However not merely primary affections of the posteriors were the punishment of the Cinaedus, but also secondary ones of the mouth and throat. First and foremost was hoarseness of the voice, to which Martial[277] alludes, when he makes the champion of the baths the cinaedus Charinus speak raucidulo ore (with a weak, hoarse voice). This we find, following Reiske’s[278] indication, more explicitly dealt with in Dio Chrysostom[279]:—
“But this is surely worth mentioning, and it is a thing no one can deny. I mean the noteworthy fact that a disease has attacked so many in this city,—one which I used to hear of as prevailing much more frequently with others than amongst you. What is it I mean? Even though I could explain myself no more clearly, yet you might easily guess the answer. Do not think I am speaking of secrets, of hidden doings, when the astounding fact itself speaks plainly enough. For there are many in this city that are asleep, even while they walk and stand and speak; though they may appear to most observers to be awake, yet it is not really so.
“Now they give, in my opinion, the clearest proof that they are asleep,—they snore (ῥέγχουσιν). I cannot, by heaven, express myself more clearly with decency. True only a few of the sleepers are suffering from the complaint I mean, and of the others it affects only the drunken, the overfed and such as have lain ill. But I maintain this vicious practice (ἔργον) shames the city and brands it publicly. The grossest ignominy is brought down upon their native city by these sleepers by day, and they ought, I say, to have been expelled your borders, as has been their fate everywhere else. For it is not now and then, nor here and there, they are met with; but at all times and in all places in the city occasion may be found to threaten, scorn or deride them. For the rest the practice has actually penetrated now to boys still young, and adults that yet would fain be reputable, suffer themselves to be led away into regarding the matter as a trifle, and if they refrain from the decisive step, yet it was their wish to take it.
“If there were a city in which wailing were to be heard all day long, and no one could walk about in it, no! not one minute, without listening to the sound of lamentation, tell me, what man would willingly stay here? Now wailing, as all agree, is a sign of unhappiness; but that other sound is the sign of shamelessness and lewdness the most scandalous. Surely one would much rather choose to associate with unhappy men than with paederasts[280]. I might avoid listening, if a single man were to be blowing the flute everlastingly, but if in a particular place there is an everlasting noise of flutes, singing or guitar-playing,—such as might be where the rocks ever ring with the Syrens’ song,—I could not, having arrived there, endure to remain. And this unmusical and harsh tone of voice[281], what man of any virtue can abide it? If a man passes in front of a home in which he catches the sound, he says, “Of a surety there is a brothel there!” Now what shall be said of a city where nothing but this tone of voice prevails universally, so that no exception can be made of time or day or place whatever? For in streets and houses, in public places, in the theatre and in the Gymnasium, paederastia is rife[282].
“Again I have never yet heard a flute-player of a morning in the city, but this horrible sort of din is raised[283] from earliest dawn.
“I do not indeed shut my eyes to the fact that it will be said I am talking silly nonsense most likely, in making such allegations, and that there is nothing in it. Nay! but surely you are only carrying pot-herbs in your cart, and behold with indifference profusion of white bread on the road, as well as salt and fresh meat. But just consider the thing (πρᾶγμα i. e. paederastia) in this way too: If any one of these objectors should come into a city, where all men, when they point to a thing, point at it with the middle finger[284], when any one gives the right hand, gives it with this same gesture, and when he stretches out the hand, as the people does in voting or the judges in giving decisions, does so in the same way, what, pray will he think of such a city? What, if further all men walk in this city with skirts up-raised, as if wading in a quagmire? For do you not really and truly know what has given occasion to the defamation you suffer; what it is has offered matter to such as are unfriendly disposed to you for censure on our city? Tell me, what is the reason they nickname you “hawks” (κερκίδες)[285]?
“Well, but you opine the question is not what others say of you, but what you really do yourselves? Good; but if a single disease of such a sort attacks a people that they all of them acquire women’s voices, and no man, neither stripling nor grey-beard, can utter a word in a man’s voice, is not this a horrible thing, and harder to bear, I should suppose, than any Plague? For it is not shameful to have a fever, nor even to die.
“Nay! but to speak with women’s voice is after all to speak with human voice, and no one is filled with aversion when he hears a woman. But, tell me, whose is this voice; does it not belong to the Androgyni (men-women), the Cinaedi? or to such as have had the genitals amputated? True it is not invariably found with all such, but it is characteristic of them and a sign of what they are.
“Well then! suppose a stranger from a distance to judge from your voices, what kind of men you are, and what are your pursuits (πράττειν,—what it is you do). You are not fit, I tell you, to be neatherds or shepherds. I wonder would any one take you for descendants of the Argives, as you profess to be, or indeed for Greeks at all,—you who outdo the Phoenicians in lubricity? At any rate I do think it would behove a man of any morality in such a city to close his ears with wax far more than if he were sailing past the Syrens’ shore. There he would run the risk of death, but here of foulest licence, of violation, of the vilest seduction.
“Once Ionic harmony was in vogue, or Doric, or yet another sort, the Phrygian and Lydian, now it is the music of Aradus and the Phoenician modes that please you; you love this rhythm par excellence, as others do the Spondaic. Was ever a race of men that were good musicianers—through the nose?!