[238] As a matter of curiosity a tale of Phlegon, De Rebus mirabilibus, ch. 26., may find a place here. According to the report of the physician Dorotheus a Cinaedus (pathic sodomite) at Alexandria in Egypt bore a child, which was preserved at that place. The text reads, Δωρόθεος δέ φησιν ὁ ἰατρὸς ἐν Ὑπομνήμασιν, ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ, τῇ κατ’ Αἴγυπτον, κίναιδον τεκεῖν· τὸ δὲ βρέφος ταριχευθὲν, χάριν τοῦ παραδόξου, φυλάττεσθαι. (Now Dorotheus the Physician says in his Memoirs, that at Alexandria in Egypt a cinaedus brought forth; and that the babe was mummified and kept as a curiosity). The same thing is reported in the following chapter of a slave with the Roman army in Germany under the command of T. Curtilius Mancias. These stories may possibly borrow some probability from modern investigations as to the “foetus” within the “foetus”. The expression “to sow seed on barren rocks” occurs, it may be mentioned, very frequently in connection with paederastia in the Fathers.
[239] 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.