(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?
[240] Genesis XIX. 4., Levit., XVIII. 2., XXIX. 13.
[241] Welcker, Aeschylus—Trilogy, p. 356.
[242] Athenaeus, Deipnosoph., p. 602., τοῦ παιδεραστεῖν παρὰ πρώτων Κρητῶν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας παρελθόντος, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Τίμαιος. (The practice of paederastia having been introduced among the Greeks first by the Cretans, as Timaeus relates).—Heraclitus Ponticus, fragment, περὶ πολιτείας III. p. 7.—Servius on Virgil—Aeneid bk. X. 325., de Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Laconas et totam Graeciam translatum est. (Of the Cretans we have been told that they were excessive in their love of boys, a practice afterwards imported into Laconia and all parts of Greece.) Comp. K. O. Müller, “Die Dorier”, (The Dorians), Vol. II. pp. 240 sqq. K. Höck, “Kreta”, (Crete), Vol. III. p. 106. Though in Crete as in all Dorian States Paedophilia was a universal and official institution, yet paederastia too was common enough, as is shown by the censure expressed by Plato (De Legibus bk. I. 636., bk. VII. 836.) and Plutarch, (De puerorum educatione ch. 14.).—as also by the expression Κρῆτα τρόπον (Cretan fashion) given in Hesychius; and probably the word κρητίζειν (to play the Cretan) is to be understood from this point of view also. Pfeffinger, “De Cretum vitiis,” (Of the Vices of the Cretans). Strasbourg 1701. 4to. From this Aristotle (Politics II. 7. 5.) may have got the idea that the lawgiver in Crete introduced paederastia in order to check the increase of population. Hesychius says at any rate κρῆτα τρόπον, παιδικοῖς χρῆσθαι. (Cretan fashion, i.e. to indulge in boy-loves). Of the Scythians later on.
[243] Thus Plutarch, Eroticus, ch. 5., Ἡ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀῤῥένων ἀκόντων, μετὰ βίας γενομένη καὶ λεηλασίας, ἂν δὲ ἑκουσίως, σὺν μαλακίᾳ καὶ θηλύτητι βαίνεσθαι κατὰ Πλάτωνα νόμῳ τετράποδος καὶ παιδοσπορεῖσθαι παρὰ φύσιν ἐνδιδόντων, χάρις ἄχαρις παντάπασι καὶ ἀσχήμων καὶ ἀναφρόδιτος. (But the pleasure that is won from males against their will by dint of force or robbery, or if voluntarily, then only because in their wantonness and effeminacy they consent to men treading them, as Plato puts it, like a four-footed beast, and emitting seed with them unnaturally—this pleasure is a graceless one altogether, and unseemly and loveless). The passage of Plato referred to here is in the Phaedrus, p. 250 E., ὥστε οὐ σέβεται προσορῶν, ἀλλ’ ἡδονῇ παραδοὺς τετράποδος νόμον βαίνειν ἐπιχειρεῖ καὶ παιδοσπορεῖν, καὶ ὕβρει προσομιλῶν οὐ δέδοικεν οὐδ’ αἰσχύνεται παρὰ φύσιν ἡδονὴν διώκων. (And so he feels no reverence when he looks on him, but giving way to pleasure endeavours to tread like a four-footed beast and to emit his seed, and using insolent violence in his intercourse, has no fear and no shame in pursuing pleasure in an unnatural way). As something παρὰ φύσιν (contrary to nature) we find paederastia further characterized in Athenaeus, Deipnosoph., bk. XIII. p. 605. Lucian, Amores, 19. Philo, De legg. spec., II. p. 306. 17. Libanius, Orat., XIX. p. 500. ἡ παράνομος Ἀφροδίτη. (Unlawful Love). Galen, De diagnos. et curat. anim. effect. (On the Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of Animals). edit. Kühn. Vol. V. p. 30. τῆς παρὰ φύσιν αἰσχρουργίας (of unnatural viciousness). In the Anthologia Graeca, bk. II. tit. 5. No. 10. is the distich following by an unknown author:
Υἱὸς Πατρικίου μάλα κόσμιος, ὃς διὰ Κύπριν