Note 239 — FIRST SECTION. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Juvenal, Sat. VI. 366 sqq.,
Sunt quas eunuchi imbelles ac mollia semper Oscula delectent et desperatio barbae. Et quod abortivo non est opus, illa voluptas Summa tamen, quod iam calida matura iuventa Inguina traduntur medicis, iam pectine nigro. Ergo exspectatos ac iussos crescere primum, Testiculos, postquam coeperunt esse bilibres, Tonsoris damno tantum rapit Heliodorus.
(Women there are to find delight in unwarlike eunuchs and kisses ever soft and the lack of a beard that can never grow, and this especially because then there is no need for any abortive. But the pleasure is greatest when the organs are delivered full-grown to the surgeons, just in the heat of youth, just when the down of puberty is darkening. Then when the testicles, long looked for and at first encouraged to grow, begin to be of double balanced weight, lo! Heliodorus whips them off,—to the barber’s loss).
Martial, VI. 67.,
Cur tantum Eunuchos habeat tua Gellia, quaeris Pannice? vult futui Gellia, non parere.
(Why your Gellia is fain to have eunuchs only, do you ask, Pannicus? Because she wishes to be f-ck-d, not to be a mother). In longam securamque libidinem exsectus spado, (A eunuch castrated with a view to long-continued and harmless lust), says St. Jerome. The information given by Galen (De usu Partium bk. XIV. 15. edit. Kühn, vol. IV. p. 571) is notable, to the effect that the athletes at Olympia were castrated, that their strength might not be wasted by coition. Have the words “Olimpia agona” (Olimpic—Olympic—games) been in some way misunderstood in the passage?