Delphi Complete Works of Petronius

by Petronius

  “Hermotimus, then, was sprung from these Pedasians; and, of all men we know, revenged himself in the severest manner for an injury he had received; for, having been captured by an enemy and sold, he was purchased by one Panionius, a Chian, who gained a livelihood by the most infamous practices; for whenever he purchased boys remarkable for their beauty, having castrated them, he used to take them to Sardis and Ephesus and sell them for large sums; for with the barbarians, eunuchs are more valued than others, on account of their perfect fidelity. Panionius, therefore, had castrated many others, as he made his livelihood by this means, and among them, this man.

  “Hermotimus, however, was not in every respect unfortunate, for he went to Sardis, along with other presents for the king, and in process of time was the most esteemed by Xerxes of all his eunuchs.

  “When the king was preparing to march his Persian army against Athens, Hermotimus was at Sardis, having gone down at that time, upon some business or other, to the Mysian territory which the Chians possess, and is called Atarneus, he there met with Panionius. Having recognized him, he addressed many friendly words to him, first recounting the many advantages he had acquired by this means, and secondly, promising him how many favors he would confer upon him in requital, if he would bring his family and settle there; so that Panionius joyfully accepted the proposal and brought his wife and children. But when Hermotimus got him with his whole family into his power, he addressed him as follows:

  “‘O thou, who, of all mankind, hast gained thy living by the most infamous acts, what harm had either I, or any of mine, done to thee, or any of thine, that of a man thou hast made me nothing?

  “‘Thou didst imagine, surely, that thy machinations would pass unnoticed by the Gods, who, following righteous laws, have enticed thee, who hath committed unholy deeds, into my hands, so that thou canst not complain of the punishment I shall inflict upon thee.’

  “When he had thus upbraided him, his sons being brought into his presence, Panionius was compelled to castrate his own sons, who were four in number; and, being compelled, he did it; and after he had finished it, his sons, being compelled, castrated him. Thus did vengeance and Hermotimus overtake Panionius.” Herodotus, viii, ch. 105-6.

  Mention of the Galli, the emasculated priests of Cybebe should be made. Emasculation was a necessary first condition of service in her worship. (Catullus, Attys.) The Latin literature of the silver and bronze ages contains many references to castration. Juvenal and Martial have lavished bitter scorn upon this form of degradation, and Suetonius and Statius inform us that Domitian prohibited the practice, but it is in the “Amoures” attributed to Lucian that we find a passage so closely akin to the one forming a basis of this note, that it is inserted in extenso:

  “Some pushed their cruelty so far as to outrage Nature with the sacrilegious knife, and, after depriving men of their virility, found in them the height of pleasure. These miserable and unhappy creatures, that they may the longer serve the purposes of boys, are stunted in their manhood, and remain a doubtful riddle of a double sex, neither preserving that boyhood in which they were born, nor possessing that manhood which should be theirs. The bloom of their youth withers away in a premature old age: while yet boys, they suddenly become old, without any interval of manhood. For impure sensuality, the mistress of every vice, devising one shameless pleasure after another, insensibly plunges into unmentionable debauchery, experienced in every form of brutal lust.” The jealous Roman husband’s furious desire to prevent the consequences of his wife’s incontinence was by no means well served by the use of such agents; on the contrary, the women themselves profited by the arrangement. By means of these eunuchs, they edited the morals of their maids and hampered the sodomitical hankerings, active or otherwise, of their husbands: Martial, xii, 54: but when the passions and suspicions of both heads of the family were mutually aroused, the eunuchs fanned them into flame and gained the ascendancy in the home. They even went so far as to marry: Martial, xi, 82, and Juvenal, i, 22.

  In the third century a certain Valesius formed a sect which, following the example set by Origen, acted literally upon the text of Matthew, v, 28, 30, and Matthew, xix, 12. Of this sect, Augustine, De Heres. cha, said: “the Valesians castrate themselves and those who partake of their hospitality, thinking that after this manner, they ought to serve God.” That injustice was done upon the wrong member is very evident, yet in an age so dark, so dominated by austere asceticism, this clean cut perception of the best interests of suffering humanity, is only to be rivalled by the French physician in the time of the black plague. He had observed that sthenic patients, when bled, died: the superstition and medical usage of the age prescribed bleeding, and when the fat abbots came to be bled, he bled them freely and with satisfaction. Justinian decreed that anyone guilty of performing the operation which deprived an individual of virility should be subjected to a similar operation, and this crime was later punished with death. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we encounter another and even viler reason for this practice: that “the voice of such a person” (one castrated in boyhood) “after arriving at adult age, combines the high range and sweetness of the female with the power of the male voice,” had long been known, and Italian singing masters were not slow in putting this hint to practical use. The poor sometimes sold their children for this purpose, and the castrati and soprani are terms well known to the musical historian.

  These artificial voices disgraced the Italian stage until literally driven from it by public hostility, and the punishment of death was the reward of the individual bold enough to perform such an operation. The papal authority excommunicated those guilty of the crime and those upon whom such an operation had been performed, but received artificial voices, which were the result of accident, into the Sistine choir. This pretext served the church well and, until the year 1878, when the disgrace was wiped out by Pope Leo XIII, the Sistine choir was an eloquent commentary upon the attitude of an institution placed, as it were, “between love and duty.” It should be recorded that this choir, in its recent visit to the United States, had but one artificial voice, and its owner was the oldest member of the choir.

  Young home-born slaves were bought up by the dealers, castrated, because of the increased price they brought when in this condition, and sold for huge sums: Seneca, Controv. x, cha; and kidnapping was frequently resorted to, just as it is in Africa today.

  In Russia there is a sect called the “skoptzi,” whose tenets, in this respect, are indicated by their name. This sect is first mentioned in the person of a certain Adrian, a monk, who came to Russia about the year 1001. In 1041, l090 to 1096, 1138 to 1147, 1326, they are noticed, and in 1721 to 1724 they are prominent. They call themselves “white doves” and are divided into smaller congregations which, in their allegorical terminology, they call “ships”; the leader of each congregation is called the “pilot” and the female leader, the “pilot’s mate.” Their tenets provide for two degrees of emasculation: complete and incomplete, and, in the case of the former, he who submitted to the operation had the “royal seal” affixed to him, this being their name for complete emasculation: in the case of the latter, the neophyte had reached the “Second Degree of Purity.” The operation was performed with a red-hot knife or a hot iron, and this was known as the “baptism by fire.”

  In the case of female converts, the breasts were amputated, either with a red-hot knife or a pair of red-hot shears (Kudrin trial, Moscow, 1871; testimony of physicians and examination of the accused) which served the double purpose of checking haemorrhage, as would a thermo-cautery, and avoiding infection. Another method consisted in searing the orifice of the vagina so that the scar tissue would contract it in such a manner as to effectually prevent the entrance of the male.

  A peculiar attribute of this sect is the character of many of its members: bankers, civil service officials, navy officers, army officers and others of the finest professions. Leroy-Beaulieu, in discussing their methods of obtaining converts says: “t
hey prefer boys and youths, whom they strive to convince of the necessity of ‘killing the flesh.’ They sometimes succeed so well, that cases are known of boys of fifteen or so resorting to self-mutilation, to save themselves from the temptations of early manhood. These apostles of purity do not always scruple to have recourse to violence or deceit. They ensnare their victims by equivocal forms of speech, and having thus obtained their consent virtually upon false pretences, they reveal to the confiding dupes the real meaning of the engagement they have entered into only at the last moment, when it is too late for them to escape the murderous knife. One evening, two men, one of them young and blooming, the other old, with sallow and unnaturally smooth face, were conversing, while sipping their tea, in a house in Moscow. ‘Virgins will alone stand before the throne of the Most High,’ said the elder man. ‘He who looks on a woman with desire commits adultery in his heart, and adulterers shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ‘What then should we sinners doe’ asked the young man. ‘Knowest thou not,’ replied the elder, ‘the word of the Lord? If thy right eye leadeth thee into temptation, pluck it out and cast it from thee; if thy right hand leadeth thee into temptation, cut it off and cast it from thee. What ye must do is to kill the flesh. Ye must become like unto the disembodied angels, and that may be attained only, through being made white as snow.’ ‘And how can we be made thus white?’ further inquired the young man. ‘Come and see,’ said the old man. ‘He took his companion down many stairs, into a cellar resplendent with lights. Some fifteen white robed men and women were gathered there. In a corner was a stove, in which blazed a fire. After some prayers and dances, very like those in use among the Flagellants, the old man announced to his companion: ‘now shalt thou learn how sinners are made white as snow.’ And the young man, before he had time to ask a single question, was seized and gagged, his eyes were bandaged, he was stretched out on the ground, and the apostle, with a red-hot knife, stamped him with the ‘seal of purity.’ This happened to a peasant, Saltykov by name, and certainly not to him alone. He fainted away under the operation, and when he came to himself, he heard the voices of his chaste sponsors give him the choice between secrecy and death.”

  Catherine II signed the first edict against this sect in 1772, but agitation was more or less constant until the Imperial government began vigorous prosecutions in 1871, and many were sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. When prosecutions were instituted, large numbers emigrated to Roumania and there took the name of “Lipovans.” Women, especially one of the name of Anna Romanovna, have had a great share in the invention and diffusion of the doctrine. Not infrequently it is the women who, with their own hands, transform the men to angels.

  In 1871 their number was estimated to be about 3000, in 1874 they numbered 5444, including 1465 women, and in 1847, 515 men and 240 women were transported to Siberia. The sect still holds its own in Russia. They are millennarians and the messiah will not come for them until their sect numbers 144,000.

  Antiquity knew three varieties of eunuch:

  Castrati: Scrotum and testicles were amputated.

  Spadones: Testicles were torn out.

  Thlibiae: Testicles were destroyed by crushing.

  CHAPTER 127.

  “Such sweetness permeated her voice as she said this, so entrancing was the sound upon the listening air that you would have believed the Sirens’ harmonies were floating in the breeze.”

  Many scholars have drawn attention to the ethereal beauty of this passage. Probably the finest parallel is to be found in Horace’s ode to Calliope. After the invocation to the muse he thinks he hears her playing:

  “Hark! Or is this but frenzy’s pleasing dream?

  Through groves I seem to stray

  Of consecrated bay,

  Where voices mingle with the babbling stream,

  And whispering breezes play.”

  Sir Theodore Martin’s version.

  Another exquisite and illuminating passage occurs in Catullus, 51, given in Marchena’s fourth note.

  CHAPTER 131.

  “Then she kneaded dust and spittle and, dipping her middle finger into the mixture, she crossed my forehead with it.”

  Since the Fairy Tale Era of the human race, sputum has been employed to give potency to charms and to curses. It was anciently used as anathema and that use is still in force to this day. Let the incredulous critic spit in some one’s face if he doubts my word.

  But sputum had also a place in the Greek and Roman rituals. Trimalchio spits and throws wine under the table when he hears a cock crowing unseasonably. This, in the first century. Any Jew in Jerusalem hearing the name of Titus mentioned, spits: this in 1903. In the ceremony of naming Roman children spittle had its part to play: it was customary for the nurse to touch the lips and forehead of the child with spittle. The Catholic priest’s ritual, which prescribes that the ears and nostrils of the infant or neophyte, as the case may be, shall be touched with spittle, comes, in all probability from Mark, vii, 33, 34, viii, 23, and John, ix, 6, which, in turn are probably derived from a classical original. It should be added that fishermen spit upon their bait before casting in their hooks.

  CHAPTER 131. Medio sustulit digito:

  There is more than a suggestion in the choice of the middle finger, in this instance. Among the Romans, the middle finger was known as the “infamous finger.”

  Infami digito et lustralibus ante salivis

  Expiat, urentes oculos inhibere perita.

  Persius, Sat. ii

  See also Dio Chrysostom, xxxiii. “Neither,” says Lampridius, Life of Heliogabalus, “was he given to demand infamies in words when he could indicate shamelessness with his fingers,” Chapter 10. “With tears in his eyes, Cestos often complains to me, Mamurianus, of being touched by your finger. You need not use your finger, merely: take Cestos all to yourself, if nothing else is wanting in your establishment,” Martial, i, 93

  To touch the posteriors lewdly with the finger, that is, the middle finger put forth and the two adjoining fingers bent down, so that the hand might form a sort of Priapus, was an obscene sign to attract catamites. That this position of the fingers was an indecent symbol is attested by numerous passages in the classical writers. “He would extend his hand, bent into an obscene posture, for them to kiss,” Suetonius, Caligula, 56. It may be added that one of that emperor’s officers assassinated him for insulting him in that manner. When this finger was thus applied it signified that the person was ready to sodomise him whom he touched. The symbol is still used by the lower orders.

  “We are informed by our younger companions that gentlemen given to sodomitical practices are in the habit of frequenting some public place, such as the Pillars of the County Fire Office, Regent St., and placing their hands behind them, raising their fingers in a suggestive manner similar to that mentioned by our epigrammatist. Should any gentleman place himself near enough to have his person touched by the playful fingers of the pleasure-seeker, and evince no repugnance, the latter turns around and, after a short conversation, the bargain is struck. In this epigram, however, Martial threatens the eye and not the anus.” The Romans used to point out sodomites and catamites by thus holding out the middle finger, and so it was used as well in ridicule (or chaff, as we say) as to denote infamy in the persons who were given to these practices.

  “If anyone calls you a catamite, Sextillus,” says Martial, ii, 28, “return the compliment and hold out your middle finger to him.” According to Ramiresius, this custom was still common in the Spain of his day (1600), and it still persists in Spanish and Italian countries, as well as in their colonies. This position of the fingers was supposed to represent the buttocks with a priapus inserted up the fundament; it was called “Iliga,” by the Spaniards. From this comes the ancient custom of suspending little priapi from boys’ necks to avert the evil eye.

  Aristophanes, in the “Clouds,” says:

  SOCRATES: First they will help you to be pleasant in company, and to know what is meant by OEnoplian rhythm and what b
y the Dactylic.

  STREPSIADES: Of the Dactyl (finger)? I know that quite well.

  SOCRATES: What is it then?

  STREPSIADES: Why, ’tis this finger; formerly, when a child, I used this one.

  (Daktulos means, of course, both Dactyl (name of a metrical foot) and finger. Strepsiades presents his middle finger with the other fingers and thumb bent under in an indecent gesture meant to suggest the penis and testicles. It was for this reason that the Romans called this finger the “unseemly finger.”)

  SOCRATES: You are as low minded as you are stupid.

  [See also Suetonius. Tiberius, chapter 68.]

  CHAPTER 138.

  “OEnothea brought out a leathern dildo.”

  This instrument, made from glass, wax, leather, or other suitable material such as ivory or the precious metals (Ezekiel xvi, 17), has been known from primitive times; and the spread of the cult of Priapus was a potent factor in making the instrument more common in the western world. Numerous Greek authors make mention of it: Aristophanes, Lucian, Herondas, Suidas and others. That it was only too familiar to the Romans is shown by their many references to it: Catullus, Martial, the apostle Paul, Tertullian, and others.

  Aristophanes, Lysistrata: (Lysistrata speaking) “And not so much as the shadow of a lover! Since the day the Milesians betrayed us, I have never once caught sight of an eight-inch-long dildo even, to be a leathern consolation to us poor widows.” Her complaint is based upon the fact that all the men were constantly absent upon military duty and the force of the play lies in her strategic control of a commodity in great demand among the male members of society. Quoting again from the same play: Calonice: “And why do you summon us, Lysistrata dear? What is it all about?” Lysistrata: “About a big affair.” Calonice: “And is it thick, too’?” Lysistrata: “Indeed it is, great and big too.” Calonice: “And we are not all on the spot!” Lysistrata: “Oh! If it were what you have in mind, there would never be an absentee. No, no, it concerns a thing I have turned about and about, this way and that, for many sleepless nights.” When the plot has been explained, viz.: that the women refuse intercourse to their husbands until after peace has been declared — Calonice: “But suppose our poor devils of husbands go away and leave us”’ Lysistrata: “Then, as Pherecrates says, ‘we must flay a skinned dog,’ that’s all.”