body assumes the _feminine_ type. Deterioration of body is followed by deterioration of mind, and the character also grows womanish.[356] The pathic despises intercourse with women, and will not enter into marriage, so long as he continues to find his lust satisfied. When this ceases to be the case as years advance, Nature herself forbids his propagating his race; the genital organs that have withered through disuse and refuse their office.[357] Driven from the society of men, he takes refuge, neither woman nor man himself, with the women, who in contempt use him as a slave, and like Omphalé of old with Hercules, put the distaff into his hands! Thus from the νοῦσος θήλεια, the vice, an actual disease has sprung; and we can now see that _Longinus_[358] was surely right in calling the expression of _Herodotus_ ἀμίμητος,—an _inimitable_ one, for certainly in no more concise or better way can the facts and the consequences of the vice of the Pathic be characterized. However if any one should consider all this still insufficient to prove the case, and regard the indication given by _Longinus_ as not explicit enough, he may learn from _Tiberius the Rhetorician_[359] that as a matter of fact the Ancients understood the νοῦσος θήλεια in Herodotus in this and in no other sense. He says: “Now a paraphrase is when authors alter a simple, straightforward statement of fact that is complete, for the sake of style or effect or sublimity of phrase, and express the matter in other words, and these more forcible and suitable; as e.g. in _Herodotus_, when he wrote ἐνέσκηψεν ἡ θεὸς θήλειαν νόσον (the goddess afflicted them with _feminine disease_) instead of “made them men-women or cinaedi”. The word ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman) is used here in the same way as in another passage where _Herodotus_ says[360], οἱ δὲ ἐνάρεες, οἱ ἀνδρόγυνοι (and the ἐνάρεες, the men-women). The false interpretation of this word has more than anything else led to misunderstanding as to the νοῦσος θήλεια, for it was supposed that by ἀνδρόγυνοι (men-women) actual eunuchs were intended, whereas pathics are meant and nothing more. How the case really stood might have been seen from _Suidas_, who tells us: _ἀνδρόγυνος_· ὁ Διόνυσος, _ὡς καὶ τὰ ἀνδρῶν ποιῶν καὶ τὰ γυναικῶν πάσχων_· ἢ ἄνανδρος καὶ Ἑρμαφρόδιτος· καὶ ἀνδρογύνων, ἀσθενῶν. γυναικῶν καρδίας ἐχόντων. (_man-woman_: Dionysus, _as both performing a man’s part and suffering a woman’s_. Synonyms, “unmanly”, and “Hermaphrodite”. Also of men-women, weakly men, having the hearts of women.) Dionysus[361] then _performed the act of coition as a man, and suffered himself to be used as a woman_, and for this reason was called ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman). We find the word used in the same way in _Plato_[362], in the passage of _Dio Chrysostom_ quoted a little above, in various places in the _Writers on Physiognomy_, in _Philo_, loco citato, and in Artemidorus[363]. From the last we quote a passage highly interesting for our purpose: