Note 342 — FIRST SECTION. (continued 2)

When Juvenal, V. 50., says: Hippo subit iuvenes et morbo pallet utroque, (Hippo submits to young men, and is pale with a double disease), this must be understood to mean that Hippo is not only a pathic, but also a Fellator (see subsequently). Further Epigr. 131. of Ausonius is to the point in this connection:

(The reason why you make the private parts smooth with hot pitch-ointment (as a depilatory) is this: Smooth limbs excite the passions of the harlots, plucked smooth themselves. But why you pluck the hair from your fundament, soaked in hot water first, and polish with pumice your well-pounded Clazomenae (i. e. buttocks) the reason is obscure: unless indeed your long-suffering lust hankers for a double disease (vice),—a woman behind, in your member a strong man).

Manilius, Astronomica bk. V. vv. 140-156., says:

(When the Bull tending downwards lifts his head with limbs bent back, he brings with him in his sixth house the sister Pleiades, his equals in brilliancy. When these are in the ascendent, there are brought forth to the light of day such as follow after Bacchus and Venus; and hearts that wanton at feast and board, and that seek to raise the merry laugh by biting wit. These will ever be giving thought to their bedizenment and becoming appearance; to curl the hair and lay it in waving ripples or else to gather in the locks with circlets and arrange them in a heavy top-knot, and to alter the head by adding false ringlets; to polish the shaggy limbs with hollow pumice-stone; yea! and to hate the very sight of a man, and long for arms without growth of hair. Women’s robes they wear; the coverings of their feet are less for use than show; and steps broken in to an effeminate gait are their delight. Nature they scorn; indeed in their breast there lies a pride they cannot avow, and they vaunt their disease (vice) under the name of virtue. Ever to love is a little thing in their eyes; their wish will be to be seen to love).

Seneca, Quaest. nat. bk. VII. ch. 31., Egenus etiam in quo morbum suum exerceat, legit. (The poor man too chooses one on whom he may practise his disease (vice).—Seneca, Epist. 114. Cum vero magis vires morbus exedit et in medullas nervosque descendere deliciae. (But when the disease (vice) has eaten deeper into a man’s vigour, and its delights penetrated to the very marrow and nerves).—Comp. Epist. 75.—Cicero, De finibus I. 18., in Verrem II. 1. 36., Tusc. quaest. IV. 11.—Wyttenbach, in Bibliothec. critic. Pt VIII. p. 73.—Horace, Sat. I. 6. 40., Ut si qui aegrotat quo morbo Barrus, haberi ut cupiat formosus. (As if one who is sick of the same disease as Barrus, as if he should long to be considered handsome.) Another passage of the same author (Odes I. 37. 9.) must be mentioned:

(With her (Cleopatra’s) herd of foul men stained with disease—vice). It is taken by Stark as by most of the commentators to mean castrated persons, though strictly speaking it implies nothing more than a contemptuous circumlocution for Egyptians. The boys that were kept in the brothels at Rome for purposes of paederastia were for the most part from Egypt, whence they were imported in flocks. Accordingly the poet calls the whole entourage of Cleopatra pathics. There can be no mistake, if only we translate thus: cum contaminato grege virorum, morbo turpium, (with a polluted herd of men, defiled with disease—vice). In this Horace was all the more justified, because as a matter of fact Cleopatra did keep cinaedi, as we learn from Suidas: s. v. κίναιδα καὶ κιναιδία· ἠ ἀναισχυντία· ἀπὸ τοῦ κινεῖν τὰ αἰδοῖα. Ὁ τῆς Κλεοπάτρας κίναιδος Χελιδὼν ἐκαλεῖτο. (under the words κίναιδα and κίναιδία: shameless practice; from the moving (τὸ κινεῖν of the genitals. Cleopatra’s cinaedus was called Chelidon. True Terence, Eunuch. I. 2. 87., makes Phaedria say:

(I have discovered wherefore you said you wanted a eunuch, because only queens use them) and Donatus observes on the passage that reginae (queens) stands for feminae divites (rich ladies). Accordingly just as Eunuchus is used for cinaedus or pathicus, in the same way cinaedus might very well stand in Suidas for eunuch, and as a matter of fact the entourage of Cleopatra may have consisted of actual eunuchs. Still it is Horace’s main point that they were pathics. As to the reason why reginae (queens, rich ladies) kept castrati (eunuchs) at all, comp. p. 125 above.—The Latin grex (herd) is sufficiently explained by the παίδων ἀγέλας (herds of boys) in the passages already quoted (p. 131.) from Tatian and Justin Martyr, along side which we may put the μειρακίων ὡραίων ἀγέλαι (herds of lads in the bloom of youth) of Clement of Alexandria, Paedag. bk. III. ch. 4. The word is used in the same sense by Seneca, Epist 95., Transeo puerorum infelicium greges, quos post transacta convivia aliae cubiculi contumeliae expectant. Transeo agmina exoletorum per nationes coloresque descripta. (I pass over the herds of unhappy boys, whom after the feast is done, other affronts of the bed-chamber await. I pass over the serried ranks of debauchees (cinaedi) marshalled by nation and complexion.) Cicero, Ad Atticum I. 13., Concursabant barbatuli iuvenes, totus ille grex Catilinae, (Thither flocked the youths of the baby beards, all the herd of Catiline’s friends.) Petronius, Sat. ch. 40., Grex agit in scena mimum. (The common herd plays the mime on the stage.) Grex was used generally for any crowd of common men.—The use of the word contaminatus (polluted) brings to mind catamitus, which bears the sense of pathic, e. g. in Cicero, Philipp. II. 31., Appuleius, Metam. I. p. 107 and especially is used as a nickname for Ganymede. Plautus, Menaechm. I. 2. 34.—Festus: Catamitum pro Ganymede dixerunt, qui fuit Jovis concubinus, (Men said catamitus for Ganymedes, who was Jupiter’s bed-fellow),—which probably led to the ridiculous idea being entertained, e.g. by Scheller, that the word was derived from Ganymedes by corruption in the pronunciation! The fact that the word is metrically a “Paeon tertius”, that is to say the i in the third syllable is long, might have led us at once to the conclusion that originally the word was catamytus, and derived from the Greek καταμύσσω (to tear), and so has the same meaning as the Latin percisus (cut), or else that it stands for καταμίκτος (mixed), and is connected with καταμίγνυμι (to mix), and so in fact concubinus (sharing the bed), as Festus says! At any rate the passages quoted above from Cicero and Seneca, which might easily be multiplied, prove that Stark’s supposition expressed on p. 22., to the effect that morbus (disease) is used in this sense only in the poets, is unfounded.