Thus there would be nothing inconsistent with the views universally held in Antiquity in considering the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease) of the Scythians, and equally that of Philoctetes, as consequences of the wrath of Venus. That paederastia was invariably regarded as a _Vice_ by the Ancients (and particularly by the Greeks) we have already, following the lines laid down by _Meier_, we think sufficiently proved. _Stark_, who repeatedly (pp. 12, 16, 20.) denies this, has been led into error merely by the mistake that was generally prevalent in his time of confusing paedophilia and paederastia; and it is on this misapprehension he bases his argument. How the Scythians came to hold this belief that the wrath of Venus was to blame for what they suffered, must indeed be left an open question. But it should be remembered it was not the _pathics_ themselves who advanced this opinion, but only the rest of the Scythians; for Herodotus says expressly, λέγουσί τε οἱ Σκύθαι διὰ τοῦτο _σφεας_ νοσέειν (and the Scythians say that for this cause _they_ were afflicted). Again it was only ὀλίγοι τινὲς αὐτῶν ὑπολειφθέντες (a few of the Scythians who were left behind), a few of the stragglers, who would seem to have plundered the temple of Aphrodité; and it certainly was only later that this act of impiety was brought into connection with the vice,—in the same way as the killing of Paris by Philoctetes was with the legend of his lewd practices. § 15. The second question we have to answer will be this: how could Herodotus write _that the descendants of these few stragglers alive in his time suffered from the νοῦσος θήλεια_ (_feminine disease_)? From the fact that, while descendants are named, strictly speaking only _male_ descendants can be in question, it is clear the statement is only a general one, and must not be understood to imply more than that certain members of these families were Cinaedi, not of course that the _whole_ posterity was afflicted with the νοῦσος θήλεια. We see at the present day how the impurity of the father passes on to the son; so it need be matter for no surprise whatever to find the vice of the cinaedi descending in the same way among certain members of a family. As a matter of fact these Scythian temple-robbers are by no means the only examples Antiquity holds up to us of such a thing, for the Orator _Lysias_[324] says of the family of _Alcibiades_, that _most members of it had become prostitutes_.