ἄνδρες, γυναῖκες ἄῤῥενες, θηλυδρίαι.
Οὐκ ἄνδρες, οὐ γυναῖκες, ἀψευδεῖ λόγῳ.
Τὸ μὲν γὰρ οὐ μένουσι, τὸ δ’ οὐκ ἔφθασαν,
Ὃ μὲν γὰρ εἰσὶν οὐ μένουσι τῷ τρόπῳ,
ὃ δ’ αὖ κακῶς θέλουσιν, οὐκ εἰσὶν φύσει.
Ἀσωτίας αἴνιγμα καὶ γρίφος παθῶν.
ἄνδρες γυναιξὶ καὶ γυναῖκες ἀνδράσιν.
(Others of them belong to that most miserable tribe that dances away their repute as man, breaking down their nature to the shrill tones of songs,—men that are male women, womanish men. Not men and not women are they in very truth. For the one sex they will not keep, the other they have not gained; for what they really are they remain not, such is their fashion, and what they foully long to be, that they are not, such is their nature. An enigma of uncleanness, and a riddle of lust. Men they are to women, and women to men).
Comp. Barth, Adversar. bk. XLIII. ch. 21. p. 1968., and the expression θήλεια Φιλόξενος (a feminine Philoxenus) quoted p. 169 above. The Romans also used their word femina (woman, wife) in the same way; as may be gathered from Ausonius, Epigr. LXIX.—In eum qui muliebria patiebatur (On one who suffered himself to be treated as a woman), where we read at the end:
Nolo tamen veteris documenta arcessere famae.