races of history, so I suspect a mixed physical temperament effected by
the manifold subtle influences massed together in the word climate.
Something of the kind is necessary to explain the fact of this
pathological love extending over the greater portion of the habitable
world, without any apparent connection of race or media, from the
polished Greek to the cannibal Tupi of the Brazil. Walt Whitman speaks
of the ashen grey faces of onanists: the faded colours, the puffy
features and the unwholesome complexion of the professed pederast with
his peculiar cachetic expression, indescribable but once seen never
forgotten, stamp the breed, and Dr. G. Adolph is justified in declaring
“Alle Gewohnneits-paederasten erkennen sich einander schnell, oft met
einen Blick.” This has nothing in common with the féminisme which
betrays itself in the pathic by womanly gait, regard and gesture: it is
a something sui generis; and the same may be said of the colour and look
of the young priest who honestly refrains from women and their
substitutes. Dr. Tardieu, in his well-known work, “Étude Médico-légale
sur les Attentats aux Mœurs,” and Dr. Adolph note a peculiar
infundibuliform disposition of the “After” and a smoothness and want of
folds even before any abuse has taken place, together with special forms
of the male organs in confirmed pederasts. But these observations have
been rejected by Caspar, Hoffman, Brouardel and Dr. J. H. Henry Coutagne
(Notes sur la Sodomie, Lyon, 1880), and it is a medical question whose
discussion would here be out of place.
The origin of pederasty is lost in the night of ages; but its historique
has been carefully traced by many writers, especially Virey,[367]
Rosenbaum[368] and M. H. E. Meier.[369] The ancient Greeks who, like the
modern Germans, invented nothing but were great improvers of what other
races invented, attributed the formal apostolate of Sotadism to Orpheus,
whose stigmata were worn by the Thracian women;
—Omnemque refugerat Orpheus
Fœmineam venerem;—
Ille etiam Thracum populis fuit auctor, amorem
In teneres transferre mares: citraque juventam
Ætatis breve ver, et primos carpere flores.
Ovid, Met. x. 79–85.
Euripides proposed Laïus father of Oedipus as the inaugurator, whereas
Timæus declared that the fashion of making favourites of boys was
introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian reasons said Aristotle
(Pol. ii. 10) attributing it to Minos. Herodotus, however, knew far
better, having discovered (ii. c. 80) that the Orphic and Bacchic rites
were originally Egyptian. But the Father of History was a traveller and
an annalist rather than an archæologist and he tripped in the following
passage (i. c. 135), “As soon as they (the Persians) hear of any luxury,
they instantly make it their own, and hence, among other matters, they
have learned from the Hellenes a passion for boys” (“unnatural lust”
says modest Rawlinson). Plutarch (De Malig. Herod. xiii.)[370] asserts
with much more probability that the Persians used eunuch boys according
to the _Mos Græciæ_, long before they had seen the Grecian main.
In the Holy Books of the Hellenes, Homer and Hesiod, dealing with the
heroic ages, there is no trace of pederasty, although, in a long
subsequent generation, Lucian suspected Achilles and Patroclus as he did
Orestes and Pylades, Theseus and Pirithous. Homer’s praises of beauty
are reserved for the feminines, especially his favourite Helen. But the
Dorians of Crete seem to have commended the abuse to Athens and Sparta
and subsequently imported it into Tarentum, Agrigentum and other
colonies. Ephorus in Strabo (x. 4 § 21) gives a curious account of the
violent abduction of beloved boys (παρασταθέντες) by the lover
(ἐραστής); of the obligations of the ravisher (φιλήτωρ) to the favourite
(κλεινός)[371] and of the “marriage-ceremonies” which lasted two months.
See also Plato Laws i. c. 8. Servius (Ad Æneid. x. 325) informs us “De
Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt,
quod postea in Laconas et in totam Græciam translatum est.” The Cretans
and afterwards their apt pupils the Chalcidians held it disreputable for
a beautiful boy to lack a lover. Hence Zeus the national Doric god of
Crete loved Ganymede[372]; Apollo, another Dorian deity, loved Hyacinth,
and Hercules, a Doric hero who grew to be a sun-god, loved Hylas and a
host of others: thus Crete sanctified the practice by the examples of
the gods and demigods. But when legislation came, the subject had
qualified itself for legal limitation and as such was undertaken by
Lycurgus and Solon, according to Xenophon (Lac. ii. 13), who draws a
broad distinction between the honest love of boys and dishonest
(αἴχιστος) lust. They both approved of pure pederastía, like that of
Harmodius and Aristogiton; but forbade it with serviles because
degrading to a free man. Hence the love of boys was spoken of like that
of women (Plato: Phædrus; Repub. VI. c. 19 and Xenophon, Synop. iv. 10)
_e.g._, “There was once a boy, or rather a youth, of exceeding beauty
and he had very many lovers”—this is the language of Hafiz and Sa’adi.
Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were allowed to introduce it upon the
stage, for “many men were as fond of having boys for their favourites as
women for their mistresses; and this was a frequent fashion in many
well-regulated cities of Greece.” Poets like Alcæus, Anacreon, Agathon
and Pindar affected it and Theognis sang of a “beautiful boy in the
flower of his youth.” The statesmen Aristides and Themistocles
quarrelled over Stesileus of Teos; and Pisistratus loved Charmus who
first built an altar to Puerile Eros, while Charmus loved Hippias son of
Pisistratus. Demosthenes the Orator took into keeping a youth called
Cnosion greatly to the indignation of his wife. Xenophon loved Clinias
and Autolycus; Aristotle, Hermeas, Theodectes[373] and others;
Empedocles, Pausanias; Epicurus, Pytocles; Aristippus, Eutichydes and
Zeno with his Stoics had a philosophic disregard for women, affecting
only pederastía. A man in Athenæus (iv. c. 40) left in his will that
certain youths he had loved should fight like gladiators at his funeral;
and Charicles in Lucian abuses Callicratidas for his love of “sterile
pleasures.” Lastly there was the notable affair of Alcibiades and
Socrates, the “sanctus pæderasta”[374] being violemment soupçonné when
under the mantle:—non semper sine plagâ ab eo surrexit. Athenæus (v. c.
13) declares that Plato represents Socrates as absolutely intoxicated
with his passion for Alcibiades.[375] The ancients seem to have held the
connection impure, or Juvenal would not have written—
Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinædos,
followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of “Socratici pædicones.” It
is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of the master of Hellenic
Sophrosyne, the “Christian before Christianity;” but such a world-wide
term as Socratic love can hardly be explained by the lucus-a-non-lucendo
theory. We are overapt to apply our nineteenth century prejudices and
prepossessions to the morality of the ancient Greeks who would have
specimen’d such squeamishness in Attic salt.
The Spartans, according to Agnon the Academic (confirmed by Plato,
Plutarch and Cicero), treated boys and girls in the same way before
marriage: hence Juvenal (xi. 173) uses “Lacedæmonius” for a pathic and
other writers apply it to a tribade. After the Peloponnesian War, which
ended in B.C. 404, the use became merged in the abuse. Yet some purity
must have survived, even amongst the Bœotians who produced the famous
Narcissus,[376] described by Ovid (Met. iii. 339):—
Multi illum juvenes, multæ cupiere puellæ;
Nulli illum juvenes, nullæ tetigere puellæ:[377]
for Epaminondas, whose name is mentioned with three beloveds,
established the Holy Regiment composed of mutual lovers, testifying the
majesty of Eros and preferring to a discreditable life a glorious death.
Philip’s reflections on the fatal field of Chaeroneia form their fittest
epitaph. At last the Athenians, according to Æschines, officially
punished Sodomy with death; but the threat did not abolish bordels of
boys, like those of Karáchi; the Porneia and Pornoboskeia, where slaves
and pueri venales “stood,” as the term was, near the Pnyx, the city
walls and a certain tower, also about Lycabettus (Æsch. contra Tim.);
and paid a fixed tax to the state. The pleasures of society in civilised
Greece seem to have been sought chiefly in the heresies of
love—Hetairesis[378] and Sotadism.
It is calculated that the French of the sixteenth century had four
hundred names for the parts genital and three hundred for their use in
coition. The Greek vocabulary is not less copious and some of its
pederastic terms, of which Meier gives nearly a hundred, and its
nomenclature of pathologic love are curious and picturesque enough to
merit quotation.
To live the life of Abron (the Argive) _i.e._ that of a πάσχων, pathic
or passive lover.
The Agathonian song.
Aischrourgía = dishonest love, also called Akolasía, Akrasía,
Arrenokoitía, etc.
Alcinoan youths, or “non-conformists,”
In cute curandâ plus æquo operata Juventus.
Alegomenos, the “unspeakable,” as the pederast was termed by the Council
of Ancyra: also the Agrios, Apolaustus and Akolastos.
Androgyne, of whom Ansonius wrote (Epig. lxviii. 15):—
Ecce ego sum factus femina de puero.
Badas and badízein = clunes torquens: also Bátalos = a catamite.
Catapygos, Katapygosyne = puerarius and catadactylium from Dactylion,
the ring, used in the sense of Nerissa’s, but applied to the corollarium
puerile.
Cinædus (Kínaidos), the active lover (ποιῶν) derived either from his
kinetics or quasi κύων αἴδως = dog-modest. Also Spatalocinædus (lasciviâ
fluens) = a fair Ganymede.
Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in Eubœa, a city famed for
love à posteriori; mostly applied to le léchement des testicules by
children.
Clazomenæ = the buttocks, also a sotadic disease, so called from the
Ionian city devoted to Aversa Venus; also used of a pathic,
—et tergo femina pube vir est.
Embasicoetas, prop. a link-boy at marriages, also a “night-cap” drunk
before bed and lastly an effeminate; one who perambulavit omnium cubilia
(Catullus). See Encolpius’ pun upon the Embasicete in Satyricon, cap.
iv.
Epipedesis, the carnal assault.
Geiton lit. “neighbour” the beloved of Encolpius, which has produced the
Fr. Giton = Bardache, Ital. bardascia from the Arab. Baradaj, a captive,
a slave; the augm. form is Polygeiton.
Hippias (tyranny of) when the patient (woman or boy) mounts the agent.
Aristoph. Vesp. 502. So also Kelitizein = peccare superne or equum
agitare supernum of Horace.
Mokhthería, depravity with boys.
Paidika, whence pædicare (act) and pædicari (pass): so in the Latin
poet:—
PEnelopes primam DIdonis prima sequatur,
Et primam CAni, syllaba prima REmi.
Pathikos, Pathicus, a passive, like Malakos (malacus, mollis, facilis),
Malchio, Trimalchio (Petronius), Malta, Maltha and in Hor. (Sat. ii. 25)
Malthinus tunicis demissis ambulat.
Praxis = the malpractice.
Pygisma = buttockry, because most actives end within the nates, being
too much excited for further intromission.
Phœnicissare (φοινικίζειν) = cunnilingere in tempore menstruum, quia hoc
vitium in Phœnicia generata solebat (Thes. Erot. Ling. Latinæ); also
irrumer en miel.
Phicidissare, denotat actum per canes commissum quando lambunt cunnos
vel testiculos (Suetonius): also applied to pollution of childhood.
Samorium flores (Erasmus, Prov. xxiii.) alluding to the androgynic
prostitutions of Samos.
Siphniassare (σιφνιάζειν, from Siphnos, hod. Sifanto Island) = digito
podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus (see Mirabeau’s
Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).
Thrypsis = the rubbing.
Pederastía had in Greece, I have shown, its noble and ideal side: Rome,
however, borrowed her malpractices, like her religion and polity, from
those ultra-material Etruscans and debauched with a brazen face. Even
under the Republic Plautus (Casin. ii. 21) makes one of his characters
exclaim, in the utmost sang-froid, “Ultro te, amator, apage te a dorso
meo!” With increased luxury the evil grew and Livy notices (xxxix. 13),
at the Bacchanalia, plura virorum inter sese quam fœminarum stupra.
There were individual protests; for instance, S. Q. Fabius Maximus
Servilianus (Consul U.C. 612) punished his son for dubia castitas; and a
private soldier, C. Plotius, killed his military Tribune, Q. Luscius,
for unchaste proposals. The Lex Scantinia (Scatinia?), popularly derived
from Scantinius the Tribune and of doubtful date (B.C. 226?), attempted
to abate the scandal by fine and the Lex Julia by death; but they were
trifling obstacles to the flood of infamy which surged in with the
Empire. No class seems then to have disdained these “sterile pleasures:”
l’on n’attachoit point alors à cette espèce d’amour une note d’infamie,
comme en païs de chrétienté, says Bayle under “Anacreon.” The great
Cæsar, the Cinædus calvus of Catullus, was the husband of all the wives
and the wife of all the husbands in Rome (Suetonius, cap. lii.); and his
soldiers sang in his praise Gallias Cæsar subegit, Nicomedes Cæsarem
(Suet. cies. xlix.); whence his sobriquet “Fornix Birthynicus.” Of
Augustus the people chaunted
Videsne ut Cinædus orbem digito temperet?
Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the
Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which the
spinthriæ (lit. women’s bracelets) were connected in a chain by the bond
of flesh[379] (Seneca Quæst. Nat.). Of this refinement, which in the
earlier part of the nineteenth century was renewed by sundry Englishmen
at Naples, Ausonius wrote (Epig. cxix. 1),
Tres uno in lecto: stuprum duo perpetiuntur;
And Martial had said (xii. 43)
Quo symplegmate quinque copulentur;
Qua plures teneantur a catena; etc.
Ausonius recounts of Caligula he so lost patience that he forcibly
entered the priest M. Lepidus, before the sacrifice was completed. The
beautiful Nero was formally married to Pythagoras (or Doryphoros) and
afterwards took to wife Sporus who was first subjected to castration of
a peculiar fashion; he was then named Sabina after the deceased spouse
and claimed queenly honours. The “Othonis et Trajani pathici” were
famed; the great Hadrian openly loved Antinoüs and the wild debaucheries
of Heliogabalus seem only to have amused, instead of disgusting, the
Romans.
Uranopolis allowed public lupanaria where adults and meritorii pueri,
who began their career as early as seven years, stood for hire: the
inmates of these cauponæ wore sleeved tunics and dalmatics like women.
As in modern Egypt pathic boys, we learn from Catullus, haunted the
public baths. Debauchees had signals like freemasons whereby they
recognised one another. The Greek Skematízein was made by closing the
hand to represent the scrotum and raising the middle finger as if to
feel whether a hen had eggs, tâter si les poulettes ont l’œuf: hence the
Athenians called it Catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus
impudicus or infamis, the “medical finger[380]” of Rabelais and the
Chiromantists. Another sign was to scratch the head with the
minimus—digitulo caput scabere (Juv. ix. 133).[381] The prostitution of
boys was first forbidden by Domitian; but Saint Paul, a Greek, had
formally expressed his abomination of Le Vice (Rom. i. 26; i. Cor. vi.
8); and we may agree with Grotius (de Verit. li. c. 13) that early
Christianity did much to suppress it. At last the Emperor Theodosius
punished it with fire as a profanation, because sacrosanctum esse
debetur hospitium virilis animæ.
In the pagan days of imperial Rome her literature makes no difference
between boy and girl. Horace naïvely says (Sat. ii. 118):—
Ancilla aut verna est præsto puer;
and with Hamlet, but in a dishonest sense:—
—Man delights me not
Nor woman neither.
Similarly the Spaniard Martial, who is a mine of such pederastic
allusions (xi. 46):—
Sive puer arrisit, sive puella tibi.
That marvellous Satyricon which unites the wit of Molière[382] with the
debaucheries of Piron, whilst the writer has been described, like
Rabelais, as purissimus in impuritate, is a kind of Triumph of
Pederasty. Geiton the hero, a handsome curly-pated hobbledehoy of
seventeen, with his câlinerie and wheedling tongue, is courted like one
of the sequor sexus: his lovers are inordinately jealous of him and his
desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart. But no dialogue between man
and wife in extremis could be more pathetic than that in the scene where
shipwreck is imminent. Elsewhere every one seems to attempt his
neighbour: a man alte succinctus assails Ascyltos; Lycus, the Tarentine
skipper, would force Encolpius and so forth: yet we have the neat and
finished touch (cap. vii.):—“The lamentation was very fine (the dying
man having manumitted his slaves) albeit his wife wept not as though she
loved him. _How were it had he not behaved to her so well?_”
Erotic Latin glossaries[383] give some ninety words connected with
Pederasty and some, which “speak with Roman simplicity,” are peculiarly
expressive. “Aversa Venus” alludes to women being treated as boys: hence
Martial, translated by Piron, addresses Mistress Martial (x. 44):—
Teque puta, cunnos, uxor, habere duos.
The capillatus or comatus is also called calamistratus, the darling
curled with crisping-irons; and he is an Effeminatus _i.e._ qui
muliebria patitur; or a Delicatus, slave or eunuch for the use of the
Draucus, Puerarius (boy-lover) or Dominus (Mart. xi. 71). The Divisor is
so called from his practice Hillas dividere or cædere, something like
Martial’s cacare mentulam or Juvenal’s Hesternæ occurrere cænæ. Facere
vicibus (Juv. vii. 238), incestare se invicem or mutuum facere (Plaut.
Trin. ii. 437), is described as “a puerile vice,” in which the two take
turns to be active and passive: they are also called Gemelli and Fratres
= compares in pædicatione. Illicita libido is = præpostera seu postica
Venus, and is expressed by the picturesque phrase indicare (seu
incurvare) aliquem. Depilatus, divellere pilos, glaber, lævis and nates
pervellere are allusions to the Sotadic toilette. The fine distinction
between demittere and dejicere caput are worthy of a glossary, while
Pathica puella, puera, putus, pullipremo, pusio, pygiaca sacra,
quadrupes, scarabæus and smerdalius explain themselves.
From Rome the practice extended far and wide to her colonies especially
the Provincia now called Provence. Athenæus (xii. 26) charges the people
of Massilia with “acting like women out of luxury”; and he cites the
saying “May you sail to Massilia!” as if it were another Corinth. Indeed
the whole Keltic race is charged with Le Vice by Aristotle (Pol. ii.
66), Strabo, (iv. 199) and Diodorus Siculus (v. 32). Roman civilisation
carried pederasty also to Northern Africa, where it took firm root,
while the negro and negroid races to the South ignore the erotic
perversion, except where imported by foreigners into such kingdoms as
Bornu and Haussa. In old Mauritania, now Marocco,[384] the Moors proper
are notable sodomites; Moslems, even of saintly houses, are permitted
openly to keep catamites, nor do their disciples think worse of their
sanctity for such license: in one case the English wife failed to banish
from the home “that horrid boy.”
Yet pederasty is forbidden by the Koran. In chapter iv. 20 we read; “And
if two (men) among you commit the crime, then punish them both,” the
penalty being some hurt or damage by public reproach, insult or
scourging. There are four distinct references to Lot and the Sodomites
in chapters vii. 78; xi. 77–84; xxvi. 160–174 and xxix. 28–35. In the
first the prophet commissioned to the people says, “Proceed ye to a
fulsome act wherein no creature hath foregone ye? Verily ye come to men
in lieu of women lustfully.” We have then an account of the rain which
made an end of the wicked and this judgment on the Cities of the Plain
is repeated with more detail in the second reference. Here the angels,
generally supposed to be three, Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, appeared
to Lot as beautiful youths, a sore temptation to the sinners and the
godly man’s arm was straitened concerning his visitors because he felt
unable to protect them from the erotic vagaries of his fellow townsmen.
He therefore shut his doors and from behind them argued the matter:
presently the riotous assembly attempted to climb the wall when Gabriel,
seeing the distress of his host, smote them on the face with one of his
wings and blinded them so that all moved off crying for aid and saying
that Lot had magicians in his house. Hereupon the “cities” which, if
they ever existed, must have been Fellah villages, were uplifted:
Gabriel thrust his wing under them and raised them so high that the
inhabitants of the lower heaven (the lunar sphere) could hear the dogs
barking and the cocks crowing. Then came the rain of stones: these were
clay pellets baked in hell-fire, streaked white and red, or having some
mark to distinguish them from the ordinary and each bearing the name of
its destination like the missiles which destroyed the host of Abrahat
al-Ashram.[385] Lastly the “Cities” were turned upside down and cast
upon earth. These circumstantial unfacts are repeated at full length in
the other two chapters; but rather as an instance of Allah’s power than
as a warning against pederasty, which Mohammed seems to have regarded
with philosophic indifference. The general opinion of his followers is
that it should be punished like fornication unless the offenders made a
public act of penitence. But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat
too clement and will not convict unless four credible witnesses swear to
have seen rem in re. I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious opinion
that the Ghilmán or Wuldán, the beautiful boys of Paradise, the
counterparts of the Houris, will be lawful catamites to the True
Believers in a future state of happiness: the idea is nowhere
countenanced in Al-Islam; and, although I have often heard debauchees
refer to it, the learned look upon the assertion as scandalous.