At si virtutes permixto semine pugnent,
Nec faciant unam, permixto in corpore dirae
Nascentem gemino vexabunt semine sexum.
Vult enim seminum praeter materias esse virtutes, quae si se ita miscuerint et [ut] eiusdem corporis [vim unam] faciant, unam congruam sexui generent voluntatem. Si autem permixto semine corporeo virtutes separatae permanserint utriusque Veneris natos adpetentia sequatur. Multi praeterea sectarum principes genuinam dicunt esse passionem et propterea in posteros venire cum semine, non quidem naturam criminantes, quae suae puritatis metas aliis ex animalibus docet: nam sunt eius specula a sapientibus nuncupata: sed humanum genus, quod ita semel recepta tenet vitia, ut nulla possit instauratione purgari, nec ullum novitati liquerit locum, sitque gravior senescentibus mentis culpa, cum plurimae genuinae, seu adventitiae passionis corporibus infractae consenescant, ut podagra, epilepsia, furor et propterea aetate vergente mitiores procul dubio fiant. Omnia et enim vexantia validos effectus dabunt firmitate opposita subiacentium materiarum, quae cum in senibus deficit, passio quoque minuitur, ut fortitudo; sola tamen supra dicta, quae subactos seu molles efficit viros, senescenti corpore gravius invalescit et infanda magis libidine movet, non quidem sine ratione. In aliis enim aetatibus adhuc valido corpore et naturalia ventris [veneris] officia celebrante, gemina luxuriae libido non divititur, animorum nunc faciendo, nunc facie iactata [animo eorum nunc patiendo nunc faciendo iactato]: in iis vero qui senectute defecti virili veneris officio caruerint, omnis animi libido in contrariam ducitur appetentiam, et propterea femina validius Venerem poscit. Hinc denique coniiciunt plurimi etiam pueros hac passione iactari. Similiter enim senibus virili indigent officio, quod in ipsis est nondum, illos deseruit.” (On effeminate men or subservients, called μαλθακοὶ—soft, effeminate, by the Greeks.—Effeminate men, or subservients, were called by the Greeks μαλθακοὶ. A man finds it difficult to believe in the existence of such creatures. For it was not nature prompted the introduction of this as part of human habits; rather was it lust that, expelling shame, subjected to foul uses parts of the body that should never have been so employed. For no limit being set to passion, and no hope of satiety being entertained, the several members find each its own realm insufficient; whereas divine providence destined the different portions of the body to perform definite functions. In fine they go out of their way to allure by dress and gait and other feminine attributes, things unconnected with bodily emotions, being rather due to a corrupted mind. For often, moved by fear, or (however difficult to believe) by shame, towards persons whom they happen to respect, they change of a sudden and for a brief space seek to show marks of manly power; but not knowing where to put the limit, they are again carried away by excess, and going beyond what is fit for an honest man are involved in yet greater offences. Thus it is evident, in our opinion, that such men have a sense of the true state of things. For theirs is, as Soranus declares, the passion of a corrupt and utterly foul mind. For as women that are called Tribades, because they practise the love of either sex, are eager to have intercourse with women more than with men, and pursue these with a jealousy almost as violent as a man’s, and when they have been deserted by their love or for the time being superseded, seek to do to other women what they are known to suffer, and winning from their double sex a pleasure in giving pleasure, like persons deboshed by constant drunkenness, being nurtured on evil habitude, delight in wrongs to their own sex,—even so these men (pathics) are seen by a comparison with women of this sort to be tormented with a passion that is of the mind. For no bodily treatment it is rightly deemed should be adopted to expel the passion, rather must the mind be disciplined which is afflicted with such a pollution of vices.
For no man ever remedied a prurient body by foul practices as a woman, nor got mitigation by contact of the male member, but concurrently he suffered some complaint or pain from a different (material) cause. So in fact the history of a cure given by Clodius is found to be really a case of recovery from “ascaridae”, which writers on intestinal worms have shown are a kind of worm born in the region of the rectum or straight gut. Parmenides in his books on natural science says “Effeminate men or subservients occasionally bring forth as a result of conception.” But as his Epigram is in Greek, I will imitate it in verse; so I have composed Latin lines like the original so far as I could make them, that there might not be a mixture of the two languages:—“When a woman and a man together mingle in the veins the seeds of love, the formative virtue that moulds of the diverse blood, if it keep due proportion, makes well-framed bodies. But if the virtues are discordant in the commingled seed, and have no unity, in the commingled body furies will torment the nascent sex with two-fold seed.” He means that over and above the material seed there are certain virtues residing in it; and if these have commingled in such a way as to have one and the same operative force in the same body, then they produce one single will that tallies with the sex. But if when the bodily seed was commingled, the virtues remained separate, the appetite for love of both kinds must pursue the offspring.
Many leading doctors of the schools moreover declare that the passion is innate, and therefore passes on with the seed to descendants, not indeed hereby incriminating nature, which teaches men the bounds of its purity by the example of other animals (for animals are called by wise men nature’s mirrors), but rather the human race that retains so obstinately vices once adopted, that by no renewal can it be purified, and has left no room for change. Similarly a mental depravity grows graver as men advance in life, whereas most affections of the body, whether innate or adventitious, get weaker as men get older, for instance gout, epilepsy and madness, and so as age advances undoubtedly grow milder. For all troublesome factors will produce strong effects in proportion to the firmness to resist possessed by the affected parts, and as this firmness is deficient in old men, so the complaint or passion diminishes in intensity, as does the general strength. But that passion which makes men subservient or effeminate, grows stronger and more serious as the body grows old and stirs the sufferers with yet more abominable lustfulness,—and not without a reason. For at other ages, the body being still strong and capable of performing the natural offices of love, there is no division of lust into double forms of wantonness, through their mind being tossed to and fro now by passive now by active lewdness. But in such as have failed from age, and become incapable of the manly office of love, all the wantonness of the mind is directed on the appetite for the opposite form of gratification; and for this cause a woman demands love more strongly than a man. In fact many conjecture it is for this reason that boys also are tormented by this passion. For they resemble old men in lacking power for the virile function. It is not yet born in boys; old men have lost it.)
To leave on one side for the present the many inferences of various sorts that this passage of Caelius Aurelianus must necessarily lead us to, as they will find a more suitable place later on, and to return to our question,—the mere fact of Herodotus mentioning posterity at all ought of itself to be sufficient to negative any idea of actual eunuchs, of loss of the generative power. For had the Scythians returning from Ascalon lost this power, they could have had no more descendants, and therefore the νούσος θήλεια could not have passed on to these, but must have become extinct with the original sufferers. On the other hand children already begotten by them before that period could have been in no way influenced by a disease communicable through the act of generation. Accordingly the νοῦσος θήλεια cannot possibly have affected these Scythians so as to annihilate the power of generation. Both must have co-existed side by side; and the contrary can never be proved from anything Herodotus says. As to another passage of Herodotus that might seem to demand some notice here, where the expression ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman) is put side by side with ἐνάρεες, we will speak subsequently.
§ 16.
But, it is maintained by those who take a different view,—the individuals who suffered from the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease) could be recognized as doing so by their looks; thus it cannot have been a mere vice, it must have been an actual bodily complaint. We will not say a word more insisting on the declarations general amongst ancient writers, for example the words of Ovid: Heu! quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu (Alas! how difficult it is not to betray a vice by the look), but will simply ask the question,—had the Ancients really no bodily marks of identification by which they could recognise in an individual the vice of the pathic or cinaedus? On this point we must look to the Physiognomists for information, and as a matter of fact they supply it in considerable completeness. First of all Aristotle[329]:
“Distinguishing Masks of the Cinaedus: