When the Greek became acquainted with the vice, he of course shared at first the notion of the avenging action of a deity, but he directed his attention less to the consequences of this vice, which in Greece were generally slighter, than to the Vice itself, which robbed the man of his manly characteristics and normal activity, and drove him to take on him the rôle of the woman in exchange for that of the man. But to be a woman was invariably among all nations a disgrace for the man, whom Plato (Timaeus 42.) considered the γένος κρεῖττον (superior sex), while Aristotle not merely represents the woman as owing her existence to an ἀνάγκη (unavoidable necessity), but calls her an ἄῤῥεν πεπηρωμένον (crippled male), an ἀναπηρία φυσική (natural crippling), even a παρέκβασις τῆς φύσεως (aberration of nature)[390]. But no man of sound intellect could possibly suffer himself to be used as a woman; therefore he must needs be sick, be afflicted with a disease that assimilated him to a woman (θήλεια—feminine). When Herodotus wrote, the Greeks to be sure knew the vice which was practised with boys (Paederastia) or youths, who had not yet reached man’s estate, but these were always first corrupted by adults; they did not practise the vice of their own impulse and could not as a rule be held accountable. When however they saw adults, men who were already in possession of manly prerogatives, appear as Pathics—not merely boys and youths not yet capable of the procreative act,—they could in no way explain the phenomenon to their satisfaction except by supposing them to have been attacked by a disease that changed them into women[391]. This also gives the reason why the expression νοῦσος Θήλεια (feminine disease) occurs so seldom in the Greek writers, for it was the violation of boys, not the violation of men, that was a familiar fact to them. For in the fact that the beautiful form of a boy was capable of firing a sensual longing to enjoy it, the Greek saw nothing at all unnatural; and he found excuses for the momentary forgetfulness of self-respect on the part of the paederast, as he did in the case of the boy or youth. But if there had been seduction, then the offence was strongly reprobrated, unless the Pathic had been a slave.
Neither bodily nor psychical consequences of the vice of the Pathic ever attained in Greece, as has been said, any very high degree of development; and most of the characteristic marks of the Cinaedus were regarded as artificial, worn half intentionally by him for show. Even in his peculiar gait, voice and look, the Greeks saw more an invitation to the perpetration of the vice than anything else; and if Plato denies to this class of persons the wish for natural coition, this is rather a sign how completely the vice mastered them than a proof of the annihilation of their power to procreate at all.
Even when positive diseases did actually occur in consequence of the vice, public opinion was far from ascribing these to the vice itself; nervous and mental affections were regarded as a punishment from the gods, or else they were treated according to their several symptoms without any examination into the original cause. Bodily ailments, especially if they did not affect the posterior or penis, were set down to any cause but the true one, often to quite ridiculous ones. The νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease) was invariably thought of merely as a form of vice dependent on a morbid imagination, while its consequences as such were left entirely out of consideration. Nam neque ulla curatio corporis depellendae passionis causa recte putatur adhibenda, sed potius animus coercendus, qui tanta peccatorum labe vexatur, (For the right opinion is this: no bodily treatment should be applied in order to expel the complaint, rather should the mind be disciplined that is vexed by so foul a stain of sinful indulgences), are the words of Coelius Aurelianus in the passage quoted on page 159.
From this it is evident the later enquirers quoted above could take the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease) for a purely mental affection, and be right in a sense,—but a sense that certainly never entered into their heads to consider. For they looked upon the intellectual imbecility that resulted from the vice of the Pathic as being the essence of the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease), and the bodily derangements as merely secondary and dependent on the psychica disturbances. Thus to some extent they confounded cause and effect, putting one for the other; yet without hitting on the true explanation, against which the meritorious Stark has tried so hard not perhaps to shut his eyes, but rather to forcibly remove it in any possible way out of the range of his ideas. For this very reason it has pursued him from beginning to end of his investigations, and in spite of all his struggles has found at last a reluctant and partial recognition from him.
As to the remaining views cited above, no attentive reader surely needs any further confutation of these.
§ 20.
We have now, we think sufficiently, proved that Herodotus as well as the other writers who use the expression νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease), denoted by it merely a Vice, which lent a feminine character to the behaviour and indeed to the whole look and mode of life of a man, assimilating him equally in body and in mind to the woman. Throughout the enquiry we have kept our eyes fixed on the cause of this transformation; and we shall now find it easy to estimate the value of a passage of Hippocrates, originally brought forward by Mercurialis (loco citato, p. 143. Note 10.) later by Zwinger[392] and others, but which Stark in particular has characterised as a more complete delineation of the disease, merely pointed out and named νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease) by Herodotus. On the other hand Bouhier specially and strenuously denies the identity of the two, yet without accurately recognising the true relationship.
Hippocrates in his well-known Work on Air, Water and Environment, describes the country of the Scythians as a bare but well-watered tableland, with so cold and damp a climate that a heavy mist covered the fields all day long and only a short summer was enjoyed. The inhabitants he says are arrogant, puffed up and exceedingly idle creatures, in outward look and mode of life having little distinctly marked characteristics of sex, the men having only very moderate desire for coition, and the women, whose menstruation is less frequent, possessing little capacity for conception. Then he goes on[393]: “Moreover there are very many men amongst the Scythians resembling Eunuchs (εὐνουχίαι); these not only follow women’s occupations (show feminine inclinations, behave as women?—γυναικεῖα ἐργάζονται) just like the women, but also bear a name signifying this, for such men are called No-men (ἀνανδριεῖς). The natives ascribe the cause to a deity; they are afraid of these men, and show them a slavish respect (προσκυνέουσι[394]), though each individual dreads such a fate for himself. It seems to me that affections of this sort may be said to have come from a deity to exactly the same degree as all other diseases,—no single one is more than any other in a sense of divine origin. Each one of them has its own peculiar nature, and nothing happens outside its nature. Now how these affections arise in my opinion, I will proceed to state. From constant riding they get κέδματα[395] (varicose dilatations), because their feet always hang away from the horse. Hence they become lame, and get, those that are seriously ill, ulcers on the hips (in the region of the ischium, festering of the cotyla or joint-socket?[396]). Then they treat themselves with a view to cure in the following fashion. So soon as the complaint breaks out, they open their veins on either side of the ear; then when the blood has flowed, they fall asleep from weakness, and go on sleeping till they wake, some of them cured and some of them not. But it appears to me that by such a treatment they ruin themselves[397]. For there lie near the ears certain veins, and when these are severed, the men so cut become seedless (unfruitful); and it is these veins that, as I think, they sever. But when subsequently they approach women, and find themselves in no condition to use them (to consummate coition with them), at the first they are not discouraged, but keep quiet. However later, after they have tried twice, three times, or oftener, with no better success, they believe themselves to have sinned against the deity, whom they hold to be to blame, put on a woman’s frock, and acknowledge their unmanliness (ἀνανδρίην), behave as women, and in company with the women perform the same tasks as they do. The like of this however happens only to the rich Scythians, not to the poor, in fact to the nobler classes and such as have attained to some considerable wealth, to a smaller degree to those of lesser position, because these latter do not ride.
But surely the complaint, since it is above all others of divine origin, must attack not solely the noblest and richest Scythians, but all equally,—or even to a greater extent those who possess little, and therefore fail to make offerings; if that is to say the gods take pleasure in (active) veneration on the part of men and see that they win a due return for it[398]. For naturally the rich offer much to the gods, bring correspondingly great contributions from their goods as marks of their veneration; but the poor less, because they possess nothing. Then are these discontented, because they have given them no wealth; so that those who possess little suffer more of the punishments for such faults than the rich. But as a matter of fact, as I have said before, these things come from the deity to just the same degree as the others; for everything happens in accordance with nature, and so does this affection arise among the Scythians from the original cause I have pointed out. Now it is precisely the same among the rest of mankind; where riding is practised most and most continuously, there very many suffer from κέδματα (varicose dilatations), hip and foot affections, and accomplish coition very badly (are only slightly disposed to coition). And this is the case with the Scythians, and they are of all men most like eunuchs, for the following reasons: Because they always wear trousers, and besides that pass the greatest part of their time on horseback, so that they cannot touch the genitals with the hand, through cold and lassitude forget the desire for coition and coition itself, and (in their senseless infatuation) think of nothing else but how to resign their manly privilege[399]. This is an account of how it is with the stock of the Scythians.”
Now if we separate the facts which are brought forward in this passage of Hippocrates from his attempted explanations, there can be no doubt that the same thing is in question here as that which Herodotus describes. There are men amongst the Scythians who behave as women, speak as women, perform women’s work and keep with the women, and their condition the Scythians consider as something sent by the deity, and for this reason honour and fear these men. All the rest is part of the attempted explanations of the author, who brings together every possible consideration in order to discover a natural cause of the phenomenon, leaving utterly and entirely unrecognized all the time the most natural cause of all. This of course was due to no other reason except that it was unknown to him, and that he was acquainted with the circumstances not from his own observation, but only from hearsay. This is a conjecture which Heyne (loco citato) had already made in his time, but which has met with many opponents, yet without the argument having ever been properly brought to the test of the evidence. In favour of Heyne’s view a passage from the book περὶ ἄρθρων (On Joints)[400] might be cited, in which the limping of the men of the Amazons in consequence of the dislocation of the limbs is clearly declared to be an unauthenticated myth; for which reason Gruner[401] denied Hippocrates’ authorship of this work in opposition to the general witness of Antiquity.