History of circumcision from the earliest times to the present

by P. C. Remondino

CHAPTER VIII.
History of Emasculation, Castration, and Eunuchism.

For the earliest records in regard to emasculation we must go back to mythological relations. In the old legendary lore of ancient Scandinavia or of Germany, the loves and hatreds of their semi-mythological heroes and heroines space over many romantic incidents before reaching a culmination. The swiftly flowing Rhine, with its precipitous banks, eddies, and rapids; the broad and more majestic Danube or Elb; the broad meadows and Druidical groves on its hilly slopes and stretches of dark and gloomy forest,—all conspired to people the fancy with elfs, gnomes, fairies, and goblins, who were more or less intermingled in all the episodes that engaged their semi-mythological heroes. This helped to fill in all their deeds with entertaining incidents; their halls and castles were made necessary accessories by the rigors of the climate, as well as were the beery feasts and carousals with the inspiration of monotonous song also rendered necessaries by the same element; hence, we have various incidents, either entertaining or exciting, connected with their legendary tales, acting like periods of intermission between their love scenes, spites, hatreds, murders, and general cremations. From such material and such opportunities it was comparatively easy for Wagner to construct the thrilling and interesting incidents that compose his opera on the legend of the Nibelungenlied.

The Grecian landscape and topography does not permit of such richness of romantic incidents or details, any more than the love-making of the unfortunate spider who is devoured by his spidery Cleopatra at the end of his first sexual embrace could furnish any incidents for one of Amelie Rives’s spirited novels; so that neither minstrel nor bard have recorded the details of the first emasculating tragedy, which from all accounts was a kind of an Olympian Donnybrook-fair sort of a paricidal-ending tragedy.

Unfortunately, Homer was not there to describe the event, or we might have had a Wagnerian opera with its Plutonic music to illustrate all its incidents; or even a Virgil could have made it into interesting verses; but, as it is, we must content ourselves with the laconic recitals that have been handed down by tradition, and, as all the Greek performances of those days were marked by an intense decisiveness, with an utter lack of circumlocution, it is probable that there was not much to relate beyond the bare facts.

In Smith’s “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biographies and Mythology” we find it related that Uranos, or Cœlus, was the progenitor of all the Grecian gods. His first children were the Centimanes; his next progeny were the Cyclops, who were imprisoned in Tartarus because of their great strength. This so angered their mother, Gäa, that she incited her next-born children, the Titans, into a rebellion against their father, Uranos. In the general turmoil that followed Uranos was deposed, and, so that he would be incapable of begetting any more children, Saturnus, the youngest of his sons, with a sickle made from a bright diamond, successfully emasculated poor old Uranos. The records are not clear whether the operation only included the penis, or the scrotum and contents, or whether, like the Turkish or Chinese taillè à fleur de ventre, Saturnus made a clean sweep of all the genitals; it is probable that he did, however, as the members fell into the sea, and in the foam caused by the commotion from their contact with the element Venus was born. Meanwhile, the blood that dripped from the wounded surface caused the Giants, the Furies, and the Melian nymphs to spring into life. Uranos is also represented as being the first king of Atlantis; so that the first eunuch was a god and a king, more unfortunate than any of Doran’s heroes, in his “Monarchs Retired from Business,” because he was more effectually retired from business than any monarch that Doran records.

After this the practice seems to have been adopted in a general way; and the fact that the future proceedings of men and things on earth do not much interest these unfortunate members of society in any great degree, interest in worldly affairs and testicles seemingly having been as intimately connected in those early and remote days as with us of the present, it very naturally followed that this disinterestedness, as well as the docility and pliability which emasculation engenders, first suggested their use as servants or in position of trust, as a eunuch, having no incentive either to run away or to embezzle, would naturally be a valued and trusted servant. In the days of eunuchism there were no defaulting bank, city, or county cashiers,—a circumstance which would suggest that such a condition should form one of the qualifications for eligibility to such offices, the very opposition to any such proposal that the class would make showing in itself the benefits that would follow such an innovation, as it would show that the class is not possessed with that total spirit of abnegation requisite in the guardians of public funds. The requirement might be extended to bank-presidents with benefit, if some Cincinnati episodes are any criterion. It is safe to assume that the bank that could advertise, in connection with its attractive quarterly or semi-annual statement, that the president and cashier were properly attested and vouched-for eunuchs would find in the public such a recognition of the fitness of things that the patronage it would receive would soon compel other banks to follow the example. The procedure might, with national benefit, be extended as an ordeal to our legislators at the national capitol, as it would do away with the particular influential lobby so graphically described in Mark Twain’s “Gilded Age.” These things or ideas are merely thrown out as suggestions to be used by those who write those interesting articles in the Forum, or the North American or Fortnightly Reviews, on government and social reforms, as a perusal of the many articles written in that direction will convince any one that, from a practical psychological view of the matter, they are sadly deficient. To make those articles effective the reflex impressions made by the animal on the psychological and moral nature of man should not be neglected.

Semiramis, whose beauty and many accomplishments, assisted by the murders of several of her husbands by the hand of the succeeding one, had this subject in hand in a far more practical manner than it is generally forced on the understanding; hence we see that she was the first to introduce the use of eunuchs in the capacity of servants as well as in official positions in and about the palace, as well as trusting some of the positions of the highest importance to the class. From her epoch, eunuchism has become an inseparable attendant on Oriental despotism, and has so continued to the present day. Like yellow fever, phthisis, and some diseases, as well as many other social afflictions and customs, eunuchism does not seem to flourish beyond certain degrees of north and south latitudes,—a fact that probably assisted Montesquieu to arrive at the conclusion that climate was a powerful factor in all things.

Bergmann, of Strasburg, quotes the ancient traditions, wherein it is stated that man was taught the art of castration by the brute creation. The hyena is cited as having so instructed man by the habit it exhibited of castrating its infant males in removing the testicles with its teeth, the habit being instigated by a jealousy, for fear of future competition in the exercise of the procreative act on the part of the young males. Another tradition attributes its origin to the castor. Bergmann here traces out the etymological relation existing between the name of the operation and that of the animal with that of a Greek verb that forms the root of castrum, or camp; casa, or house; castigare, to arrange; from whence also is traced cosmos, the world; kastorio, the Greek for wishing to build, and the Latin kasturio having the same relative but a more imperative signification; kastor, signifying as loving to build; castitiator, Latin for architect, and casticheur, old French for constructor. The tale or tradition in regard to the self-mutilation inflicted by the castor is traced to the Arabian merchants who purchased the castoreum, which was imported from the shores of the Persian Gulf and from India. It was called, also, by the Arabs, chuzyalu-l-bahhr, or testicles from beyond the sea; or, in French, testicules d’outre mer. These terms and the tradition that the castor on being pursued, knowing the reason of the chase, was in the habit of tearing out his testicles and throwing them at his pursuers, were invented by these merchants to heighten the price and value of the article intrinsically, as well as to make it more interesting by this peculiar individuality of adventure. The Latins, believing and adopting the tradition as a matter of fact, coined the word castorare, or doing like the castor. Bergmann uses in this connection a number of terms in French to denote different forms or degrees of this mutilation which have no equivalents in English,—for instance, chatrure, as applied to animals, making also a distinctive difference between the meaning of the French words castration and chatrement. Bergmann is a decided evolutionist as regards circumcision being evolved from prior forms of physical mutilation, as will be more fully explained in the next chapter; the shaving of the head of a conquered people by the Hindoos, or the shearing the royal locks of the ancient Frankish kings; the blinding of one eye of their slaves by the old Scythians, or crippling one foot by the division of a tendon in a captive by the Goths, he considers as on the same line with the idea that led to castration, the different forms of eunuchism, and circumcision.[31]

From a purely materialistic and utilitarian view of the subject, he observes that what we call moral progress and civilization owe their advancement more to material interest and cold, selfish calculation than to any development of the humanitarian sentiments, and that neither morality nor justice has much to do with it. The evolution of the slave and the marks inflicted upon him by his fellow humans are the most emphatic evidences of the justness of the above proposition. The study of the subject is equally interesting when considered in connection with the evolutions of the Christian Church. In its divergence from Judaism and its beneficent laws, both social and moral, the Christian Church was but illy fit to cope with its persecutors of Pagan tendencies, or to enforce an unwritten law or code of morality or hygiene among an idolatrous, barbarous, and ignorant population such as it had to encounter. To its professors, the formation of that monachism which has been so much misunderstood and abused was but an inevitable condition.[32] These men had not the steady compass to guide them in the path that was possessed by the Jewish people. The martyrdom of Christ and many of his apostles, and the teachings of the early church, pointed to physical denials, castigations, humiliations, and sufferings as the only way to salvation; all pleasures were sin and all denials and pain were looked upon as steps to heaven. The climate pointed to sexual indulgence as the sum of all happiness, as can readily be inferred from the Mohammedan idea of heaven; so, with the early Christians who were born in the same climates, the denials of sexual pleasures were looked upon as the most acceptable offering that man could make to the Deity. Continence, celibacy, infibulation, and even castration were the conditions looked upon by many of these men as the only means of living a life on earth that would grant them an eternal life in the next. This view of the situation peopled the deserts with a lot of men dwelling in caves and in huts, living on such a scarce diet that they barely existed. That many went insane, and in their frenzy died while roaming in these solitudes, we have ample evidence. The tortures and impositions of the Pagan rulers also drove many to this life or death.