Sunt quas eunuchi imbelles ac mollia semper Oscula delectent et desperatio barbae. _Et quod abortivo non est opus_, illa voluptas Summa tamen, quod iam calida matura iuventa Inguina traduntur medicis, iam pectine nigro. Ergo exspectatos ac iussos crescere primum, Testiculos, postquam coeperunt esse bilibres, Tonsoris damno tantum rapit Heliodorus.
(Women there are to find delight in unwarlike eunuchs and kisses ever soft and the lack of a beard that can never grow, and this especially because then there is no need for any abortive. But the pleasure is greatest when the organs are delivered full-grown to the surgeons, just in the heat of youth, just when the down of puberty is darkening. Then when the testicles, long looked for and at first encouraged to grow, begin to be of double balanced weight, lo! Heliodorus whips them off,—to the barber’s loss).
Cur tantum Eunuchos habeat tua Gellia, quaeris Pannice? vult futui Gellia, non parere.
(Why your Gellia is fain to have eunuchs only, do you ask, Pannicus? Because she wishes to be f-ck-d, not to be a mother). In longam securamque libidinem exsectus spado, (A eunuch castrated with a view to long-continued and _harmless_ lust), says St. Jerome. The information given by _Galen_ (De usu Partium bk. XIV. 15. edit. Kühn, vol. IV. p. 571) is notable, to the effect that the athletes at Olympia were castrated, that their strength might not be wasted by coition. Have the words “Olimpia agona” (Olimpic—Olympic—games) been in some way misunderstood in the passage?
[240] Genesis XIX. 4., Levit., XVIII. 2., XXIX. 13.
[241] _Welcker_, Aeschylus—Trilogy, p. 356.
[242] _Athenaeus_, Deipnosoph., p. 602., τοῦ παιδεραστεῖν παρὰ πρώτων Κρητῶν εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας παρελθόντος, ὡς ἱστορεῖ Τίμαιος. (The practice of paederastia having been introduced among the Greeks first by the Cretans, as Timaeus relates).—_Heraclitus Ponticus_, fragment, περὶ πολιτείας III. p. 7.—_Servius_ on Virgil—Aeneid bk. X. 325., de Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Laconas et totam Graeciam translatum est. (Of the Cretans we have been told that they were excessive in their love of boys, a practice afterwards imported into Laconia and all parts of Greece.) Comp. _K. O. Müller_, “Die Dorier”, (The Dorians), Vol. II. pp. 240 sqq. K. Höck, “Kreta”, (Crete), Vol. III. p. 106. Though in Crete as in all Dorian States Paedophilia was a universal and official institution, yet paederastia too was common enough, as is shown by the censure expressed by _Plato_ (De Legibus bk. I. 636., bk. VII. 836.) and _Plutarch_, (De puerorum educatione ch. 14.).—as also by the expression Κρῆτα τρόπον (Cretan fashion) given in _Hesychius_; and probably the word κρητίζειν (to play the Cretan) is to be understood from this point of view also. _Pfeffinger_, “De Cretum vitiis,” (Of the Vices of the Cretans). Strasbourg 1701. 4to. From this _Aristotle_ (Politics II. 7. 5.) may have got the idea that the lawgiver in Crete introduced paederastia in order to check the increase of population. _Hesychius_ says at any rate κρῆτα τρόπον, παιδικοῖς χρῆσθαι. (Cretan fashion, i.e. to indulge in boy-loves). Of the Scythians later on.