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.