But the passage just quoted from Juvenal is of still greater importance for another reason. In it the vice of the cinaedus is called morbus (a disease); and in virtue of its explicitness it is sufficient by itself to settle all doubts as to this being a usual mode of expression with the Romans, who ordinarily designated any vice by this name[342]. The only question remaining will be, Did the Greeks also use this form of expression? Any scholar possessed of a special acquaintance with the Greek language will most certainly not hesitate an instant to answer this question in the affirmative, the Lexicographers having long ago collected an exhaustive list of examples of such use[343].
Plutarch[344] says, comparing the action of the Sun with that of Love:— Καὶ μὴν οὔτε σώματος ἀγύμναστος ἕξις ἥλιον, οὒτε Ἔρωτα δύναται φέρειν ἀλύπως τρόπος ἀπαιδεύτου ψυχῆς· ἐξίσταται δ’ ὁμοίως ἐκάτερον καὶ νοσεῖ, τὴν του θεοῦ δύναμιν, οὐ τὴν αὑτοῦ μεμφόμενον ἀσθένειαν.—(ch. XXIII.) Τὴν μὲν πρὸς ἄῤῥενα ἄῤῥενος ὁμιλίαν, μᾶλλον δὲ ἀκρασίαν καὶ ἐπιπήδησιν εἴποι τις ἂν ἐννοήσας,
Ὕβρις τάδ’ οὐχ ἡ Κύπρις ἐξεργάζεται.
Διὸ τοὺς μὲν ἡδομένους τῷ πάσχειν εἰς τὸ χείριστον τιθέμενοι γένος κακίας, οὔτε πίστεως μοῖραν, οὔτε αἰδοῦς.... Ἀλλὰ πολλὰ φαῦλα καὶ μανικὰ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐρώτων· Τὶ δὲ οὐχὶ πλείονα τῶν παιδικῶν; Ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τοῦτο παιδομανία τὸ πάθος, οὐδέτερον δὲ Ἔρως ἔστιν. (And in fact neither can an untrained body bear the sun, nor can any fashion of uneducated soul bear Love (Eros) without pain; but each equally is disorganized and grows sick, having to blame the power of the god, not its own weakness.—ch. XXIII.—Now intercourse of male with male one would rather call, after due reflection, incontinence and violent assault.
“’Tis overmastering insolence works this result, not love (Cypris).”[345]
Wherefore such as take pleasure in pathic lust, devoting themselves to the vilest kind of wickedness, have no portion in honour or in modesty.—Indeed much there is base and insane in amours with women; how much more so in those with boys! Now the name of the latter passion is paedomania—[346]madness for boys,—but neither kind is Love—Eros).
These passages are of the highest importance in connection with our subject, as confirming in the most distinct manner what has been said above as to the wrath of Venus; but for the sake of greater clearness they had to be held over for discussion till now. It is clearly stated in them: that paederastia is no work of Venus, i.e. not an expression or consequence of the customary activity of the goddess, but a ὕβρις (act of insolent violence) and the consequence of ὕβρις i.e. of some act that has roused the anger of the gods. Here we have the oldest view of all: that paederastia is a consequence of the vengeance of Venus, arising in consequence of a ὕβρις, and again in turn itself constituting a ὕβρις.[347]
But besides this the later view of a more enlightened time is also implied. According to this it was not any δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ (operation of a god’s might), but simply an ἀσθενεία or ἀκρασία[348] (weakness, incontinence) of the individual that was in question, (and it is for this reason Plutarch quotes the line of Manetho, an old and obscure poet, in this sense); Paederastia was called a πάθος, a form of insanity (παιδομανία—madness for boys), and was not looked upon in any sense as a consequence of the power of Eros—Love. That the vice was also called νόσος (a disease) is shown,—not to mention the expression νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease), which we have yet to fully explain,—by the Speech of Dio Chrysostom cited above, as well as by a number of passages quoted in the course of our investigation,—e.g. on p. 125. In the “Wasps” of Aristophanes, Xanthias relates how a son had confined his father and put him under surveillance, and then goes on (vv. 71 sqq.):
νόσον γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ ἀλλόκοτον αὐτοῦ νοσεῖ ,
ἣν οὐδ’ ἂν εἷς γνοίη ποτ’ οὐδὲ ξυμβάλῃ,