If on the other hand θήλεια (feminine) is taken in an active sense, as it is by Stark and other interpreters,—and with greater correctness, then the νοῦσος θήλεια is a form of lust that transforms men into women,—and this can be said of paederastia in several senses, as is manifest from what has been said already on preceding pages. The Pathic becomes a woman, because he renounces his man’s prerogative, as being the stronger, to play the active part[352], and assumes instead the passive rôle of the woman[353], Entering into competition as he does with the ladies of pleasure in courting the favour of men, he has recourse to all the arts they invoke to gain their object; and seeks by artificial means to bring his body into as close a resemblance as possible to the female form. He dresses himself out like a woman of pleasure, adopts female dress, and lets the hair of the head grow long, whilst at the same time he carefully eradicates by the process of dropacismus (use of pitch-ointment as a depilatory) every trace of hair on other parts of the person, even sacrificing what was the chief ornament of a man in Ancient times,—his beard[354]. All this was done by the hero of Aristophanes’ “Thesmophoriazusae”, and without a doubt an underlying irony à propos of the pathics was at the bottom of the poet’s conception. Care of the skin, such as women adopt, by means of baths, friction with pumice-stone, etc. complete the feminine appearance[355],—hence the expressions μάλακος, μαλθακός (soft or effeminate) for the pathic, μαλακία, μαλθακία (softness, effeminacy) for the pathic’s vice; and outraged Nature avenges herself by seconding his endeavours. In consequence of the stretching of the fundament, the buttocks become broader towards the lower part, and the space between them wider, causing the hips to take more the shape they have in a woman, the pelvis itself seems to be enlarged, while the legs lose their straightness and the knees bend more and more inwards (γονύκροτος—knock-kneed,)—in short the whole of the lower half of the body assumes the feminine type.
Deterioration of body is followed by deterioration of mind, and the character also grows womanish.[356] The pathic despises intercourse with women, and will not enter into marriage, so long as he continues to find his lust satisfied. When this ceases to be the case as years advance, Nature herself forbids his propagating his race; the genital organs that have withered through disuse and refuse their office.[357] Driven from the society of men, he takes refuge, neither woman nor man himself, with the women, who in contempt use him as a slave, and like Omphalé of old with Hercules, put the distaff into his hands! Thus from the νοῦσος θήλεια, the vice, an actual disease has sprung; and we can now see that Longinus[358] was surely right in calling the expression of Herodotus ἀμίμητος,—an inimitable one, for certainly in no more concise or better way can the facts and the consequences of the vice of the Pathic be characterized.
However if any one should consider all this still insufficient to prove the case, and regard the indication given by Longinus as not explicit enough, he may learn from Tiberius the Rhetorician[359] that as a matter of fact the Ancients understood the νοῦσος θήλεια in Herodotus in this and in no other sense. He says:
“Now a paraphrase is when authors alter a simple, straightforward statement of fact that is complete, for the sake of style or effect or sublimity of phrase, and express the matter in other words, and these more forcible and suitable; as e.g. in Herodotus, when he wrote ἐνέσκηψεν ἡ θεὸς θήλειαν νόσον (the goddess afflicted them with feminine disease) instead of “made them men-women or cinaedi”. The word ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman) is used here in the same way as in another passage where Herodotus says[360], οἱ δὲ ἐνάρεες, οἱ ἀνδρόγυνοι (and the ἐνάρεες, the men-women). The false interpretation of this word has more than anything else led to misunderstanding as to the νοῦσος θήλεια, for it was supposed that by ἀνδρόγυνοι (men-women) actual eunuchs were intended, whereas pathics are meant and nothing more. How the case really stood might have been seen from Suidas, who tells us: ἀνδρόγυνος· ὁ Διόνυσος, ὡς καὶ τὰ ἀνδρῶν ποιῶν καὶ τὰ γυναικῶν πάσχων· ἢ ἄνανδρος καὶ Ἑρμαφρόδιτος· καὶ ἀνδρογύνων, ἀσθενῶν. γυναικῶν καρδίας ἐχόντων. (man-woman: Dionysus, as both performing a man’s part and suffering a woman’s. Synonyms, “unmanly”, and “Hermaphrodite”. Also of men-women, weakly men, having the hearts of women.) Dionysus[361] then performed the act of coition as a man, and suffered himself to be used as a woman, and for this reason was called ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman). We find the word used in the same way in Plato[362], in the passage of Dio Chrysostom quoted a little above, in various places in the Writers on Physiognomy, in Philo, loco citato, and in Artemidorus[363]. From the last we quote a passage highly interesting for our purpose:
“A man saw in a dream his penis covered with hair to the extreme tip, shaggy with very thick hair that grew all of a sudden on it. He was a notorious cinaedus, indulging in every abominable pleasure, effeminate and a man-woman; only never using his member as a man does. In this way it happened that that part was so little employed, that through not being rubbed against another body hair actually grew on it.” The same author relates in another place[364]: “A man saw in a dream the rôle[365] of a man-woman played on the stage; his privy member fell sick. A man thought he saw a priest of Cybelé (a castrated man); his privy member fell sick. This happened in the first instance because of the name, in the second because of the coincidence of the fact with the spectator’s condition. And indeed you know what κωμῳδεῖν (to represent in comedy) signifies in dreams, and what it means to see a priest of Cybelé. You remember too that if any one dreams he sees a Comedy or Tragedy and remembers it afterwards, the event can be predicted according to the plot of the piece dreamed of.”
The passage affords us yet another proof as to the causes that were supposed in Antiquity to condition the rise of diseases of the genitals, and we need certainly feel no surprise if we find the ætiological relations of these complaints even in professional writers wrapped in all but impenetrable obscurity.
Now what is the word ἐναρέες? Some scholars take it to be Greek; and accordingly would read ἐναγέες (persons who have sinned against the godhead), as Bouhier did, and perhaps Caelius Rhodoginus even in his time, or else ανάριες (imbelles, ad luctum veneream inepti,—unwarlike, i.e. unfit for the struggle of love), which was Coray’s emendation. Stark does not believe in any corruption of the word, but thinks it should be derived from ἐναίρω (spolio,—I rob, spoil), ἔναρα (spolia,—spoils), making it signify virilitate spoliati,—men robbed of their virility. But ἐναίρω according to Buttmann’s Lexilogus, p. 276., means “to send down to Hades”, to slay, ἔναρα the spoils taken from the slain, and from this comes the idea of spoliation, deprivation. The word undoubtedly occurs (Homer, Iliad XXIV. 244.) in the sense of “to be slain”, but the meaning virilitate spoliari (to be deprived of virility) without the addition of some supplemental word can certainly not be authenticated in old Writers. Supposing this derivation to be correct, ἐναρέες might signify simply (Temple) robbers, and as a matter of fact the glosses give ὁπλίται (warriors) as an explanation. It is a surprising thing that those who make out the νοῦσος θήλεια to have been gonorrhœa (clap), should not have derived the word from ἐάρ, the sap, the seed, with inserted ν.
However a Greek origin of the word is rendered unlikely by one simple circumstance. Herodotus writes τοὺς καλέουσι Ἐναρέας οἱ Σκύθαι, (whom the Scythians call Ἐναρέες,—which is obviously the same thing as saying, “in the language of the Scythians they are called Ἐναρέες”. And again why should Herodotus have explained it by ἀνδρόγυνοι (men-women), if it was a word that every Greek could understand. In this view moreover Wesseling and Schweighäuser, scholars possessing a special, critical knowledge of their Herodotus, concur. We do not indeed know to what family of speech the Scythian belongs; but it may be assumed that the word signifying the disease took its origin from the same country where the νοῦσος θήλεια itself arose. We believe ἐναρέες[366] to have been originally a Syrian word, which the Scythians, or more likely the Greeks[367], first adopted into their own idiom. The Greeks were particularly good at the transformation or, if you please, distortion, of foreign names! The word which we think must be claimed as the original is the Semitic נַעֲרָה (naãrâ),—the girl, the woman in the abstract; and we conjecture Herodotus wrote ναρέες, a form which is actually found according to Coray in one Manuscript. The meaning then would be the womanish man, and this gives a complete correspondance with νοῦσος θήλεια and ἀνδρόγυνος. Another conjecture is based on the name of the Babylonish Praefect or Ἄνναρος, to which Coray calls attention, adding: mais qui pourroit bien être un surnom altéré par les copistes, et relatif à sa vie effeminée et au milieu des femmes. (but which might very possibly be a surname changed by the transcribers and referring to his effeminate life and his living surrounded by women.) In Athenaeus[368] we read in fact: Κτησίας δ’ ἱστορεῖ, Ἀνναρον τὸν βασιλέως ὕπαρχον καὶ τῆς Βαβυλωνίας δυναστεύσαντα στολῇ χρῆσθαι γυναικείᾳ καὶ κόσμῳ· καὶ ὅτι βασιλέως δούλῳ ὄντι κ. τ. λ. (Ctesias relates in his History that Annarus, the King’s Praefect and Governor of Babylon wore a woman’s robes and ornaments; and that being a slave of the King, etc.) Still as a matter of fact it is difficult to see why the transcriber should have introduced the name as Ἄνναρος, the whole form of the sentence demanding a proper name. Coray refuses to admit that ἐναρέες is a foreign word at all, for he says, “cette manière de s’exprimer n’est souvent qu’une version littérale du mot étranger dans la langue de l’écrivain qui l’emploie”. (such a mode of expression is very often nothing more than a literal translation of the foreign word into the language of the writer using it). But if this were the case, and the word one that a Greek would have understood, why did Herodotus go out of his way to explain it by ἀνδρόγυνοι? Supposing a transcriber to have inserted Ἄνναρον into the text, yet even then the word must have been familiar to him in the sense of womanish, unmanly. But if it has this meaning, Coray’s conjecture,—to read ἀναρέες for ἐναρέες, should be unhesitatingly adopted,—if that is (a point to which Prof. Pott has drawn attention) the derivation is taken from Sanskrit or Zend.
In Zend in fact man is nara, woman narî; in Sanskrit nrî is the stem, nom. nâ, pl. nar-as,—or else nara the stem and nom. naras, from which has come the Greek ἀνήρ (man) by addition of the prosthetic, (not privative), α. Now from nara, by prefixing α privative, which exists both in Zend and Sanskrit, may be formed a-nara, with the meaning of not-man, unmanly,—a meaning which is preserved in the name Ἄναρος (the doubling of the ν is undoubtedly wrong); and so ἀναρέες would be literally the same by etymology with Hippocrates’ ἀνανδριεῖς (unmanly men), occurring in a passage to be presently discussed. This, and equally ἀνανδρία, ἀνάνδρος (unmanliness, unmanly) are all expressions for the pathic and his vice, as is shown again and again by passages quoted in the course of our investigation.
But again, if with Coray an actual verbal translation of a foreign word is supposed, then ἀνανέρες (ἀ-ν-ἀνέρες) might be read,—a word which though quite legitimately formed, was not in actual use by the Greeks, and for this reason Herodotus naturally enough explained it by ἀνδρόγυνοι. In any case the remarkable fact remains that no one of the ancient Lexicographers, Suidas for instance or Hesychius[369], should have thought the word, in whatever form it may have been read, worthy of notice in his Dictionary.