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
“Nay! but to speak with women’s voice is after all to speak with human
voice, and no one is filled with aversion when he hears a woman. But,
tell me, whose is this voice; does it not belong to the _Androgyni_
(men-women), the Cinaedi? or to such as have had the genitals
amputated? True it is not invariably found with all such, but it is
characteristic of them and a sign of what they are.
“Well then! suppose a stranger from a distance to judge from your
voices, what kind of men you are, and what are your pursuits
(πράττειν,—what it is you do). You are not fit, I tell you, to be
neatherds or shepherds. I wonder would any one take you for descendants
of the Argives, as you profess to be, or indeed for Greeks at all,—you
who outdo the Phoenicians in lubricity? At any rate I do think it would
behove a man of any morality in such a city to close his ears with wax
far more than if he were sailing past the Syrens’ shore. There he would
run the risk of death, but here of foulest licence, of violation, of
the vilest seduction.
“Once Ionic harmony was in vogue, or Doric, or yet another sort, the
Phrygian and Lydian, now it is the music of Aradus and the Phoenician
modes that please you; you love this rhythm _par excellence_,
as others do the Spondaic. Was ever a race of men that were good
musicianers—through the nose?!
(p. 409). “But such a rhythm must needs have something to follow. You
would seem not to know what; just as with other nations the wrath
of the gods overtook some single part, the hands, the feet or the
face[286], in the same way among you an endemic disease has attacked
the nose. Just as the angry Aphrodité they say made the Lemnian women’s
armpits abominable, know now that the gods in their anger have played
havoc with the noses of most of your fellow citizens, and that is why
they have this characteristic voice of their own. Indeed from where
else could it have come?
“But _I_ say this thing is the mark of most infamous lewdness, of most
infamous madness, of contempt for all decency (all morality), and (a
proof) of the fact that there is no more any single thing held to be
disgraceful. Their speech, their gait, their look, proclaim it.”
From this passage of Dio Chrysostom, who lived at the end of the First
and beginning of the Second Century A.D., we see that at that period
the vice of paederastia prevailed at Tarsus to an appalling extent;
and very possibly it is this circumstance that gave occasion to the
declaration of the Apostle St. Paul[287], whose native town of course
Tarsus was, when he says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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