(p. 409). “But such a rhythm must needs have something to follow. You would seem not to know what; just as with other nations the wrath of the gods overtook some single part, the hands, the feet or the face[286], in the same way among you an endemic disease has attacked the nose. Just as the angry Aphrodité they say made the Lemnian women’s armpits abominable, know now that the gods in their anger have played havoc with the noses of most of your fellow citizens, and that is why they have this characteristic voice of their own. Indeed from where else could it have come?
“But I say this thing is the mark of most infamous lewdness, of most infamous madness, of contempt for all decency (all morality), and (a proof) of the fact that there is no more any single thing held to be disgraceful. Their speech, their gait, their look, proclaim it.”
From this passage of Dio Chrysostom, who lived at the end of the First and beginning of the Second Century A.D., we see that at that period the vice of paederastia prevailed at Tarsus to an appalling extent; and very possibly it is this circumstance that gave occasion to the declaration of the Apostle St. Paul[287], whose native town of course Tarsus was, when he says:
“Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonoured among themselves.... For their women[288] changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due.” This recompense was no doubt the ῥέγχειν (snoring), which according to Reiske was the consequence of an affection of the throat and nose in which the breath was exhaled with a characteristic noise. To corroborate this view he quotes in his edition of Dio Chrysostom the following passage from Ammianus Marcellinus[289], who picturing the habits of the Romans in the middle of the Fourth Century, wrote thus: “Haec nobilium instituta. Ex turba vero imae sortis et pauperrimae, in tabernis aliqui pernoctant vinariis: nonnulli velabris umbraculorum theatralium latent, quae Campanam imitatus lasciviam Catulus in aedilitate sua suspendit omnium primus; aut pugnaciter aleis certant, turpi sono fragosis naribus introrsum reducto spiritu concrepantes.” (Such are the usages of the nobles. But of the masses, those of lowest and poorest lot, certain spend the night in wine-taverns, some lurk under the curtains of the theatre awnings,—which Catulus in his aedileship, imitating Campanian luxury, was the very first to erect; or quarrel and fight at dice, making an ugly rattling sound the while by drawing in the breath through their rough nostrils).
Now we know that paederasts had foul breaths, as Martial[290] indeed noted, consequently the mucous membrane of the mouth was morbidly affected in its action, and further that they spoke raucidulo ore (with hoarse voice)[291], which must have been with many the ordinary consequence of a thickening of the tissues by previous ulceration; and at this fact this Speech of Dio Chrysostom, as Reiske understands it, may very well hint. But to take the main gist of his speech, the author of the “Tarsica” signifies by ῥέγχειν (to snort) something quite different from this, as the whole context shows clearly.
It was in fact a signal or mode of solicitation, by which the pathics sought to allure the paederasts to them and invited them to lewdness, as comes out more plainly in the following passage of Clemens Alexandrinus[292]: Αἱ δὲ ἀνδρογύνων συνουσίαις ἥδονται· παρεισῥέουσιν δὲ ἔνδον κιναίδων ὄχλοι, ἀθυρόγλωσσοι· μιαροὶ μὲν τὰ σώματα, μιαροὶ δὲ τὰ φθέγματα, εἰς ὑπουργίας ἀκολάστους ἠνδρωμένοι, μοιχείας διάκονοι, κιχλίζοντες καὶ ψιθυρίζοντες, καὶ τὸ πορνικὸν ἀναίδην εἰς ἀσέλγειαν διὰ ῥινῶν ἐπιψοφοῦντες ἐπικιναίδισμα, ἀκολάστοις ῥήμασι καὶ σχήμασι τέρπειν πειρώμενοι, καὶ εἰς γέλωτας ἐκκαλούμενοι, πορνείας παράδρομον· ἔστι δ’ὅτε καὶ ὑπεκκαιόμενοι διὰ τὴν τυχοῦσαν ὄργην, ἤτοι πόρνοι αὐτοὶ ἢ καὶ κιναίδων ὄχλον εἰς ὄλεθρον ἐζηλωκότες, ἐπικροτοῦσι τῇ ῥινὶ, βατράχων δίκην, καθάπερ ἔνοικον τοῖς μυκτῆρσι τὴν χολὴν κεκτημένοι. (But they delight in the assemblies of the Androgyni (men-women); and crowds of pathics hurry along to join them within, everlasting chatterers, abominable in person and abominable in voice; reared up to manhood for unchaste ministrations, servants of adultery; tittering and whispering, and sounding though their nose the debauched cinaedus’ call to shameful licentiousness, striving to please with indecent words and gestures, and challenging to laughter, a race and competition in harlotry. Then again at times kindled by some chance gust of anger, whether debauchees themselves or roused to a fatal emulation with the crowd of pathics, they make a rattling sound with the nose, like frogs, as though they kept their stock of gall up their nostrils).
But possibly the Tarsians were also Fellatores (ii qui penem alienum in os admittunt, ibique eo sugunt ut voluptas quaedam libidinosa paretur,—those who allow another’s penis to be put in their mouth, and suck it) (see later), and snorted as fellatores did at their task,—for the word ῥέγχειν (to snort) is manifestly used in several different senses. It only remains to mention that a pale complexion was also reckoned one of the signs of a Cinaedus, a fact to which Juvenal’s (II. 50.) words refer: Hippo subit iuvenes et morbo pallet utroque. (Hippo submits to men, and is pale with two-fold disease). Of these marks of the Cinaedus we shall speak in greater detail directly.
Νοῦσος Θήλεια (Feminine Disease)[293].
§ 14.
The passage of Dio Chrysostom discussed in the preceding section brings us, in virtue of a variety of hints it contains, to the much canvassed Νοῦσος Θήλεια (feminine disease) of the Scythians. Stark has collected with the greatest care everything that has so far been adduced by different authors in explanation of the subject; and on his Work we must base our own efforts in the investigations that follow.