The Plague of Lust, Vol. 1 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical AntiquityRosenbaum, Julius
History
The Plague of Lust, Vol. 1 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical Antiquity
Rosenbaum, Julius
Sexually transmitted diseases -- History
Bishop _Synesius_ (378-431 A.D.) in his Speech _De Regno_[382]
addressed to the Emperor Arcadius exhorts the latter to set bounds to
the insubordination in the army, and for the foreign subject peoples,
that are continually meditating treason, to attack them and really
conquer them, rather than wait till their hostile temper break out in
open revolt. That the renown of the Romans stood fast, that they were
victorious, wherever they came and marched through the countries of the
world, like the gods, supervising men’s insolence and government. “But
those Scythians, Herodotus tells us so, and we see it for ourselves,
are all fallen under the νόσος θήλεια (feminine disease). And it is
they of whom the subject peoples mainly consist, etc.” He goes on
to say how they had submitted only in appearance, while secretly
they laughed at the folly of the Romans, who took their submission
seriously, etc. Now in the first place we must remember the fact
that _Synesius_, like all Greek Orators and Fathers of later times,
considered it his special duty to cite the Classical Greek authors as
frequently as possible, and with this object made almost any peg do to
hang a quotation on. He says of the Romans that they, ὡς Ὅμηρός φησι
τοὺς θεούς
Ἀνθρώπων ὕβριν τε καὶ εὐνομίαν ἐφέποντες
(as Homer says of the gods, “visiting the insolence and good government
of men”), and to explain this ὕβρις (insolence), he recalls the
statement of Herodotus to the effect that the Scythians suffered
from the νοῦσος θήλεια, a statement which, he adds, still holds good
of them; that the vice had prevailed amongst them from the earliest
times, that it was quite inveterate, and that accordingly men of such
abandoned character could never be trusted, trained as they were to
dissemble; all this _Synesius_ is specially anxious to enforce strongly
upon Arcadius! In this sequence of thought we find a sufficient
explanation of the καὶ ἡμεῖς ὁρῶμεν (and we see it for ourselves); this
refers not so much to the ocular recognition of the νοῦσος θήλεια, the
possibility of which however we have demonstrated elsewhere, as to the
fact that the disease was _still_ to be met with among the Scythians,
in order to show which Synesius laid special stress on the phrase,
and added—undoubtedly to the sacrifice of truth—the word ἅπαντας (all
of them). Besides which, _Dionysius Petavius_ reminds us in his notes
on this passage that the name “Scythian” is used here, as it is in
_Strabo_, in its widest signification, and includes Goths, Alani,
Vandals, Germans, Huns, in fact all the Northern peoples. This is the
more interesting as _Sextus Empiricus_[383] relates of the Germans
that they practised Paederastia, Prof. _Meier_ (loco cit. p. 131. Note
20.), who cites the passage, doubted the truth of the statement, on the
ground that Sextus Empiricus is the only author, and even he does so
only as a matter of hearsay (ὡς φασιν—as men say), to lay this vice to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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