which I hold to be geographical and climatic, not racial, I must
offer a few considerations of its cause and origin. We must not
forget that the love of boys has its noble, sentimental side. The
Platonists and pupils of the Academy, followed by the Sufis or
Moslem Gnostics, held such affection, pure as ardent, to be the
beau idéal which united in man’s soul the creature with the
Creator. Professing to regard youths as the most cleanly and
beautiful objects in this phenomenal world, they declared that by
loving and extolling the chef-d’uvre, corporeal and
intellectual, of the Demiurgus, disinterestedly and without any
admixture of carnal sensuality, they are paying the most fervent
adoration to the Causa causans. They add that such affection,
passing as it does the love of women, is far less selfish than
fondness for and admiration of the other sex which, however
innocent, always suggest sexuality;[FN#363] and Easterns add that
the devotion of the moth to the taper is purer and more fervent
than the Bulbul’s love for the Rose. Amongst the Greeks of the
best ages the system of boy-favourites was advocated on
considerations of morals and politics. The lover undertook the
education of the beloved through precept and example, while the
two were conjoined by a tie stricter than the fraternal.
Hieronymus the Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the
vigorous disposition of youths and the confidence engendered by
their association often led to the overthrow of tyrannies.
Socrates declared that “a most valiant army might be composed of
boys and their lovers; for that of all men they would be most
ashamed to desert one another.” And even Virgil, despite the foul
flavour of Formosum pastor Corydon, could write:—
Nisus amore pio pueri.
The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to
me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that
within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and
feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only
sporadically. Hence the male féminisme whereby the man becomes
patiens as well as agens, and the woman a tribade, a votary of
mascula Sappho,[FN#364] Queen of Frictrices or Rubbers.[FN#365]
Prof. Mantegazza claims to have discovered the cause of this
pathological love, this perversion of the erotic sense, one of
the marvellous list of amorous vagaries which deserve, not
prosecution but the pitiful care of the physician and the study
of the psychologist. According to him the nerves of the rectum
and the genitalia, in all cases closely connected, are abnormally
so in the pathic, who obtains, by intromission, the venereal
orgasm which is usually sought through the sexual organs. So
amongst women there are tribads who can procure no pleasure
except by foreign objects introduced a posteriori. Hence his
threefold distribution of sodomy; (1) Peripheric or anatomical,
caused by an unusual distribution of the nerves and their
hyperæsthesia; (2) Luxurious, when love a tergo is preferred on
account of the narrowness of the passage; and (3) the Psychical.
But this is evidently superficial: the question is what causes
this neuropathy, this abnormal distribution and condition of the
nerves.[FN#366]
As Prince Bismarck finds a moral difference between the male and
female 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 Thick.” 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 generic; 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 Medico-régale sur les Attentats
aux Murs,” 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,[FN#367] Rosenbaum[FN#368] and M. H. E. Meier.[FN#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
Fmineam 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.)[FN#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 ({Greek}) by the lover ({Greek}); of
the obligations of the ravisher ({Greek}) to the favourite
({Greek})[FN#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 Lacones 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;[FN#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 ({Greek}) 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[FN#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”[FN#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.[FN#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 Botians who produced the famous Narcissus,[FN#376] described
by Ovid (Met. iii. 339);—
Multi ilium juvenes, multæ cupiere puellæ;
Nulli ilium juvenes, nullæ tetigere puellæ:[FN#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 redactions 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[FN#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 ,
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 operate 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 ({Greek}) derived either
from his kinetics or quasi {Greek} = dog modest. Also
Spatalocinædus (lasciviâ fluens) = a fair Ganymede.
Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in Euba, a city famed
for love à posteriori; mostly applied to le léchement des
testicules by children.
Clazomenae = 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 Phnicia 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 ({Greek}, 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 fminarum 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 Cinaedus calvus of Catullus, was
the husband of all the wives and the wife of all the husbands in
Rome (Suetonius, cap. Iii.); 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[FN#379] (Seneca Quaest. Nat.). Of this
refinement which in the earlier part of the nineteenth century
was renewed by sundry Englishmen at Naples, Ausonius wrote (Epig.
cxix. I),
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 Antinous, 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. Debauchées 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’uf: hence the Athenians
called it Catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus impudicus
or infamis, the “medical finger”[FN#380] of Rabelais and the
Chiromantists. Another sign was to scratch the head with the
minimus—digitulo caput scabere (Juv. ix. 133).[FN#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. ii. c. 13) that early Christianity did much to suppress
it. At last the Emperor Theodosius punished it with fire as a
profanation, because sacro-sanctum 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 praesto 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[FN#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[FN#383] give some ninety words connected
with pederasty and some, which “speak with Roman simplicity,” are
peculiarly expressive. “Averse 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, laevis 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,[FN#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
licence: in one case the English wife failed to banish from the
home “that horrid boy.”