The healthy good sense of the Greeks could not possibly regard the vice of the Pathic otherwise than as a deviation from Nature, an _unnatural_ appetite; _and_ every _unnatural_ appetite (ἀκολασία—“intemperance”) was a νόσος or πάθος (disease, or suffering, passion), or a consequence of these, as the passages quoted from _Aristotle_ and elsewhere show conclusively. From the point of view of the paederast reasons perhaps were to be discovered, that appeared to justify his peculiar taste; and the mode in which he obtained the titillation of sensual pleasure was looked upon merely as one way of getting rid of the semen, as a _figura Veneris_ (mode of Love) standing in close relationship with Onanism. The paederast was relegated to the category of voluptuaries, but without his incurring any special condemnation. On the other hand for the pathic who lent himself as subject of the vice, no excuse of this sort was forthcoming. His lust was not seen (this was impossible at the time) to have a bodily origin in “prurigo ani” (itching of the anus), and could only be regarded as springing from a _depraved imagination_ (ἀνίατον νόσον ψυχῆς ἡγούμενος—deeming it an incurable disease of the soul); it must be that a demon had dragged him along irresistibly in his train, and drove his victim who was incapable of helping himself (ἀσθενής—“weak”) to degradation. All men thus held in thrall by evil demons were supposed to have offended against the gods, to have roused their anger, and were avoided and shunned by their fellows. If in addition they showed any traces of mental aberration, madness, epileptic convulsions, or the like, rude peoples saw in _these_ the manifestation of a god’s influence, and took the victim’s sayings and dreams for oracles. So _Herodotus_ relates (IV. 67.) that the Scythians considered the ἐναρέες to have received the gift of prophecy from Aphrodité,—οἱ δὲ ἐναρέες οἱ ἀνδρόγυνοι, τὴν Ἀφροδίτην σφισι λέγουσι μαντικὴν δοῦναι (now the ἐναρέες, the men-women, declare that Venus brought madness on the object of her anger), and held the vice of the pathic to be due to the goddess’s wrath, or at a later time to be an (incurable) disease of the soul (ψυχή),—as is proved again by the passage of _Caelius Aurelianus_ already quoted; but they did _not_ ascribe to such men the power of prophecy, though in a certain sense every actual madman was supposed to possess it[349]. For the vice of the pathic was not in the eyes of the Greeks actual madness, but rather a vice (νόσος—disease) that robbed the sufferer of the power of governing himself[350], in the same sense as they called sexual love a madness. From this point of view therefore the commentators who saw in the νοῦσος θήλεια a mental affliction, had some grounds for their view; but should not have lost sight of the fact of its being a _vice_ at the same time.