When the Greek became acquainted with the vice, he of course shared at first the notion of the avenging action of a deity, but he directed his attention less to the consequences of this vice, which in Greece were generally slighter, than to the Vice itself, which robbed the man of his manly characteristics and normal activity, and drove him to take on him the rôle of the woman in exchange for that of the man. But to be a woman was invariably among all nations a disgrace for the man, whom _Plato_ (Timaeus 42.) considered the γένος κρεῖττον (superior sex), while _Aristotle_ not merely represents the woman as owing her existence to an ἀνάγκη (unavoidable necessity), but calls her an ἄῤῥεν πεπηρωμένον (crippled male), an ἀναπηρία φυσική (natural crippling), even a παρέκβασις τῆς φύσεως (aberration of nature)[390]. But no man of sound intellect could possibly suffer himself to be used as a woman; therefore he must needs be sick, be afflicted with a disease that assimilated him to a woman (θήλεια—feminine). When _Herodotus_ wrote, the Greeks to be sure knew the vice which was practised with _boys_ (Paederastia) or youths, who had not yet reached man’s estate, but these were always first corrupted by adults; they did not practise the vice of their own impulse and could not as a rule be held accountable. When however they saw adults, men who were already in possession of manly prerogatives, appear as Pathics—not merely boys and youths not yet capable of the procreative act,—they could in no way explain the phenomenon to their satisfaction except by supposing them to have been attacked by a disease that changed them into women[391]. This also gives the reason why the expression νοῦσος Θήλεια (feminine disease) occurs so seldom in the Greek writers, for it was the violation of boys, not the violation of _men_, that was a familiar fact to them. For in the fact that the beautiful form of a boy was capable of firing a sensual longing to enjoy it, the Greek saw nothing at all unnatural; and he found excuses for the momentary forgetfulness of self-respect on the part of the paederast, as he did in the case of the boy or youth. But if there had been seduction, then the offence was strongly reprobrated, unless the Pathic had been a slave. 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.