word is rendered unlikely by one simple circumstance. Herodotus writes τοὺς καλέουσι Ἐναρέας οἱ Σκύθαι, (whom the Scythians call Ἐναρέες,—which is obviously the same thing as saying, “in the language of the Scythians they are called Ἐναρέες”. And again why should Herodotus have explained it by ἀνδρόγυνοι (men-women), if it was a word that every Greek could understand. In this view moreover Wesseling and Schweighäuser, scholars possessing a special, critical knowledge of their Herodotus, concur. We do not indeed know to what family of speech the Scythian belongs; but it may be assumed that the word signifying the disease took its origin from the same country where the νοῦσος θήλεια itself arose. We believe ἐναρέες366 to have been originally a Syrian word, which the Scythians, or more likely the Greeks367, first adopted into their own idiom. The Greeks were particularly good at the transformation or, if you please, distortion, of foreign names! The word which we think must be claimed as the original is the Semitic נַעֲרָה (naãrâ),—the girl, the woman in the abstract; and we conjecture Herodotus wrote ναρέες, a form which is actually found according to Coray in one Manuscript. The meaning then would be the womanish man, and this gives a complete correspondance with νοῦσος θήλεια and ἀνδρόγυνος. Another conjecture is based on the name of the Babylonish Praefect or Ἄνναρος, to which Coray calls attention, adding: mais qui pourroit bien être un surnom altéré par les copistes, et relatif à sa vie effeminée et au milieu des femmes. (but which might very possibly be a surname changed by the transcribers and referring to his effeminate life and his living surrounded by women.) In Athenaeus368 we read in fact: Κτησίας δ’ ἱστορεῖ, Ἀνναρον τὸν βασιλέως ὕπαρχον καὶ τῆς Βαβυλωνίας δυναστεύσαντα στολῇ χρῆσθαι γυναικείᾳ καὶ κόσμῳ· καὶ ὅτι βασιλέως δούλῳ ὄντι κ. τ. λ. (Ctesias relates in his History that Annarus, the King’s Praefect and Governor of Babylon wore a woman’s robes and ornaments; and that being a slave of the King, etc.) Still as a matter of fact it is difficult to see why the transcriber should have introduced the name as Ἄνναρος, the whole form of the sentence demanding a proper name. Coray refuses to admit that ἐναρέες is a foreign word at all, for he says, “cette manière de s’exprimer n’est souvent qu’une version littérale du mot étranger dans la langue de l’écrivain qui l’emploie”. (such a mode of expression is very often nothing more than a literal translation of the foreign word into the language of the writer using it). But if this were the case, and the word one that a Greek would have understood, why did Herodotus go out of his way to explain it by ἀνδρόγυνοι? Supposing a transcriber to have inserted Ἄνναρον into the text, yet even then the word must have been familiar to him in the sense of womanish, unmanly. But if it has this meaning, Coray’s conjecture,—to read ἀναρέες for ἐναρέες, should be unhesitatingly adopted,—if that is (a point to which Prof. Pott has drawn attention) the derivation is taken from Sanskrit or Zend.