Death awareness: Terror management or cognitive adaptation to time management? X.T. Wang, Peng Wang. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abstract: Death awareness refers to thinking about and recognizing the inevitability of one’s own death. According to the popular terror management theory, death awareness is a common source of many irrational defensive reactions to existential anxiety. However, an evolutionary perspective suggests that death awareness is an essential part of human-unique autonoetic consciousness, and should be viewed as a cognitive adaptation to the problems of resource management, mainly time management. In three studies, we explored proactive effects of death awareness, activated experimentally or experientially by the affliction of cancer. In Studies 1 and 2, compared to a control group, the participants who contemplated death underestimated the passage of time in a time-perception task and had a lower delay-discounting rate, indicated by a more future-oriented preference for a larger-and-delayed reward to a smaller-and-immediate reward. In Study 3, cancer patients, when compared with non-cancer patients with more curable diseases, overestimated the passage of time and had a higher delay discounting rate (more present-oriented) when making intertemporal choices. These findings do not support defensive reactions predicted from terror management theory. Instead, the results reveal a proactive time management pattern adapted to different types of death awareness: mortality reminder and cancer experience.
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Activating pathogen threat consistently made dense social environments seem more crowded, & consistently generated more negative affect toward these environments; people were more likely to choose uncrowded environments
The infectiousness of crowds: Crowding experiences are amplified by pathogen threats. Iris M. Wang, Joshua M. Ackerman. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abstract: In our everyday lives, we may find ourselves in situations where many people are congregated, like on a subway car during rush hour, or in a dance club on a Saturday night. People sometimes perceive these social situations as unpleasantly crowded. Previous work has demonstrated that incidental factors such as being hungry or hot increase perceptions of crowdedness. Yet, crowds afford additional threats and opportunities to individuals, ones that exist because other people can act as agents (even unwitting ones) of harm and safety. Here, we demonstrate that crowding perceptions and evaluations depend on specific, active threats for perceivers. Eight studies (combined N = 2056) test whether infectious disease threats, which are associated with crowded conditions, increase negative reactions and avoidant behavioral intentions. Across studies, activating pathogen threat consistently made dense social environments seem more crowded, and consistently generated more negative affect toward these environments. Finally, under pathogen threat, people were more likely to choose to inhabit uncrowded environments. These outcomes were threat-specific. That is, they were more influenced by pathogen threat relative to other threats of physical safety. These studies suggest that interpretations of social environments depend on the unique threats and opportunities those environments afford to individuals.
Abstract: In our everyday lives, we may find ourselves in situations where many people are congregated, like on a subway car during rush hour, or in a dance club on a Saturday night. People sometimes perceive these social situations as unpleasantly crowded. Previous work has demonstrated that incidental factors such as being hungry or hot increase perceptions of crowdedness. Yet, crowds afford additional threats and opportunities to individuals, ones that exist because other people can act as agents (even unwitting ones) of harm and safety. Here, we demonstrate that crowding perceptions and evaluations depend on specific, active threats for perceivers. Eight studies (combined N = 2056) test whether infectious disease threats, which are associated with crowded conditions, increase negative reactions and avoidant behavioral intentions. Across studies, activating pathogen threat consistently made dense social environments seem more crowded, and consistently generated more negative affect toward these environments. Finally, under pathogen threat, people were more likely to choose to inhabit uncrowded environments. These outcomes were threat-specific. That is, they were more influenced by pathogen threat relative to other threats of physical safety. These studies suggest that interpretations of social environments depend on the unique threats and opportunities those environments afford to individuals.
Mothers of very young children report more dates than fathers of very young children; single parents of children less than 5 report higher frequency of sexual activity & more first dates in the past 3 months than those of older children
Using conjoint analysis to assess men’s relationship interest in women with and without children. Viviana Weekes-Shackelford, Justin K Mogilski, Todd K. Shackelford. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abstract: If the presence of children and remarriage (or re-mating) were recurrent features of human evolutionary history, mating psychology should contain features that address problems associated with the presence of children and re-mating and we should see this revealed in a variety of mating behaviors. Mothers of very young children (<2yrs) report more dates than fathers of very young children and single parents of children less than 5 report higher frequency of sexual activity and more first dates in the past 3 months than do parents of older children. Men and women with at least one genetic child with their partner also perform more frequent individual mate retention behaviors. Furthermore, women report different mate preferences before and after having children. The current research used conjoint analysis to explore men’s long- and short-term interest in women with and without children. Over 500 men were asked to rank profiles of potential mates that varied by the woman’s age, her child’s age, her child’s sex, and the father’s involvement. Findings add to a provisional framework for research on mating psychology after having children.
Abstract: If the presence of children and remarriage (or re-mating) were recurrent features of human evolutionary history, mating psychology should contain features that address problems associated with the presence of children and re-mating and we should see this revealed in a variety of mating behaviors. Mothers of very young children (<2yrs) report more dates than fathers of very young children and single parents of children less than 5 report higher frequency of sexual activity and more first dates in the past 3 months than do parents of older children. Men and women with at least one genetic child with their partner also perform more frequent individual mate retention behaviors. Furthermore, women report different mate preferences before and after having children. The current research used conjoint analysis to explore men’s long- and short-term interest in women with and without children. Over 500 men were asked to rank profiles of potential mates that varied by the woman’s age, her child’s age, her child’s sex, and the father’s involvement. Findings add to a provisional framework for research on mating psychology after having children.
Plant avoidance behaviors in Shuar infants and toddlers (Amazonians in southeastern Ecuador)
Plant avoidance behaviors in Shuar infants and toddlers. Annie E. Wertz, Alejandro S. Erut, Andrew Marcus Smith, Claudia Elsner, H. Clark Barrett. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abstract: Recent research shows that 8- to 18-month-old infants from the US and Germany are reluctant to touch plants and look more frequently toward adults before touching plants, a behavioral avoidance strategy that would mitigate plant dangers. Here we test Shuar infants and toddlers to examine whether infants growing up with substantial exposure to plants exhibit similar avoidance behaviors. The Shuar are an indigenous Amazonian society in southeastern Ecuador. Infants and toddlers (7- to 36month-olds; N=52) from four small rural Shuar villages were tested. The stimuli were real plants, artificial plants, feature-matched novel artifacts, familiar artifacts, and naturally occurring objects. An experimenter placed each stimulus object in front of the infant for 10 seconds; infants’ touch behavior and looking behavior were coded. The results showed that Shuar infants, like infants from the US and Germany, took longer to touch plants (real and artificial) compared to familiar artifacts and stones. However, unlike US and German infants, Shuar infants were as reluctant to touch novel artifacts as plants, and exhibited similar amounts of social looking across all object types. These results suggest informative similarities and differences between the Shuar and infants from the US and Germany.
Check also How Plants Shape the Mind. Annie E. Wertz. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, June 1 2019, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/06/the-adaptive-problems-humans-faced-with.html
And And The seeds of social learning: Infants exhibit more social looking for plants than other object types. Claudia E lsner, Annie E.Wertz. Cognition, Volume 183, February 2019, Pages 244-255. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/02/knowing-which-plants-are-beneficial-or.html
Abstract: Recent research shows that 8- to 18-month-old infants from the US and Germany are reluctant to touch plants and look more frequently toward adults before touching plants, a behavioral avoidance strategy that would mitigate plant dangers. Here we test Shuar infants and toddlers to examine whether infants growing up with substantial exposure to plants exhibit similar avoidance behaviors. The Shuar are an indigenous Amazonian society in southeastern Ecuador. Infants and toddlers (7- to 36month-olds; N=52) from four small rural Shuar villages were tested. The stimuli were real plants, artificial plants, feature-matched novel artifacts, familiar artifacts, and naturally occurring objects. An experimenter placed each stimulus object in front of the infant for 10 seconds; infants’ touch behavior and looking behavior were coded. The results showed that Shuar infants, like infants from the US and Germany, took longer to touch plants (real and artificial) compared to familiar artifacts and stones. However, unlike US and German infants, Shuar infants were as reluctant to touch novel artifacts as plants, and exhibited similar amounts of social looking across all object types. These results suggest informative similarities and differences between the Shuar and infants from the US and Germany.
Check also How Plants Shape the Mind. Annie E. Wertz. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, June 1 2019, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/06/the-adaptive-problems-humans-faced-with.html
And And The seeds of social learning: Infants exhibit more social looking for plants than other object types. Claudia E lsner, Annie E.Wertz. Cognition, Volume 183, February 2019, Pages 244-255. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/02/knowing-which-plants-are-beneficial-or.html
A meta-analysis of sex differences in human navigation skills: Children younger than 13 years showed much smaller effect sizes (d = .15) than older age groups
A meta-analysis of sex differences in human navigation skills. Alina Nazareth et al. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, July 3 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-019-01633-6
Abstract: There are inconsistent reports regarding behavioral sex differences in the human navigation literature. This meta-analysis quantifies the overall magnitude of sex differences in large-scale navigation skills in a variety of paradigms and populations, and examines potential moderators, using 694 effect sizes from 266 studies and a multilevel analytic approach. Overall, male participants outperform female participants, with a small to medium effect size (d = 0.34 to 0.38). The type of task, the type of dependent variable and the testing environment significantly contribute to variability in effect sizes, although there are only a few situations in which differences are either nonexistent or very large. Pointing and recall tasks (and the deviation scores associated with them) show larger sex differences than distance estimation tasks or learning to criterion. Studies with children younger than 13 years showed much smaller effect sizes (d = .15) than older age groups. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding sex differences in human spatial navigation and identify avenues for future navigation research.
Keywords: Meta-analysis Sex difference Navigation Spatial skills
Check also Phenotypic and genetic evidence for a unifactorial structure of spatial abilities. Kaili Rimfeld, Nicholas G. Shakeshaft, Margherita Malanchini, Maja Rodic, Saskia Selzam, Kerry Schofield, Philip S. Dale, Yulia Kovas, and Robert Plomin. PNAS March 7, 2017 114 (10) 2777-2782; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1607883114
Abstract: There are inconsistent reports regarding behavioral sex differences in the human navigation literature. This meta-analysis quantifies the overall magnitude of sex differences in large-scale navigation skills in a variety of paradigms and populations, and examines potential moderators, using 694 effect sizes from 266 studies and a multilevel analytic approach. Overall, male participants outperform female participants, with a small to medium effect size (d = 0.34 to 0.38). The type of task, the type of dependent variable and the testing environment significantly contribute to variability in effect sizes, although there are only a few situations in which differences are either nonexistent or very large. Pointing and recall tasks (and the deviation scores associated with them) show larger sex differences than distance estimation tasks or learning to criterion. Studies with children younger than 13 years showed much smaller effect sizes (d = .15) than older age groups. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding sex differences in human spatial navigation and identify avenues for future navigation research.
Keywords: Meta-analysis Sex difference Navigation Spatial skills
Check also Phenotypic and genetic evidence for a unifactorial structure of spatial abilities. Kaili Rimfeld, Nicholas G. Shakeshaft, Margherita Malanchini, Maja Rodic, Saskia Selzam, Kerry Schofield, Philip S. Dale, Yulia Kovas, and Robert Plomin. PNAS March 7, 2017 114 (10) 2777-2782; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1607883114
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Interpretation of reports about crimes are affected by motivations to construct & protect our worldview; liberals attribute crimes more to religion for Christian rather than Muslim offenders; opposite effect for conservatives
Perpetrator Religion and Perceiver’s Political Ideology Affect Processing and Communication of Media Reports of Violence. Samia Habib, Levi Adelman, Bernhard Leidner, Shaheen Pasha, and Razvan Sibii. Social Psychology, July 1, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000385
Abstract: People’s interpretations of media reports about crimes may be biased by their motivations to construct and protect their worldviews and, relatedly, by criminals’ group membership. Two large-scale experiments (Ns = 248 and 1,115) investigated how American adults interpret reports of crimes committed by either a Christian or Muslim, and how these interpretations depend on political ideology. Results show liberals attributing crimes more to religion for Christian rather than Muslim offenders, with the opposite effect for conservatives. Importantly, these biases also influenced how people communicated the news report to others. Additionally, evidence suggests that attitudes toward Islam and not toward Muslims may explain these effects. Implications for how political ideology affects interpretation and communication of media portrayals of Muslims are discussed.
Keywords: media, political ideology, motivated reasoning, religion
Abstract: People’s interpretations of media reports about crimes may be biased by their motivations to construct and protect their worldviews and, relatedly, by criminals’ group membership. Two large-scale experiments (Ns = 248 and 1,115) investigated how American adults interpret reports of crimes committed by either a Christian or Muslim, and how these interpretations depend on political ideology. Results show liberals attributing crimes more to religion for Christian rather than Muslim offenders, with the opposite effect for conservatives. Importantly, these biases also influenced how people communicated the news report to others. Additionally, evidence suggests that attitudes toward Islam and not toward Muslims may explain these effects. Implications for how political ideology affects interpretation and communication of media portrayals of Muslims are discussed.
Keywords: media, political ideology, motivated reasoning, religion
Having a second child, which is common in Switzerland, correlates negatively with mothers’ life satisfaction; the mothers’ life satisfaction trajectories reflect work–family conflict
The Parenthood and Happiness Link: Testing Predictions from Five Theories. MaĆgorzata Mikucka, Ester Rizzi. European Journal of Population, July 3 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-019-09532-1
Abstract: This research studied the relationship between parenthood and life satisfaction in Switzerland. We tested predictions derived from set-point theory, the economic model of parenthood, the approaches that underscore work–family conflict and the psychological rewards from parenthood, and the ‘taste for children’ theory. We used Swiss Household Panel data (2000–2018) to analyse how life satisfaction changed during parenthood (fixed-effects regression) separately for a first child and a second child, mothers and fathers, and various socio-demographic groups. Our results showed that having a second child, which is common in Switzerland, correlates negatively with mothers’ life satisfaction. The observed patterns are consistent with the idea that mothers’ life satisfaction trajectories reflect work–family conflict. We found partial support for the set-point and the ‘taste for children’ theories. Our results did not support the approaches that emphasize the importance of psychological rewards from parenthood.
Keywords: Parenthood Fertility Life satisfaction Fixed-effects analysis Set-point theory Work–family conflict Costs of parenthood Taste for children
The online version of this article ( https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09532-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Abstract: This research studied the relationship between parenthood and life satisfaction in Switzerland. We tested predictions derived from set-point theory, the economic model of parenthood, the approaches that underscore work–family conflict and the psychological rewards from parenthood, and the ‘taste for children’ theory. We used Swiss Household Panel data (2000–2018) to analyse how life satisfaction changed during parenthood (fixed-effects regression) separately for a first child and a second child, mothers and fathers, and various socio-demographic groups. Our results showed that having a second child, which is common in Switzerland, correlates negatively with mothers’ life satisfaction. The observed patterns are consistent with the idea that mothers’ life satisfaction trajectories reflect work–family conflict. We found partial support for the set-point and the ‘taste for children’ theories. Our results did not support the approaches that emphasize the importance of psychological rewards from parenthood.
Keywords: Parenthood Fertility Life satisfaction Fixed-effects analysis Set-point theory Work–family conflict Costs of parenthood Taste for children
The online version of this article ( https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-019-09532-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
It can be suggested that standard hardcore pornography on the whole is not currently harmful, but there are not many benefits associated with it; & when taken to excess there may be problems that arise
Development and implications of pornography use: a narrative review.
James Binnie & Paula Reavey. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Jul 3
2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2019.1635250
Abstract: Pornography use is widespread and as such may have potential effects on the individuals that view it and on society itself. The question of whether pornography is harmful warrants investigation. A non-systematic narrative review of research literature pertaining to pornography was undertaken. Taking a historical and social perspective on pornography, the developments and implications of pornography use are critically analysed. How much pornography is currently used, who uses it and why is presented. The potential effects of pornography on the individual and on society are also described. From reviewing the literature, it can be suggested that standard hardcore pornography on the whole is not currently harmful, however, there are not many benefits associated with it. Research suggests that pornography is not harmful for the individual, however, like any substance or behaviour when taken to excess there may be problems that arise; a subsequent paper focuses on this important and under researched phenomena.
Keywords: Pornography use, narrative review, prevalence, harmfulness
Abstract: Pornography use is widespread and as such may have potential effects on the individuals that view it and on society itself. The question of whether pornography is harmful warrants investigation. A non-systematic narrative review of research literature pertaining to pornography was undertaken. Taking a historical and social perspective on pornography, the developments and implications of pornography use are critically analysed. How much pornography is currently used, who uses it and why is presented. The potential effects of pornography on the individual and on society are also described. From reviewing the literature, it can be suggested that standard hardcore pornography on the whole is not currently harmful, however, there are not many benefits associated with it. Research suggests that pornography is not harmful for the individual, however, like any substance or behaviour when taken to excess there may be problems that arise; a subsequent paper focuses on this important and under researched phenomena.
Keywords: Pornography use, narrative review, prevalence, harmfulness
Gender effects and cooperation in collective action: Mixed-sex groups were the most effective in cooperation, although cooperation level varied significantly; men demonstrated a higher level of trust and gratitude than women
Gender effects and cooperation in collective action: A laboratory experiment. Anastasia Peshkovskaya, Tatiana Babkina, Mikhail Myagkov. Rationality and Society, July 3, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043463119858788
Abstract: Numerous researches have indicated that men’s and women’s cooperation varied from no differences to significant differences under the influence of different contextual characteristics. In this study, we investigated how social factors together with a gender composition of a group affected gender differences in cooperation. We found that mixed-sex groups were the most effective in cooperation. At the same time, cooperation level in same-sex groups varied significantly. Besides, in same-sex groups, men demonstrated a higher level of trust and gratitude than women. Among women, in same-sex groups, a tendency toward mutual distrust and competition was revealed more often than among men.
Keywords: Behavior, cooperation, gender, group, group composition, mixed, prisoner’s dilemma, same-sex, social dilemma, trust
Abstract: Numerous researches have indicated that men’s and women’s cooperation varied from no differences to significant differences under the influence of different contextual characteristics. In this study, we investigated how social factors together with a gender composition of a group affected gender differences in cooperation. We found that mixed-sex groups were the most effective in cooperation. At the same time, cooperation level in same-sex groups varied significantly. Besides, in same-sex groups, men demonstrated a higher level of trust and gratitude than women. Among women, in same-sex groups, a tendency toward mutual distrust and competition was revealed more often than among men.
Keywords: Behavior, cooperation, gender, group, group composition, mixed, prisoner’s dilemma, same-sex, social dilemma, trust
The fusiform face area (FFA) responds to visual expertise; neuropsychological data says not only to process faces, it also contributes to non-face expertise recognition (cars, birds, radiographs)
P-curving the Fusiform Face Area: Meta-Analyses Support the Expertise Hypothesis. Edwin J. Burns, Taylor Arnold, Cindy M. Bukach. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, July 2 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.07.003
Highlights
• Meta-analyses show the fusiform face area (FFA) responds to visual expertise
• These effects are not due to publication bias or p-hacking
• The failed replications do not negate the evidence supporting the expertise account
• Neuropsychological data confirms the FFA contributes to non-face expertise recognition
Abstract: Psychologists have debated whether the right fusiform face area’s (FFA) responses are domain specific to faces, or domain general for certain object categories that we have visual expertise with. This latter domain general expertise account has been criticised for basing its assumptions upon studies that suffer from small participant numbers, small effects, and statistically significant p-values that are close to .05. An additional criticism is that these findings are difficult to replicate. A modern reader familiar with the replication crisis may therefore question whether the FFA’s expertise effect is real. The p-curve is a relatively new form of meta-analysis that enables researchers to identify whether there is evidential value for any given effect in the literature. We put the literature to the test by running p-curve analyses on all published expertise studies. Contrary to aforementioned criticisms, our meta-analyses confirm the right FFA’s expertise effect is based upon evidential value. We therefore review the broader literature to address additional criticisms of the expertise account and propose ways to improve replicability.
Highlights
• Meta-analyses show the fusiform face area (FFA) responds to visual expertise
• These effects are not due to publication bias or p-hacking
• The failed replications do not negate the evidence supporting the expertise account
• Neuropsychological data confirms the FFA contributes to non-face expertise recognition
Abstract: Psychologists have debated whether the right fusiform face area’s (FFA) responses are domain specific to faces, or domain general for certain object categories that we have visual expertise with. This latter domain general expertise account has been criticised for basing its assumptions upon studies that suffer from small participant numbers, small effects, and statistically significant p-values that are close to .05. An additional criticism is that these findings are difficult to replicate. A modern reader familiar with the replication crisis may therefore question whether the FFA’s expertise effect is real. The p-curve is a relatively new form of meta-analysis that enables researchers to identify whether there is evidential value for any given effect in the literature. We put the literature to the test by running p-curve analyses on all published expertise studies. Contrary to aforementioned criticisms, our meta-analyses confirm the right FFA’s expertise effect is based upon evidential value. We therefore review the broader literature to address additional criticisms of the expertise account and propose ways to improve replicability.
Trigger warnings had no significant effect on changes to affect or learning but did significantly increase perceptions of warnings as necessary (not for oneself, obviously, but for the others)
Boysen, G. A., Isaacs, R. A., Tretter, L., & Markowski, S. (2019). Trigger warning efficacy: The impact of warnings on affect, attitudes, and learning. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/stl0000150
Abstract: The purpose of trigger warnings is to prevent distress by giving prior notice about sensitive topics, but there is little empirical evidence to support their effectiveness in psychology education. The current research examined the effects of trigger warnings on affect, learning, and attitudes. Study 1 (N = 353) presented an online sample of adults with a video lecture about sexual assault, and participants reported their positive and negative affect before and after the video. They also took a test on the content and reported their attitudes about the necessity of warnings. Learning about sexual assault led to significant changes in affect for participants with and without personal experience related to the topic. Trigger warnings had no significant impact on changes in affect or test scores. However, participants who received a trigger warning had significantly increased belief that warnings are necessary for the topic of sexual assault. Study 2 (N = 412) replicated Study 1 using the topic of suicide. Trigger warnings had no significant effect on changes to affect or test scores but did significantly increase perceptions of warnings as necessary. Study 3 examined a sample of college students (N = 105) learning about sexual assault, and it also showed no significant effect of trigger warnings on changes to affect or test scores but a significant effect on belief that warnings are necessary. Overall, trigger warnings appear to have little impact on affect or learning, but they do increase people’s belief that warnings are necessary for sensitive topics.
Abstract: The purpose of trigger warnings is to prevent distress by giving prior notice about sensitive topics, but there is little empirical evidence to support their effectiveness in psychology education. The current research examined the effects of trigger warnings on affect, learning, and attitudes. Study 1 (N = 353) presented an online sample of adults with a video lecture about sexual assault, and participants reported their positive and negative affect before and after the video. They also took a test on the content and reported their attitudes about the necessity of warnings. Learning about sexual assault led to significant changes in affect for participants with and without personal experience related to the topic. Trigger warnings had no significant impact on changes in affect or test scores. However, participants who received a trigger warning had significantly increased belief that warnings are necessary for the topic of sexual assault. Study 2 (N = 412) replicated Study 1 using the topic of suicide. Trigger warnings had no significant effect on changes to affect or test scores but did significantly increase perceptions of warnings as necessary. Study 3 examined a sample of college students (N = 105) learning about sexual assault, and it also showed no significant effect of trigger warnings on changes to affect or test scores but a significant effect on belief that warnings are necessary. Overall, trigger warnings appear to have little impact on affect or learning, but they do increase people’s belief that warnings are necessary for sensitive topics.
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Factors of social partners' selection: who helps/harms others (signal of how someone may act towards ourselves) & who acts like/unlike others (capacity for coordination)
The selection of social partners based on the moral actions of the group vs. the individual. Brandon M. Woo, Jason Paul Mitchell. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abstract: The ability to select appropriate social partners enables the human species to better navigate the social world. Research has demonstrated that at least two factors influence the selection of social partners, even as early as infancy: (i) who helps vs. harms others (Hamlin et al., 2007), as a signal of how someone may act towards ourselves; and (ii) who acts like vs. unlike others (Powell & Spelke, 2018), as a signal of someone’s capacity for coordinated action. Although people have studied these two factors, they have done so independently. It is unknown whether these two factors interact. At times, they may even come into conflict. In the present study, we presented 128 participants with agents who help others, harm others, or do a non-moral action after the agents’ friends either have done the same thing, have done a different thing, or have not done anything. Participants rated people who acted like vs. unlike their friends as a better potential friend: (i) when the friends did a non-moral action; and (ii) even more strongly when the friends helped others. When the friends harmed others, however, participants rated people who acted like vs. unlike their friends as a worse potential friend.
Abstract: The ability to select appropriate social partners enables the human species to better navigate the social world. Research has demonstrated that at least two factors influence the selection of social partners, even as early as infancy: (i) who helps vs. harms others (Hamlin et al., 2007), as a signal of how someone may act towards ourselves; and (ii) who acts like vs. unlike others (Powell & Spelke, 2018), as a signal of someone’s capacity for coordinated action. Although people have studied these two factors, they have done so independently. It is unknown whether these two factors interact. At times, they may even come into conflict. In the present study, we presented 128 participants with agents who help others, harm others, or do a non-moral action after the agents’ friends either have done the same thing, have done a different thing, or have not done anything. Participants rated people who acted like vs. unlike their friends as a better potential friend: (i) when the friends did a non-moral action; and (ii) even more strongly when the friends helped others. When the friends harmed others, however, participants rated people who acted like vs. unlike their friends as a worse potential friend.
Nuclear Twin Family analysis: Political orientation is often assumed to be shaped by socialization processes, but previous studies have shown substantial genetic variance components in party affiliation, political attitudes & behaviors
Hufer, A., Kornadt, A. E., Kandler, C., & Riemann, R. (2019). Genetic and environmental variation in political orientation in adolescence and early adulthood: A Nuclear Twin Family analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000258
Abstract: Political orientation is often assumed to be shaped by socialization processes; however, previous studies have shown substantial genetic variance components in party affiliation, political attitudes and behaviors, or closely related personality traits. The majority of these studies have relied on the Classical Twin Design, which comes with restrictive assumptions, some of which are easily violated. Moreover, most analyses lack a perspective of age-group differences. In this study, we investigated political orientation in adolescents (age: 16–18) and young adults (age: 21–25) in a cross-sectional Nuclear Twin Family Design. We used data of the German TwinLife project, including data from same-sex twins reared together, their biological parents, and nontwin full siblings. We found genetic variation in political orientation, which was significant in the older cohort, possibly indicating an increasing importance of active gene-environment correlation from adolescence to adulthood. Individual differences in political orientation because of passive gene-environment correlation and shared environmental effects were larger in the younger cohort, substantiating the same theoretical consideration and the importance of shared socialization contexts for adolescents’ political views. By running Nuclear Twin Family model analyses, and considering age-group differences, as well as the relationship of political orientation with the Big Five personality traits, our study extended previous work, and resulted in more robust and fine-grained estimates of genetic and environmental sources of variance in political orientation. Therefore, it contributed to a better understanding of the complex nature–nurture interplay that forms political orientation in emerging adulthood.
Abstract: Political orientation is often assumed to be shaped by socialization processes; however, previous studies have shown substantial genetic variance components in party affiliation, political attitudes and behaviors, or closely related personality traits. The majority of these studies have relied on the Classical Twin Design, which comes with restrictive assumptions, some of which are easily violated. Moreover, most analyses lack a perspective of age-group differences. In this study, we investigated political orientation in adolescents (age: 16–18) and young adults (age: 21–25) in a cross-sectional Nuclear Twin Family Design. We used data of the German TwinLife project, including data from same-sex twins reared together, their biological parents, and nontwin full siblings. We found genetic variation in political orientation, which was significant in the older cohort, possibly indicating an increasing importance of active gene-environment correlation from adolescence to adulthood. Individual differences in political orientation because of passive gene-environment correlation and shared environmental effects were larger in the younger cohort, substantiating the same theoretical consideration and the importance of shared socialization contexts for adolescents’ political views. By running Nuclear Twin Family model analyses, and considering age-group differences, as well as the relationship of political orientation with the Big Five personality traits, our study extended previous work, and resulted in more robust and fine-grained estimates of genetic and environmental sources of variance in political orientation. Therefore, it contributed to a better understanding of the complex nature–nurture interplay that forms political orientation in emerging adulthood.
Direct evidence for transport of RNA from the mouse brain to the germline and offspring?
Direct evidence for transport of RNA from the mouse brain to the germline and offspring. Elizabeth A. O’Brien, Kathleen S. Ensbey, Bryan W. Day, Paul A. Baldock, Guy Barry. bioRxiv, June 28, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1101/686634
Abstract: The traditional concept that heritability occurs exclusively from the transfer of germline-restricted genetics is being challenged by the increasing accumulation of evidence confirming the existence of experience-dependent transgenerational inheritance. Transgenerational inheritance is emerging as a powerful mechanism for robustly transmitting phenotypic adaptations to offspring. However, questions remain unanswered as to how this heritable information is passed from somatic cells. Previous studies have implicated the critical involvement of RNA in heritable transgenerational effects and the high degree of mobility and genomic impact of RNAs in all organisms is an attractive model for the efficient transfer of genetic information. Here we show, for the first time, robust transport of RNA from the brain of an adult male mouse to sperm, and subsequently to offspring. Our observation of heritable genetic information originating from a somatic tissue may reveal a mechanism for how transgenerational effects are transmitted to offspring.
Abstract: The traditional concept that heritability occurs exclusively from the transfer of germline-restricted genetics is being challenged by the increasing accumulation of evidence confirming the existence of experience-dependent transgenerational inheritance. Transgenerational inheritance is emerging as a powerful mechanism for robustly transmitting phenotypic adaptations to offspring. However, questions remain unanswered as to how this heritable information is passed from somatic cells. Previous studies have implicated the critical involvement of RNA in heritable transgenerational effects and the high degree of mobility and genomic impact of RNAs in all organisms is an attractive model for the efficient transfer of genetic information. Here we show, for the first time, robust transport of RNA from the brain of an adult male mouse to sperm, and subsequently to offspring. Our observation of heritable genetic information originating from a somatic tissue may reveal a mechanism for how transgenerational effects are transmitted to offspring.
Traditional postpartum care: Alloparenting has been considered as an important factor in raising children; additional help can enhance further reproductive opportunity of new mother & her key role on enhancing the fitness of the newborn
Traditional postpartum care: Alloparenting from an evolutionary perspective. Sangkwon Woo, Mark V. Flinn, Robert S. Walker. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abtract: Variation of traditional postpartum care practices vary across different regions. Paternal and alloparental support, however, are common components in human cultures. Whereas many ethnographic studies have accumulated information on cultural variation during antepartum/postpartum period, such as food taboo and couvade, systematically comparative data sets have not been broadly considered on these cultural traits, mainly due to the limited comparability of diverse variables. Alloparental care has long been considered as an important factor in raising children, but it is also essential in that additional help can enhance further reproductive opportunity of new mother and her key role on enhancing the fitness of the newborn. Here we examine how traditional care practices might have helped the health of mothers and infants. Traditional care practices in East/Southeast Asian population and indigenous populations in American continents involve not only intensive treatment and isolation but also strong cold-avoidance, or ‘hot-cold theory’ based care. We collected information on temperature management after childbirth during postpartum care practice and utilized the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), a globally representative data of human populations. Using a phylogenetic supertree including the SCCS, the cultural evolutionary processes on the postpartum care are examined to indicate the association between genetic/linguistic phylogeny and vertical/horizontal transmission of cultural traits.
Abtract: Variation of traditional postpartum care practices vary across different regions. Paternal and alloparental support, however, are common components in human cultures. Whereas many ethnographic studies have accumulated information on cultural variation during antepartum/postpartum period, such as food taboo and couvade, systematically comparative data sets have not been broadly considered on these cultural traits, mainly due to the limited comparability of diverse variables. Alloparental care has long been considered as an important factor in raising children, but it is also essential in that additional help can enhance further reproductive opportunity of new mother and her key role on enhancing the fitness of the newborn. Here we examine how traditional care practices might have helped the health of mothers and infants. Traditional care practices in East/Southeast Asian population and indigenous populations in American continents involve not only intensive treatment and isolation but also strong cold-avoidance, or ‘hot-cold theory’ based care. We collected information on temperature management after childbirth during postpartum care practice and utilized the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), a globally representative data of human populations. Using a phylogenetic supertree including the SCCS, the cultural evolutionary processes on the postpartum care are examined to indicate the association between genetic/linguistic phylogeny and vertical/horizontal transmission of cultural traits.
‘I Do Not Exist’: Pathologies of Self Among Western Buddhists
‘I Do Not Exist’: Pathologies of Self Among Western Buddhists. Judith Pickering. Journal of Religion and Health, June 2019, Volume 58, Issue 3, pp 748–769. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10943-019-00794-x
Abstract: This paper presents a clinical case involving a patient suffering ‘depersonalisation’ who had a psychotic episode at a Buddhist retreat. Recent writing on possible psychological risks of meditation has discussed problems of depersonalisation associated with misunderstandings of the Buddhist conception of non-self (anÄtman) and emptiness (ĆĆ«nyatÄ). Drawing on the work of Winnicott and Bion, this article helps us to realise some of what is at stake in the failure to achieve and maintain an effective sense of self. What does Buddhist talk of non-self really mean? What conditions enable a creatively engaged and meaningful relational life, a sense of aliveness, human flourishing and a capacity for alterity?
Keywords: Depersonalisation Derealisation Non-self (anÄtman) Emptiness (ĆĆ«nyatÄ) Self Alterity Nihilism Jung Bion LĂ©vinas Winnicott
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‘Eve’
Eve 1 arrives for her first session. I hear the gate open, close, then silence. I go to open the door in welcome, but intuitively hold back. There is a tentative knock so quiet that I would not have heard it if I wasn’t already waiting by the door. I open it. Eyes downcast, she says very diffidently, ‘well, … here I am’. Once inside she sits on the edge of the couch. Like a marionette puppet with no puppet master to hold her up, she crumples into the cushions. Her face has a haunted, hollowed out look, covering profound anguish. Over the course of our analytic journey, her opening phrase ‘well, … here I am’ becomes something of a mantra, transmitting as yet unrealised potential. Like the ‘initial dream’ which encapsulates the patient’s psychological predicament, this simple phrase says it all. When she first came to see me, Eve was not ‘well’. She had not been psychologically ‘born’, so she was not yet ‘here’ on earth. She felt that she was no more than an amoeba-like semblance of pre-life with no form, no substance, no past, no future, no sense of on-going being. She was skinless and porous—the emotional states of others passed through her like the tides of an ocean. She was not ‘here’. There was no ‘I am’, no ‘I and thou’, no ‘we’, let alone any sense of being alive, real, interconnected with the world of others, let alone creativity, a sense of meaning, direction, or joie de vivre.
When, as a young adult, Eve found her way to a Tibetan Buddhist retreat, she initially felt great relief. Here was a philosophy that made sense of her states of non-being. Yet, due to excessive application of ascetic and meditative practices, Eve had a psychotic episode and was hospitalised. On discharge, she was advised to seek on-going psychological treatment. She sought me out as a Jungian because Jung, unlike Freud, did not dismiss spirituality.
Check also Potential negative consequences of mindfulness in the moral domain. Simon Schindler, Stefan Pfattheicher, Marc-Andre Reinhard. To appear in the European Journal of Social Psychology, January 2019, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/01/other-consequences-of-mindfulness-in.html
Abstract: This paper presents a clinical case involving a patient suffering ‘depersonalisation’ who had a psychotic episode at a Buddhist retreat. Recent writing on possible psychological risks of meditation has discussed problems of depersonalisation associated with misunderstandings of the Buddhist conception of non-self (anÄtman) and emptiness (ĆĆ«nyatÄ). Drawing on the work of Winnicott and Bion, this article helps us to realise some of what is at stake in the failure to achieve and maintain an effective sense of self. What does Buddhist talk of non-self really mean? What conditions enable a creatively engaged and meaningful relational life, a sense of aliveness, human flourishing and a capacity for alterity?
Keywords: Depersonalisation Derealisation Non-self (anÄtman) Emptiness (ĆĆ«nyatÄ) Self Alterity Nihilism Jung Bion LĂ©vinas Winnicott
---
‘Eve’
Eve 1 arrives for her first session. I hear the gate open, close, then silence. I go to open the door in welcome, but intuitively hold back. There is a tentative knock so quiet that I would not have heard it if I wasn’t already waiting by the door. I open it. Eyes downcast, she says very diffidently, ‘well, … here I am’. Once inside she sits on the edge of the couch. Like a marionette puppet with no puppet master to hold her up, she crumples into the cushions. Her face has a haunted, hollowed out look, covering profound anguish. Over the course of our analytic journey, her opening phrase ‘well, … here I am’ becomes something of a mantra, transmitting as yet unrealised potential. Like the ‘initial dream’ which encapsulates the patient’s psychological predicament, this simple phrase says it all. When she first came to see me, Eve was not ‘well’. She had not been psychologically ‘born’, so she was not yet ‘here’ on earth. She felt that she was no more than an amoeba-like semblance of pre-life with no form, no substance, no past, no future, no sense of on-going being. She was skinless and porous—the emotional states of others passed through her like the tides of an ocean. She was not ‘here’. There was no ‘I am’, no ‘I and thou’, no ‘we’, let alone any sense of being alive, real, interconnected with the world of others, let alone creativity, a sense of meaning, direction, or joie de vivre.
When, as a young adult, Eve found her way to a Tibetan Buddhist retreat, she initially felt great relief. Here was a philosophy that made sense of her states of non-being. Yet, due to excessive application of ascetic and meditative practices, Eve had a psychotic episode and was hospitalised. On discharge, she was advised to seek on-going psychological treatment. She sought me out as a Jungian because Jung, unlike Freud, did not dismiss spirituality.
Check also Potential negative consequences of mindfulness in the moral domain. Simon Schindler, Stefan Pfattheicher, Marc-Andre Reinhard. To appear in the European Journal of Social Psychology, January 2019, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/01/other-consequences-of-mindfulness-in.html
Monday, July 1, 2019
Return the favour: Preverbal infants represent direct reciprocity
Return the favour: Preverbal infants represent direct reciprocity. Joakim Haugane Zahl, Erik Kjos Fonn, Oda Eidjar, Lotte Thomsen. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abstract> If direct reciprocity sustains selective altruism and cooperation among non-kin (Trivers, 1971), early-developing representations of reciprocity might evolve to facilitate the navigation of such social relations. Here, we show that preverbal infants represent direct reciprocity. We familiarized 32 7-12 month-old infants to a scenario with three novel agents where the benefactor gave one of his two apples to the beneficiary who had none (the third agent simply had one apple). In test trials the former beneficiary now had two apples, while both other agents had none. In Expected trials it reciprocated by giving its surplus apple to its former benefactor, in Unexpected trials it instead gave it to the third agent. We found that nine-to-twelve month-olds looked longer at unexpected than expected trials (M_unexpected=27,8 seconds; M_expected=21,5; p<.0005, BF10>550), indicating that they expected agents to act reciprocally, but 7-8 month-olds did not. A second study demonstrated that reciprocity is generalized across resources (receiving an apple and returning a banana). Two control studies demonstrated that these effects are specific to resource distributions among self-propelled, intentional agents and not accounted for by low-level mechanisms of mere association.
Abstract> If direct reciprocity sustains selective altruism and cooperation among non-kin (Trivers, 1971), early-developing representations of reciprocity might evolve to facilitate the navigation of such social relations. Here, we show that preverbal infants represent direct reciprocity. We familiarized 32 7-12 month-old infants to a scenario with three novel agents where the benefactor gave one of his two apples to the beneficiary who had none (the third agent simply had one apple). In test trials the former beneficiary now had two apples, while both other agents had none. In Expected trials it reciprocated by giving its surplus apple to its former benefactor, in Unexpected trials it instead gave it to the third agent. We found that nine-to-twelve month-olds looked longer at unexpected than expected trials (M_unexpected=27,8 seconds; M_expected=21,5; p<.0005, BF10>550), indicating that they expected agents to act reciprocally, but 7-8 month-olds did not. A second study demonstrated that reciprocity is generalized across resources (receiving an apple and returning a banana). Two control studies demonstrated that these effects are specific to resource distributions among self-propelled, intentional agents and not accounted for by low-level mechanisms of mere association.
Pseudo-opinions (commenting on fictitious questions, even though they should not really have an opinion): Up to 69% of the respondents give a substantive opinion on the fictitious questionnaires; the better educated sin more.
Wolter F., Junkermann J. (2019) AntwortvaliditĂ€t in Survey-Interviews: MeinungsĂ€uĂerungen zu fiktiven Dingen (=approx. Response validity in survey interviews: expressions of opinion on fictitious things). In: Menold N., Wolbring T. (eds) QualitĂ€tssicherung sozialwissenschaftlicher Erhebungsinstrumente. Schriftenreihe der ASI - Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialwissenschaftlicher Institute. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. December 30 2018 DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-24517-7_11
Abstract (automatic translation): The article examines the extent and factors influencing the expression of pseudo-Opinions. By this is meant the often documented phenomenon, according to which respondents also comment on fictitious, fictitious questions, even though they should not really have an opinion. The relevance arises on the one hand from the assumption that some respondents do not know real existing question objects, but still express an opinion. The results of such surveys would be distorted. On the other hand, the study of pseudo-Opinions allows to study the process of socially desirable responses with respect to the extent and determinants of a response bias. In addition to sociodemographic influencing factors and measures for incentives through social desirability, in particular the response reaction time as a proxy for the degree of cognitive elaboration is examined for its influence. This is done on the basis of theoretical considerations on respondent behavior, i.a. from the frame selection theory. In the CATI study (N = 499) conducted in Mainz, respondents were asked three fictitious sights in Mainz. It turns out that the amount of response bias through pseudo-Opinions is considerable; Up to 69% of the respondents give a substantive opinion on the fictitious questionnaires. In addition, the propensity to distorting responses varies according to simple socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and education. An effect of the response response time can only be determined for one of the items. Here the latency acts negatively, i. Thinking longer when answering the question leads to fewer pseudo-opinions and thus less distorted data.
Abstract (automatic translation): The article examines the extent and factors influencing the expression of pseudo-Opinions. By this is meant the often documented phenomenon, according to which respondents also comment on fictitious, fictitious questions, even though they should not really have an opinion. The relevance arises on the one hand from the assumption that some respondents do not know real existing question objects, but still express an opinion. The results of such surveys would be distorted. On the other hand, the study of pseudo-Opinions allows to study the process of socially desirable responses with respect to the extent and determinants of a response bias. In addition to sociodemographic influencing factors and measures for incentives through social desirability, in particular the response reaction time as a proxy for the degree of cognitive elaboration is examined for its influence. This is done on the basis of theoretical considerations on respondent behavior, i.a. from the frame selection theory. In the CATI study (N = 499) conducted in Mainz, respondents were asked three fictitious sights in Mainz. It turns out that the amount of response bias through pseudo-Opinions is considerable; Up to 69% of the respondents give a substantive opinion on the fictitious questionnaires. In addition, the propensity to distorting responses varies according to simple socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and education. An effect of the response response time can only be determined for one of the items. Here the latency acts negatively, i. Thinking longer when answering the question leads to fewer pseudo-opinions and thus less distorted data.
From the “Terminal Essay” in Volume Ten of Sir Richard Francis Burton's translation of The Arabian Nights (1886)
Sir Richard Francis Burton
From the “Terminal Essay” in Volume Ten of his translation of The Arabian Nights (1886). http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/RB-ESSAY.HTM
[Note: Burton's footnotes in asterisks follow the paragraph; they are indented and in crimson. My own footnotes are numbered, in hypertext, and appear at the end of the essay in navy blue. I suggest reading my own Introduction first, and then this essay. See my note on the text at the very end of this document. — John Lauritsen]
Section D
The “execrabilis familia pathicorum” [1] first came before me by a chance of earlier life. In 1845, when Sir Charles Napier had conquered and annexed Sind, despite a fraction (mostly venal) which sought favour with the now defunct “Court of Directors to the Honourable East India Company”, the veteran began to consider his conquest with a curious eye. It was reported to him that KarĂĄchi, a townlet of some two thousand souls and distant not more than a mile from camp, supported no less than three lupanars or bordels, in which not women but boys and eunuchs, the former demanding nearly a double price,* lay for hire. Being then the only British officer who could speak Sindi, I was asked indirectly to make enquiries and to report upon the subject; and I undertook the task on express condition that my report should not be forwarded to the Bombay Government, from whom supporters of the Conqueror's policy could expect scant favour, mercy or justice. Accompanied by a Munshi, Mirza Mohammed Hosayn of Shiraz, and habited as a merchant, Mirza Abdullah the Bushiri,** I passed many an evening in the townlet, visited all the porneia and obtained the fullest details, which were duly despatched to Government House. But the “Devil's Brother” presently quitted Sind, leaving in his office my unfortunate official: this found its way with sundry other reports*** to Bombay and produced the expected result. A friend in the Secretariat informed me that my summary dismissal from the service had been formally proposed by one of Sir Charles Napier's successors, whose decease compels me parcere sepulto. But this excess of outraged modesty was not allowed.
* This detail especially excited the veteran's curiosity. The reason proved to be that the scrotum of the unmutilated boy could be used as a kind of bridle for directing the movements of the animal. I find nothing of the kind mentioned in the Sotadical literature of Greece and Rome, although the same cause might be expected everywhere to have the same effect. But in Mirabeau (KadhĂ©sch) a grand seigneur moderne, when his valet-de-chambre de confiance proposes to provide him with women instead of boys, exclaims, “Des femmes! eh! c'est comme si tu me servais un gigot sans manche.” See also infra for “Le poids du tisserand.”
** See Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, London, John Van Voorst, 1852.
*** Submitted to Government on Dec. 31, '47 and March 2, '48, they were printed in “Selections from the Records of the Government of India.” Bombay, New Series, No. xvii, Part 2, 1855. These are (1) Notes on the Population of Sind, etc., and (2) Brief Notes on the Modes of Intoxication, etc., written in collaboration with my late friend Assistant-Surgeon John E. Stocks, whose early death was a sore loss to scientific botany.
Subsequent enquiries in many and distant countries [2] enabled me to arrive at the following conclusions: —
1. There exists what I shall call a “Sotadic Zone”, bounded westwards by the northern shores of the Mediterranean (N. Lat. 43°) and by the southern (N. Lat. 30°). Thus the depth would be 780 to 800 miles including meridional France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa from Marocco to Egypt.
2. Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and ChaldĂŠa, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab and Kashmir.
3. In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China, Japan and Turkistan.
4. It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World where, at the time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some exceptions, an established racial institution.
5. Within the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined practise it only sporadically amid the opprobrium of their fellows who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation and look upon it with the liveliest disgust. [3]
Before entering into topographical details concerning Pederasty, which I hold to be geographical and climatic, not racial, I must offer a few considerations of its cause and origin. We must not forget that the love of boys has its noble sentimental side. The Platonists and pupils of the Academy, followed by the Sufis or Moslem Gnostics, held such affection, pure as ardent, to be the beau idĂ©al which united in man's soul the creature with the Creator. Professing to regard youths as the most cleanly and beautiful objects in this phenomenal world, they declared that by loving and extolling the chef-d'Ćuvre, corporeal and intellectual, of the Demiurgus, disinterestedly and without any admixture of carnal sensuality, they are paying the most fervent adoration to the Causa causans. They add that such affection, passing as it does the love of women, is far less selfish than fondness for and admiration of the other sex which, however innocent, always suggest sexuality;* and Easterns add that the devotion of the moth to the taper is purer and more fervent than the Bulbul's love for the Rose. Amongst the Greeks of the best ages the system of boy-favourites was advocated on considerations of morals and politics. The lover undertook the education of the beloved through precept and example, while the two were conjoined by a tie stricter than the fraternal. Hieronymus the Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the vigorous disposition of youths and the confidence engendered by their association often led to the overthrow of tyrannies. Socrates declared that “a most valiant army might be composed of boys and their lovers; for that of all men they would be most ashamed to desert one another.” And even Virgil, despite the foul flavour of Formosum pastor Corydon, [4] could write:
Nisus amore pio pueri.
* Glycon the Courtesan in Athen. xiii. 84 declares that “boys are handsome only when they resemble women”; and so the Learned Lady in The Nights (vol. v, 160) declares “Boys are likened to girls because folks say, Yonder boy is like a girl.” For the superior physical beauty of the human male compared with the female, [5] see The Nights, vol. iv. 15; and the boy's voice before it breaks excels that of any diva.
The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically. Hence the male /féminisme/ whereby the man becomes patiens as well as agens, and the woman a tribade, a votary of mascula Sappho,* Queen of Frictrices or Rubbers.** Prof. Mantegazza claims to have discovered the cause of this pathological love, this perversion of the erotic sense, one of the marvellous list of amorous vagaries which deserve, not prosecution but the pitiful care of the physician and the study of the psychologist. [6] According to him the nerves of the rectum and the genitalia, in all cases closely connected, are abnormally so in the pathic who obtains, by intromission, the venereal orgasm which is usually sought through the sexual organs. So amongst women there are tribads who can procure no pleasure except by foreign objects introduced a posteriori. Hence his threefold distribution of sodomy; (1) Periphic or anatomical, caused by an unusual distribution of the nerves and their hyperÊsthesia; (2) Luxurious, when love a tergo is preferred on account of the narrowness of the passage; and (3) the Psychical. But this is evidently superficial: the question is what causes this neuropathy, this abnormal distribution and condition of the nerves.***
* “Mascula”, from the priapiscus, the over-development of clitoris (the veretrum muliebre, in Arabic Abu TartĂșr, habens cristam) which enabled her to play the man. Sappho (nat. B.C. 612) has been retoillĂ©e like Mary Stuart, La Brinvilliers, Marie Antoinette and a host of feminine names which have a savour not of sanctity. Maximus of Tyre (Dissert. xxiv.) declares that the Eros of Sappho was Socratic and that Gyrinna and Atthis were as Alcibiades and Chermides to Socrates: Ovid, who could consult documents now lost, takes the same view in the Letter of Sappho to Phaon and in Tristia ii. 265
Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas?
Suidas supports Ovid. Longinus eulogises the ΔÏÏÏÎčÎșη ΌαΜÎčα [erotike mania] (a term applied only to carnal love) of the far-famed Ode to Atthis:——
Ille mĂź par esse Deo videtur * * *
(Heureux! qui prĂšs de toi pour toi seule soupire * * *
(Blest as th' immortal gods is he, etc.)
By its love symptoms, suggesting that possession is the sole cure for passion Erasistratus discovered the love of Antiochus for Stratonice. Mure (Hist. of Greek Literature, 1850) speaks of the Ode to Aphrodite (Frag. 1) as “one in which the whole volume of Greek literature offers the most powerful concentration into one brilliant focus of the modes in which amatory concupiscence can display itself.” But Bernhardy, Bode, Richter, K. O. MĂŒller and esp. Welcker have made Sappho a model of purity, much like some of our dull wits who have converted Shakespeare, that most debauched genius, into a good British bourgeois. [7]
** The Arabic SahhĂĄkah, the Tractatrix of Subigitatrix, who has been noticed in vol. iv. 134. Hence to Lesbianise (λΔÏÎČÎčζΔÎčÎœ) and tribassare (ÏÏÎčÎČΔÏΞαÎč) the former applied to the love of woman for woman and the latter to its mĂ©canique: this is either natural, as friction of the labia and insertion of the clitoris when unusually developed, or artificial by means of the fascinum, the artificial penis (the Persian “MayĂĄjang”); the patte de chat, the banana-fruit and a multitude of other succedanea. As this feminine perversion is only glanced at in The Nights I need hardly enlarge upon the subject.
*** Plato (Symp.) is probably mystical when he accounts for such passions by there being in the beginning three species of humanity, men, women and men-women or androgynes. When the latter were destroyed by Zeus for rebellion, the two others were individually divided into equal parts. Hence each division seeks its other half in the same sex; the primitive man prefers men and the primitive woman women. C'est beau, but — is it true? The idea was probably derived from Egypt which supplied the Hebrews with androgynic humanity and thence it passed to extreme India, where Shiva as ArdhanĂĄrĂ was male on one side and female on the other side of the body, combining paternal and maternal qualities and functions. The first creation of humans (Gen. i. 27) was hermaphrodite (= Hermes and Venus) masculum et fĆminam creavit eos — male and female created He them — on the sixth day, with the command to increase and multiply (ibid. v. 28) while Eve the woman was created subsequently. Meanwhile, say certain Talmudists, Adam carnally copulated with all races of animals. See L'Anandryne in Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, where Antoinette Bourgnon laments the undoubling which disfigured the work of God, producing monsters incapable of independent self-reproduction like the vegetable kingdom.
As Prince Bismarck finds a moral difference between the male and female races of history, so I suspect a mixed physical temperament effected by the manifold subtle influences massed together in the word climate. Something of the kind is necessary to explain the fact of this pathological love extending over the greater portion of the habitable world, without any apparent connection of race or media, from the polished Greek to the cannibal Tupi of the Brazil. Walt Whitman speaks of the ashen grey faces of onanists: the faded colours, the puffy features and the unwholesome complexion of the professed pederast with his peculiar cachectic expression, indescribable but once seen never forgotten, stamp the breed, and Dr. G. Adolph is justified in declaring “Alle Gewohnneits-paederasten erkennen sich einander schnell, oft mit einem Blick.” [8] This has nothing in common with the fĂ©minisme which betrays itself in the pathic by womanly gait, regard and gesture: it is a something sui generis; and the same may be said of the colour and look of the young priest, who honestly refrains from women and their substitutes. Dr. Tardieu, in his well-known work, “Etude Medico-lĂ©gale sur les Attentats aux MĆurs”, and Dr. Adolph note a peculiar infundibuliform disposition of the “After” and a smoothness and want of folds even before any abuse has taken place, together with special forms of the male organs in confirmed pederasts. But these observations have been rejected by Caspar, Hoffman, Brouardel and Dr. J H. Henry Coutagne (Notes sur la Sodomie, Lyon 1880), and it is a medlcal question whose discussion would here be out of place.
The origin of pederasty is lost in the night of ages; but its historique has been carefully traced by many writers, especially Virey,* Rosenbaum** and M. H. E. Meier.*** The ancient Greeks who, like the modern Germans, invented nothing but were great improvers of what other races invented, attributed the formal apostolate of Sotadism to Orpheus, whose stigmata were worn by the Thracian women;
——Omnemque refugerat Orpheus
Foemineam venerem;——
Ille etiam Thracum populis fuit auctor, amorem
In teneres transferre mares: citraque juventam
Ătatis breve ver, et primos carpere flores.
Ovid. Met. x. 79-85.
Euripides proposed LaĂŻus father of Oedipus as the inaugurator, whereas TimĂŠus declared that the fashion of making favourites of boys was introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian reasons said Aristotle (Pol. ii, 10) attributing it to Minos. Herodotus, however, knew far better, having discovered (ii. c. 80) that the Orphic and Bacchic rites were originally Egyptian. But the Father of History was a traveller and an annalist rather than an archaeologist and he tripped in the following passage (i. c. 135), “As soon as they (the Persians) hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own, and hence, among other matters, they have learned from the Hellenes a passion for boys” (“unnatural lust”, says modest Rawlinson). Plutarch (De Malig. Herod. xiii.)**** asserts with much more probability that the Persians used eunuch boys according to the /Mos Graeciae/, long before they had seen the Grecian main.
* De la Femme, Paris, 1827
** Die Lustseuche des Alterthum's, Halle, 1839.
*** See his exhaustive article on (Grecian) “Paederastie” in the Allgemeine EncyclopĂŠdie of Ersch and Gruber, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1837. He carefully traces it through the several states, Dorians, Aeolians, Ionians, the Attic cities and those of Asia Minor. For these details I must refer my readers to M. Meier; a full account of these would fill a volume not the section of an essay.
**** Against which see Henri Estienne, Apologie pour HĂ©rodote, a society satire of xvith century, lately reprinted by Liseux.
In the Holy Books of the Hellenes, Homer and Hesiod, dealing with the heroic ages, there is no trace of pederasty, although, in a long subsequent generation, Lucian suspected Achilles and Patroclus as he did Orestes and Pylades, Theseus and Pirithous. Homer's praises of beauty are reserved for the feminines, especially his favourite Helen. But the Dorians of Crete seem to have commended the abuse to Athens and Sparta and subsequently imported it into Tarentum, Agrigentum and other colonies. Ephorus in Strabo (x. 4 § 21) gives a curious account of the violent abduction of beloved boys (ÏαÏαÏÏαΞΔΜÏÎżÏ) by the lover (ΔÏαÏÏÎ·Ï ); of the obligations of the ravisher (ÏÎčληÏÏÏ) to the favourite (ÎșλΔÎčÎœÎżÏ)* and of the “marriage-ceremonies” which lasted two months. See also Plato, Laws i. c. 8. Servius (Ad Ăneid. x. 325) informs us “De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Laconas et in totam Graeciam translatum est.” The Cretans and afterwards their apt pupils the Chalcidians held it disreputable for a beautiful boy to lack a lover. Hence Zeus the national Doric god of Crete loved Ganymede;** Apollo, another Dorian deity, loved Hyacinth, and Hercules, a Doric hero who grew to be a sun-god, loved Hylas and a host of others: thus Crete sanctified the practice by the examples of the gods and demigods. But when legislation came, the subject had qualified itself for legal limitation and as such was undertaken by Lycurgus and Solon, according to Xenophon (Lac. ii. 13), who draws a broad distinction between the honest love of boys and dishonest (αÎčÏÎčÎżÏÏÎżÏ) lust. They both approved of pure pederastĂa, like that of Harmodius and Aristogiton; but forbade it with serviles because degrading to a free man. Hence the love of boys was spoken of like that of women (Plato: Phaedrus; Repub. vi. c. 19 and Xenophon, Symp. iv. 10) e.g., “There was once a boy, or rather a youth, of exceeding beauty and he had very many lovers” — this is the language of Hafiz and Sa'adi. Ăschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were allowed to introduce it upon the stage, for “many men were as fond of having boys for their favourites as women for their mistresses; and this was a frequent fashion in many well-regulated cities of Greece.” Poets like AlcĂŠus, Anacreon, Agathon and Pindar affected it and Theognis sang of a “beautiful boy in the flower of his youth”. The statesmen Aristides and Themistocles quarrelled over Stesileus of Teos; and Pisistratus loved Charmus who first built an altar to Puerile Eros, while Charmus loved Hippias son of Pisistratus. Demosthenes the Orator took into keeping a youth called Cnosion greatly to the indignation of his wife. Xenophon loved Clinias and Autolycus; Aristotle, Hermeas, Theodectes*** and others; Empedocles, Pausanias; Epicurus, Pytocles; Aristippus, Eutichydes, and Zeno with his Stoics had a philosophic disregard for women, affecting only pederastĂa. A man in Athenaeus (iv. c. 40) left in his will that certain youths he had loved should fight like gladiators at his funeral; and Charicles in Lucian abuses Callicratidas for his love of “sterile pleasures”. Lastly there was the notable affair of Alcibiades and Socrates, the “sanctus paederasta”**** being violemment soupçonnĂ© when under the mantle:— non semper sine plagĂą ab eo surrexit. Athanaeus (v. c. 13) declares that Plato represents Socrates as absolutely intoxicated with his passion for Alcibiades.***** The ancients seem to have held the connection impure, or Juvenal would not have written:—
Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos,
followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of “Socratici pĂŠdicones”. It is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of the master of Hellenic Sophrosyne, the “Christian before Christianity”; but such a world-wide term as Socratic love can hardly be explained by the lucus-a-non-lucendo theory. We are overapt to apply our nineteenth century prejudices and prepossessions to the morality of the ancient Greeks who would have specimen'd such squeamishness in Attic salt. [9]
* In Sparta the lover was called ΔÎčÏÏÎœÎ·Î»Î±Ï or ΔÎčÏÏÎœÎ·Î»ÎżÏ and the beloved as in Thessaly αÎčÏÎ±Ï or αÎčÏηÏ.
** The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. Zeus, who became Jupiter, was an ancient king, according to the Cretans, who were entitled liars because they showed his burial-place. From a deified ancestor he would become a local god, like the Hebrew Jehovah as opposed to Chemosh of Moab; the name would gain amplitude by long time and distant travel and the old island chieftain would end in becoming the Demiurgus. Ganymede (who possibly gave rise to the old Lat. “Catamitus”) was probably some fair Phrygian boy (“son of Tros”) who in process of time became a symbol of the wise man seized by the eagle (perspicacity) to be raised amongst the Immortals; and the chaste myth simply signified that only the prudent are loved by the gods. But it rotted with age as do all things human. For the PederastĂa of the Gods see Bayle under Chrysippe.
*** See Dissertation sur les idĂ©es morales des Grecs et sur les dangers de lire Platon. Par M. AudĂ©, Bibliophile, Rouen, Lemonnyer, 1879. This is the pseudonym of the late Octave Delepierre, who published with Gay, but not the Editio Princeps — which, if I remember rightly, contains much more matter.
**** The phrase of J. Matthias Gesner, Comm. Reg. Soc. Gottingen i. 1-32. It was founded upon Erasmus' “Sancte Socrate, ora pro nobis”, and the article was translated by M. Alcide Bonmaire, Paris, Liseux, 1877.
***** The subject has employed many a pen, e.g. Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola, D. P. A. (supposed to be Pietro Aretino [10] — ad captandum?), Oranges, par Juann VVart, 1652: small square 8vo. of pp. 102, including 3 preliminary pp. and at end an unpaged leaf with 4 sonnets, almost Venetian, by V. M. There is a re-impression of the same date, a small 12mo of longer format, pp. 124 with pp. 2 for sonnets: in 1862 the Imprimerie Raçon printed 102 copies in 8vo. of pp. iv.-108, and in 1863 it was condemned by the police as a liber spurcissimus atque execrandus de criminis sodomici laude et arte. This work produced “Alcibiade Enfant Ă l'Ă©cole”, traduit pour la premiĂšre fois de l'Italien de Ferrante Pallavicini, Amsterdam, chez l'Ancien Pierre Marteau, mdccclxvi. Pallavicini (nat. 1618), who wrote against Rome, was beheaded, ĂŠt. 26 (March 5, 1644) at Avignon in 1644 by the vengeance of the Barberini: he was a bel esprit dĂ©rĂ©glĂ©, nourri d'Ă©tudes antiques and a Memb. of the Acad. Degl' Incogniti. His peculiarities are shown by his “Opere Scelte”, 2 vols. 12mo, Villafranca, mdclxiii.; these do not include Alcibiade Fanciullo, a dialogue between Philotimus and Alcibiades which seems to be a mere skit at the Jesuits and their PĂ©chĂ© philosophique. Then came the “Dissertation sur l'Alcibiade fanciullo a scola” traduit de l'Italien de Giambattista Baseggio et accompagnĂ©e de notes et d'une post-face par un bibliophile français (M. Gustave Brunet, Librarian of Bordeaux), Paris. J. Gay, 1861 — an octavo of pp. 78 (paged), 254 copies. The same Baseggio printed in 1850 his Disquisizioni (23 copies) and claims for F. Pallavicini the authorship of Alcibiades which the Manuel du Libraire wrongly attributes to M. Girol. Adda in 1859. I have heard of but not seen the “Amator fornaceus, amator ineptus” (Palladi, 1633) supposed by some to be the origin of Alcibiade Fanciullo: but most critics consider it a poor and insipid production.
The Spartans, according to Agnon the Academic (confirmed by Plato, Plutarch and Cicero), treated boys and girls in the same way before marriage: hence Juvenal (xi. 173) uses “LacedĂŠmonius” for a pathic and other writers apply it to a tribade. After the Peloponnesian War, which ended in B.C. 404, the use became merged in the abuse. Yet some purity must have survived, even amongst the BĆotians who produced the famous Narcissus,* described by Ovid (Met. iii. 339):——
Multi illum juvenes, multĂŠ cupiere puellĂŠ;
Nulli illum juvenes, nullĂŠ tetigere puellĂŠ:**
for Epaminondas, whose name is mentioned with three beloveds, established the Holy Regiment composed of mutual lovers, testifying the majesty of Eros and preferring to a discreditable life a glorious death. Philip's reflections on the fatal field of Chaeroneia form their fittest epitaph. At last the Athenians, according to Ăschines, officially punished Sodomy with death; [11] but the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of KarĂĄchi; the Porneia and Pornoboskeia, where slaves and pueri venales “stood”, as the term was, near the Pnyx, the city walls and a certain tower, also about Lycabettus (Ăsch. contra Tim.); and paid a fixed tax to the state. The pleasures of society in civilized Greece seem to have been sought chiefly in the heresies of love — Hetairesis*** and Sotadism.
* The word is from ΜαÏÎșη, numbness, torpor, narcotism: the flowers, being loved by the infernal gods, were offered to the Furies. Narcissus and Hippolytus are often assumed as types of morosa voluptas, masturbation and clitorisation for nymphomania: certain mediaeval writers found in the former a type of the Saviour; and Mirabeau a representation of the androgynous or first Adam: to me Narcissus suggests the Hindu Vishnu absorbed in the contemplation of his own perfections.
** The verse of Ovid is parallel'd by the song of Al-ZĂĄhir al-Jazari (Ibn Khall. iii. 720).
Illum impuberem amaverunt mares; puberem feminĂŠ.
Gloria Deo! nunquam amatoribus carebit.
*** The venerable society of prostitutes contained three chief classes. The first and lowest were the Dicteriads, so called from Diete (Crete) who imitated Pasiphaë, wife of Minos, in preferring a bull to a husband; above them was the middle class, the AleutridÊ who were the Almahs or professional musicians, and the aristocracy was represented by the Hetairai, whose wit and learning enabled them to adorn more than one page of Grecian history. The grave Solon, who had studied in Egypt, established a vast Dicterion (Philemon in his Delphica), or bordel, whose proceeds swelled the revenue of the Republic.
It is calculated that the French of the sixteenth century had four hundred names for the parts genital and three hundred for their use in coition. The Greek vocabulary is not less copious, and some of its pederastic terms, of which Meier gives nearly a hundred, and its nomenclature of pathologic love are curious and picturesque enough to merit quotation.
To live the life of Abron (the Argive) i.e. that of a ÏαÏÏÏÎœ, pathic or passive lover.
The Agathonian song.
AischrourgĂa = dishonest love, also called AkolasĂa, AkrasĂa, ArrenokoitĂa, etc.
Alcinoan youths, or “non-conformists”,
In cute curandĂą plus ĂŠquo operata Juventus.
Alegomenos, the “unspeakable”, as the pederast was termed by the Council of Ancyra: also the Agrios, Apolaustus and Akolastos.
Androgyne, of whom Ansonius wrote (Epig. lxviii. 15):——
Ecce ego sum factus femina de puero.
Badas and badizein = clunes torquens: also BĂĄtalos = a catamite.
Catapygos, Katapygosyne = puerarius and catadactylium from Dactylion, the ring, used in the sense of Nerissa's, but applied to the corollarium puerile.
CinĂŠdus (Kinaidos), the active lover (ÏÎżÎčÏÎœ) derived either from his kinetics or quasi ÎșÏ ÏÎœ αÎčÎŽÏÏ = dog-modest. Also SpatalocinĂŠdus (lasciviĂą fluens) = a fair Ganymede.
Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in EubĆa, a city famed for love Ă posteriori; mostly applied to le lĂ©chement des testicules by children.
ClazomenĂŠ = the buttocks, also a sotadic disease, so called from the Ionian city devoted to Aversa Venus; also used of a pathic,
— et tergo femina pube vir est.
Embasicoetas, prop. a link-boy at marriages, also a “night-cap” drunk before bed and lastly an effeminate; one who perambulavit omnium cubilia (Catullus). See Encolpius' pun upon the Embasicete in Satyricon, cap. iv.
Epipedesis, the carnal assault.
Geiton lit. “neighbour” the beloved of Encolpius, which has produced the Fr. Giton = Bardache, Ital. bardascia from the Arab. Baradaj, a captive, a slave; the augm. form is Polygeiton.
Hippias (tyranny of) when the patient (woman or boy) mounts the agent. Aristoph. Vesp. 502. So also Kelitizein = peccare superne or equum agitare supernum of Horace.
Mokhtheria, depravity with boys.
Paidika, whence pĂŠdicare (act.) and pĂŠdicari (pass.): so in the Latin poet:—
PEnelopes primam DIdonis prima sequatur,
Et primam CAni, syllaba prima REmi.
Pathikos, Pathicus, a passive, like Malakos (malacus, mollis, facilis), Malchio, Trimalchio (Petronius), Malta, Maltha and in Hor. (Sat. ii. 25):—
Malthinus tunicis demissis ambulat.
Praxis = the malpractice.
Pygisma = buttockry, because most actives end within the nates, being too much excited for further intromission.
PhĆnicissare (ÏÎżÎčÎœÎčÎșÎčζΔÎčÎœ) = cunnilingere in tempore menstruum, quia hoc vitium in Phoenicia generata solebat (Thes. Erot. Ling. Latinae); also irrumer en miel.
Phicidissare, denotat actum per canes commissum quando lambunt cunnos vel testiculos (Suetonius): also applied to pollution of childhood.
Samorium flores (Erasmus, Prov. xxiii.) alluding to the androgynic prostitutions of Samos.
Siphniassare (ÏÎčÏÎœÎčαζΔÎčÎœ), from Siphnos, hod. Sifanto Island) = digito podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus (see Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).
Thrypsis = the rubbing.
PederastĂa had in Greece, I have shown, its noble and ideal side: Rome, however, borrowed her malpractices, like her religion and polity, from those ultra-material Etruscans and debauched with a brazen face. Even under the Republic Plautus (Casin. ii. 21) makes one of his characters exclaim, in the utmost sang-froid, “Ultro te, amator, apage te a dorso meo!” With increased luxury the evil grew and Livy notices (xxxix. 13), at the Bacchanalia, plura virorum inter sese quam fĆminarum stupra. There were individual protests; for instance, S. Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus (Consul U.C. 612) punished his son for dubia castitas; and a private soldier, C. Plotius, killed his military Tribune, Q. Luscius, for unchaste proposals. The Lex Scantinia (Scatinia?), popularly derived from Scantinius the Tribune and of doubtful date (B.C. 226.?), attempted to abate the scandal by fine and the Lex Julia by death; [12] but they were trifling obstacles to the flood of infamy which surged in with the Empire. No class seems then to have disdained these “sterile pleasures”: l'on n'attachoit point alors Ă cette espĂšce d'amour une note d'infamie, comme en paĂŻs de chrĂ©tientĂ©, says Bayle under “Anacreon”. The great CĂŠsar, the CinĂŠdus calvus of Catullus, was the husband of all the wives and the wife of all the husbands in Rome (Suetonius, cap. lii.); and his soldiers sang in his praise “Gallias CĂŠsar subegit, Nicomedes CĂŠsarem” (Suet. cies. xlix.); whence his sobriquet “Fornix Bithynicus”. Of Augustus the people chanted
Videsne ut CinĂŠdus orbem digito temperet?
Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which the spinthriĂŠ (lit. women's bracelets) were connected in a chain by the bond of flesh* Seneca (QuĂŠst. Nat.): Of this refinement, which in the earlier part of the nineteenth century was renewed by sundry Englishmen at Naples, Ausonius wrote (Epig. cxix. I),
Tres uno in lecto: stuprum duo perpetiuntur;
And Martial had said (xii. 43);——
Quo symplegmate quinque cupulentur;
Qua plures teneantur a catena; etc.
Ausonius recounts of Caligula he so lost patience that he forcibly entered the priest M. Lepidus, before the sacrifice was completed. The beautiful Nero was formally married to Pythagoras (or Doryphoros) and afterwards took to wife Sporus who was first subjected to castration of a peculiar fashion; he was then named Sabina after the deceased spouse and claimed queenly honours. The “Othonis et Trajani pathici” were famed; the great Hadrian openly loved AntinoĂŒs and the wild debaucheries of Heliogabalus seem only to have amused, instead of disgusting, the Romans.
* This and Saint Paul (Romans i. 27) suggested to Caravaggio his picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati.
Uranopolis allowed public lupanaria where adults and meritorii pueri, who began their career as early as seven years, stood for hire: the inmates of these cauponĂŠ wore sleeved tunics and dalmatics like women. As in modern Egypt pathic boys, we learn from Catullus, haunted the public baths. DebauchĂ©es had signals like freemasons whereby they recognized one another. The Greek SkematĂzein was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had eggs, tĂąter si les poulettes ont l'Ćuf: hence the Athenians called it Catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus impudicus or infamis, the “medical finger”* of Rabelais and the Chiromantists. Another sign was to scratch the head with the minimus — digitulo caput scabere (Juv. ix. 133).** The prostitution of boys was first forbidden by Domitian; but Saint Paul, a Greek, had formally expressed his abomination of Le Vice (Rom. i. 26; i. Cor. vi. 8); and we may agree with Grotius (de Verit. ii. c. 13) that early Christianity did much to suppress it. At last the Emperor Theodosius punished it with fire as a profanation, because sacro-sanctum esse debetur hospitium virilis animĂŠ.
* Properly speaking “Medicus” is the third or ring-finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses,
Est pollex Veneris; sed Jupiter indice gaudet
Saturnus medium; Sol medicumque tenet.
** So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput. The modern Italian does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and medius to suggest the clitoris.
In the pagan days of imperial Rome her literature makes no difference between boy and girl. Horace naĂŻvely says (Sat. ii. 118):—
Ancilla aut verna est prĂŠsto puer;
and with Hamlet, but in a dishonest sense:—
— Man delights me not
Nor woman neither.
Similarly the Spaniard Martial, who is a mine of such pederastic allusions (xi. 46):—
Sive puer arrisit, sive puella tibi.
That marvellous Satyricon which unites the wit of MoliĂšre* with the debaucheries of Piron, whilst the writer has been described, like Rabelais, as purissimus in impuritate, is a kind of Triumph of Pederasty. Geiton the hero, a handsome curly-pated hobbledehoy of seventeen, with his cĂąlinerie and wheedling tongue, is courted like one of the sequor sexus: his lovers are inordinately jealous of him and his desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart. But no dialogue between man and wife in extremis could be more pathetic than that in the scene where shipwreck is imminent. Elsewhere everyone seems to attempt his neighbour: a man alte succinctus assails Ascyltos; Lycus, the Tarentine skipper, would force Encolpius and so forth: yet we have the neat and finished touch (cap. vii.):—— “The lamentation was very fine (the dying man having manumitted his slaves) albeit his wife wept not as though she loved him. How were it had he not behaved to her so well?”
* What can be wittier than the now trite “Tale of the Ephesian Matron”, whose dry humour is worthy of The Nights? No wonder that it has made the grand tour of the world. It is found in the neo-PhĂŠdrus, the tales of MusĂŠus and in the Septem Sapientes as the “Widow which was comforted”. As the “Fabliau de la Femme qui se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari”, it tempted BrantĂŽme and La Fontaine; and Abel RĂ©musat shows in his Contes Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom. Mr. Walter K. Kelly remarks that the most singular place for such a tale is the “Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying” by Jeremy Taylor, who introduces it into his chapt. v — “Of the Contingencies of Death and Treating our Dead”. But in those days divines were not mealy-mouthed.
Erotic Latin glossaries* give some ninety words connected with Pederasty and some, which “speak with Roman simplicity”, are peculiarly expressive. “Aversa Venus” alludes to women being treated as boys: hence Martial, translated by Piron, addresses Mistress Martial (x. 44):—
Teque puta, cunnos, uxor, habere duos.
The capillatus or comatus is also called calamistratus, the darling curled with crisping-irons; and he is an Effeminatus, i.e. qui muliebria patitur; or a Delicatus, slave or eunuch for the use of the Draucus, Puerarius (boy-lover) or Dominus (Mart. xi. 71). The Divisor is so called from his practice Hillas dividere or cĂŠdere, something like Martial's cacare mentulam or Juvenal's Hesternae occurrere cĂŠnĂŠ. Facere vicibus (Juv. vii. 238), incestare se invicem or mutuum facere (Plaut. Trin. ii. 437), is described as “a puerile vice”, in which the two take turns to be active and passive: they are also called Gemelli and Fratres = compares in pĂŠdicatione. Illicita libido is = praepostera seu postica Venus, and is expressed by the picturesque phrase indicare (seu incurvare) aliquem. Depilatus, divellere pilos, glaber, lĂŠvis and nates pervellere are allusions to the Sotadic toilette. The fine distinction between demittere and dejicere caput are worthy of a glossary, while Pathica puella, puera, putus, pullipremo, pusio, pygiaca sacra, quadrupes, scarabĂŠus and smerdalius explain themselves.
* Glossarium eroticum linguĂŠ LatinĂŠ, sive theogoniĂŠ, legum et morum nuptialium apud Romanos explanatio nova, auctore P. P. (Parisiis, Dondey-DuprĂ©, 1826, in 8vo). P. P. is supposed to be Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, an engineer who made a plan of Bordeaux and who annotated the Erotica Biblion. Gay writes, “On s'est servi pour cet ouvrage des travaux inĂ©dits de M. le Baron de Schonen, etc. Quant au Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, qu'on dĂ©signait comme l'auteur de ce savant volume, son existence n'est pas bien avĂ©rĂ©e, et quelques bibliographes persistent Ă penser que ce nom cache la collaboration du Baron de Schonen et d'Eloi Johanneau”. Other glossicists as Blondeau and Forberg have been printed by Liseux, Paris.
From Rome the practice extended far and wide to her colonies, especially the Provincia now called Provence. Athenaeus (xii. 26) charges the people of Massilia with “acting like women out of luxury”; and he cites the saying “May you sail to Massilia!” as if it were another Corinth. Indeed the whole Keltic race is charged with Le Vice by Aristotle (Pol. ii. 66), Strabo. (iv. 199) and Diodorus Siculus (v. 32). Roman civilization carried pederasty also to Northern Africa, where it took firm root, while the negro and negroid races to the South ignore the erotic perversion, except where imported by foreigners into such kingdoms as Bornu and Haussa. In old Mauritania, now Morocco,* the Moors proper are notable sodomites; Moslems, even of saintly houses, are permitted openly to keep catamites, nor do their disciples think worse of their sanctity for such license: in one case the English wife failed to banish from the home “that horrid boy”.
* This magnificent country, which the petty jealousies of Europe condemn, like the glorious regions about Constantinople, to mere barbarism, is tenanted by three Moslem races. The Berbers, who call themselves Tamazight (plur. of Amazigh), are the GĂŠtulian indigenes speaking an Africo-Semitic tongue (see Essai de Grammaire Kabyle, etc. par A. Hanoteau, Paris, Benjamin Duprat). The Arabs, descended from the conquerors in our eighth century, are mostly nomads and camel-breeders. Third and last are the Moors proper, the race dwelling in towns, a mixed breed originally Arabian but modified by six centuries of Spanish residence and showing by thickness of feature and a parchment-coloured skin, resembling the American Octaroon's, a negro innervation of old date. The latter are well described in “Morocco and the Moors”, etc. (Sampson Low and Co., 1876), by my late friend Dr. Arthur Leared, whose work I should like to see reprinted.
Yet pederasty is forbidden by the Koran. In chapter iv. 20 we read; “And if two (men) among you commit the crime, then punish them both”, the penalty being some hurt or damage by public reproach, insult or scourging. [13] There are four distinct references to Lot and the Sodomites in chapters vii. 78; xi 77-84; xxvi. 160-174 and xxix. 28-35. In the first the prophet commissioned to the people says, “Proceed ye to a fulsome act wherein no creature hath foregone ye? Verily ye come to men in lieu of women lustfully.” We have then an account of the rain which made an end of the wicked and this judgement on the Cities of the Plain is repeated with more detail in the second reference. Here the angels, generally supposed to be three, Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, appeared to Lot as beautiful youths, a sore temptation to the sinners, and the godly man's arm was straitened concerning his visitors because he felt unable to protect them from the erotic vagaries of his fellow townsmen. He therefore shut his doors and from behind them argued the matter: presently the riotous assembly attempted to climb the wall when Gabriel, seeing the distress of his host, smote them on the face with one of his wings and blinded them so that all moved off crying for aid and saying that Lot had magicians in his house. Hereupon the “cities” which, if they ever existed, must have been Fellah villages, were uplifted: Gabriel thrust his wing under them and raised them so high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven (the lunar sphere) could hear the dogs barking and the cocks crowing. Then came the rain of stones: these were clay pellets baked in hell-fire, streaked white and red, or having some mark to distinguish them from the ordinary and each bearing the name of its destination like the missiles which destroyed the host of Abrahat al-Ashram.* Lastly the “Cities” were turned upside down and cast upon earth. These circumstantial unfacts are repeated at full length in the other two chapters; but rather as an instance of Allah's power than as a warning against pederasty, which Mohammed seems to have regarded with philosophic indifference. [14] The general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like fornication unless the offenders made a public act of penitence. But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat too clement and will not convict unless four credible witnesses swear to have seen rem in re. I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious opinion that the Ghilman or WuldĂĄn, the beautiful boys of Paradise, the counterparts of the Houris, will be lawful catamites to the True Believers in a future state of happiness: the idea is nowhere countenanced in Al-Islam; and, although I have often heard debauchĂ©es refer to it, the learned look upon the assertion as scandalous.
* Thus somewhat agreeing with one of the multitudinous modern theories that the Pentapolis was destroyed by discharges of meteoric stones during a tremendous thunderstorm. Possible, but where are the stones?
As in Morocco so the Vice prevails throughout the old regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and all the cities of the South Mediterranean seaboard, whilst it is unknown to the Nubians, the Berbers and the wilder tribes dwelling inland. Proceeding Eastward we reach Egypt, that classical region of all abominations which, marvellous to relate, flourished in closest contact with men leading the purest of lives, models of moderation and morality, of religion and virtue. [15] Amongst the ancient Copts Le Vice was part and portion of the Ritual and was represented by two male partridges alternately copulating (Interp. in Priapi Carm. xvii). The evil would have gained strength by the invasion of Cambyses (B.C. 524), whose armies, after the victory over Psammenitus, settled in the Nile-Valley, and held it, despite sundry revolts, for some hundred and ninety years. During these six generations the Iranians left their mark upon Lower Egypt and especially, as the late Rogers Bey proved, upon the Fayyum, the most ancient Delta of the Nile.* Nor would the evil be diminished by the Hellenes who, under Alexander the Great, “liberator and saviour of Egypt” (B.C. 332), extinguished the native dynasties: the love of the Macedonian for Bagoas the Eunuch being a matter of history. From that time and under the rule of the Ptolemies the morality gradually decayed; the Canopic orgies extended into private life and the debauchery of the men was equalled only by the depravity of the women. Neither Christianity nor Al-Islam could effect a change for the better; and social morality seems to have been at its worst during the past century when Sonnini travelled (A.D. 1717). The French officer, who is thoroughly trustworthy, draws the darkest picture of the widely-spread criminality, especially of the bestiality and the sodomy (chapt. xv.) which formed the “delight of the Egyptians”. During the Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his letter to General Bruix (p. 19) says, “Les Arabes et les Mamelouks ont traitĂ© quelques-uns de nos prisonniers comme Socrate traitait, dit-on, Alcibiade. Il fallait pĂ©rir ou y passer.” Old Anglo-Egyptians still chuckle over the tale of Sa'id Pasha and M. de Ruyssenaer, the highdried and highly respectable Consul-General for the Netherlands, who was solemnly advised to make the experiment, active and passive, before offering his opinion upon the subject. In the present age extensive intercourse with Europeans has produced not a reformation but a certain reticence amongst the upper classes: they are as vicious as ever, but they do not care for displaying their vices to the eyes of mocking strangers.
* To this Iranian domination I attribute the use of many Persic words which are not yet obsolete in Egypt. “Bakhshish”, for instance, is not intelligible in the Moslem regions west of the Nile-Valley, and for a present the Moors say HadĂyah, regalo or favor.
Syria and Palestine, another ancient focus of abominations, borrowed from Egypt and exaggerated the worship of androgynic and hermaphroditic deities. Plutarch (De Iside) notes that the old Nilotes held the moon to be of “male-female sex”, the men sacrificing to Luna and the women to Lunus.* Isis also was a hermaphrodite, the idea being that Aether or Air (the lower heavens) was the menstruum of generative nature; and Damascius explained the tenet by the all-fruitful and prolific powers of the atmosphere. Hence the fragment attributed to Orpheus, the song of Jupiter (Air)—
All things from Jove descend
Jove was a male, Jove was a deathless bride;
For men call Air, of two-fold sex, the Jove.
Julius Firmicus relates that “The Assyrians and part of the Africans” (along the Mediterranean seaboard?) “hold Air to be the chief element and adore its fanciful figure (imaginata figura), consecrated under the name of Juno or the Virgin Venus. * * * Their companies of priests cannot duly serve her unless they effeminate their faces, smooth their skins and disgrace their masculine sex by feminine ornaments. You may see men in their very temples amid general groans enduring miserable dalliance and becoming passives like women (viros muliebria pati) and they expose, with boasting and ostentation, the pollution of the impure and immodest body.” Here we find the religious significance of eunuchry. It was practised as a religious rite by the Tympanotribas or Gallus,** the castrated votary of Rhea or Bona Mater, in Phrygia called Cybele, self-mutilated but not in memory of Atys; and by a host of other creeds: even Christianity, as sundry texts show,*** could not altogether cast out the old possession. Hence too we have an explanation of Sotadic love in its second stage, when it became, like cannibalism, a matter of superstition. Assuming a nature-implanted tendency, we see that like human sacrifice it was held to be the most acceptable offering to the God-goddess in the Orgia or sacred ceremonies, a something set apart for peculiar worship. Hence in Rome as in Egypt the temples of Isis (Inachidos limina, IsiacĂŠ sacraria LunĂŠ) were centres of sodomy, and the religious practice was adopted by the grand priestly castes from Mesopotamia to Mexico and Peru.
* Arnobius and Tertullian, with the arrogance of their caste and its miserable ignorance of that symbolism which often concealed from vulgar eyes the most precious mysteries, used to taunt the heathen for praying to deities whose sex they ignored: “Consuistis in precibus ‘Seu tu Deus seu tu Dea,’ dicere!” These men would know everything; they made God the merest work of man's brains and armed him with a despotism of omnipotence which rendered their creation truly dreadful.
** Gallus lit. = a cock, in pornologic parlance is a capon, a castrato.
*** The texts justifying or conjoining castration are Matt. xviii. 8-9; Mark ix. 43-47; Luke xxiii. 29 and Col. iii. 5. St. Paul preached (I Corin. vii. 29) that a man should live with his wife as if he had none. The Abelian heretics of Africa abstained from women because Abel died virginal. Origen mutilated himself after interpreting too rigorously Matt. xix. 12, and was duly excommunicated. But his disciple, the Arab Valerius, founded (A.D. 250) the castrated sect called Valerians who, persecuted and dispersed by the Emperors Constantine and Justinian, became the spiritual fathers of the modern Skopzis. These eunuchs first appeared in Russia at the end of the xith century, when two Greeks, John and Jephrem, were metropolitans of Kiew: the former was brought thither in A.D. 1089 by Princess Anna Wassewolodowna and is called by the chronicles NawjĂš or the Corpse. But in the early part of the last century (1715-1733) a sect arose in the circle of Uglitseh and in Moscow, at first called Clisti or flagellants, which developed into the modern Skopzi. For this extensive subject see De Stein (Zeitschrift fĂŒr Ethn. Berlin, 1875) and Mantegazza, chapt. vi.
We find the earliest written notices of the Vice in the mythical destruction of the Pentapolis (Gen. xix.), Sodom, Gomorrah ( = 'Ämirah, the cultivated country), Adama, ZeboĂŻm and Zoar or Bela. The legend has been amply embroidered by the Rabbis who make the Sodomites do everything Ă l'envers: e.g. if a man were wounded he was fined for bloodshed and was compelled to fee the offender; and if one cut off the ear of a neighbour's ass he was condemned to keep the animal till the ear grew again. The Jewish doctors declare the people to have been a race of sharpers with rogues for magistrates, and thus they justify the judgement which they read literally. But the traveller cannot accept it. I have carefully examined the lands at the North and at the South of that most beautiful lake, the so-called Dead Sea, whose tranquil loveliness, backed by the grand plateau of Moab, is an object of admiration to all save patients suffering from the strange disease “Holy Land on the Brain”.* But I found no traces of craters in the neighbourhood, no signs of vulcanism, no remains of “meteoric stones”: the asphalt which named the water is a mineralized vegetable washed out of the limestones, and the sulphur and salt are brought down by the Jordan into a lake without issue. I must therefore look upon the history as a myth which may have served a double purpose. The first would be to deter the Jew from the Malthusian practices of his pagan predecessors, upon whom obloquy was thus cast, so far resembling the scandalous and absurd legend which explained the names of the children of Lot by PheinĂ© and Thamma as “Moab” (Mu-ab) the water or semen of the father, and “Ammon” as mother's son, that is, bastard. The fable would also account for the abnormal fissure containing the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea, which the late Sir R. I. Murchison used wrong-headedly to call a “Volcano of Depression”: this geological feature, that cuts off the river-basin from its natural outlet the Gulf of Eloth (Akabah), must date from myriads of years before there were “Cities of the Plains”. But the main object of the ancient lawgiver, Osarsiph, Moses or the Moseidae, was doubtless to discountenance a perversion prejudicial to the increase of population. And he speaks with no uncertain voice, Whoso lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death (Exod. xxii. 19): If a man lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them (Levit. xx. 13; where v.v. 15-16 threaten with death man and woman who lie with beasts). Again, There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel (Deut. xxii. 5).
* See the marvellously absurd description of the glorious “Dead Sea” in the Purchas v 84.
The old commentators on the Sodom-myth are most unsatisfactory, Parkhurst, s.v. Kadesh. “From hence we may observe the peculiar propriety of this punishment of Sodom and of the neighbouring cities. By their sodomitical impurities they meant to acknowledge the Heavens as the cause of fruitfulness independently upon, and in opposition to Jehovah;* therefore Jehovah, by raining upon them not genial showers but brimstone from heaven, not only destroyed the inhabitants, but also changed all that country, which was before as the garden of God, into brimstone and salt that is not sown nor beareth, neither any grass groweth therein.” It must be owned that to this Pentapolis was dealt very hard measure for religiously and diligently practising a popular rite which a host of cities even in the present day, as Naples and Shiraz, to mention no others, affect for simple luxury and affect with impunity. The myth may probably reduce itself to very small proportions, a few Fellah villages destroyed by a storm, like that which drove Brennus from Delphi.
* Jehovah here is made to play an evil part by destroying men instead of teaching them better. But, “Nous faisons les Dieux Ă notre image et nous portons dans le ciel ce que nous voyons sur la terre.” The idea of Yahweh, or Yah, is palpably Egyptian, the Ankh or ever-living One: the etymon, however, was learned at Babylon and is still found amongst the cuneiforms.
The Hebrews entering Syria found it religionized by Assyria and Babylonia, whence Accadian Ishtar had passed west and had become Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth or Ashirah,* the Anaitis of Armenia, the Phoenician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-goddess,** who is queen of Heaven and Love. In another phase she was Venus Mylitta = the Procreatrix, in Chaldaic MauludatĂ and in Arabic Moawallidah, she who bringeth forth. She was worshipped by men habited as women and vice versĂą; for which reason in the Torah (Deut. xx. 5) the sexes are forbidden to change dress. The male prostitutes were called Kadesh the holy, the women being Kadeshah, and doubtless gave themselves up to great excesses. Eusebius (De bit. Const. iii. c. 55) describes a school of impurity at Aphac, where women and “men who were not men” practised all manner of abominations in honour of the Demon (Venus). Here the Phrygian symbolism of Kybele and Attis (Atys) had become the Syrian Ba'al Tammuz and Astarte, and the Grecian DionĂŠa and Adonis, the anthropomorphic forms of the two greater lights. The site, Apheca, now Wady al-Afik on the route from Bayrut to the Cedars, is a glen of wild and wondrous beauty, fitting frame-work for the loves of goddess and demigod: and the ruins of the temple destroyed by Constantine contrast with Nature's work, the glorious fountain, splendidior vitro, which feeds the River Ibrahim and still at times Adonis runs purple to the sea.***
* The name still survives in the ShajarĂĄt al-AsharĂĄ, a clump of trees near the village Al-GhĂĄjar (of the Gypsies?) at the foot of Hermon.
** I am not quite sure that Astarte is not primarily the planet Venus; but I can hardly doubt that Prof. Max MĂŒller and Sir G. Cox are mistaken in bringing from India Aphrodite the Dawn and her attendants, the Charites identified with the Vedic Harits. Of Ishtar in Accadia, however, Roscher seems to have proved that she is distinctly the Moon sinking into Amenti (the west, the Underworld) in search of her lost spouse Izdubar, the Sun-god. This again is pure Egyptianism.
*** In this classical land of Venus the worship of Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete. The MetĂĄwali heretics, a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry of “BilĂĄd B'sharrah”, which I would derive from Bayt Ashlrah, still pilgrimage to the ruins and address their vows to the Sayyidat al-KabĂrah, the Great Lady. Orthodox Moslems accuse them of abominable orgies and point to the lamps and rags which they suspend to a tree entitled Shajarat al-Sitt — the Lady's tree — an Acacia Albida which, according to some travellers, is found only here and at Sayda (Sidon) where an avenue exists. The people of KasrawĂĄn, a Christian province in the Libanus, inhabited by a peculiarly prurient race, also hold high festival under the far-famed Cedars, and their women sacrifice to Venus like the Kadashah of the PhĆnicians This survival of old superstition is unknown to missionary “Handbooks”, but amply deserves the study of the anthropologist.
The Phoenicians spread this androgynic worship over Greece. We find the consecrated servants and votaries of Corinthian Aphrodite called Hierodouli (Strabo viii. 6), who aided the ten thousand courtesans in gracing the Venus-temple: from this excessive luxury arose the proverb popularized by Horace. One of the headquarters of the cult was Cyprus where, as Servius relates (Ad Ăn. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a bearded Aphrodite with feminine body and costume, sceptered and mitred like a man. The sexes when worshipping it exchanged habits and here the virginity was offered in sacrifice: Herodotus (i. c. 199) describes this defloration at Babylon but sees only the shameful part of the custom which was a mere consecration of a tribal rite. Everywhere girls before marriage belong either to the father or to the clan and thus the maiden paid the debt due to the public before becoming private property as a wife. The same usage prevailed in ancient Armenia and in parts of Ethiopia; and Herodotus tells us that a practice very much like the Babylonian “is found also in certain parts of the Island of Cyprus”: it is noticed by Justin (xviii. c. 5) and probably it explains the “Succoth Benoth” or Damsels' booths which the Babylonians transplanted to the cities of Samaria.* The Jews seem very successfully to have copied the abominations of their pagan neighbours, even in the matter of the “dog”.** In the reign of wicked Rehoboam (B.C. 975) “There were also sodomites in the land and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel” (I Kings xiv. 20). The scandal was abated by zealous King Asa (B.C. 958) whose grandmother*** was high-priestess of Priapus (princeps in sacris Priapi): he “took away the sodomites out of the land” (I Kings xv. 12). Yet the prophets were loud in their complaints, especially the so-called Isaiah (B.C. 760), “except the Lord of Hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom” (i. 9); and strong measures were required from good King Josiah (B.C. 641) who amongst other things, “brake down the houses of the sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove” (2 Kings xxiii. 7). The bordels of boys (pueris alienis adhĂŠseverunt) appear to have been near the Temple.
* Some commentators understand “the tabernacles sacred to the reproductive powers of women”; and the Rabbis declare that the emblem was the figure of a setting hen.
** “Dog” is applied by the older Jews to the Sodomite and the Catamite; and thus they understand the “price of a dog” which could not be brought into the Temple (Deut. xxiii. 18). I have noticed it in one of the derivations of cinĂŠdus and can only remark that it is a vile libel upon the canine tribe.
*** Her name was Maachah and her title, according to some, “King's mother”: she founded the sect of Communists who rejected marriage and made adultery and incest part of worship in their splendid temple. Such were the Basilians and the Carpocratians, followed in the xith century by Tranchelin, whose sectarians, the Turlupins, long infested Savoy.
Syria has not forgotten her old “praxis”. At Damascus I found some noteworthy cases amongst the religious of the great Amawi Mosque. As for the Druses we have Burckhardt's authority (Travels in Syria, etc., p. 202) “unnatural propensities are very common amongst them.”
The Sotadic Zone covers the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia now occupied by the “unspeakable Turk”, a race of born pederasts; and in the former region we first notice a peculiarity of the feminine figure, the mammĂŠ inclinataĂŠ, jacentes et pannosĂŠ, which prevails over all this part of the belt. Whilst the women to the North and South have, with local exceptions, the mammĂŠ stantes of the European virgin,* those of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and Kashmir lose all the fine curves of the bosom, sometimes even before the first child; and after it the hemispheres take the form of bags. This cannot result from climate only; the women of MarathĂĄ-land, inhabiting a damper and hotter region than Kashmir, are noted for fine firm breasts even after parturition. Le Vice of course prevails more in the cities and towns of Asiatic Turkey than in the villages; yet even these are infected; while the nomad Turcomans contrast badly in this point with the Gypsies, those Badawin of India. The Kurd population is of Iranian origin, which means that the evil is deeply rooted: I have noted in The Nights that the great and glorious Saladin was a habitual pederast. The Armenians, as their national character is, will prostitute themselves for gain but prefer women to boys: Georgia supplied Turkey with catamites whilst Circassia sent concubines. In Mesopotamia the barbarous invader has almost obliterated the ancient civilization which is antedated only by the Nilotic: the mysteries of old Babylon nowhere survive save in certain obscure tribes like the MandĂŠans, the Devil-worshippers and the Ali-ilĂĄhi. Entering Persia we find the reverse of Armenia; and, despite Herodotus, I believe that Iran borrowed her pathologic love from the peoples of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from the then insignificant Greeks. But whatever may be its origin, the corruption is now bred in the bone. It begins in boyhood and many Persians account for it by paternal severity. Youths arrived at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies fornication. Onanism** is to a certain extent discouraged by circumcision, and meddling with the father's slave-girls and concubines would be risking cruel punishment if not death. Hence they use each other by turns, a “puerile practice” known as Alish-Takish, the Lat. facere vicibus or mutuum facere. Temperament, media, and atavism recommend the custom to the general; and after marrying and begetting heirs, Paterfamilias returns to the Ganymede. [16] Hence all the odes of Hafiz are addressed to youths as proved by such Arabic exclamations as 'AfĂĄka 'llah = Allah assain thee (masculine)***: the object is often fanciful but it would be held coarse and immodest to address an imaginary girl.**** An illustration of the penchant is told at Shiraz concerning a certain Mujtahid, the head of the Shi'ah creed, corresponding with a prince-archbishop in Europe. A friend once said to him, “There is a question I would fain address to your Eminence but I lack the daring to do so.” “Ask and fear not,” replied the Divine. “It is this, O Mujtahid! Figure thee in a garden of roses and hyacinths with the evening breeze waving the cypress-heads, a fair youth of twenty sitting by thy side and the assurance of perfect privacy. What, prithee, would be the result?” The holy man bowed the chin of doubt upon the collar of meditation; and, too honest to lie presently whispered, “Allah defend me from such temptation of Satan!” [17] Yet even in Persia men have not been wanting who have done their utmost to uproot the Vice: in the same Shiraz they speak of a father who, finding his son in flagrant delict, put him to death like Brutus or Lynch of Galway. Such isolated cases, however, can effect nothing. Chardin tells us that houses of male prostitution were common in Persia whilst those of women were unknown: the same is the case in the present day and the boys are prepared with extreme care by diet, baths, depilation, unguents and a host of artists in cosmetics.***** Le Vice is looked upon at most as a peccadillo and its mention crops up in every jest-book. When the Isfahan man mocked Shaykh Sa'adi, by comparing the bald pates of Shirazian elders to the bottom of a lotĂĄ, a brass cup with a wide-necked opening used in the Hammam, the witty poet turned its aperture upwards and thereto likened the well-abused podex of an Isfahani youth. Another favourite piece of Shirazian “chaff” is to declare that when an Isfahan father would set up his son in business he provides him with a pound of rice, meaning that he can sell the result as compost for the kitchen-garden, and with the price buy another meal: hence the saying Khakh-i-pĂĄi kahu = the soil at the lettuce-root. The Isfahanis retort with the name of a station or halting-place between the two cities where, under pretence of making travellers stow away their riding-gear, many a Shirazi had been raped: hence “Zin o takaltĂș tĂș bi-bar” = carry within saddle and saddle-cloth! A favourite Persian punishment for strangers caught in the Harem or GynĂŠceum is to strip and throw them and expose them to the embraces of the grooms and negro slaves. I once asked a Shirazi how penetration was possible if the patient resisted with all the force of the sphincter muscle: he smiled and said, “Ah, we Persians know a trick to get over that; we apply a sharpened tent-peg to the crupper-bone (os coccygis) and knock till he opens.” [18] A well-known missionary to the East during the last generation was subjected to this gross insult by one of the Persian Prince-governors, whom he had infuriated by his conversion-mania: in his memoirs he alludes to it by mentioning his “dishonoured person”; but English readers cannot comprehend the full significance of the confession. About the same time Skaykh Nasr, Governor of Bushire, a man famed for facetious blackguardism, used to invite European youngsters serving in the Bombay Marine and ply them with liquor till they were insensible. Next morning the middies mostly complained that the champagne had caused a curious irritation and soreness in la parte-poste. The same Eastern “Scrogin” would ask his guests if they had ever seen a mancannon (Adami-top); and, on their replying in the negative, a greybeard slave was dragged in blaspheming and struggling with all his strength. He was presently placed on all fours and firmly held by the extremities; his bag-trousers were let down and a dozen peppercorns were inserted ano suo: the target was a sheet of paper held at a reasonable distance; the match was applied by a pinch of cayenne in the nostrils; the sneeze started the grapeshot and the number of hits on the butt decided the bets. We can hardly wonder at the loose conduct of Persian women perpetually mortified by marital pederasty. During the unhappy campaign of 1856-57 in which, with the exception of a few brilliant skirmishes, we gained no glory, Sir James Outram and the Bombay army showing how badly they could work, there was a formal outburst of the Harems; and even women of princely birth could not be kept out of the officers' quarters.
* A noted exception is Vienna, remarkable for the enormous development of the virginal bosom, which soon becomes pendulent.
** Gen. xxxviii. 2-11. Amongst the classics Mercury taught the “Art of le Thalaba” to his son Pan who wandered about the mountains distraught with love for the Nymph Echo and Pan passed it on to the pastors. See Thalaba in Mirabeau.
*** The reader of The Nights has remarked how often the “he” in Arabic poetry denotes a “she”; but the Arab, when uncontaminated by travel, ignores pederasty, and the Arab poet is a Badawi.
**** So Moharnmed addressed his girl-wife Ayishah in the masculine.
***** So amongst the Romans we have the IatroliptĂŠ, youths or girls who wiped the gymnast's perspiring body with swan-down, a practice renewed by the professors of “Massage”; Unctores who applied perfumes and essences; Fricatrices and Tractatrices or shampooers; DropacistĂŠ, corn-cutters; Alipilarii who plucked the hair. etc.
The cities of Afghanistan and Sind are thoroughly saturated with Persian vice, and the people sing
Kadr-i-kus AughĂĄn dĂĄnad, kadr-i-kunrĂĄ KĂĄbuli:
The worth of coynte the Afghan knows:
Cabul prefers the other /chose!/*
* It is a parody on the well-known song (Roebuck i. sect. 2, No. 1602):
The goldsmith knows the worth of gold, jewellers worth of jewelry
The worth of rose Bulbul can tell and Kambar's worth his lord, Ali.
The Afghans are commercial travellers on a large scale and each caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in woman's attire with kohl'd eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses and henna'd fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in KajĂĄwas or camel-panniers: they are called KĂșch-i safari, or travelling wives, and the husbands trudge patiently by their sides. In Afghanistan also a frantic debauchery broke out amongst the women when they found incubi who were not pederasts; and the scandal was not the most insignificant cause of the general rising at Cabul (Nov. 1841), and the slaughter of Macnaghten, Burnes and other British officers.
Resuming our way Eastward we find the Sikhs and the Moslems of the Panjab much addicted to Le Vice, although the Himalayan tribes to the north and those lying south, the Rajputs and MarathĂĄs, ignore it. The same may be said of the Kashmirians who add another Kappa to the tria Kakista, Kappadocians, Kretans, and Kilicians: the proverb says,
Agar kaht-i-mardum uftad, az in sih jins kam gĂri;
Eki AfghĂĄn, dovvum SindĂ,* siyyum badjins-i-KashmĂrĂ:
Though of men there be famine yet shun these three——
Afghan, Sindi and rascally KashmĂrĂ.
* For “Sindi” Roebuck (Oriental Proverbs Part i. p. 99) has Kunbu (Kumboh) a PanjĂĄbi peasant and others vary the saying ad libitum. See vol. vi. 156.
M. Louis Daville describes the infamies of Lahore and Lakhnau where he found men dressed as women, with flowing locks under crowns of flowers, imitating the feminine walk and gestures, voice and fashion of speech, and ogling their admirers with all the coquetry of bayadĂšres. Victor Jacquemont's Journal de Voyage describes the pederasty of Ranjit Singh, the “Lion of the PanjĂ b”, and his pathic GulĂĄb Singh, whom the English inflicted upon Cashmir as ruler by way of paying for his treason. Yet the Hindus, I repeat, hold pederasty in abhorrence and are as much scandalized by being called GĂĄnd-mĂĄrĂĄ (anus-beater) or GĂĄndĂș (anuser) as Englishmen would be. During the years 1843-44 my regiment, almost all Hindu Sepoys of the Bombay Presidency, was stationed at a purgatory called Bandar GhĂĄrrĂĄ,* a sandy flat with a scatter of verdigris-green milk-bush some forty miles north of KarĂĄchi the headquarters. The dirty heap of mud-and-mat hovels, which represented the adjacent native village, could not supply a single woman; yet only one case of pederasty came to light and that after a tragical fashion some years afterwards. A young Brahman had connection with a soldier comrade of low caste and this had continued till, in an unhappy hour, the Pariah patient ventured to become the agent. The latter, in Arab. Al-FĂĄ'il = the “doer”, is not an object of contempt like Al-MafĂșl = the “done”; and the high-caste sepoy, stung by remorse and revenge, loaded his musket and deliberately shot his paramour. He was hanged by court martial at Hyderabad and, when his last wishes were asked, he begged in vain to be suspended by the feet; the idea being that his soul, polluted by exiting “below the waist”, would be doomed to endless transmigrations through the lowest forms of life.
*See “Sind Revisited” i. 133-35
Beyond India, I have stated, the Sotadic Zone begins to broaden out, embracing all China, Turkistan and Japan. The Chinese, as far as we know them in the great cities, are omnivorous and omnifutuentes: they are the chosen people of debauchery, and their systematic bestiality with ducks, goats, and other animals is equalled only by their pederasty. KĂŠmpfer and Orlof TorĂ©e (Voyage en Chine) notice the public houses for boys and youths in China and Japan. Mirabeau (L'Anandryne) describes the tribadism of their women in hammocks. When Pekin was plundered the Harems contained a number of balls a little larger than the old musket-bullet, made of thin silver with a loose pellet of brass inside somewhat like a grelot;* these articles were placed by the women between the labia and an up-and-down movement on the bed gave a pleasant titillation when nothing better was to be procured. They have every artifice of luxury, aphrodisiacs, erotic perfumes and singular applications. Such are the pills which, dissolved in water and applied to the glans penis; cause it to throb and swell: so according to Amerigo Vespucci American women could artificially increase the size of their husbands' parts.** The Chinese bracelet of caoutchouc studded with points now takes the place of the Herisson, or Annulus hirsutus,*** which was bound between the glans and prepuce. Of the penis succedaneus, that imitation of the Arbor vitĂŠ or Soter Kosmou, which the Latins called phallus and fascinum,**** the French godemichĂ© and the Italians passatempo and diletto (whence our “dildo”), everykind abounds, varying from a stuffed “French letter” to a cone of ribbed horn which looks like an instrument of torture. For the use of men they have the “merkin”,***** a heart-shaped article of thin skin stuffed with cotton and slit with an artificial vagina: two tapes at the top and one below lash it to the back of a chair. The erotic literature of the Chinese and Japanese is highly developed, and their illustrations are often facetious as well as obscene. All are familiar with that of the strong man who by a blow with his enormous phallus shivers a copper pot; and the ludicrous contrast of the huge-membered wights who land in the Isle of Women and presently escape from it, wrinkled and shrivelled, true Domine Dolittles. Of Turkistan we know little, but what we know confirms my statement. Mr. Schuyler in his Turkistan (i. 132) offers an illustration of a “Batchah” (Pers. bachcheh = catamite), “or singing-boy surrounded by his admirers.” Of the Tartars Master Purchas laconically says (v. 419), “They are addicted to Sodomie or Buggerie.” The learned casuist Dr. Thomas Sanchez the Spaniard had (says Mirabeau in KadhĂ©sch) to decide a difficult question concerning the sinfulness of a peculiar erotic perversion. The Jesuits brought home from Manilla a tailed man whose moveable prolongation of the os coccygis measured from 7 to 10 inches: he had placed himself between two women, enjoying one naturally while the other used his tail as a penis succedaneus. The verdict was incomplete sodomy and simple fornication. [19] For the islands north of Japan, the “Sodomitical Sea”, and the “nayle of tynne” thrust through the prepuce to prevent sodomy, see Lib. ii. chap. 4 of Master Thomas Caudish's Circumnavigation, and vol. vi of Pinckerton's Geography translated by Walckenaer.
* They must not be confounded with the grelots lascifs, the little bells of gold or silver set by the people of Pegu in the prepuce-skin, and described by Nicolo de Conti who however refused to undergo the operation.
** Relation des découvertes faites par Colomb, etc., p. 137: Bologna 1875; also Vespucci's letter in Ramusio (i. 131) and Paro's Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains.
*** See Mantegazza loc cit. who borrows from the ThĂšse de Paris of Dr. Abel Hureau de Villeneuve, “Frictiones per coitum productĂŠ magnum mucosĂŠ membranĂŠ vaginalis turgorem, ac simul hujus cuniculi coarctationem tam maritis salacibus quĂŠritatam afferunt.”
**** Fascinus is the Priapus-god to whom the Vestal Virgins of Rome, professed tribades, sacrificed; also the neck-charm in phallus-shape. Fascinum is the male member.
***** Captain Grose (Lexicon Balatronicum) explains merkin as “counterfeit hair for women's privy parts”. See Bailey's Dict. The Bailey of 1764, an “improved edition”, does not contain the word which is now generally applied to a cunnus succedaneus.
Passing over to America we find that the Sotadic Zone contains the whole hemisphere from Behring's Straits to Magellan's. This prevalence of “mollities” astonishes the anthropologist, who is apt to consider pederasty the growth of luxury and the especial product of great and civilized cities, unnecessary and therefore unknown to simple savagery, where the births of both sexes are about equal and female infanticide is not practised. In many parts of the New World this perversion was accompanied by another depravity of taste — confirmed cannibalism.* The forests and campos abounded in game from the deer to the pheasant-like penelope, and the seas and rivers produced an unfailing supply of excellent fish and shell-fish;** yet the Brazilian Tupis preferred the meat of man to every other food.
* I have noticed this phenomenal cannibalism in my notes to Mr. Albert Tootle's excellent translation of “The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse”: London, Hakluyt Society, mdccclxxiv.
** The Ostreiras or shell mounds of the Brazil, sometimes 200 feet high, are described by me in Anthropologia No. i. Oct. 1873.
A glance at Mr. Bancroft* proves the abnormal development of sodomy amongst the savages and barbarians of the New World. Even his half-frozen Hyperboreans “possess all the passions which are supposed to develop most freely under a milder temperature” (i. 58). “The voluptuousness and polygamy of the North American Indians, under a temperature of almost perpetual winter, is far greater than that of the most sensual tropical nations” (Martin's Brit. Colonies iii. 524). I can quote only a few of the most remarkable instances. Of the Koniagas of Kadiak Island and the Thinkleets we read (i. 81-82), “The most repugnant of all their practices is that of male concubinage. A Kadiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at women's work, associating him with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy complete. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man who regards such a companion as a great acquisition. These male concubines are called Achnutschik or Schopans” (the authorities quoted being Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris, Lisiansky and Marchand). The same is the case in Nutka Sound and the Aleutian Islands, where “male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to the same extent as amongst the Koniagas.” The objects of “unnatural” affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those of the women. In California the first missionaries found the same practice, the youths being called Joya (Bancroft, i. 415 and authorities Palon, Crespi, Boscana, Motras, Torquemada, Duflot and Fages). The Comanches unite incest with sodomy (i. 515). “In New Mexico, according to Arlegui, Ribas, and other authors, male concubinage prevails to a great extent; these loathsome semblances of humanity, whom to call beastly were a slander upon beasts, dress themselves in the clothes and perform the functions of women, the use of weapons being denied them” (i. 585). Pederasty was systematically practised by the peoples of Cueba, Careta, and other parts of Central America. The Caciques and some of the headmen kept harems of youths who, as soon as destined for the unclean office, were dressed as women. They went by the name of Camayoas, and were hated and detested by the goodwives (i. 773-74) Of the Nahua nations Father Pierre de Gand (alias de Musa) writes; “Un certain nombre de prĂȘtres n'avaient point de femmes, sed eorum loco pueros quibus abutebantur. Ce pĂ©chĂ© Ă©tait si commun dans ce pays que, jeunes ou vieux, tous Ă©taient infectĂ©s; ils y Ă©taient si adonnĂ©s que mĂȘmes les enfants de six ans s'y livraient” (Ternaux-Campans, Voyages, SĂ©rie i. Tom. x. p. 197). Among the Mayas of Yucatan Las Casas declares that the great prevalence of “unnatural” lust made parents anxious to see their progeny wedded as soon as possible (Kingsborough's Mex. Ant. viii. 135). In Vera Paz a god, called by some Chin and by others Cavial and Maran, taught it by committing the act with another god. Some fathers gave their sons a boy to use as a woman, and if any other approached this pathic he was treated as an adulterer. In Yucatan images were found by Bernal Diaz proving the sodomitical propensities of the people (Bancroft v. 198). De Pauw (Recherches Philosophiques sur les AmĂ©ricains, London, 1771) has much to say about the subject in Mexico generally: in the northern provinces men married youths who, dressed like women, were forbidden to carry arms. According to Gomara there were at Tamalpais houses of male prostitution; and from Diaz and others we gather that the pecado nefando was the rule. Both in Mexico and in Peru it might have caused, if it did not justify, the cruelties of the Conquistadores. Pederasty was also general throughout Nicaragua, and the early explorers found it amongst the indigenes of Panama.
* The Native Races of the Pacific States of South America, by Herbert Howe Bancroft, London, Longmans, 1875.
We have authentic details concerning Le Vice in Peru and its adjacent lands, beginning with Cieza de Leon, who must be read in the original or in the translated extracts of Purchas (vol. v. 942, etc.), not in the cruelly castrated form preferred by the Council of the Hakluyt Society. Speaking of the New Granada Indians he tells us that “at Old Port (Porto Viejo) and Puna, the Deuill so farre prevayled in their beastly Deuotions that there were Boyes consecrated to serue in the Temple; and at the times of their Sacrifices and Solemne Feasts, the Lords and principall men abused them to that detestable filthinesse”; i e. performed their peculiar worship. Generally in the hill-countries the Devil, under the show of holiness, had introduced the practice; for every temple or chief house of adoration kept one or two men or more which were attired like women, even from the time of their childhood, and spake like them, imitating them in everything; with these, under pretext of holiness and religion, their principal men on principal days had commerce. Speaking of the arrival of the Giants* at Point Santa Elena, Cieza says (chap. lii.), they were detested by the natives, because in using their women they killed them, and their men also in another way. All the natives declare that God brought upon them a punishment proportioned to the enormity of their offence. When they were engaged together in their accursed intercourse, a fearful and terrible fire came down from Heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which there issued a shining Angel with a glittering sword, wherewith at one blow they were all killed and the fire consumed them.** There remained a few bones and skulls which God allowed to bide unconsumed by the fire, as a memorial of this punishment. In the Hakluyt Society's bowdlerization we read of the Tumbez Islanders being “very vicious, many of them committing the abominable offence” (p. 24); also, “If by the advice of the Devil any Indian commit the abominable crime, it is thought little of and they call him a woman.” In chapters lii. and lviii. we find exceptions. The Indians of Huancabamba, “although so near the peoples of Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do not commit the abominable sin”; and the Serranos, or island mountaineers, as sorcerers and magicians inferior to the coast peoples, were not so much addicted to sodomy.
* All Peruvian historians mention these giants, who were probably the large-limbed Caribs (Caraibes) of the Brazil: they will be noticed below.
** This sounds much like a pious fraud of the missionaries, a Europeo-American version of the Sodom legend.
The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas shows that the evil was of a comparatively modern growth. In the early period of Peruvian history the people considered the crime “unspeakable”: if a Cuzco Indian, not of Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the term pederast to another, he was held infamous for many days. One of the generals having reported to the Ynca Ccapacc Yupanqui that there were some sodomites, not in all the valleys, but one here and one there, “nor was it a habit of all the inhabitants but only of certain persons who practised it privately,” the ruler ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive and their houses, crops and trees destroyed: moreover, to show his abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so be treated if one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13). Elsewhere we learn, “There were sodomites in some provinces, though not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in secret. In some parts they had them in their temples because the Devil persuaded them that the Gods took great delight in such people, and thus the Devil acted as a traitor to remove the veil of shame that the Gentiles felt for this crime and to accustom them to commit it in public and in common.”
During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had become the rule throughout Peru. At Cuzco, we are told by Nuno de Guzman in 1530, “The last which was taken, and which fought most couragiously, was a man in the habite of a woman, which confessed that from a childe he had gotten his liuing by that filthinesse, for which I caused him to be burned.” V. F. Lopez* draws a frightful picture of pathologic love in Peru. Under the reigns which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc) Amauri, the country was attacked by invaders of a giant race coming from the sea: they practised pederasty after a fashion so shameless that the conquered tribes were compelled to fly (p. 271). Under the pre-Yncarial Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed into savagery and the kings of Cuzco preserved only the name. “Toutes ces hontes et toutes ces misĂšres provenaient de deux vices infĂąmes, la bestialitĂ© et la sodomie. Les femmes surtout Ă©taient offensĂ©es de voir la nature frustrĂ©e de tous ses droits. Elles pleuraient ensemble en leurs rĂ©unions sur le misĂ©rable Ă©tat dans lequel elles Ă©taient tombĂ©es, sur le mĂ©pris avec lequel elles Ă©taient traitĂ©es. * * * * Le monde Ă©tait renversĂ©, les hommes s'aimaient et Ă©taient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles cherchaient, mais en vain, les moyens de remĂ©dier au mal; elles employaient des herbes et des recettes diaboliques qui leur ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais ne pouvaient arrĂȘter les progrĂšs incessants du vice. Cet Ă©tat de choses constitua un vĂ©ritable moyen Ăąge, qui dura jusqu'Ă l'Ă©tablissement du gouvernement des Incas” (p. 277).
* Les Races Aryennes du PĂ©rou, Paris, Franck, 1871.
When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist of Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb. “Ni la prudence de l'Inca, ni les lois sĂ©vĂšres qu'il avait promulguĂ©es n'avaient pu extirper entiĂšrement le pĂ©chĂ© contre nature. Il reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes en furent si jalouses qu'un grand nombre d'elles tuĂšrent leurs maris. Les devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journĂ©es Ă fabriquer, avec certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui rendaient fous ceux qui en mangaient, et les femmes en faisaient prendre, soit dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, Ă ceux dont elles Ă©taient jalouses” (p. 291).
I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous for cannibalism and sodomy; nor could the latter be only racial as proved by the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood followed in the path of the savages. Sr. Antonio Augusto da Costa Aguiars* is outspoken upon this point. “A crime which in England leads to the gallows, and which is the very measure of abject depravity, passes with impunity amongst us by the participating in it of almost all or of many (de quasi todos, ou de muitos). Ah! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of punishing such crimes (delictos), more than one city of this Empire, more than a dozen, would pass into the category of the Sodoms and Gomorrahs” (p. 30). Till late years pederasty in the Brazil was looked upon as a peccadillo; the European immigrants following the practice of the wild men who were naked but not, as Columbus said, “clothed in innocence”. One of Her Majesty's Consuls used to tell a tale of the hilarity provoked in a “fashionable” assembly by the open declaration of a young gentleman that his mulatto-“patient” had suddenly turned upon him, insisting upon becoming agent. Now, however, under the influences of improved education and respect for the public opinion of Europe, pathologic love amongst the Luso-Brazilians has been reduced to the normal limits.
* O Brazil e os Brazileiros, Santos, 1862.
Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not endemic: yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where puberty, they say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has been the same in most lands, causing modesty to decay and pederasty to flourish. The Badawi Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice; yet San'ĂĄ the capital of Al-Yaman and other centres of population have long been and still are thoroughly infected. History tells us of ZĂș ShanĂĄtir, tyrant of “Arabia Felix”, in A.D. 478, who used to entice young men into his palace and cause them after use to be cast out of the windows: this unkindly ruler was at last poinarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as “Zu NowĂĄs”. The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and tribadism. Yet Joan dos Sanctos* found in Cacongo of West Africa certain “Chibudi, which are men attyred like women and behaue themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men; are also married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale damnation an honor.” Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing boys dressed as girls. In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of prostitutes kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses .
* Aethiopia Orientalis, Purchas ii. 1558.
North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances. Master Christopher Burrough* describes on the western side of the Volga “a very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak, and adioyning to the same a Towne called by the Russes, Sodom, * * * which was swallowed into the earth by the iustice of God, for the wickednesse of the people.” Again: although as a rule Christianity has steadily opposed pathologic love both in writing and preaching, there have been remarkable exceptions. Perhaps the most curious idea was that of certain medical writers in the middle ages: “Usus et amplexus pueri, bene temperatus, salutaris medicina” (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under “Vayer”) the infamous book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, “De laudibus SodomiĂŠ”,** vulgarly known as “Capitolo del Forno”. The same writer refers (under “Sixte iv.”) to the report that the Dominican Order, which systematically decried Le Vice, had presented a request to the Cardinal di Santa Lucia that sodomy might be lawful during three months per annum, June to August; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the petition “Be it done as they demand.” Hence the FĂŠda Venus of Battista Mantovano. Bayle rejects the history for a curious reason, venery being colder in summer than in winter, and quotes the proverb “Aux mois qui n'ont pas d' R, peu embrasser et bien boire.” But in the case of a celibate priesthood such scandals are inevitable: witness the famous Jesuit epitaph Ci-gĂźt un JĂ©suite, etc.
* Purchas iii. 243
** For a literal translation see Ire Série de la Curiosité Littéraire et Bibliographique, Paris, Liseux, 1880.
In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance, the Vice seems subject to periodical outbreaks. For many years, also, England sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to Naples, whence originated the term “Il vizio Inglese”. [20] It would be invidious to detail the scandals which of late years have startled the public in London and Dublin: for these the curious will consult the police reports. Berlin, despite her strong flavour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion, manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr. Gaspar,* a well-known authority on the subject, adduces many interesting cases, especially an old Count Cajus and his six accomplices. Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him that not only Plato and Julius Caesar but also Winckelmann and Platen (?) belonged to the Society; and he had found it flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and St. Petersburg, to name only a few places. Frederick the Great is said to have addressed these words to his nephew, “Je puis vous assurer, par mon expĂ©rience personelle, que ce plaisir est peu agrĂ©able Ă cultiver.” This suggests the popular anecdote of Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an “experience” and found it far from satisfactory. A few days afterwards the latter informed the Sage of Ferney that he had tried it again and provoked the exclamation, “Once a philosopher: twice a sodomite!” The last revival of the kind in Germany is a society at Frankfort and its neighbourhood, self-styled Les Cravates Noires, in opposition, I suppose, to Les Cravates Blanches of A. Belot.
* His best known works are (1) Praktisches Handbuch der Gechtlichen Medecin, Berlin, 1860; and (2) Klinische Novellen zur gerechtlichen Medicin, Berlin. 1863.
Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London; but, whilst the latter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not: hence we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public. For France of the xviith century consult the “Histoire de la Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde”, and “La France devenue Italienne”, a treatise which generally follows “L'Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules” by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin.* The headquarters of male prostitution were then in the Champ Flory, i.e., Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low courtesans. In the xviiith century, “quand le Français Ă tĂȘte folle,” as Voltaire sings, invented the term “PĂ©chĂ© philosophique”, there was a temporary recrudescence; and, after the death of Pidauzet de Mairobert (March, 1779), his “Apologie de la Secte Anandryne” was published in L'Espion Anglais. In those days the AllĂ©e des Veuves in the Champs ElysĂ©es had a “fief reservĂ© des Ebugors”** — “veuve” in the language of Sodom being the maĂźtresse en titre, the favourite youth.
* The same author printed another imitation of Petronius Arbiter, the “Larissa” story of ThĂ©ophile Viand. His cousin, the SĂ©vignĂ©, highly approved of it. See Bayle's objections to Rabutin's delicacy and excuses for Petronius' grossness in his “Ăclaircissement sur les obscĂ©nitĂ©s” (Appendice au Dictionnaire Antique).
** The Boulgrin of Rabelais, which Urquhart renders Ingle for Boulgre an “indorser”, derived from the Bulgarus or Bulgarian, who gave to Italy the term bugiardo — liar. Bougre and Bougrerie date (LittrĂ©) from the xiiith century. I cannot, however, but think that the trivial term gained strength in the xvith, when the manners of the Bugres or indigenous Brazilians were studied by Huguenot refugees in La France Antartique and several of these savages found their way to Europe. A grand FĂȘte in Rouen on the entrance of Henri II. and Dame Katherine de Medicis (June 16, 1564) showed, as part of the pageant three hundred men (including fifty “Bugres” or Tupis) with parroquets and other birds and beasts of the newly explored regions. The procession is given in the four-folding woodcut “Figure des BrĂ©siliens” in Jean de Prest's Edition of 1551.
At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition Mirabeau* declares that pederasty was reglementĂ©e and adds, “Le goĂ»t des pĂ©dĂ©rastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps de Henri III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le rĂšgne desquel les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement** sous les portiques du Louvre, fait des progrĂšs considĂ©rables. On sait que cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d'Ćuvre de police; en consĂ©quence, il y a des lieux publics autorisĂ©s Ă cet effet. Les jeunes gens qui se destinent Ă la profession, sont soigneusement enclassĂ©s; car les systĂšmes rĂ©glementaires s'Ă©tendent jusques-lĂ . On les examine; ceux qui peuvent ĂȘtre agents et patients, qui sont beaux, vermeils, bien faits, potelĂ©s, sont rĂ©servĂ©s pour les grands seigneurs, ou se font payer trĂšs-cher par les Ă©vĂȘques et les financiers. Ceux qui sont privĂ©s de leurs testicules, ou en termes de l'art (car notre langue est plus chaste qui nos mĆurs), qui n'ont pas le /poids du tisserand/, mais qui donnent et reçoivent, forment la seconde classe; ils sont encore chers, parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu'ils servent aux hommes. Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles d'Ă©rection tant ils sont usĂ©s, quoiqu'ils aient tous ces organes nĂ©cessaires au plaisir, s'inscrivent comme /patiens purs/, et composent la troisiĂšme classe: mais celle qui prĂ©side Ă ces plaisirs, vĂ©rifie leur impuissance. Pour cet effet, on les place tout nus sur un matelas ouvert par la moitiĂ© infĂ©rieure; deux filles les caressent de leur mieux, pendant qu'une troisiĂšme frappe doucement avec des orties naissantes le siĂšge des dĂ©sirs vĂ©nĂ©riens. AprĂšs un quart d'heure de cet essai, on leur introduit dans l'anus un poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation considĂ©rable; on pose sur les Ă©chauboulures produites par les orties, de la moutarde fine de Caudebec, et l'on passe le /gland/ au camphre. Ceux qui rĂ©sistent Ă ces Ă©preuves et ne donnent aucun signe d'Ă©rection, servent comme patiens Ă un tiers de paie seulement.”***
* Erotika Biblion, chapt. Kadésch (pp. 93 et seq.) Edition de Bruxelles with notes by the Chevalier P. Pierrugues of Bordeaux, before noticed.
** Called Chevaliers de Paille because the sign was a straw in the mouth, Ă la Palmerston.
*** I have noticed that the eunuch in Sind was as meanly paid and have given the reason.
The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant in matters of politics than of morals. The favourite club, which had its mot de passe, was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St. Thomas des Louvre; and the house was a hĂŽtel of the xviith century. Two street-doors, on the right for the male gynĂŠceum and the left for the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer. A decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women's clothes, with big haunches and small waist, promenaded outside; and this continued till 1826 when the police put down the house.
Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results, according to the Marquis de Boissy. He complained without ambages of mĆurs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that the result of the African wars was an Ă©ffrayable dĂ©bordement pĂ©dĂ©rastique, even as the vĂ©role resulted from the Italian campaigns of that age of passion, the xvith century. From the military the flĂ©au spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expansion and intensity that it may be said to have been democratized in cities and large towns; at least so we gather from the Dossier des Agissements des PĂ©dĂ©rastes. A general gathering of “La Sainte CongrĂ©gation des glorieux PĂ©dĂ©rastes” was held in the old Petite Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted under pretext of making water. They ranged themselves along the walls of a vast garden and exposed their podices: bourgeois, richards and nobles came with full purses, touched the part which most attracted them and were duly followed by it. At the AllĂ©e des Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m.: no policeman or ronde de nuit dared venture in it; cords were stretched from tree to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst whom, they say, was once Victor Hugo. This nuisance was at length suppressed by the municipal administration.
The Empire did not improve morals. Balls of sodomites were held at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, '64, some one hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women that even the landlord did not recognize them. There was also a club for sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons de l'ImpĂ©ratrice.* They copied the imperial toilette and kept it in the general wardrobe: hence “faire ImpĂ©ratrice” meant to be used carnally. The site, a splendid hotel in the AllĂ©e des Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-GĂ©nĂ©ral who registered all the names; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings. The club was broken up on July 16, '64. During the same year La Petite Revue, edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed an article, “Les Ă©chappĂ©s de Sodome”: it discusses the letter of M. Castagnary to the ProgrĂšs de Lyons and declares that the Vice had been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes. For its latest developments as regards the chantage of the /tantes/ (pathics), the reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu's well-known Etudes.** He declares that the servant-class is most infected; and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.
* Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (by Pisanus Fraxi) 4to, p. lx. and 593. London. Privately printed, mdccclxxix.
** A friend learned in these matters supplies me with the following list of famous pederasts. Those who marvel at the wide diffusion of such erotic perversion, and its being affected by so many celebrities, will bear in mind that the greatest men have been some of the worst: Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Buonaparte held themselves high above the moral law which obliges common-place humanity. All three are charged with the Vice. Of Kings we have Henri iii., Louis xiii. and xviii., Frederick ii. of Prussia, Peter the Great, William ii. of Holland and Charles ii. and iii. of Parma. We find also Shakespeare (i., xv., Edit. François Hugo) and MoliÚre, Theodorus Beza, Lully (the Composer), D'Assoucy, Count Zintzendorff, the Grand Condé, Marquis de Villette, Pierre Louis FarnÚse, Duc de la ValliÚre, De Soleinne Count D'Avaray, Saint Mégrin, D'Epernon, Admiral de la Susse, La Roche-Pouchin Rochfort S. Louis, Henne (the Spiritualist), Comte Horace de Viel Castel, Lerminin, Fievée, Théodore Leclerc, Archi-Chancellier CambacÚrés, Marquis de Custine, Sainte-Beuve and Count D'Orsay. For others refer to the three volumes of Pisanus Fraxi; Index Librorum Prohibitorum (London, 1877), Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (before alluded to) and Catena Librorum Tacendorum, London, 1885. The indices will supply the names. [21]
The pederasty of The Nights may briefly be distributed into three categories. The first is the funny form, as the unseemly practical joke of masterful Queen BudĂșr (vol. iii. 300-306) and the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv. 226). The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas* debauches the three youths (vol. v. 64-69); whilst in the third form it is wisely and learnedly discussed, to be severely blamed, by the Shaykhah or Reverend Woman (vol. v. 154).
* Of this peculiar character Ibn Khallikan remarks (ii. 43), “There were four poets whose works clearly contraried their character. AbĂș al-AtahĂyah wrote pious poems himself being an atheist, AbĂș Hukayma's verses proved his impotence, yet he was more salacious than a he-goat; Mohammed ibn HĂĄzim praised contentment, yet he was greedier than a dog; and AbĂș NowĂĄs hymned the joys of sodomy, yet he was more passionate for women than a baboon.”
To conclude this part of my subject, the Ă©claircissement des obscĂ©nitĂ©s. Many readers will regret the absence from The Nights of that modesty which distinguishes “Amadis de Gaul”, whose author, when leaving a man and a maid together says, “And nothing shall be here related; for these and suchlike things which are conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought in reason lightly to pass over, holding them in slight esteem as they deserve.” Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England who after a risquĂ© scene declares, “Herein is no offence offered to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose by lascivious matter.” But these are not oriental ideas and we must e'en take the Eastern as we find him. He still holds “Naturalia non sunt turpia” [what is natural is not shameful — JL] , together with “Mundis omnia munda” [to the pure all things are pure — JL]; and, as Bacon assures us the mixture of a lie doth add to pleasure, so the Arab enjoys the startling and lively contrast of extreme virtue and horrible vice placed in juxtaposition. [22]
Those who have read through these ten volumes will agree with me that the proportion of offensive matter bears a very small ratio to the mass of the work. In an age saturated with cant and hypocrisy, here and there a venal pen will mourn over the “Pornography” of The Nights, dwell upon the “Ethics of Dirt” and the “Garbage of the Brothel”; and will lament the “wanton dissemination (!) of ancient and filthy fiction”. This self-constituted Censor morum reads Aristophanes and Plato, Horace and Virgil, perhaps even Martial and Petronius, because “veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language”; he allows men LatinĂš loqui; but he is scandalized at stumbling-blocks much less important in plain English. To be consistent he must begin by bowdlerizing not only the classics, with which boys' and youths' minds and memories are soaked and saturated at schools and colleges, but also Boccaccio and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rabelais; Burton, Sterne, Swift and a long list of works which are yearly reprinted and republished without a word of protest. Lastly, why does not this inconsistent puritan purge the Old Testament of its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda; to carnal copulation and impudent whoredom, to adultery and fornication, to onanism, sodomy and bestiality? But this he will not do, the whited sepulchre! To the interested critic of the Edinburgh Review (No. 335 of July, 1886), I return my warmest thanks for his direct and deliberate falsehoods: — lies are one-legged and short-lived, and venom evaporates.* It appears to me that when I show to such men, so “respectable” and so impure, a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are adorned with every charm of nature and art, they point their unclean noses at a little heap of muck here and there lying in a field-corner.* [23]
* A virulently and unjustly abusive critique never yet injured its object: in fact it is generally the greatest favour an author's unfriends can bestow upon him. But to notice in a popular Review books which have been printed and not published is hardly in accordance with the established courtesies of literature. At the end of my work I propose to write a paper “The Reviewer Reviewed” which will, amongst other things, explain the motif of the writer of the critique and the editor of the Edinburgh.
Notes by John Lauritsen
1. “execrabilis familia pathicorum”: literally, “execrable family of pathics”. More freely, “accursed tribe of catamites”. “Pathicus” in ancient Latin refers to males who play the passive role in sex — primarily the passive partners in anal sex. More widely it can be used of a man who accepts oral penetration , or even of a woman who desires sexual penetration (e. g., unambiguously, at Priapea 25.3). In this paragraph Burton describes the brothels in Karachi, which featured eunuchs and boy prostitutes — both of which could be considered pathics. [Thanks to Terrence Lockyer and Michael Broder for suggestions here.]
2. In other words, Burton has explored and presumably experienced the world of all-male sexuality “in many and distant countries”. “Been there, done that.”
3. In this paragraph Burton's hints and ironies clearly indicate where his sympathies lie: “the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo.” Those who condemn the Vice “look upon it with the liveliest disgust” (a charming oxymoron), and are probably undersexed or impotent (“physically incapable of performing the operation”).
4. A reference to Virgil's Second Ecologue, in which the shepherd Corydon burns with yearning for Alexis, his master's darling. “Foul flavour” was only thrown in to befuddle the censors.
5. Burton elsewhere makes the point that male beauty is superior to female beauty:
The male figure here, as all the world over, is notably superior, as amongst the lower animals, to that of the female. The latter is a system of soft, curved, and rounded lines, graceful, but meaningless and monotonous. The former far excels it in variety of form and in sinew. In these lands, where all figures are semi-nude, the exceeding difference between the sexes strikes the eye at once. There will be a score of fine male figures to one female, and there she is, as everywhere else, as inferior as is the Venus de Medici to the Apollo Belvedere. (Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains)
Easterners, I have remarked, mostly recognise the artistic truth that the animal man is handsomer than woman; and that “fair sex” is truly only of skin-colour. The same is the general rule throughout creation, for instance the stallion compared with the mare, the cock with the hen; while there are sundry exceptions such as the Falconidae. (The Arabian Nights)
6. This sentence is a deliberately hilarious exercise in incongruities. Of course, the same form of love cannot be both “pathological” and “one of the marvellous list of amorous vagaries”. The “pitiful care of the physician” is intentionally and facetiously lugubrious.
7. In this sentence Burton expresses directly his loathing of prudes, bowdlerisers and censors.
8. The German means “All habitual pederasts recognise each other quickly, often with a single glance.” Burton here touches on what we now call gaydar — the ability of gay men, who may be neither effeminate nor conspicuously different from straight men, to recognise each other.
9. Despite the word “abuse” and a trivial amount of doubletalk, the entire long paragraph is a panegyric to the male love of Hellas.
10. An English translation of Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola, with authorship attributed to Antonio Rocco, translated from the Italian by J.C. Rawnsley, was published in 2000 by Entimos Press.
11. It is not true that the Athenians punished or categorically condemned boy love per se. For a scholarly refutation of older misinterpretations of Aeschines' speech see K.J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (1978). The entire text of Aeschines' speech, in English translation, is in Thomas K. Hubbard (ed.), Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic documents (2003).
12. There is no basis for the old belief that the Lex Scantinia or Lex Julia severely condemned all male-to-male sex, perhaps even with the death penalty. Warren Johansson in his entry, “Law (Major Traditions in the West” (Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, ed. Wayne R. Dynes, 1990) puts the case succinctly: “Under the Roman republic, the Lex Scatinia or Lex Scantinia from the third century B.C. seems to have directed against the use of force or authority to compel a free man to submit to what was in Roman eyes a degrading act; its full import and application remain obscure.” John Boswell in his chapter, “Rome: The Foundation” (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 1980), argues convincingly that sex between males per se could not have been illegal in ancient Rome.
13. In these two sentences Burton is using “pederasty” generically, to refer to all sex between males, not only that between a man and a boy.
14. “philosophic indifference”. Would that St. Paul had practised the same.
15. “abominations which, marvellous to relate, flourished in closest contact with men leading the purest of lives, models of moderation and morality, of religion and virtue.” Here Burton makes it quite clear to his intended readers, the initiated, that words like “abominations” should not be taken seriously.
16. In these three remarkable sentences, Burton informs us that as boys the Persian males have mutual sex with each other — then, when mature, they marry and have children — and then they again turn to the love of boys.
17. This cunning parable makes the point that under the right circumstances, virtually all men would succumb to homoerotic desire. Significantly, the supreme temptation is represented by a “fair youth of twenty”, not by an adolescent boy.
18. Surely a “tall tale”. Many of Burton's anecdotes should be taken with more than a grain of salt.
19. Surely, Burton himself did not believe this preposterous story of a man with a tail. One wonders how many of his readers believed it.
20. Understandably, gay men emigrated from England to Italy. In England, men and boys were regularly hanged for having sex with each other. (The last hanging was in 1834, but the death penalty remained on the books until 1861). In Italy, thanks to the Code Napoléon (1810), sex between males was legal.
21. For centuries gay men have made lists of famous men who loved other males. Notable lists before Burton's are found in Marlowe's play, Edward II (1593); Voltaire's article, “L'Amour nommĂ© Socratique” (1764); the anonymously published Don Leon (ca. 1836); Heinrich Hössli's Eros: Die MĂ€nnerliebe der Griechen (1838); and in various pamphlets by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1864-1879).
22. These two Latin phrases — “Naturalia non sunt turpia” [what is natural is not shameful] and “Mundis omnia munda” [to the pure all things are pure] — express Burton's own outlook.
23. In this final paragraph Burton directly expresses his loathing of censors, prudes and hypocrites: “so ‘respectable’ and so impure”.
Note on the text
I have all sixteen volumes of the Arabian Nights in my personal library. From the title page of the tenth volume:
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments.
Translated and annotated by Richard F. Burton.
Privately printed by the Burton Club.
Volume Ten.
London 1886.
In this Internet edition I have silently corrected a few outright typos. Punctuation in the printed text is inconsistent, but I have left it alone except when it was simply wrong, and except for the placement of quotation marks relative to commas (where I have used the logical punctuation favored by the best publishing houses). The printed text uses almost no italics, which is fine here, since italics show up poorly on a computer screen — either they are far too light or, if boldface is added, they are far too dark. Accordingly, I have simply followed the printed text with regard to italics.I write books and am proprietor of Pagan Press, a small book publisher. Each of our books is unique and well produced. Please check out the Pagan Press BOOKLIST — John Lauritsen
From the “Terminal Essay” in Volume Ten of his translation of The Arabian Nights (1886). http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/RB-ESSAY.HTM
[Note: Burton's footnotes in asterisks follow the paragraph; they are indented and in crimson. My own footnotes are numbered, in hypertext, and appear at the end of the essay in navy blue. I suggest reading my own Introduction first, and then this essay. See my note on the text at the very end of this document. — John Lauritsen]
Section D
The “execrabilis familia pathicorum” [1] first came before me by a chance of earlier life. In 1845, when Sir Charles Napier had conquered and annexed Sind, despite a fraction (mostly venal) which sought favour with the now defunct “Court of Directors to the Honourable East India Company”, the veteran began to consider his conquest with a curious eye. It was reported to him that KarĂĄchi, a townlet of some two thousand souls and distant not more than a mile from camp, supported no less than three lupanars or bordels, in which not women but boys and eunuchs, the former demanding nearly a double price,* lay for hire. Being then the only British officer who could speak Sindi, I was asked indirectly to make enquiries and to report upon the subject; and I undertook the task on express condition that my report should not be forwarded to the Bombay Government, from whom supporters of the Conqueror's policy could expect scant favour, mercy or justice. Accompanied by a Munshi, Mirza Mohammed Hosayn of Shiraz, and habited as a merchant, Mirza Abdullah the Bushiri,** I passed many an evening in the townlet, visited all the porneia and obtained the fullest details, which were duly despatched to Government House. But the “Devil's Brother” presently quitted Sind, leaving in his office my unfortunate official: this found its way with sundry other reports*** to Bombay and produced the expected result. A friend in the Secretariat informed me that my summary dismissal from the service had been formally proposed by one of Sir Charles Napier's successors, whose decease compels me parcere sepulto. But this excess of outraged modesty was not allowed.
* This detail especially excited the veteran's curiosity. The reason proved to be that the scrotum of the unmutilated boy could be used as a kind of bridle for directing the movements of the animal. I find nothing of the kind mentioned in the Sotadical literature of Greece and Rome, although the same cause might be expected everywhere to have the same effect. But in Mirabeau (KadhĂ©sch) a grand seigneur moderne, when his valet-de-chambre de confiance proposes to provide him with women instead of boys, exclaims, “Des femmes! eh! c'est comme si tu me servais un gigot sans manche.” See also infra for “Le poids du tisserand.”
** See Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, London, John Van Voorst, 1852.
*** Submitted to Government on Dec. 31, '47 and March 2, '48, they were printed in “Selections from the Records of the Government of India.” Bombay, New Series, No. xvii, Part 2, 1855. These are (1) Notes on the Population of Sind, etc., and (2) Brief Notes on the Modes of Intoxication, etc., written in collaboration with my late friend Assistant-Surgeon John E. Stocks, whose early death was a sore loss to scientific botany.
Subsequent enquiries in many and distant countries [2] enabled me to arrive at the following conclusions: —
1. There exists what I shall call a “Sotadic Zone”, bounded westwards by the northern shores of the Mediterranean (N. Lat. 43°) and by the southern (N. Lat. 30°). Thus the depth would be 780 to 800 miles including meridional France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa from Marocco to Egypt.
2. Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and ChaldĂŠa, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab and Kashmir.
3. In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China, Japan and Turkistan.
4. It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World where, at the time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some exceptions, an established racial institution.
5. Within the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined practise it only sporadically amid the opprobrium of their fellows who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation and look upon it with the liveliest disgust. [3]
Before entering into topographical details concerning Pederasty, which I hold to be geographical and climatic, not racial, I must offer a few considerations of its cause and origin. We must not forget that the love of boys has its noble sentimental side. The Platonists and pupils of the Academy, followed by the Sufis or Moslem Gnostics, held such affection, pure as ardent, to be the beau idĂ©al which united in man's soul the creature with the Creator. Professing to regard youths as the most cleanly and beautiful objects in this phenomenal world, they declared that by loving and extolling the chef-d'Ćuvre, corporeal and intellectual, of the Demiurgus, disinterestedly and without any admixture of carnal sensuality, they are paying the most fervent adoration to the Causa causans. They add that such affection, passing as it does the love of women, is far less selfish than fondness for and admiration of the other sex which, however innocent, always suggest sexuality;* and Easterns add that the devotion of the moth to the taper is purer and more fervent than the Bulbul's love for the Rose. Amongst the Greeks of the best ages the system of boy-favourites was advocated on considerations of morals and politics. The lover undertook the education of the beloved through precept and example, while the two were conjoined by a tie stricter than the fraternal. Hieronymus the Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the vigorous disposition of youths and the confidence engendered by their association often led to the overthrow of tyrannies. Socrates declared that “a most valiant army might be composed of boys and their lovers; for that of all men they would be most ashamed to desert one another.” And even Virgil, despite the foul flavour of Formosum pastor Corydon, [4] could write:
Nisus amore pio pueri.
* Glycon the Courtesan in Athen. xiii. 84 declares that “boys are handsome only when they resemble women”; and so the Learned Lady in The Nights (vol. v, 160) declares “Boys are likened to girls because folks say, Yonder boy is like a girl.” For the superior physical beauty of the human male compared with the female, [5] see The Nights, vol. iv. 15; and the boy's voice before it breaks excels that of any diva.
The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically. Hence the male /féminisme/ whereby the man becomes patiens as well as agens, and the woman a tribade, a votary of mascula Sappho,* Queen of Frictrices or Rubbers.** Prof. Mantegazza claims to have discovered the cause of this pathological love, this perversion of the erotic sense, one of the marvellous list of amorous vagaries which deserve, not prosecution but the pitiful care of the physician and the study of the psychologist. [6] According to him the nerves of the rectum and the genitalia, in all cases closely connected, are abnormally so in the pathic who obtains, by intromission, the venereal orgasm which is usually sought through the sexual organs. So amongst women there are tribads who can procure no pleasure except by foreign objects introduced a posteriori. Hence his threefold distribution of sodomy; (1) Periphic or anatomical, caused by an unusual distribution of the nerves and their hyperÊsthesia; (2) Luxurious, when love a tergo is preferred on account of the narrowness of the passage; and (3) the Psychical. But this is evidently superficial: the question is what causes this neuropathy, this abnormal distribution and condition of the nerves.***
* “Mascula”, from the priapiscus, the over-development of clitoris (the veretrum muliebre, in Arabic Abu TartĂșr, habens cristam) which enabled her to play the man. Sappho (nat. B.C. 612) has been retoillĂ©e like Mary Stuart, La Brinvilliers, Marie Antoinette and a host of feminine names which have a savour not of sanctity. Maximus of Tyre (Dissert. xxiv.) declares that the Eros of Sappho was Socratic and that Gyrinna and Atthis were as Alcibiades and Chermides to Socrates: Ovid, who could consult documents now lost, takes the same view in the Letter of Sappho to Phaon and in Tristia ii. 265
Lesbia quid docuit Sappho nisi amare puellas?
Suidas supports Ovid. Longinus eulogises the ΔÏÏÏÎčÎșη ΌαΜÎčα [erotike mania] (a term applied only to carnal love) of the far-famed Ode to Atthis:——
Ille mĂź par esse Deo videtur * * *
(Heureux! qui prĂšs de toi pour toi seule soupire * * *
(Blest as th' immortal gods is he, etc.)
By its love symptoms, suggesting that possession is the sole cure for passion Erasistratus discovered the love of Antiochus for Stratonice. Mure (Hist. of Greek Literature, 1850) speaks of the Ode to Aphrodite (Frag. 1) as “one in which the whole volume of Greek literature offers the most powerful concentration into one brilliant focus of the modes in which amatory concupiscence can display itself.” But Bernhardy, Bode, Richter, K. O. MĂŒller and esp. Welcker have made Sappho a model of purity, much like some of our dull wits who have converted Shakespeare, that most debauched genius, into a good British bourgeois. [7]
** The Arabic SahhĂĄkah, the Tractatrix of Subigitatrix, who has been noticed in vol. iv. 134. Hence to Lesbianise (λΔÏÎČÎčζΔÎčÎœ) and tribassare (ÏÏÎčÎČΔÏΞαÎč) the former applied to the love of woman for woman and the latter to its mĂ©canique: this is either natural, as friction of the labia and insertion of the clitoris when unusually developed, or artificial by means of the fascinum, the artificial penis (the Persian “MayĂĄjang”); the patte de chat, the banana-fruit and a multitude of other succedanea. As this feminine perversion is only glanced at in The Nights I need hardly enlarge upon the subject.
*** Plato (Symp.) is probably mystical when he accounts for such passions by there being in the beginning three species of humanity, men, women and men-women or androgynes. When the latter were destroyed by Zeus for rebellion, the two others were individually divided into equal parts. Hence each division seeks its other half in the same sex; the primitive man prefers men and the primitive woman women. C'est beau, but — is it true? The idea was probably derived from Egypt which supplied the Hebrews with androgynic humanity and thence it passed to extreme India, where Shiva as ArdhanĂĄrĂ was male on one side and female on the other side of the body, combining paternal and maternal qualities and functions. The first creation of humans (Gen. i. 27) was hermaphrodite (= Hermes and Venus) masculum et fĆminam creavit eos — male and female created He them — on the sixth day, with the command to increase and multiply (ibid. v. 28) while Eve the woman was created subsequently. Meanwhile, say certain Talmudists, Adam carnally copulated with all races of animals. See L'Anandryne in Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, where Antoinette Bourgnon laments the undoubling which disfigured the work of God, producing monsters incapable of independent self-reproduction like the vegetable kingdom.
As Prince Bismarck finds a moral difference between the male and female races of history, so I suspect a mixed physical temperament effected by the manifold subtle influences massed together in the word climate. Something of the kind is necessary to explain the fact of this pathological love extending over the greater portion of the habitable world, without any apparent connection of race or media, from the polished Greek to the cannibal Tupi of the Brazil. Walt Whitman speaks of the ashen grey faces of onanists: the faded colours, the puffy features and the unwholesome complexion of the professed pederast with his peculiar cachectic expression, indescribable but once seen never forgotten, stamp the breed, and Dr. G. Adolph is justified in declaring “Alle Gewohnneits-paederasten erkennen sich einander schnell, oft mit einem Blick.” [8] This has nothing in common with the fĂ©minisme which betrays itself in the pathic by womanly gait, regard and gesture: it is a something sui generis; and the same may be said of the colour and look of the young priest, who honestly refrains from women and their substitutes. Dr. Tardieu, in his well-known work, “Etude Medico-lĂ©gale sur les Attentats aux MĆurs”, and Dr. Adolph note a peculiar infundibuliform disposition of the “After” and a smoothness and want of folds even before any abuse has taken place, together with special forms of the male organs in confirmed pederasts. But these observations have been rejected by Caspar, Hoffman, Brouardel and Dr. J H. Henry Coutagne (Notes sur la Sodomie, Lyon 1880), and it is a medlcal question whose discussion would here be out of place.
The origin of pederasty is lost in the night of ages; but its historique has been carefully traced by many writers, especially Virey,* Rosenbaum** and M. H. E. Meier.*** The ancient Greeks who, like the modern Germans, invented nothing but were great improvers of what other races invented, attributed the formal apostolate of Sotadism to Orpheus, whose stigmata were worn by the Thracian women;
——Omnemque refugerat Orpheus
Foemineam venerem;——
Ille etiam Thracum populis fuit auctor, amorem
In teneres transferre mares: citraque juventam
Ătatis breve ver, et primos carpere flores.
Ovid. Met. x. 79-85.
Euripides proposed LaĂŻus father of Oedipus as the inaugurator, whereas TimĂŠus declared that the fashion of making favourites of boys was introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian reasons said Aristotle (Pol. ii, 10) attributing it to Minos. Herodotus, however, knew far better, having discovered (ii. c. 80) that the Orphic and Bacchic rites were originally Egyptian. But the Father of History was a traveller and an annalist rather than an archaeologist and he tripped in the following passage (i. c. 135), “As soon as they (the Persians) hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own, and hence, among other matters, they have learned from the Hellenes a passion for boys” (“unnatural lust”, says modest Rawlinson). Plutarch (De Malig. Herod. xiii.)**** asserts with much more probability that the Persians used eunuch boys according to the /Mos Graeciae/, long before they had seen the Grecian main.
* De la Femme, Paris, 1827
** Die Lustseuche des Alterthum's, Halle, 1839.
*** See his exhaustive article on (Grecian) “Paederastie” in the Allgemeine EncyclopĂŠdie of Ersch and Gruber, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1837. He carefully traces it through the several states, Dorians, Aeolians, Ionians, the Attic cities and those of Asia Minor. For these details I must refer my readers to M. Meier; a full account of these would fill a volume not the section of an essay.
**** Against which see Henri Estienne, Apologie pour HĂ©rodote, a society satire of xvith century, lately reprinted by Liseux.
In the Holy Books of the Hellenes, Homer and Hesiod, dealing with the heroic ages, there is no trace of pederasty, although, in a long subsequent generation, Lucian suspected Achilles and Patroclus as he did Orestes and Pylades, Theseus and Pirithous. Homer's praises of beauty are reserved for the feminines, especially his favourite Helen. But the Dorians of Crete seem to have commended the abuse to Athens and Sparta and subsequently imported it into Tarentum, Agrigentum and other colonies. Ephorus in Strabo (x. 4 § 21) gives a curious account of the violent abduction of beloved boys (ÏαÏαÏÏαΞΔΜÏÎżÏ) by the lover (ΔÏαÏÏÎ·Ï ); of the obligations of the ravisher (ÏÎčληÏÏÏ) to the favourite (ÎșλΔÎčÎœÎżÏ)* and of the “marriage-ceremonies” which lasted two months. See also Plato, Laws i. c. 8. Servius (Ad Ăneid. x. 325) informs us “De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Laconas et in totam Graeciam translatum est.” The Cretans and afterwards their apt pupils the Chalcidians held it disreputable for a beautiful boy to lack a lover. Hence Zeus the national Doric god of Crete loved Ganymede;** Apollo, another Dorian deity, loved Hyacinth, and Hercules, a Doric hero who grew to be a sun-god, loved Hylas and a host of others: thus Crete sanctified the practice by the examples of the gods and demigods. But when legislation came, the subject had qualified itself for legal limitation and as such was undertaken by Lycurgus and Solon, according to Xenophon (Lac. ii. 13), who draws a broad distinction between the honest love of boys and dishonest (αÎčÏÎčÎżÏÏÎżÏ) lust. They both approved of pure pederastĂa, like that of Harmodius and Aristogiton; but forbade it with serviles because degrading to a free man. Hence the love of boys was spoken of like that of women (Plato: Phaedrus; Repub. vi. c. 19 and Xenophon, Symp. iv. 10) e.g., “There was once a boy, or rather a youth, of exceeding beauty and he had very many lovers” — this is the language of Hafiz and Sa'adi. Ăschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were allowed to introduce it upon the stage, for “many men were as fond of having boys for their favourites as women for their mistresses; and this was a frequent fashion in many well-regulated cities of Greece.” Poets like AlcĂŠus, Anacreon, Agathon and Pindar affected it and Theognis sang of a “beautiful boy in the flower of his youth”. The statesmen Aristides and Themistocles quarrelled over Stesileus of Teos; and Pisistratus loved Charmus who first built an altar to Puerile Eros, while Charmus loved Hippias son of Pisistratus. Demosthenes the Orator took into keeping a youth called Cnosion greatly to the indignation of his wife. Xenophon loved Clinias and Autolycus; Aristotle, Hermeas, Theodectes*** and others; Empedocles, Pausanias; Epicurus, Pytocles; Aristippus, Eutichydes, and Zeno with his Stoics had a philosophic disregard for women, affecting only pederastĂa. A man in Athenaeus (iv. c. 40) left in his will that certain youths he had loved should fight like gladiators at his funeral; and Charicles in Lucian abuses Callicratidas for his love of “sterile pleasures”. Lastly there was the notable affair of Alcibiades and Socrates, the “sanctus paederasta”**** being violemment soupçonnĂ© when under the mantle:— non semper sine plagĂą ab eo surrexit. Athanaeus (v. c. 13) declares that Plato represents Socrates as absolutely intoxicated with his passion for Alcibiades.***** The ancients seem to have held the connection impure, or Juvenal would not have written:—
Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos,
followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of “Socratici pĂŠdicones”. It is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of the master of Hellenic Sophrosyne, the “Christian before Christianity”; but such a world-wide term as Socratic love can hardly be explained by the lucus-a-non-lucendo theory. We are overapt to apply our nineteenth century prejudices and prepossessions to the morality of the ancient Greeks who would have specimen'd such squeamishness in Attic salt. [9]
* In Sparta the lover was called ΔÎčÏÏÎœÎ·Î»Î±Ï or ΔÎčÏÏÎœÎ·Î»ÎżÏ and the beloved as in Thessaly αÎčÏÎ±Ï or αÎčÏηÏ.
** The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. Zeus, who became Jupiter, was an ancient king, according to the Cretans, who were entitled liars because they showed his burial-place. From a deified ancestor he would become a local god, like the Hebrew Jehovah as opposed to Chemosh of Moab; the name would gain amplitude by long time and distant travel and the old island chieftain would end in becoming the Demiurgus. Ganymede (who possibly gave rise to the old Lat. “Catamitus”) was probably some fair Phrygian boy (“son of Tros”) who in process of time became a symbol of the wise man seized by the eagle (perspicacity) to be raised amongst the Immortals; and the chaste myth simply signified that only the prudent are loved by the gods. But it rotted with age as do all things human. For the PederastĂa of the Gods see Bayle under Chrysippe.
*** See Dissertation sur les idĂ©es morales des Grecs et sur les dangers de lire Platon. Par M. AudĂ©, Bibliophile, Rouen, Lemonnyer, 1879. This is the pseudonym of the late Octave Delepierre, who published with Gay, but not the Editio Princeps — which, if I remember rightly, contains much more matter.
**** The phrase of J. Matthias Gesner, Comm. Reg. Soc. Gottingen i. 1-32. It was founded upon Erasmus' “Sancte Socrate, ora pro nobis”, and the article was translated by M. Alcide Bonmaire, Paris, Liseux, 1877.
***** The subject has employed many a pen, e.g. Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola, D. P. A. (supposed to be Pietro Aretino [10] — ad captandum?), Oranges, par Juann VVart, 1652: small square 8vo. of pp. 102, including 3 preliminary pp. and at end an unpaged leaf with 4 sonnets, almost Venetian, by V. M. There is a re-impression of the same date, a small 12mo of longer format, pp. 124 with pp. 2 for sonnets: in 1862 the Imprimerie Raçon printed 102 copies in 8vo. of pp. iv.-108, and in 1863 it was condemned by the police as a liber spurcissimus atque execrandus de criminis sodomici laude et arte. This work produced “Alcibiade Enfant Ă l'Ă©cole”, traduit pour la premiĂšre fois de l'Italien de Ferrante Pallavicini, Amsterdam, chez l'Ancien Pierre Marteau, mdccclxvi. Pallavicini (nat. 1618), who wrote against Rome, was beheaded, ĂŠt. 26 (March 5, 1644) at Avignon in 1644 by the vengeance of the Barberini: he was a bel esprit dĂ©rĂ©glĂ©, nourri d'Ă©tudes antiques and a Memb. of the Acad. Degl' Incogniti. His peculiarities are shown by his “Opere Scelte”, 2 vols. 12mo, Villafranca, mdclxiii.; these do not include Alcibiade Fanciullo, a dialogue between Philotimus and Alcibiades which seems to be a mere skit at the Jesuits and their PĂ©chĂ© philosophique. Then came the “Dissertation sur l'Alcibiade fanciullo a scola” traduit de l'Italien de Giambattista Baseggio et accompagnĂ©e de notes et d'une post-face par un bibliophile français (M. Gustave Brunet, Librarian of Bordeaux), Paris. J. Gay, 1861 — an octavo of pp. 78 (paged), 254 copies. The same Baseggio printed in 1850 his Disquisizioni (23 copies) and claims for F. Pallavicini the authorship of Alcibiades which the Manuel du Libraire wrongly attributes to M. Girol. Adda in 1859. I have heard of but not seen the “Amator fornaceus, amator ineptus” (Palladi, 1633) supposed by some to be the origin of Alcibiade Fanciullo: but most critics consider it a poor and insipid production.
The Spartans, according to Agnon the Academic (confirmed by Plato, Plutarch and Cicero), treated boys and girls in the same way before marriage: hence Juvenal (xi. 173) uses “LacedĂŠmonius” for a pathic and other writers apply it to a tribade. After the Peloponnesian War, which ended in B.C. 404, the use became merged in the abuse. Yet some purity must have survived, even amongst the BĆotians who produced the famous Narcissus,* described by Ovid (Met. iii. 339):——
Multi illum juvenes, multĂŠ cupiere puellĂŠ;
Nulli illum juvenes, nullĂŠ tetigere puellĂŠ:**
for Epaminondas, whose name is mentioned with three beloveds, established the Holy Regiment composed of mutual lovers, testifying the majesty of Eros and preferring to a discreditable life a glorious death. Philip's reflections on the fatal field of Chaeroneia form their fittest epitaph. At last the Athenians, according to Ăschines, officially punished Sodomy with death; [11] but the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of KarĂĄchi; the Porneia and Pornoboskeia, where slaves and pueri venales “stood”, as the term was, near the Pnyx, the city walls and a certain tower, also about Lycabettus (Ăsch. contra Tim.); and paid a fixed tax to the state. The pleasures of society in civilized Greece seem to have been sought chiefly in the heresies of love — Hetairesis*** and Sotadism.
* The word is from ΜαÏÎșη, numbness, torpor, narcotism: the flowers, being loved by the infernal gods, were offered to the Furies. Narcissus and Hippolytus are often assumed as types of morosa voluptas, masturbation and clitorisation for nymphomania: certain mediaeval writers found in the former a type of the Saviour; and Mirabeau a representation of the androgynous or first Adam: to me Narcissus suggests the Hindu Vishnu absorbed in the contemplation of his own perfections.
** The verse of Ovid is parallel'd by the song of Al-ZĂĄhir al-Jazari (Ibn Khall. iii. 720).
Illum impuberem amaverunt mares; puberem feminĂŠ.
Gloria Deo! nunquam amatoribus carebit.
*** The venerable society of prostitutes contained three chief classes. The first and lowest were the Dicteriads, so called from Diete (Crete) who imitated Pasiphaë, wife of Minos, in preferring a bull to a husband; above them was the middle class, the AleutridÊ who were the Almahs or professional musicians, and the aristocracy was represented by the Hetairai, whose wit and learning enabled them to adorn more than one page of Grecian history. The grave Solon, who had studied in Egypt, established a vast Dicterion (Philemon in his Delphica), or bordel, whose proceeds swelled the revenue of the Republic.
It is calculated that the French of the sixteenth century had four hundred names for the parts genital and three hundred for their use in coition. The Greek vocabulary is not less copious, and some of its pederastic terms, of which Meier gives nearly a hundred, and its nomenclature of pathologic love are curious and picturesque enough to merit quotation.
To live the life of Abron (the Argive) i.e. that of a ÏαÏÏÏÎœ, pathic or passive lover.
The Agathonian song.
AischrourgĂa = dishonest love, also called AkolasĂa, AkrasĂa, ArrenokoitĂa, etc.
Alcinoan youths, or “non-conformists”,
In cute curandĂą plus ĂŠquo operata Juventus.
Alegomenos, the “unspeakable”, as the pederast was termed by the Council of Ancyra: also the Agrios, Apolaustus and Akolastos.
Androgyne, of whom Ansonius wrote (Epig. lxviii. 15):——
Ecce ego sum factus femina de puero.
Badas and badizein = clunes torquens: also BĂĄtalos = a catamite.
Catapygos, Katapygosyne = puerarius and catadactylium from Dactylion, the ring, used in the sense of Nerissa's, but applied to the corollarium puerile.
CinĂŠdus (Kinaidos), the active lover (ÏÎżÎčÏÎœ) derived either from his kinetics or quasi ÎșÏ ÏÎœ αÎčÎŽÏÏ = dog-modest. Also SpatalocinĂŠdus (lasciviĂą fluens) = a fair Ganymede.
Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in EubĆa, a city famed for love Ă posteriori; mostly applied to le lĂ©chement des testicules by children.
ClazomenĂŠ = the buttocks, also a sotadic disease, so called from the Ionian city devoted to Aversa Venus; also used of a pathic,
— et tergo femina pube vir est.
Embasicoetas, prop. a link-boy at marriages, also a “night-cap” drunk before bed and lastly an effeminate; one who perambulavit omnium cubilia (Catullus). See Encolpius' pun upon the Embasicete in Satyricon, cap. iv.
Epipedesis, the carnal assault.
Geiton lit. “neighbour” the beloved of Encolpius, which has produced the Fr. Giton = Bardache, Ital. bardascia from the Arab. Baradaj, a captive, a slave; the augm. form is Polygeiton.
Hippias (tyranny of) when the patient (woman or boy) mounts the agent. Aristoph. Vesp. 502. So also Kelitizein = peccare superne or equum agitare supernum of Horace.
Mokhtheria, depravity with boys.
Paidika, whence pĂŠdicare (act.) and pĂŠdicari (pass.): so in the Latin poet:—
PEnelopes primam DIdonis prima sequatur,
Et primam CAni, syllaba prima REmi.
Pathikos, Pathicus, a passive, like Malakos (malacus, mollis, facilis), Malchio, Trimalchio (Petronius), Malta, Maltha and in Hor. (Sat. ii. 25):—
Malthinus tunicis demissis ambulat.
Praxis = the malpractice.
Pygisma = buttockry, because most actives end within the nates, being too much excited for further intromission.
PhĆnicissare (ÏÎżÎčÎœÎčÎșÎčζΔÎčÎœ) = cunnilingere in tempore menstruum, quia hoc vitium in Phoenicia generata solebat (Thes. Erot. Ling. Latinae); also irrumer en miel.
Phicidissare, denotat actum per canes commissum quando lambunt cunnos vel testiculos (Suetonius): also applied to pollution of childhood.
Samorium flores (Erasmus, Prov. xxiii.) alluding to the androgynic prostitutions of Samos.
Siphniassare (ÏÎčÏÎœÎčαζΔÎčÎœ), from Siphnos, hod. Sifanto Island) = digito podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus (see Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).
Thrypsis = the rubbing.
PederastĂa had in Greece, I have shown, its noble and ideal side: Rome, however, borrowed her malpractices, like her religion and polity, from those ultra-material Etruscans and debauched with a brazen face. Even under the Republic Plautus (Casin. ii. 21) makes one of his characters exclaim, in the utmost sang-froid, “Ultro te, amator, apage te a dorso meo!” With increased luxury the evil grew and Livy notices (xxxix. 13), at the Bacchanalia, plura virorum inter sese quam fĆminarum stupra. There were individual protests; for instance, S. Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus (Consul U.C. 612) punished his son for dubia castitas; and a private soldier, C. Plotius, killed his military Tribune, Q. Luscius, for unchaste proposals. The Lex Scantinia (Scatinia?), popularly derived from Scantinius the Tribune and of doubtful date (B.C. 226.?), attempted to abate the scandal by fine and the Lex Julia by death; [12] but they were trifling obstacles to the flood of infamy which surged in with the Empire. No class seems then to have disdained these “sterile pleasures”: l'on n'attachoit point alors Ă cette espĂšce d'amour une note d'infamie, comme en paĂŻs de chrĂ©tientĂ©, says Bayle under “Anacreon”. The great CĂŠsar, the CinĂŠdus calvus of Catullus, was the husband of all the wives and the wife of all the husbands in Rome (Suetonius, cap. lii.); and his soldiers sang in his praise “Gallias CĂŠsar subegit, Nicomedes CĂŠsarem” (Suet. cies. xlix.); whence his sobriquet “Fornix Bithynicus”. Of Augustus the people chanted
Videsne ut CinĂŠdus orbem digito temperet?
Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which the spinthriĂŠ (lit. women's bracelets) were connected in a chain by the bond of flesh* Seneca (QuĂŠst. Nat.): Of this refinement, which in the earlier part of the nineteenth century was renewed by sundry Englishmen at Naples, Ausonius wrote (Epig. cxix. I),
Tres uno in lecto: stuprum duo perpetiuntur;
And Martial had said (xii. 43);——
Quo symplegmate quinque cupulentur;
Qua plures teneantur a catena; etc.
Ausonius recounts of Caligula he so lost patience that he forcibly entered the priest M. Lepidus, before the sacrifice was completed. The beautiful Nero was formally married to Pythagoras (or Doryphoros) and afterwards took to wife Sporus who was first subjected to castration of a peculiar fashion; he was then named Sabina after the deceased spouse and claimed queenly honours. The “Othonis et Trajani pathici” were famed; the great Hadrian openly loved AntinoĂŒs and the wild debaucheries of Heliogabalus seem only to have amused, instead of disgusting, the Romans.
* This and Saint Paul (Romans i. 27) suggested to Caravaggio his picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati.
Uranopolis allowed public lupanaria where adults and meritorii pueri, who began their career as early as seven years, stood for hire: the inmates of these cauponĂŠ wore sleeved tunics and dalmatics like women. As in modern Egypt pathic boys, we learn from Catullus, haunted the public baths. DebauchĂ©es had signals like freemasons whereby they recognized one another. The Greek SkematĂzein was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had eggs, tĂąter si les poulettes ont l'Ćuf: hence the Athenians called it Catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus impudicus or infamis, the “medical finger”* of Rabelais and the Chiromantists. Another sign was to scratch the head with the minimus — digitulo caput scabere (Juv. ix. 133).** The prostitution of boys was first forbidden by Domitian; but Saint Paul, a Greek, had formally expressed his abomination of Le Vice (Rom. i. 26; i. Cor. vi. 8); and we may agree with Grotius (de Verit. ii. c. 13) that early Christianity did much to suppress it. At last the Emperor Theodosius punished it with fire as a profanation, because sacro-sanctum esse debetur hospitium virilis animĂŠ.
* Properly speaking “Medicus” is the third or ring-finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses,
Est pollex Veneris; sed Jupiter indice gaudet
Saturnus medium; Sol medicumque tenet.
** So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput. The modern Italian does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and medius to suggest the clitoris.
In the pagan days of imperial Rome her literature makes no difference between boy and girl. Horace naĂŻvely says (Sat. ii. 118):—
Ancilla aut verna est prĂŠsto puer;
and with Hamlet, but in a dishonest sense:—
— Man delights me not
Nor woman neither.
Similarly the Spaniard Martial, who is a mine of such pederastic allusions (xi. 46):—
Sive puer arrisit, sive puella tibi.
That marvellous Satyricon which unites the wit of MoliĂšre* with the debaucheries of Piron, whilst the writer has been described, like Rabelais, as purissimus in impuritate, is a kind of Triumph of Pederasty. Geiton the hero, a handsome curly-pated hobbledehoy of seventeen, with his cĂąlinerie and wheedling tongue, is courted like one of the sequor sexus: his lovers are inordinately jealous of him and his desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart. But no dialogue between man and wife in extremis could be more pathetic than that in the scene where shipwreck is imminent. Elsewhere everyone seems to attempt his neighbour: a man alte succinctus assails Ascyltos; Lycus, the Tarentine skipper, would force Encolpius and so forth: yet we have the neat and finished touch (cap. vii.):—— “The lamentation was very fine (the dying man having manumitted his slaves) albeit his wife wept not as though she loved him. How were it had he not behaved to her so well?”
* What can be wittier than the now trite “Tale of the Ephesian Matron”, whose dry humour is worthy of The Nights? No wonder that it has made the grand tour of the world. It is found in the neo-PhĂŠdrus, the tales of MusĂŠus and in the Septem Sapientes as the “Widow which was comforted”. As the “Fabliau de la Femme qui se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari”, it tempted BrantĂŽme and La Fontaine; and Abel RĂ©musat shows in his Contes Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom. Mr. Walter K. Kelly remarks that the most singular place for such a tale is the “Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying” by Jeremy Taylor, who introduces it into his chapt. v — “Of the Contingencies of Death and Treating our Dead”. But in those days divines were not mealy-mouthed.
Erotic Latin glossaries* give some ninety words connected with Pederasty and some, which “speak with Roman simplicity”, are peculiarly expressive. “Aversa Venus” alludes to women being treated as boys: hence Martial, translated by Piron, addresses Mistress Martial (x. 44):—
Teque puta, cunnos, uxor, habere duos.
The capillatus or comatus is also called calamistratus, the darling curled with crisping-irons; and he is an Effeminatus, i.e. qui muliebria patitur; or a Delicatus, slave or eunuch for the use of the Draucus, Puerarius (boy-lover) or Dominus (Mart. xi. 71). The Divisor is so called from his practice Hillas dividere or cĂŠdere, something like Martial's cacare mentulam or Juvenal's Hesternae occurrere cĂŠnĂŠ. Facere vicibus (Juv. vii. 238), incestare se invicem or mutuum facere (Plaut. Trin. ii. 437), is described as “a puerile vice”, in which the two take turns to be active and passive: they are also called Gemelli and Fratres = compares in pĂŠdicatione. Illicita libido is = praepostera seu postica Venus, and is expressed by the picturesque phrase indicare (seu incurvare) aliquem. Depilatus, divellere pilos, glaber, lĂŠvis and nates pervellere are allusions to the Sotadic toilette. The fine distinction between demittere and dejicere caput are worthy of a glossary, while Pathica puella, puera, putus, pullipremo, pusio, pygiaca sacra, quadrupes, scarabĂŠus and smerdalius explain themselves.
* Glossarium eroticum linguĂŠ LatinĂŠ, sive theogoniĂŠ, legum et morum nuptialium apud Romanos explanatio nova, auctore P. P. (Parisiis, Dondey-DuprĂ©, 1826, in 8vo). P. P. is supposed to be Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, an engineer who made a plan of Bordeaux and who annotated the Erotica Biblion. Gay writes, “On s'est servi pour cet ouvrage des travaux inĂ©dits de M. le Baron de Schonen, etc. Quant au Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, qu'on dĂ©signait comme l'auteur de ce savant volume, son existence n'est pas bien avĂ©rĂ©e, et quelques bibliographes persistent Ă penser que ce nom cache la collaboration du Baron de Schonen et d'Eloi Johanneau”. Other glossicists as Blondeau and Forberg have been printed by Liseux, Paris.
From Rome the practice extended far and wide to her colonies, especially the Provincia now called Provence. Athenaeus (xii. 26) charges the people of Massilia with “acting like women out of luxury”; and he cites the saying “May you sail to Massilia!” as if it were another Corinth. Indeed the whole Keltic race is charged with Le Vice by Aristotle (Pol. ii. 66), Strabo. (iv. 199) and Diodorus Siculus (v. 32). Roman civilization carried pederasty also to Northern Africa, where it took firm root, while the negro and negroid races to the South ignore the erotic perversion, except where imported by foreigners into such kingdoms as Bornu and Haussa. In old Mauritania, now Morocco,* the Moors proper are notable sodomites; Moslems, even of saintly houses, are permitted openly to keep catamites, nor do their disciples think worse of their sanctity for such license: in one case the English wife failed to banish from the home “that horrid boy”.
* This magnificent country, which the petty jealousies of Europe condemn, like the glorious regions about Constantinople, to mere barbarism, is tenanted by three Moslem races. The Berbers, who call themselves Tamazight (plur. of Amazigh), are the GĂŠtulian indigenes speaking an Africo-Semitic tongue (see Essai de Grammaire Kabyle, etc. par A. Hanoteau, Paris, Benjamin Duprat). The Arabs, descended from the conquerors in our eighth century, are mostly nomads and camel-breeders. Third and last are the Moors proper, the race dwelling in towns, a mixed breed originally Arabian but modified by six centuries of Spanish residence and showing by thickness of feature and a parchment-coloured skin, resembling the American Octaroon's, a negro innervation of old date. The latter are well described in “Morocco and the Moors”, etc. (Sampson Low and Co., 1876), by my late friend Dr. Arthur Leared, whose work I should like to see reprinted.
Yet pederasty is forbidden by the Koran. In chapter iv. 20 we read; “And if two (men) among you commit the crime, then punish them both”, the penalty being some hurt or damage by public reproach, insult or scourging. [13] There are four distinct references to Lot and the Sodomites in chapters vii. 78; xi 77-84; xxvi. 160-174 and xxix. 28-35. In the first the prophet commissioned to the people says, “Proceed ye to a fulsome act wherein no creature hath foregone ye? Verily ye come to men in lieu of women lustfully.” We have then an account of the rain which made an end of the wicked and this judgement on the Cities of the Plain is repeated with more detail in the second reference. Here the angels, generally supposed to be three, Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, appeared to Lot as beautiful youths, a sore temptation to the sinners, and the godly man's arm was straitened concerning his visitors because he felt unable to protect them from the erotic vagaries of his fellow townsmen. He therefore shut his doors and from behind them argued the matter: presently the riotous assembly attempted to climb the wall when Gabriel, seeing the distress of his host, smote them on the face with one of his wings and blinded them so that all moved off crying for aid and saying that Lot had magicians in his house. Hereupon the “cities” which, if they ever existed, must have been Fellah villages, were uplifted: Gabriel thrust his wing under them and raised them so high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven (the lunar sphere) could hear the dogs barking and the cocks crowing. Then came the rain of stones: these were clay pellets baked in hell-fire, streaked white and red, or having some mark to distinguish them from the ordinary and each bearing the name of its destination like the missiles which destroyed the host of Abrahat al-Ashram.* Lastly the “Cities” were turned upside down and cast upon earth. These circumstantial unfacts are repeated at full length in the other two chapters; but rather as an instance of Allah's power than as a warning against pederasty, which Mohammed seems to have regarded with philosophic indifference. [14] The general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like fornication unless the offenders made a public act of penitence. But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat too clement and will not convict unless four credible witnesses swear to have seen rem in re. I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious opinion that the Ghilman or WuldĂĄn, the beautiful boys of Paradise, the counterparts of the Houris, will be lawful catamites to the True Believers in a future state of happiness: the idea is nowhere countenanced in Al-Islam; and, although I have often heard debauchĂ©es refer to it, the learned look upon the assertion as scandalous.
* Thus somewhat agreeing with one of the multitudinous modern theories that the Pentapolis was destroyed by discharges of meteoric stones during a tremendous thunderstorm. Possible, but where are the stones?
As in Morocco so the Vice prevails throughout the old regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and all the cities of the South Mediterranean seaboard, whilst it is unknown to the Nubians, the Berbers and the wilder tribes dwelling inland. Proceeding Eastward we reach Egypt, that classical region of all abominations which, marvellous to relate, flourished in closest contact with men leading the purest of lives, models of moderation and morality, of religion and virtue. [15] Amongst the ancient Copts Le Vice was part and portion of the Ritual and was represented by two male partridges alternately copulating (Interp. in Priapi Carm. xvii). The evil would have gained strength by the invasion of Cambyses (B.C. 524), whose armies, after the victory over Psammenitus, settled in the Nile-Valley, and held it, despite sundry revolts, for some hundred and ninety years. During these six generations the Iranians left their mark upon Lower Egypt and especially, as the late Rogers Bey proved, upon the Fayyum, the most ancient Delta of the Nile.* Nor would the evil be diminished by the Hellenes who, under Alexander the Great, “liberator and saviour of Egypt” (B.C. 332), extinguished the native dynasties: the love of the Macedonian for Bagoas the Eunuch being a matter of history. From that time and under the rule of the Ptolemies the morality gradually decayed; the Canopic orgies extended into private life and the debauchery of the men was equalled only by the depravity of the women. Neither Christianity nor Al-Islam could effect a change for the better; and social morality seems to have been at its worst during the past century when Sonnini travelled (A.D. 1717). The French officer, who is thoroughly trustworthy, draws the darkest picture of the widely-spread criminality, especially of the bestiality and the sodomy (chapt. xv.) which formed the “delight of the Egyptians”. During the Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his letter to General Bruix (p. 19) says, “Les Arabes et les Mamelouks ont traitĂ© quelques-uns de nos prisonniers comme Socrate traitait, dit-on, Alcibiade. Il fallait pĂ©rir ou y passer.” Old Anglo-Egyptians still chuckle over the tale of Sa'id Pasha and M. de Ruyssenaer, the highdried and highly respectable Consul-General for the Netherlands, who was solemnly advised to make the experiment, active and passive, before offering his opinion upon the subject. In the present age extensive intercourse with Europeans has produced not a reformation but a certain reticence amongst the upper classes: they are as vicious as ever, but they do not care for displaying their vices to the eyes of mocking strangers.
* To this Iranian domination I attribute the use of many Persic words which are not yet obsolete in Egypt. “Bakhshish”, for instance, is not intelligible in the Moslem regions west of the Nile-Valley, and for a present the Moors say HadĂyah, regalo or favor.
Syria and Palestine, another ancient focus of abominations, borrowed from Egypt and exaggerated the worship of androgynic and hermaphroditic deities. Plutarch (De Iside) notes that the old Nilotes held the moon to be of “male-female sex”, the men sacrificing to Luna and the women to Lunus.* Isis also was a hermaphrodite, the idea being that Aether or Air (the lower heavens) was the menstruum of generative nature; and Damascius explained the tenet by the all-fruitful and prolific powers of the atmosphere. Hence the fragment attributed to Orpheus, the song of Jupiter (Air)—
All things from Jove descend
Jove was a male, Jove was a deathless bride;
For men call Air, of two-fold sex, the Jove.
Julius Firmicus relates that “The Assyrians and part of the Africans” (along the Mediterranean seaboard?) “hold Air to be the chief element and adore its fanciful figure (imaginata figura), consecrated under the name of Juno or the Virgin Venus. * * * Their companies of priests cannot duly serve her unless they effeminate their faces, smooth their skins and disgrace their masculine sex by feminine ornaments. You may see men in their very temples amid general groans enduring miserable dalliance and becoming passives like women (viros muliebria pati) and they expose, with boasting and ostentation, the pollution of the impure and immodest body.” Here we find the religious significance of eunuchry. It was practised as a religious rite by the Tympanotribas or Gallus,** the castrated votary of Rhea or Bona Mater, in Phrygia called Cybele, self-mutilated but not in memory of Atys; and by a host of other creeds: even Christianity, as sundry texts show,*** could not altogether cast out the old possession. Hence too we have an explanation of Sotadic love in its second stage, when it became, like cannibalism, a matter of superstition. Assuming a nature-implanted tendency, we see that like human sacrifice it was held to be the most acceptable offering to the God-goddess in the Orgia or sacred ceremonies, a something set apart for peculiar worship. Hence in Rome as in Egypt the temples of Isis (Inachidos limina, IsiacĂŠ sacraria LunĂŠ) were centres of sodomy, and the religious practice was adopted by the grand priestly castes from Mesopotamia to Mexico and Peru.
* Arnobius and Tertullian, with the arrogance of their caste and its miserable ignorance of that symbolism which often concealed from vulgar eyes the most precious mysteries, used to taunt the heathen for praying to deities whose sex they ignored: “Consuistis in precibus ‘Seu tu Deus seu tu Dea,’ dicere!” These men would know everything; they made God the merest work of man's brains and armed him with a despotism of omnipotence which rendered their creation truly dreadful.
** Gallus lit. = a cock, in pornologic parlance is a capon, a castrato.
*** The texts justifying or conjoining castration are Matt. xviii. 8-9; Mark ix. 43-47; Luke xxiii. 29 and Col. iii. 5. St. Paul preached (I Corin. vii. 29) that a man should live with his wife as if he had none. The Abelian heretics of Africa abstained from women because Abel died virginal. Origen mutilated himself after interpreting too rigorously Matt. xix. 12, and was duly excommunicated. But his disciple, the Arab Valerius, founded (A.D. 250) the castrated sect called Valerians who, persecuted and dispersed by the Emperors Constantine and Justinian, became the spiritual fathers of the modern Skopzis. These eunuchs first appeared in Russia at the end of the xith century, when two Greeks, John and Jephrem, were metropolitans of Kiew: the former was brought thither in A.D. 1089 by Princess Anna Wassewolodowna and is called by the chronicles NawjĂš or the Corpse. But in the early part of the last century (1715-1733) a sect arose in the circle of Uglitseh and in Moscow, at first called Clisti or flagellants, which developed into the modern Skopzi. For this extensive subject see De Stein (Zeitschrift fĂŒr Ethn. Berlin, 1875) and Mantegazza, chapt. vi.
We find the earliest written notices of the Vice in the mythical destruction of the Pentapolis (Gen. xix.), Sodom, Gomorrah ( = 'Ämirah, the cultivated country), Adama, ZeboĂŻm and Zoar or Bela. The legend has been amply embroidered by the Rabbis who make the Sodomites do everything Ă l'envers: e.g. if a man were wounded he was fined for bloodshed and was compelled to fee the offender; and if one cut off the ear of a neighbour's ass he was condemned to keep the animal till the ear grew again. The Jewish doctors declare the people to have been a race of sharpers with rogues for magistrates, and thus they justify the judgement which they read literally. But the traveller cannot accept it. I have carefully examined the lands at the North and at the South of that most beautiful lake, the so-called Dead Sea, whose tranquil loveliness, backed by the grand plateau of Moab, is an object of admiration to all save patients suffering from the strange disease “Holy Land on the Brain”.* But I found no traces of craters in the neighbourhood, no signs of vulcanism, no remains of “meteoric stones”: the asphalt which named the water is a mineralized vegetable washed out of the limestones, and the sulphur and salt are brought down by the Jordan into a lake without issue. I must therefore look upon the history as a myth which may have served a double purpose. The first would be to deter the Jew from the Malthusian practices of his pagan predecessors, upon whom obloquy was thus cast, so far resembling the scandalous and absurd legend which explained the names of the children of Lot by PheinĂ© and Thamma as “Moab” (Mu-ab) the water or semen of the father, and “Ammon” as mother's son, that is, bastard. The fable would also account for the abnormal fissure containing the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea, which the late Sir R. I. Murchison used wrong-headedly to call a “Volcano of Depression”: this geological feature, that cuts off the river-basin from its natural outlet the Gulf of Eloth (Akabah), must date from myriads of years before there were “Cities of the Plains”. But the main object of the ancient lawgiver, Osarsiph, Moses or the Moseidae, was doubtless to discountenance a perversion prejudicial to the increase of population. And he speaks with no uncertain voice, Whoso lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death (Exod. xxii. 19): If a man lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them (Levit. xx. 13; where v.v. 15-16 threaten with death man and woman who lie with beasts). Again, There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel (Deut. xxii. 5).
* See the marvellously absurd description of the glorious “Dead Sea” in the Purchas v 84.
The old commentators on the Sodom-myth are most unsatisfactory, Parkhurst, s.v. Kadesh. “From hence we may observe the peculiar propriety of this punishment of Sodom and of the neighbouring cities. By their sodomitical impurities they meant to acknowledge the Heavens as the cause of fruitfulness independently upon, and in opposition to Jehovah;* therefore Jehovah, by raining upon them not genial showers but brimstone from heaven, not only destroyed the inhabitants, but also changed all that country, which was before as the garden of God, into brimstone and salt that is not sown nor beareth, neither any grass groweth therein.” It must be owned that to this Pentapolis was dealt very hard measure for religiously and diligently practising a popular rite which a host of cities even in the present day, as Naples and Shiraz, to mention no others, affect for simple luxury and affect with impunity. The myth may probably reduce itself to very small proportions, a few Fellah villages destroyed by a storm, like that which drove Brennus from Delphi.
* Jehovah here is made to play an evil part by destroying men instead of teaching them better. But, “Nous faisons les Dieux Ă notre image et nous portons dans le ciel ce que nous voyons sur la terre.” The idea of Yahweh, or Yah, is palpably Egyptian, the Ankh or ever-living One: the etymon, however, was learned at Babylon and is still found amongst the cuneiforms.
The Hebrews entering Syria found it religionized by Assyria and Babylonia, whence Accadian Ishtar had passed west and had become Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth or Ashirah,* the Anaitis of Armenia, the Phoenician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-goddess,** who is queen of Heaven and Love. In another phase she was Venus Mylitta = the Procreatrix, in Chaldaic MauludatĂ and in Arabic Moawallidah, she who bringeth forth. She was worshipped by men habited as women and vice versĂą; for which reason in the Torah (Deut. xx. 5) the sexes are forbidden to change dress. The male prostitutes were called Kadesh the holy, the women being Kadeshah, and doubtless gave themselves up to great excesses. Eusebius (De bit. Const. iii. c. 55) describes a school of impurity at Aphac, where women and “men who were not men” practised all manner of abominations in honour of the Demon (Venus). Here the Phrygian symbolism of Kybele and Attis (Atys) had become the Syrian Ba'al Tammuz and Astarte, and the Grecian DionĂŠa and Adonis, the anthropomorphic forms of the two greater lights. The site, Apheca, now Wady al-Afik on the route from Bayrut to the Cedars, is a glen of wild and wondrous beauty, fitting frame-work for the loves of goddess and demigod: and the ruins of the temple destroyed by Constantine contrast with Nature's work, the glorious fountain, splendidior vitro, which feeds the River Ibrahim and still at times Adonis runs purple to the sea.***
* The name still survives in the ShajarĂĄt al-AsharĂĄ, a clump of trees near the village Al-GhĂĄjar (of the Gypsies?) at the foot of Hermon.
** I am not quite sure that Astarte is not primarily the planet Venus; but I can hardly doubt that Prof. Max MĂŒller and Sir G. Cox are mistaken in bringing from India Aphrodite the Dawn and her attendants, the Charites identified with the Vedic Harits. Of Ishtar in Accadia, however, Roscher seems to have proved that she is distinctly the Moon sinking into Amenti (the west, the Underworld) in search of her lost spouse Izdubar, the Sun-god. This again is pure Egyptianism.
*** In this classical land of Venus the worship of Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete. The MetĂĄwali heretics, a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry of “BilĂĄd B'sharrah”, which I would derive from Bayt Ashlrah, still pilgrimage to the ruins and address their vows to the Sayyidat al-KabĂrah, the Great Lady. Orthodox Moslems accuse them of abominable orgies and point to the lamps and rags which they suspend to a tree entitled Shajarat al-Sitt — the Lady's tree — an Acacia Albida which, according to some travellers, is found only here and at Sayda (Sidon) where an avenue exists. The people of KasrawĂĄn, a Christian province in the Libanus, inhabited by a peculiarly prurient race, also hold high festival under the far-famed Cedars, and their women sacrifice to Venus like the Kadashah of the PhĆnicians This survival of old superstition is unknown to missionary “Handbooks”, but amply deserves the study of the anthropologist.
The Phoenicians spread this androgynic worship over Greece. We find the consecrated servants and votaries of Corinthian Aphrodite called Hierodouli (Strabo viii. 6), who aided the ten thousand courtesans in gracing the Venus-temple: from this excessive luxury arose the proverb popularized by Horace. One of the headquarters of the cult was Cyprus where, as Servius relates (Ad Ăn. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a bearded Aphrodite with feminine body and costume, sceptered and mitred like a man. The sexes when worshipping it exchanged habits and here the virginity was offered in sacrifice: Herodotus (i. c. 199) describes this defloration at Babylon but sees only the shameful part of the custom which was a mere consecration of a tribal rite. Everywhere girls before marriage belong either to the father or to the clan and thus the maiden paid the debt due to the public before becoming private property as a wife. The same usage prevailed in ancient Armenia and in parts of Ethiopia; and Herodotus tells us that a practice very much like the Babylonian “is found also in certain parts of the Island of Cyprus”: it is noticed by Justin (xviii. c. 5) and probably it explains the “Succoth Benoth” or Damsels' booths which the Babylonians transplanted to the cities of Samaria.* The Jews seem very successfully to have copied the abominations of their pagan neighbours, even in the matter of the “dog”.** In the reign of wicked Rehoboam (B.C. 975) “There were also sodomites in the land and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel” (I Kings xiv. 20). The scandal was abated by zealous King Asa (B.C. 958) whose grandmother*** was high-priestess of Priapus (princeps in sacris Priapi): he “took away the sodomites out of the land” (I Kings xv. 12). Yet the prophets were loud in their complaints, especially the so-called Isaiah (B.C. 760), “except the Lord of Hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom” (i. 9); and strong measures were required from good King Josiah (B.C. 641) who amongst other things, “brake down the houses of the sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove” (2 Kings xxiii. 7). The bordels of boys (pueris alienis adhĂŠseverunt) appear to have been near the Temple.
* Some commentators understand “the tabernacles sacred to the reproductive powers of women”; and the Rabbis declare that the emblem was the figure of a setting hen.
** “Dog” is applied by the older Jews to the Sodomite and the Catamite; and thus they understand the “price of a dog” which could not be brought into the Temple (Deut. xxiii. 18). I have noticed it in one of the derivations of cinĂŠdus and can only remark that it is a vile libel upon the canine tribe.
*** Her name was Maachah and her title, according to some, “King's mother”: she founded the sect of Communists who rejected marriage and made adultery and incest part of worship in their splendid temple. Such were the Basilians and the Carpocratians, followed in the xith century by Tranchelin, whose sectarians, the Turlupins, long infested Savoy.
Syria has not forgotten her old “praxis”. At Damascus I found some noteworthy cases amongst the religious of the great Amawi Mosque. As for the Druses we have Burckhardt's authority (Travels in Syria, etc., p. 202) “unnatural propensities are very common amongst them.”
The Sotadic Zone covers the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia now occupied by the “unspeakable Turk”, a race of born pederasts; and in the former region we first notice a peculiarity of the feminine figure, the mammĂŠ inclinataĂŠ, jacentes et pannosĂŠ, which prevails over all this part of the belt. Whilst the women to the North and South have, with local exceptions, the mammĂŠ stantes of the European virgin,* those of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and Kashmir lose all the fine curves of the bosom, sometimes even before the first child; and after it the hemispheres take the form of bags. This cannot result from climate only; the women of MarathĂĄ-land, inhabiting a damper and hotter region than Kashmir, are noted for fine firm breasts even after parturition. Le Vice of course prevails more in the cities and towns of Asiatic Turkey than in the villages; yet even these are infected; while the nomad Turcomans contrast badly in this point with the Gypsies, those Badawin of India. The Kurd population is of Iranian origin, which means that the evil is deeply rooted: I have noted in The Nights that the great and glorious Saladin was a habitual pederast. The Armenians, as their national character is, will prostitute themselves for gain but prefer women to boys: Georgia supplied Turkey with catamites whilst Circassia sent concubines. In Mesopotamia the barbarous invader has almost obliterated the ancient civilization which is antedated only by the Nilotic: the mysteries of old Babylon nowhere survive save in certain obscure tribes like the MandĂŠans, the Devil-worshippers and the Ali-ilĂĄhi. Entering Persia we find the reverse of Armenia; and, despite Herodotus, I believe that Iran borrowed her pathologic love from the peoples of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from the then insignificant Greeks. But whatever may be its origin, the corruption is now bred in the bone. It begins in boyhood and many Persians account for it by paternal severity. Youths arrived at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies fornication. Onanism** is to a certain extent discouraged by circumcision, and meddling with the father's slave-girls and concubines would be risking cruel punishment if not death. Hence they use each other by turns, a “puerile practice” known as Alish-Takish, the Lat. facere vicibus or mutuum facere. Temperament, media, and atavism recommend the custom to the general; and after marrying and begetting heirs, Paterfamilias returns to the Ganymede. [16] Hence all the odes of Hafiz are addressed to youths as proved by such Arabic exclamations as 'AfĂĄka 'llah = Allah assain thee (masculine)***: the object is often fanciful but it would be held coarse and immodest to address an imaginary girl.**** An illustration of the penchant is told at Shiraz concerning a certain Mujtahid, the head of the Shi'ah creed, corresponding with a prince-archbishop in Europe. A friend once said to him, “There is a question I would fain address to your Eminence but I lack the daring to do so.” “Ask and fear not,” replied the Divine. “It is this, O Mujtahid! Figure thee in a garden of roses and hyacinths with the evening breeze waving the cypress-heads, a fair youth of twenty sitting by thy side and the assurance of perfect privacy. What, prithee, would be the result?” The holy man bowed the chin of doubt upon the collar of meditation; and, too honest to lie presently whispered, “Allah defend me from such temptation of Satan!” [17] Yet even in Persia men have not been wanting who have done their utmost to uproot the Vice: in the same Shiraz they speak of a father who, finding his son in flagrant delict, put him to death like Brutus or Lynch of Galway. Such isolated cases, however, can effect nothing. Chardin tells us that houses of male prostitution were common in Persia whilst those of women were unknown: the same is the case in the present day and the boys are prepared with extreme care by diet, baths, depilation, unguents and a host of artists in cosmetics.***** Le Vice is looked upon at most as a peccadillo and its mention crops up in every jest-book. When the Isfahan man mocked Shaykh Sa'adi, by comparing the bald pates of Shirazian elders to the bottom of a lotĂĄ, a brass cup with a wide-necked opening used in the Hammam, the witty poet turned its aperture upwards and thereto likened the well-abused podex of an Isfahani youth. Another favourite piece of Shirazian “chaff” is to declare that when an Isfahan father would set up his son in business he provides him with a pound of rice, meaning that he can sell the result as compost for the kitchen-garden, and with the price buy another meal: hence the saying Khakh-i-pĂĄi kahu = the soil at the lettuce-root. The Isfahanis retort with the name of a station or halting-place between the two cities where, under pretence of making travellers stow away their riding-gear, many a Shirazi had been raped: hence “Zin o takaltĂș tĂș bi-bar” = carry within saddle and saddle-cloth! A favourite Persian punishment for strangers caught in the Harem or GynĂŠceum is to strip and throw them and expose them to the embraces of the grooms and negro slaves. I once asked a Shirazi how penetration was possible if the patient resisted with all the force of the sphincter muscle: he smiled and said, “Ah, we Persians know a trick to get over that; we apply a sharpened tent-peg to the crupper-bone (os coccygis) and knock till he opens.” [18] A well-known missionary to the East during the last generation was subjected to this gross insult by one of the Persian Prince-governors, whom he had infuriated by his conversion-mania: in his memoirs he alludes to it by mentioning his “dishonoured person”; but English readers cannot comprehend the full significance of the confession. About the same time Skaykh Nasr, Governor of Bushire, a man famed for facetious blackguardism, used to invite European youngsters serving in the Bombay Marine and ply them with liquor till they were insensible. Next morning the middies mostly complained that the champagne had caused a curious irritation and soreness in la parte-poste. The same Eastern “Scrogin” would ask his guests if they had ever seen a mancannon (Adami-top); and, on their replying in the negative, a greybeard slave was dragged in blaspheming and struggling with all his strength. He was presently placed on all fours and firmly held by the extremities; his bag-trousers were let down and a dozen peppercorns were inserted ano suo: the target was a sheet of paper held at a reasonable distance; the match was applied by a pinch of cayenne in the nostrils; the sneeze started the grapeshot and the number of hits on the butt decided the bets. We can hardly wonder at the loose conduct of Persian women perpetually mortified by marital pederasty. During the unhappy campaign of 1856-57 in which, with the exception of a few brilliant skirmishes, we gained no glory, Sir James Outram and the Bombay army showing how badly they could work, there was a formal outburst of the Harems; and even women of princely birth could not be kept out of the officers' quarters.
* A noted exception is Vienna, remarkable for the enormous development of the virginal bosom, which soon becomes pendulent.
** Gen. xxxviii. 2-11. Amongst the classics Mercury taught the “Art of le Thalaba” to his son Pan who wandered about the mountains distraught with love for the Nymph Echo and Pan passed it on to the pastors. See Thalaba in Mirabeau.
*** The reader of The Nights has remarked how often the “he” in Arabic poetry denotes a “she”; but the Arab, when uncontaminated by travel, ignores pederasty, and the Arab poet is a Badawi.
**** So Moharnmed addressed his girl-wife Ayishah in the masculine.
***** So amongst the Romans we have the IatroliptĂŠ, youths or girls who wiped the gymnast's perspiring body with swan-down, a practice renewed by the professors of “Massage”; Unctores who applied perfumes and essences; Fricatrices and Tractatrices or shampooers; DropacistĂŠ, corn-cutters; Alipilarii who plucked the hair. etc.
The cities of Afghanistan and Sind are thoroughly saturated with Persian vice, and the people sing
Kadr-i-kus AughĂĄn dĂĄnad, kadr-i-kunrĂĄ KĂĄbuli:
The worth of coynte the Afghan knows:
Cabul prefers the other /chose!/*
* It is a parody on the well-known song (Roebuck i. sect. 2, No. 1602):
The goldsmith knows the worth of gold, jewellers worth of jewelry
The worth of rose Bulbul can tell and Kambar's worth his lord, Ali.
The Afghans are commercial travellers on a large scale and each caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in woman's attire with kohl'd eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses and henna'd fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in KajĂĄwas or camel-panniers: they are called KĂșch-i safari, or travelling wives, and the husbands trudge patiently by their sides. In Afghanistan also a frantic debauchery broke out amongst the women when they found incubi who were not pederasts; and the scandal was not the most insignificant cause of the general rising at Cabul (Nov. 1841), and the slaughter of Macnaghten, Burnes and other British officers.
Resuming our way Eastward we find the Sikhs and the Moslems of the Panjab much addicted to Le Vice, although the Himalayan tribes to the north and those lying south, the Rajputs and MarathĂĄs, ignore it. The same may be said of the Kashmirians who add another Kappa to the tria Kakista, Kappadocians, Kretans, and Kilicians: the proverb says,
Agar kaht-i-mardum uftad, az in sih jins kam gĂri;
Eki AfghĂĄn, dovvum SindĂ,* siyyum badjins-i-KashmĂrĂ:
Though of men there be famine yet shun these three——
Afghan, Sindi and rascally KashmĂrĂ.
* For “Sindi” Roebuck (Oriental Proverbs Part i. p. 99) has Kunbu (Kumboh) a PanjĂĄbi peasant and others vary the saying ad libitum. See vol. vi. 156.
M. Louis Daville describes the infamies of Lahore and Lakhnau where he found men dressed as women, with flowing locks under crowns of flowers, imitating the feminine walk and gestures, voice and fashion of speech, and ogling their admirers with all the coquetry of bayadĂšres. Victor Jacquemont's Journal de Voyage describes the pederasty of Ranjit Singh, the “Lion of the PanjĂ b”, and his pathic GulĂĄb Singh, whom the English inflicted upon Cashmir as ruler by way of paying for his treason. Yet the Hindus, I repeat, hold pederasty in abhorrence and are as much scandalized by being called GĂĄnd-mĂĄrĂĄ (anus-beater) or GĂĄndĂș (anuser) as Englishmen would be. During the years 1843-44 my regiment, almost all Hindu Sepoys of the Bombay Presidency, was stationed at a purgatory called Bandar GhĂĄrrĂĄ,* a sandy flat with a scatter of verdigris-green milk-bush some forty miles north of KarĂĄchi the headquarters. The dirty heap of mud-and-mat hovels, which represented the adjacent native village, could not supply a single woman; yet only one case of pederasty came to light and that after a tragical fashion some years afterwards. A young Brahman had connection with a soldier comrade of low caste and this had continued till, in an unhappy hour, the Pariah patient ventured to become the agent. The latter, in Arab. Al-FĂĄ'il = the “doer”, is not an object of contempt like Al-MafĂșl = the “done”; and the high-caste sepoy, stung by remorse and revenge, loaded his musket and deliberately shot his paramour. He was hanged by court martial at Hyderabad and, when his last wishes were asked, he begged in vain to be suspended by the feet; the idea being that his soul, polluted by exiting “below the waist”, would be doomed to endless transmigrations through the lowest forms of life.
*See “Sind Revisited” i. 133-35
Beyond India, I have stated, the Sotadic Zone begins to broaden out, embracing all China, Turkistan and Japan. The Chinese, as far as we know them in the great cities, are omnivorous and omnifutuentes: they are the chosen people of debauchery, and their systematic bestiality with ducks, goats, and other animals is equalled only by their pederasty. KĂŠmpfer and Orlof TorĂ©e (Voyage en Chine) notice the public houses for boys and youths in China and Japan. Mirabeau (L'Anandryne) describes the tribadism of their women in hammocks. When Pekin was plundered the Harems contained a number of balls a little larger than the old musket-bullet, made of thin silver with a loose pellet of brass inside somewhat like a grelot;* these articles were placed by the women between the labia and an up-and-down movement on the bed gave a pleasant titillation when nothing better was to be procured. They have every artifice of luxury, aphrodisiacs, erotic perfumes and singular applications. Such are the pills which, dissolved in water and applied to the glans penis; cause it to throb and swell: so according to Amerigo Vespucci American women could artificially increase the size of their husbands' parts.** The Chinese bracelet of caoutchouc studded with points now takes the place of the Herisson, or Annulus hirsutus,*** which was bound between the glans and prepuce. Of the penis succedaneus, that imitation of the Arbor vitĂŠ or Soter Kosmou, which the Latins called phallus and fascinum,**** the French godemichĂ© and the Italians passatempo and diletto (whence our “dildo”), everykind abounds, varying from a stuffed “French letter” to a cone of ribbed horn which looks like an instrument of torture. For the use of men they have the “merkin”,***** a heart-shaped article of thin skin stuffed with cotton and slit with an artificial vagina: two tapes at the top and one below lash it to the back of a chair. The erotic literature of the Chinese and Japanese is highly developed, and their illustrations are often facetious as well as obscene. All are familiar with that of the strong man who by a blow with his enormous phallus shivers a copper pot; and the ludicrous contrast of the huge-membered wights who land in the Isle of Women and presently escape from it, wrinkled and shrivelled, true Domine Dolittles. Of Turkistan we know little, but what we know confirms my statement. Mr. Schuyler in his Turkistan (i. 132) offers an illustration of a “Batchah” (Pers. bachcheh = catamite), “or singing-boy surrounded by his admirers.” Of the Tartars Master Purchas laconically says (v. 419), “They are addicted to Sodomie or Buggerie.” The learned casuist Dr. Thomas Sanchez the Spaniard had (says Mirabeau in KadhĂ©sch) to decide a difficult question concerning the sinfulness of a peculiar erotic perversion. The Jesuits brought home from Manilla a tailed man whose moveable prolongation of the os coccygis measured from 7 to 10 inches: he had placed himself between two women, enjoying one naturally while the other used his tail as a penis succedaneus. The verdict was incomplete sodomy and simple fornication. [19] For the islands north of Japan, the “Sodomitical Sea”, and the “nayle of tynne” thrust through the prepuce to prevent sodomy, see Lib. ii. chap. 4 of Master Thomas Caudish's Circumnavigation, and vol. vi of Pinckerton's Geography translated by Walckenaer.
* They must not be confounded with the grelots lascifs, the little bells of gold or silver set by the people of Pegu in the prepuce-skin, and described by Nicolo de Conti who however refused to undergo the operation.
** Relation des découvertes faites par Colomb, etc., p. 137: Bologna 1875; also Vespucci's letter in Ramusio (i. 131) and Paro's Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains.
*** See Mantegazza loc cit. who borrows from the ThĂšse de Paris of Dr. Abel Hureau de Villeneuve, “Frictiones per coitum productĂŠ magnum mucosĂŠ membranĂŠ vaginalis turgorem, ac simul hujus cuniculi coarctationem tam maritis salacibus quĂŠritatam afferunt.”
**** Fascinus is the Priapus-god to whom the Vestal Virgins of Rome, professed tribades, sacrificed; also the neck-charm in phallus-shape. Fascinum is the male member.
***** Captain Grose (Lexicon Balatronicum) explains merkin as “counterfeit hair for women's privy parts”. See Bailey's Dict. The Bailey of 1764, an “improved edition”, does not contain the word which is now generally applied to a cunnus succedaneus.
Passing over to America we find that the Sotadic Zone contains the whole hemisphere from Behring's Straits to Magellan's. This prevalence of “mollities” astonishes the anthropologist, who is apt to consider pederasty the growth of luxury and the especial product of great and civilized cities, unnecessary and therefore unknown to simple savagery, where the births of both sexes are about equal and female infanticide is not practised. In many parts of the New World this perversion was accompanied by another depravity of taste — confirmed cannibalism.* The forests and campos abounded in game from the deer to the pheasant-like penelope, and the seas and rivers produced an unfailing supply of excellent fish and shell-fish;** yet the Brazilian Tupis preferred the meat of man to every other food.
* I have noticed this phenomenal cannibalism in my notes to Mr. Albert Tootle's excellent translation of “The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse”: London, Hakluyt Society, mdccclxxiv.
** The Ostreiras or shell mounds of the Brazil, sometimes 200 feet high, are described by me in Anthropologia No. i. Oct. 1873.
A glance at Mr. Bancroft* proves the abnormal development of sodomy amongst the savages and barbarians of the New World. Even his half-frozen Hyperboreans “possess all the passions which are supposed to develop most freely under a milder temperature” (i. 58). “The voluptuousness and polygamy of the North American Indians, under a temperature of almost perpetual winter, is far greater than that of the most sensual tropical nations” (Martin's Brit. Colonies iii. 524). I can quote only a few of the most remarkable instances. Of the Koniagas of Kadiak Island and the Thinkleets we read (i. 81-82), “The most repugnant of all their practices is that of male concubinage. A Kadiak mother will select her handsomest and most promising boy, and dress and rear him as a girl, teaching him only domestic duties, keeping him at women's work, associating him with women and girls, in order to render his effeminacy complete. Arriving at the age of ten or fifteen years, he is married to some wealthy man who regards such a companion as a great acquisition. These male concubines are called Achnutschik or Schopans” (the authorities quoted being Holmberg, Langsdorff, Billing, Choris, Lisiansky and Marchand). The same is the case in Nutka Sound and the Aleutian Islands, where “male concubinage obtains throughout, but not to the same extent as amongst the Koniagas.” The objects of “unnatural” affection have their beards carefully plucked out as soon as the face-hair begins to grow, and their chins are tattooed like those of the women. In California the first missionaries found the same practice, the youths being called Joya (Bancroft, i. 415 and authorities Palon, Crespi, Boscana, Motras, Torquemada, Duflot and Fages). The Comanches unite incest with sodomy (i. 515). “In New Mexico, according to Arlegui, Ribas, and other authors, male concubinage prevails to a great extent; these loathsome semblances of humanity, whom to call beastly were a slander upon beasts, dress themselves in the clothes and perform the functions of women, the use of weapons being denied them” (i. 585). Pederasty was systematically practised by the peoples of Cueba, Careta, and other parts of Central America. The Caciques and some of the headmen kept harems of youths who, as soon as destined for the unclean office, were dressed as women. They went by the name of Camayoas, and were hated and detested by the goodwives (i. 773-74) Of the Nahua nations Father Pierre de Gand (alias de Musa) writes; “Un certain nombre de prĂȘtres n'avaient point de femmes, sed eorum loco pueros quibus abutebantur. Ce pĂ©chĂ© Ă©tait si commun dans ce pays que, jeunes ou vieux, tous Ă©taient infectĂ©s; ils y Ă©taient si adonnĂ©s que mĂȘmes les enfants de six ans s'y livraient” (Ternaux-Campans, Voyages, SĂ©rie i. Tom. x. p. 197). Among the Mayas of Yucatan Las Casas declares that the great prevalence of “unnatural” lust made parents anxious to see their progeny wedded as soon as possible (Kingsborough's Mex. Ant. viii. 135). In Vera Paz a god, called by some Chin and by others Cavial and Maran, taught it by committing the act with another god. Some fathers gave their sons a boy to use as a woman, and if any other approached this pathic he was treated as an adulterer. In Yucatan images were found by Bernal Diaz proving the sodomitical propensities of the people (Bancroft v. 198). De Pauw (Recherches Philosophiques sur les AmĂ©ricains, London, 1771) has much to say about the subject in Mexico generally: in the northern provinces men married youths who, dressed like women, were forbidden to carry arms. According to Gomara there were at Tamalpais houses of male prostitution; and from Diaz and others we gather that the pecado nefando was the rule. Both in Mexico and in Peru it might have caused, if it did not justify, the cruelties of the Conquistadores. Pederasty was also general throughout Nicaragua, and the early explorers found it amongst the indigenes of Panama.
* The Native Races of the Pacific States of South America, by Herbert Howe Bancroft, London, Longmans, 1875.
We have authentic details concerning Le Vice in Peru and its adjacent lands, beginning with Cieza de Leon, who must be read in the original or in the translated extracts of Purchas (vol. v. 942, etc.), not in the cruelly castrated form preferred by the Council of the Hakluyt Society. Speaking of the New Granada Indians he tells us that “at Old Port (Porto Viejo) and Puna, the Deuill so farre prevayled in their beastly Deuotions that there were Boyes consecrated to serue in the Temple; and at the times of their Sacrifices and Solemne Feasts, the Lords and principall men abused them to that detestable filthinesse”; i e. performed their peculiar worship. Generally in the hill-countries the Devil, under the show of holiness, had introduced the practice; for every temple or chief house of adoration kept one or two men or more which were attired like women, even from the time of their childhood, and spake like them, imitating them in everything; with these, under pretext of holiness and religion, their principal men on principal days had commerce. Speaking of the arrival of the Giants* at Point Santa Elena, Cieza says (chap. lii.), they were detested by the natives, because in using their women they killed them, and their men also in another way. All the natives declare that God brought upon them a punishment proportioned to the enormity of their offence. When they were engaged together in their accursed intercourse, a fearful and terrible fire came down from Heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which there issued a shining Angel with a glittering sword, wherewith at one blow they were all killed and the fire consumed them.** There remained a few bones and skulls which God allowed to bide unconsumed by the fire, as a memorial of this punishment. In the Hakluyt Society's bowdlerization we read of the Tumbez Islanders being “very vicious, many of them committing the abominable offence” (p. 24); also, “If by the advice of the Devil any Indian commit the abominable crime, it is thought little of and they call him a woman.” In chapters lii. and lviii. we find exceptions. The Indians of Huancabamba, “although so near the peoples of Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do not commit the abominable sin”; and the Serranos, or island mountaineers, as sorcerers and magicians inferior to the coast peoples, were not so much addicted to sodomy.
* All Peruvian historians mention these giants, who were probably the large-limbed Caribs (Caraibes) of the Brazil: they will be noticed below.
** This sounds much like a pious fraud of the missionaries, a Europeo-American version of the Sodom legend.
The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas shows that the evil was of a comparatively modern growth. In the early period of Peruvian history the people considered the crime “unspeakable”: if a Cuzco Indian, not of Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the term pederast to another, he was held infamous for many days. One of the generals having reported to the Ynca Ccapacc Yupanqui that there were some sodomites, not in all the valleys, but one here and one there, “nor was it a habit of all the inhabitants but only of certain persons who practised it privately,” the ruler ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive and their houses, crops and trees destroyed: moreover, to show his abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so be treated if one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13). Elsewhere we learn, “There were sodomites in some provinces, though not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in secret. In some parts they had them in their temples because the Devil persuaded them that the Gods took great delight in such people, and thus the Devil acted as a traitor to remove the veil of shame that the Gentiles felt for this crime and to accustom them to commit it in public and in common.”
During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had become the rule throughout Peru. At Cuzco, we are told by Nuno de Guzman in 1530, “The last which was taken, and which fought most couragiously, was a man in the habite of a woman, which confessed that from a childe he had gotten his liuing by that filthinesse, for which I caused him to be burned.” V. F. Lopez* draws a frightful picture of pathologic love in Peru. Under the reigns which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc) Amauri, the country was attacked by invaders of a giant race coming from the sea: they practised pederasty after a fashion so shameless that the conquered tribes were compelled to fly (p. 271). Under the pre-Yncarial Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed into savagery and the kings of Cuzco preserved only the name. “Toutes ces hontes et toutes ces misĂšres provenaient de deux vices infĂąmes, la bestialitĂ© et la sodomie. Les femmes surtout Ă©taient offensĂ©es de voir la nature frustrĂ©e de tous ses droits. Elles pleuraient ensemble en leurs rĂ©unions sur le misĂ©rable Ă©tat dans lequel elles Ă©taient tombĂ©es, sur le mĂ©pris avec lequel elles Ă©taient traitĂ©es. * * * * Le monde Ă©tait renversĂ©, les hommes s'aimaient et Ă©taient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles cherchaient, mais en vain, les moyens de remĂ©dier au mal; elles employaient des herbes et des recettes diaboliques qui leur ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais ne pouvaient arrĂȘter les progrĂšs incessants du vice. Cet Ă©tat de choses constitua un vĂ©ritable moyen Ăąge, qui dura jusqu'Ă l'Ă©tablissement du gouvernement des Incas” (p. 277).
* Les Races Aryennes du PĂ©rou, Paris, Franck, 1871.
When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist of Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb. “Ni la prudence de l'Inca, ni les lois sĂ©vĂšres qu'il avait promulguĂ©es n'avaient pu extirper entiĂšrement le pĂ©chĂ© contre nature. Il reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes en furent si jalouses qu'un grand nombre d'elles tuĂšrent leurs maris. Les devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journĂ©es Ă fabriquer, avec certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui rendaient fous ceux qui en mangaient, et les femmes en faisaient prendre, soit dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, Ă ceux dont elles Ă©taient jalouses” (p. 291).
I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous for cannibalism and sodomy; nor could the latter be only racial as proved by the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood followed in the path of the savages. Sr. Antonio Augusto da Costa Aguiars* is outspoken upon this point. “A crime which in England leads to the gallows, and which is the very measure of abject depravity, passes with impunity amongst us by the participating in it of almost all or of many (de quasi todos, ou de muitos). Ah! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of punishing such crimes (delictos), more than one city of this Empire, more than a dozen, would pass into the category of the Sodoms and Gomorrahs” (p. 30). Till late years pederasty in the Brazil was looked upon as a peccadillo; the European immigrants following the practice of the wild men who were naked but not, as Columbus said, “clothed in innocence”. One of Her Majesty's Consuls used to tell a tale of the hilarity provoked in a “fashionable” assembly by the open declaration of a young gentleman that his mulatto-“patient” had suddenly turned upon him, insisting upon becoming agent. Now, however, under the influences of improved education and respect for the public opinion of Europe, pathologic love amongst the Luso-Brazilians has been reduced to the normal limits.
* O Brazil e os Brazileiros, Santos, 1862.
Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not endemic: yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where puberty, they say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has been the same in most lands, causing modesty to decay and pederasty to flourish. The Badawi Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice; yet San'ĂĄ the capital of Al-Yaman and other centres of population have long been and still are thoroughly infected. History tells us of ZĂș ShanĂĄtir, tyrant of “Arabia Felix”, in A.D. 478, who used to entice young men into his palace and cause them after use to be cast out of the windows: this unkindly ruler was at last poinarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as “Zu NowĂĄs”. The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and tribadism. Yet Joan dos Sanctos* found in Cacongo of West Africa certain “Chibudi, which are men attyred like women and behaue themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men; are also married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale damnation an honor.” Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing boys dressed as girls. In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of prostitutes kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses .
* Aethiopia Orientalis, Purchas ii. 1558.
North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances. Master Christopher Burrough* describes on the western side of the Volga “a very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak, and adioyning to the same a Towne called by the Russes, Sodom, * * * which was swallowed into the earth by the iustice of God, for the wickednesse of the people.” Again: although as a rule Christianity has steadily opposed pathologic love both in writing and preaching, there have been remarkable exceptions. Perhaps the most curious idea was that of certain medical writers in the middle ages: “Usus et amplexus pueri, bene temperatus, salutaris medicina” (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under “Vayer”) the infamous book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, “De laudibus SodomiĂŠ”,** vulgarly known as “Capitolo del Forno”. The same writer refers (under “Sixte iv.”) to the report that the Dominican Order, which systematically decried Le Vice, had presented a request to the Cardinal di Santa Lucia that sodomy might be lawful during three months per annum, June to August; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the petition “Be it done as they demand.” Hence the FĂŠda Venus of Battista Mantovano. Bayle rejects the history for a curious reason, venery being colder in summer than in winter, and quotes the proverb “Aux mois qui n'ont pas d' R, peu embrasser et bien boire.” But in the case of a celibate priesthood such scandals are inevitable: witness the famous Jesuit epitaph Ci-gĂźt un JĂ©suite, etc.
* Purchas iii. 243
** For a literal translation see Ire Série de la Curiosité Littéraire et Bibliographique, Paris, Liseux, 1880.
In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance, the Vice seems subject to periodical outbreaks. For many years, also, England sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to Naples, whence originated the term “Il vizio Inglese”. [20] It would be invidious to detail the scandals which of late years have startled the public in London and Dublin: for these the curious will consult the police reports. Berlin, despite her strong flavour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion, manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr. Gaspar,* a well-known authority on the subject, adduces many interesting cases, especially an old Count Cajus and his six accomplices. Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him that not only Plato and Julius Caesar but also Winckelmann and Platen (?) belonged to the Society; and he had found it flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and St. Petersburg, to name only a few places. Frederick the Great is said to have addressed these words to his nephew, “Je puis vous assurer, par mon expĂ©rience personelle, que ce plaisir est peu agrĂ©able Ă cultiver.” This suggests the popular anecdote of Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an “experience” and found it far from satisfactory. A few days afterwards the latter informed the Sage of Ferney that he had tried it again and provoked the exclamation, “Once a philosopher: twice a sodomite!” The last revival of the kind in Germany is a society at Frankfort and its neighbourhood, self-styled Les Cravates Noires, in opposition, I suppose, to Les Cravates Blanches of A. Belot.
* His best known works are (1) Praktisches Handbuch der Gechtlichen Medecin, Berlin, 1860; and (2) Klinische Novellen zur gerechtlichen Medicin, Berlin. 1863.
Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London; but, whilst the latter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not: hence we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public. For France of the xviith century consult the “Histoire de la Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde”, and “La France devenue Italienne”, a treatise which generally follows “L'Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules” by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin.* The headquarters of male prostitution were then in the Champ Flory, i.e., Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low courtesans. In the xviiith century, “quand le Français Ă tĂȘte folle,” as Voltaire sings, invented the term “PĂ©chĂ© philosophique”, there was a temporary recrudescence; and, after the death of Pidauzet de Mairobert (March, 1779), his “Apologie de la Secte Anandryne” was published in L'Espion Anglais. In those days the AllĂ©e des Veuves in the Champs ElysĂ©es had a “fief reservĂ© des Ebugors”** — “veuve” in the language of Sodom being the maĂźtresse en titre, the favourite youth.
* The same author printed another imitation of Petronius Arbiter, the “Larissa” story of ThĂ©ophile Viand. His cousin, the SĂ©vignĂ©, highly approved of it. See Bayle's objections to Rabutin's delicacy and excuses for Petronius' grossness in his “Ăclaircissement sur les obscĂ©nitĂ©s” (Appendice au Dictionnaire Antique).
** The Boulgrin of Rabelais, which Urquhart renders Ingle for Boulgre an “indorser”, derived from the Bulgarus or Bulgarian, who gave to Italy the term bugiardo — liar. Bougre and Bougrerie date (LittrĂ©) from the xiiith century. I cannot, however, but think that the trivial term gained strength in the xvith, when the manners of the Bugres or indigenous Brazilians were studied by Huguenot refugees in La France Antartique and several of these savages found their way to Europe. A grand FĂȘte in Rouen on the entrance of Henri II. and Dame Katherine de Medicis (June 16, 1564) showed, as part of the pageant three hundred men (including fifty “Bugres” or Tupis) with parroquets and other birds and beasts of the newly explored regions. The procession is given in the four-folding woodcut “Figure des BrĂ©siliens” in Jean de Prest's Edition of 1551.
At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition Mirabeau* declares that pederasty was reglementĂ©e and adds, “Le goĂ»t des pĂ©dĂ©rastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps de Henri III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le rĂšgne desquel les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement** sous les portiques du Louvre, fait des progrĂšs considĂ©rables. On sait que cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d'Ćuvre de police; en consĂ©quence, il y a des lieux publics autorisĂ©s Ă cet effet. Les jeunes gens qui se destinent Ă la profession, sont soigneusement enclassĂ©s; car les systĂšmes rĂ©glementaires s'Ă©tendent jusques-lĂ . On les examine; ceux qui peuvent ĂȘtre agents et patients, qui sont beaux, vermeils, bien faits, potelĂ©s, sont rĂ©servĂ©s pour les grands seigneurs, ou se font payer trĂšs-cher par les Ă©vĂȘques et les financiers. Ceux qui sont privĂ©s de leurs testicules, ou en termes de l'art (car notre langue est plus chaste qui nos mĆurs), qui n'ont pas le /poids du tisserand/, mais qui donnent et reçoivent, forment la seconde classe; ils sont encore chers, parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu'ils servent aux hommes. Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles d'Ă©rection tant ils sont usĂ©s, quoiqu'ils aient tous ces organes nĂ©cessaires au plaisir, s'inscrivent comme /patiens purs/, et composent la troisiĂšme classe: mais celle qui prĂ©side Ă ces plaisirs, vĂ©rifie leur impuissance. Pour cet effet, on les place tout nus sur un matelas ouvert par la moitiĂ© infĂ©rieure; deux filles les caressent de leur mieux, pendant qu'une troisiĂšme frappe doucement avec des orties naissantes le siĂšge des dĂ©sirs vĂ©nĂ©riens. AprĂšs un quart d'heure de cet essai, on leur introduit dans l'anus un poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation considĂ©rable; on pose sur les Ă©chauboulures produites par les orties, de la moutarde fine de Caudebec, et l'on passe le /gland/ au camphre. Ceux qui rĂ©sistent Ă ces Ă©preuves et ne donnent aucun signe d'Ă©rection, servent comme patiens Ă un tiers de paie seulement.”***
* Erotika Biblion, chapt. Kadésch (pp. 93 et seq.) Edition de Bruxelles with notes by the Chevalier P. Pierrugues of Bordeaux, before noticed.
** Called Chevaliers de Paille because the sign was a straw in the mouth, Ă la Palmerston.
*** I have noticed that the eunuch in Sind was as meanly paid and have given the reason.
The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant in matters of politics than of morals. The favourite club, which had its mot de passe, was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St. Thomas des Louvre; and the house was a hĂŽtel of the xviith century. Two street-doors, on the right for the male gynĂŠceum and the left for the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer. A decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women's clothes, with big haunches and small waist, promenaded outside; and this continued till 1826 when the police put down the house.
Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results, according to the Marquis de Boissy. He complained without ambages of mĆurs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that the result of the African wars was an Ă©ffrayable dĂ©bordement pĂ©dĂ©rastique, even as the vĂ©role resulted from the Italian campaigns of that age of passion, the xvith century. From the military the flĂ©au spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expansion and intensity that it may be said to have been democratized in cities and large towns; at least so we gather from the Dossier des Agissements des PĂ©dĂ©rastes. A general gathering of “La Sainte CongrĂ©gation des glorieux PĂ©dĂ©rastes” was held in the old Petite Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted under pretext of making water. They ranged themselves along the walls of a vast garden and exposed their podices: bourgeois, richards and nobles came with full purses, touched the part which most attracted them and were duly followed by it. At the AllĂ©e des Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m.: no policeman or ronde de nuit dared venture in it; cords were stretched from tree to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst whom, they say, was once Victor Hugo. This nuisance was at length suppressed by the municipal administration.
The Empire did not improve morals. Balls of sodomites were held at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, '64, some one hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women that even the landlord did not recognize them. There was also a club for sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons de l'ImpĂ©ratrice.* They copied the imperial toilette and kept it in the general wardrobe: hence “faire ImpĂ©ratrice” meant to be used carnally. The site, a splendid hotel in the AllĂ©e des Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-GĂ©nĂ©ral who registered all the names; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings. The club was broken up on July 16, '64. During the same year La Petite Revue, edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed an article, “Les Ă©chappĂ©s de Sodome”: it discusses the letter of M. Castagnary to the ProgrĂšs de Lyons and declares that the Vice had been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes. For its latest developments as regards the chantage of the /tantes/ (pathics), the reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu's well-known Etudes.** He declares that the servant-class is most infected; and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.
* Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (by Pisanus Fraxi) 4to, p. lx. and 593. London. Privately printed, mdccclxxix.
** A friend learned in these matters supplies me with the following list of famous pederasts. Those who marvel at the wide diffusion of such erotic perversion, and its being affected by so many celebrities, will bear in mind that the greatest men have been some of the worst: Alexander of Macedon, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Buonaparte held themselves high above the moral law which obliges common-place humanity. All three are charged with the Vice. Of Kings we have Henri iii., Louis xiii. and xviii., Frederick ii. of Prussia, Peter the Great, William ii. of Holland and Charles ii. and iii. of Parma. We find also Shakespeare (i., xv., Edit. François Hugo) and MoliÚre, Theodorus Beza, Lully (the Composer), D'Assoucy, Count Zintzendorff, the Grand Condé, Marquis de Villette, Pierre Louis FarnÚse, Duc de la ValliÚre, De Soleinne Count D'Avaray, Saint Mégrin, D'Epernon, Admiral de la Susse, La Roche-Pouchin Rochfort S. Louis, Henne (the Spiritualist), Comte Horace de Viel Castel, Lerminin, Fievée, Théodore Leclerc, Archi-Chancellier CambacÚrés, Marquis de Custine, Sainte-Beuve and Count D'Orsay. For others refer to the three volumes of Pisanus Fraxi; Index Librorum Prohibitorum (London, 1877), Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (before alluded to) and Catena Librorum Tacendorum, London, 1885. The indices will supply the names. [21]
The pederasty of The Nights may briefly be distributed into three categories. The first is the funny form, as the unseemly practical joke of masterful Queen BudĂșr (vol. iii. 300-306) and the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv. 226). The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas* debauches the three youths (vol. v. 64-69); whilst in the third form it is wisely and learnedly discussed, to be severely blamed, by the Shaykhah or Reverend Woman (vol. v. 154).
* Of this peculiar character Ibn Khallikan remarks (ii. 43), “There were four poets whose works clearly contraried their character. AbĂș al-AtahĂyah wrote pious poems himself being an atheist, AbĂș Hukayma's verses proved his impotence, yet he was more salacious than a he-goat; Mohammed ibn HĂĄzim praised contentment, yet he was greedier than a dog; and AbĂș NowĂĄs hymned the joys of sodomy, yet he was more passionate for women than a baboon.”
To conclude this part of my subject, the Ă©claircissement des obscĂ©nitĂ©s. Many readers will regret the absence from The Nights of that modesty which distinguishes “Amadis de Gaul”, whose author, when leaving a man and a maid together says, “And nothing shall be here related; for these and suchlike things which are conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought in reason lightly to pass over, holding them in slight esteem as they deserve.” Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England who after a risquĂ© scene declares, “Herein is no offence offered to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose by lascivious matter.” But these are not oriental ideas and we must e'en take the Eastern as we find him. He still holds “Naturalia non sunt turpia” [what is natural is not shameful — JL] , together with “Mundis omnia munda” [to the pure all things are pure — JL]; and, as Bacon assures us the mixture of a lie doth add to pleasure, so the Arab enjoys the startling and lively contrast of extreme virtue and horrible vice placed in juxtaposition. [22]
Those who have read through these ten volumes will agree with me that the proportion of offensive matter bears a very small ratio to the mass of the work. In an age saturated with cant and hypocrisy, here and there a venal pen will mourn over the “Pornography” of The Nights, dwell upon the “Ethics of Dirt” and the “Garbage of the Brothel”; and will lament the “wanton dissemination (!) of ancient and filthy fiction”. This self-constituted Censor morum reads Aristophanes and Plato, Horace and Virgil, perhaps even Martial and Petronius, because “veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language”; he allows men LatinĂš loqui; but he is scandalized at stumbling-blocks much less important in plain English. To be consistent he must begin by bowdlerizing not only the classics, with which boys' and youths' minds and memories are soaked and saturated at schools and colleges, but also Boccaccio and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rabelais; Burton, Sterne, Swift and a long list of works which are yearly reprinted and republished without a word of protest. Lastly, why does not this inconsistent puritan purge the Old Testament of its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda; to carnal copulation and impudent whoredom, to adultery and fornication, to onanism, sodomy and bestiality? But this he will not do, the whited sepulchre! To the interested critic of the Edinburgh Review (No. 335 of July, 1886), I return my warmest thanks for his direct and deliberate falsehoods: — lies are one-legged and short-lived, and venom evaporates.* It appears to me that when I show to such men, so “respectable” and so impure, a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are adorned with every charm of nature and art, they point their unclean noses at a little heap of muck here and there lying in a field-corner.* [23]
* A virulently and unjustly abusive critique never yet injured its object: in fact it is generally the greatest favour an author's unfriends can bestow upon him. But to notice in a popular Review books which have been printed and not published is hardly in accordance with the established courtesies of literature. At the end of my work I propose to write a paper “The Reviewer Reviewed” which will, amongst other things, explain the motif of the writer of the critique and the editor of the Edinburgh.
Notes by John Lauritsen
1. “execrabilis familia pathicorum”: literally, “execrable family of pathics”. More freely, “accursed tribe of catamites”. “Pathicus” in ancient Latin refers to males who play the passive role in sex — primarily the passive partners in anal sex. More widely it can be used of a man who accepts oral penetration , or even of a woman who desires sexual penetration (e. g., unambiguously, at Priapea 25.3). In this paragraph Burton describes the brothels in Karachi, which featured eunuchs and boy prostitutes — both of which could be considered pathics. [Thanks to Terrence Lockyer and Michael Broder for suggestions here.]
2. In other words, Burton has explored and presumably experienced the world of all-male sexuality “in many and distant countries”. “Been there, done that.”
3. In this paragraph Burton's hints and ironies clearly indicate where his sympathies lie: “the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo.” Those who condemn the Vice “look upon it with the liveliest disgust” (a charming oxymoron), and are probably undersexed or impotent (“physically incapable of performing the operation”).
4. A reference to Virgil's Second Ecologue, in which the shepherd Corydon burns with yearning for Alexis, his master's darling. “Foul flavour” was only thrown in to befuddle the censors.
5. Burton elsewhere makes the point that male beauty is superior to female beauty:
The male figure here, as all the world over, is notably superior, as amongst the lower animals, to that of the female. The latter is a system of soft, curved, and rounded lines, graceful, but meaningless and monotonous. The former far excels it in variety of form and in sinew. In these lands, where all figures are semi-nude, the exceeding difference between the sexes strikes the eye at once. There will be a score of fine male figures to one female, and there she is, as everywhere else, as inferior as is the Venus de Medici to the Apollo Belvedere. (Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains)
Easterners, I have remarked, mostly recognise the artistic truth that the animal man is handsomer than woman; and that “fair sex” is truly only of skin-colour. The same is the general rule throughout creation, for instance the stallion compared with the mare, the cock with the hen; while there are sundry exceptions such as the Falconidae. (The Arabian Nights)
6. This sentence is a deliberately hilarious exercise in incongruities. Of course, the same form of love cannot be both “pathological” and “one of the marvellous list of amorous vagaries”. The “pitiful care of the physician” is intentionally and facetiously lugubrious.
7. In this sentence Burton expresses directly his loathing of prudes, bowdlerisers and censors.
8. The German means “All habitual pederasts recognise each other quickly, often with a single glance.” Burton here touches on what we now call gaydar — the ability of gay men, who may be neither effeminate nor conspicuously different from straight men, to recognise each other.
9. Despite the word “abuse” and a trivial amount of doubletalk, the entire long paragraph is a panegyric to the male love of Hellas.
10. An English translation of Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola, with authorship attributed to Antonio Rocco, translated from the Italian by J.C. Rawnsley, was published in 2000 by Entimos Press.
11. It is not true that the Athenians punished or categorically condemned boy love per se. For a scholarly refutation of older misinterpretations of Aeschines' speech see K.J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (1978). The entire text of Aeschines' speech, in English translation, is in Thomas K. Hubbard (ed.), Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic documents (2003).
12. There is no basis for the old belief that the Lex Scantinia or Lex Julia severely condemned all male-to-male sex, perhaps even with the death penalty. Warren Johansson in his entry, “Law (Major Traditions in the West” (Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, ed. Wayne R. Dynes, 1990) puts the case succinctly: “Under the Roman republic, the Lex Scatinia or Lex Scantinia from the third century B.C. seems to have directed against the use of force or authority to compel a free man to submit to what was in Roman eyes a degrading act; its full import and application remain obscure.” John Boswell in his chapter, “Rome: The Foundation” (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 1980), argues convincingly that sex between males per se could not have been illegal in ancient Rome.
13. In these two sentences Burton is using “pederasty” generically, to refer to all sex between males, not only that between a man and a boy.
14. “philosophic indifference”. Would that St. Paul had practised the same.
15. “abominations which, marvellous to relate, flourished in closest contact with men leading the purest of lives, models of moderation and morality, of religion and virtue.” Here Burton makes it quite clear to his intended readers, the initiated, that words like “abominations” should not be taken seriously.
16. In these three remarkable sentences, Burton informs us that as boys the Persian males have mutual sex with each other — then, when mature, they marry and have children — and then they again turn to the love of boys.
17. This cunning parable makes the point that under the right circumstances, virtually all men would succumb to homoerotic desire. Significantly, the supreme temptation is represented by a “fair youth of twenty”, not by an adolescent boy.
18. Surely a “tall tale”. Many of Burton's anecdotes should be taken with more than a grain of salt.
19. Surely, Burton himself did not believe this preposterous story of a man with a tail. One wonders how many of his readers believed it.
20. Understandably, gay men emigrated from England to Italy. In England, men and boys were regularly hanged for having sex with each other. (The last hanging was in 1834, but the death penalty remained on the books until 1861). In Italy, thanks to the Code Napoléon (1810), sex between males was legal.
21. For centuries gay men have made lists of famous men who loved other males. Notable lists before Burton's are found in Marlowe's play, Edward II (1593); Voltaire's article, “L'Amour nommĂ© Socratique” (1764); the anonymously published Don Leon (ca. 1836); Heinrich Hössli's Eros: Die MĂ€nnerliebe der Griechen (1838); and in various pamphlets by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1864-1879).
22. These two Latin phrases — “Naturalia non sunt turpia” [what is natural is not shameful] and “Mundis omnia munda” [to the pure all things are pure] — express Burton's own outlook.
23. In this final paragraph Burton directly expresses his loathing of censors, prudes and hypocrites: “so ‘respectable’ and so impure”.
Note on the text
I have all sixteen volumes of the Arabian Nights in my personal library. From the title page of the tenth volume:
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments.
Translated and annotated by Richard F. Burton.
Privately printed by the Burton Club.
Volume Ten.
London 1886.
In this Internet edition I have silently corrected a few outright typos. Punctuation in the printed text is inconsistent, but I have left it alone except when it was simply wrong, and except for the placement of quotation marks relative to commas (where I have used the logical punctuation favored by the best publishing houses). The printed text uses almost no italics, which is fine here, since italics show up poorly on a computer screen — either they are far too light or, if boldface is added, they are far too dark. Accordingly, I have simply followed the printed text with regard to italics.I write books and am proprietor of Pagan Press, a small book publisher. Each of our books is unique and well produced. Please check out the Pagan Press BOOKLIST — John Lauritsen
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