d). actual loss of the Testicles, true Eunuchs, Mercurialis[304] considered must have been implied; and with this view Stark’s conclusion in part coincides, who understood a disease involving complete loss of virile power, both corporeal and mental, and producing an actual metamorphosis of the male type into the female.
(3). a mental Disease, in fact a form of Melancholia. This is the view adopted by Sauvages[305], Heyne, Bose, Koray[306] and Friedreich.
It would naturally be our task to examine the reasons alleged for and against these separate views. Supposing however we succeed in satisfactorily proving one of them to be the right one, then ipso facto all the rest come to nothing; and so we propose here to essay the advocacy of the oldest of them,—the view that makes the νοῦσος θήλεια to be the vice of paederastia. En passant we must call attention to the fact that under the name of paederastia must be understood not only the vicious habit of the paederast pure and simple, of the man that is who practices the act, but also of the pathic, who offers opportunities for its commission. This is a point which above all others has been quite left out of sight by the adversaries of the view in question.
The next question we have to answer would seem to be this: Could paederastia be regarded as a consequence of the vengeance of Venus? As it is the Scythians that are in question, the first thing would naturally appear to be to determine what conception the Scythians had of Venus. But inasmuch as the data are lacking for any demonstration of the sort, while the Scythians themselves ascribe the νοῦσος θήλεια to the vengeance of Venus, we may very well refer for a reply to this first question to the general character of the cult of the goddess[307] and what has been said on the whole subject above; and herein there seems to exist no reason why we should not answer the query asked above in the affirmative. Granted that Venus was regarded as goddess of fruitfulness or as dispenser of the joys of Love, then in either aspect it was but natural she should withdraw the marks of her favour from the culprits (the paederasts). These neither wished for posterity nor enjoyed the delights connected with natural coition, but were equally indifferent towards the one and towards the other[308]; and the first sign of the vengeance of the goddess consists in the withdrawal of her benefits.
How Stark, following the lead of an anonymous French author quoted by Larcher[309], can maintain there is no question of punishment here, as in that case Venus would be acting against her own interest, we fail to understand; and Larcher himself calls this unknown writer un homme d’esprit, mais peu instruit (witty but superficial). This is proof sufficient in our opinion that only a jest is intended, but one that Stark, p. 7 (notes 19 and 20.), has taken with the utmost seriousness.
However our view is directly supported by another myth, which Dio Chrysostom mentions, speaking of the sweating at the armpits with which the Lemnian women were afflicted. According to this legend Venus punishes the women of Lemnos[310]:
“Haec Dea veluti etiam ceteri, sua sacrificia praetermitti non aequo animo ferebat: quae cum Lemniae mulieres Veneris sacrificia sprevissent, Deae maxime iram in se concitasse creditae sunt, quod etiam non impune putantur fecisse. Nam tantum foetorem illis excitasse feminis Dea perhibetur, ut a suis maritis contemnerentur.” (This goddess, no less than other deities, could not bear the neglect of her proper sacrifices with equanimity. Thus the women of Lemnos, having omitted to perform these sacrifices of Venus, are believed to have brought down on themselves the most serious anger of the goddess, and this they are accounted not to have done with impunity. For the goddess, as is related, caused such a foul odour to arise among the women, that they were scorned by their husbands.) If the view mentioned just above as taken by the Apostle Paul and by St. Athanasius is the right one, it would seem that the Lemnian women had suffered themselves to be used by their husbands for purposes of paederastia; then as a consequence there had been set up the evil odour of the mouth and breath, and this had driven the men to desert their wives to live with the captive Thracian slave-women (Apollonius).
But indeed the Ancients generally, or at any rate the Greeks and Romans, seem to have always held the opinion that unnatural coition, as well as all the similar forms of indulgence taking its place, were a consequence of the wrath of Venus, against whom the individuals had offended[311]. This appears also from the play of Philoctetes, of whom the Scholiast to Thucydides[312] says: “Moreover Philoctetes, having on account of the death of Paris fallen sick of the feminine disease, and being unable to bear the shame of it, left his country and founded a city, which in memory of his misfortune he named Malacia—Effeminacy.” Martial[313] had the same myth in his mind when he wrote:
In Sertorium
Mollis erat, facilisque viris Paeantius heros,