#Eunuchus

[frimleyblogger]

Lost Word Of The Day (13)

to gnathonise - to toady or flatter #lostwords #obscurewords #logophilia

How much has the English language lost as a result in the decline in the familiarity with the classical literature of Ancient Greece and Rome? I began musing on this when I came across the verb gathonise which was used particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries to describe the actions a toady or someone who excels in the art of flattery. Gnatho was the name of a character in Eunuchus, a play…

[englishmoribund]

A Word to Describe a Boastful Person: Thrasonical

Have you ever encountered someone who brags excessively about their accomplishments? If so, then you have met a thrasonical person. The word "thrasonical" is derived from the character Thraso in the ancient Greek play "Eunuchus" by Terence, who was known for his boastful behavior.

Thrasonical people are characterized by their excessive bragging and boasting. They love to talk about their achievements, wealth, and success to make themselves look better than others. Here's an example sentence to showcase a thrasonical person's behavior:

"He was so thrasonical that he claimed to have personally taught Leonardo da Vinci how to paint."

The term "thrasonical" has been used in English literature since the 16th and 17th centuries to describe boastful and arrogant characters. In modern times, it's still used to describe people who are overly boastful.

An example of a thrasonical character can be seen in the anime series "Chillin' in My 30s after Getting Fired from the Demon King's Army." The character Gashita starts off as thrasonical but changes as the story progresses, growing as a person and learning the importance of humility.

In conclusion, the word "thrasonical" is a rich and humorous term that refers to people who are excessively boastful and love to show off their accomplishments. So next time you encounter a thrasonical person, just remember to use the word to describe their behavior in a comedic yet precise manner. And always keep in mind that true success lies in being grounded and humble.

[walruna]

Nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius

It's impossible to say something that hasn't already been said

- Publius Terentius Afer

[sroloc--elbisivni]

Rating the Nonsense* I found doing queer historiography research

back in 2020 I was doing a project on queer historiography prior to the queer liberation movement. Since I needed a bunch of sources, my four criteria were:

had to be accessible online (early days of the pandemic)

had to be in English

had to have been identified by another researcher or archive as queer (because i didn't have time to make arguments for every single piece of evidence)

had to be from before 1969

so, as you can imagine, I found some wild stuff. I put this together for a powerpoint party last year and now I am sharing it with the world. enjoy. includes some nsfw text.

THREE CRITERIA RATING SCALE:

"Just Saying Shit" aka wow you didn't have to cite your sources at all did you "Sure?" aka I'll go ahead and integrate that into my belief system "Creativity" aka this FUCKS

*all of this nonsense is from the non-fiction. we're not getting into the Victorian 'girdle of cunts' gangbang erotica.

EXHIBIT 1: "The Chimp," ONE Magazine, 1954. Part of a series of cartoons satirizing gay bar attendees. Ink cartoon of a chimpanzee wearing glasses sitting on a chair, martini glass held by prehensile toes. One hand is holding a cigarette and the other hand is gesturing. Caption reads "For instance, in ancient Greece, it was considered the highest form of..."

Just Saying Shit: 2/10 I fully believe the artist absolutely knew a bunch of people like this, try harder. We are just getting started. Sure?: 2/10 they just don't make 'em like this anymore Creativity: 8/10 haha fursonas in the 50s

EXHIBIT 2: Gordon Rattray Taylor, part 1. Book quote reading "According to some accounts, the Devil is equipped with a forked penis so that he can commit both buggery and fornication at the same time."

there was a book about ‘the multiple roots of homosexuality’ and if I did the whole thing we’d be here all day. This guy wrote a chapter. 

Just Saying Shit: 4/10, he’s quoting other sources but props for making it sound like it’s a factual thing about the Devil as a real person who exists. An extra point for not actually citing these sources. Sure?: 7/10 I hear hemipenes are a kink according to the scalies Creativity: 1/10 for Rattray Taylor who was quoting this but 9/10 for the original postulators.

EXHIBIT 3: Gordon Rattray Taylor, part 2. Book quote reading "As I have sought to show elsewhere (Rattray Taylor, 1954; Rattray Taylor, 1958), in societies that conceive of their deities as mother-figures, incest is regarded as the overwhelming danger and is hedged with taboos, whereas homosexuality has little importance. Conversely, in societies that conceive of their deities as father-figures, homosexuality is regarded as the overwhelming danger and is surrounded with taboos and condemnation; incest may also be tabooed but it falls far behind homosexuality in importance. I have proposed the terms matrist and patrist for those too patterns. (I do not regard "matriarchy" and "patriarchy" as satisfactory, for reasons that need not concern us here.)

Just Saying Shit: 8/10 now THAT’S what I’m talking about!! Hit me with your nonsense theories. Classic anthropology right here. Sure?: 3/10 I will regurgitate this occasionally but only because it’s kind of funny Creativity: 2/10 you did it! You broke gender essentialism down to its bare essentials and added gods!

EXHIBIT 4: Gordon Rattray Taylor, part 3. Book quote reading "The Acta Sanctorum includes accounts of "Brother Marinos," whom the other monks supposed to be a eunuch from his voice and beardlessness, who was even accused of seducing a local girl, and who turned out at death to be female; of frater Pelagius monachus et eunuchus, also a girl; of Marina, Margarita, and others. Other Instances noted by Delcourt (1961) include Athanasia of Antioch, Eugenia of Alexandria, Apollinaria, Papula of Gaul, and Hildegonde of Neuss."

Honestly i just put this one in here because it’s neat. Trans* rights.

Just Saying Shit: 0/10 you have actually clearly named your sources for once Sure?: 10/10 hey can we talk about ‘eunuch’ as not only a codified transgressive gender role but also as the rare gender&sexuality thing we can clearly translate across multiple societies– Creativity: 5/10 for not just stopping with Joan of Arc like 90% of ‘cross-dressing in the church!’ stuff

EXAMPLE 5: Edward Prime-Stevenson, part 1. Book quote reading "Of a prevalence of female similisexualism we have no historic record, but its existence is beyond doubt. Earliest legislation took little or no control of the similisexual impulses and habits. In Egypt there seems to have been no period when men were not accustomed to give free course, as by natural right, to the passion. In all dynasties, in all classes, in the army, the priesthood, in civil life, it was well-known."

Love this bastard. He wrote a 600 page book all by his damn self in 1911 and cited absolutely nothing.

Just Saying Shit: 9/10 THIS is what we’re here for. All of Egypt was gay Because I Say So Sure?: 8/10 I will believe this as a treat for me Creativity: 4/10 this fucks but points off for using it to argue the Torah is homophobic

EXAMPLE 6: Edward Prime-Stevenson, part 2. Book quote reading "The "Sexual Germ" in Friendships. Meantime, however displeasing to the reader, let it be affirmed that all real friendships between men have a sexual germ."

BEHOLD MY MOST ABSOLUTE FAVORITE QUOTE I PUT IN MY THESIS

Just Saying Shit: 12/10 absolute madlad fucking love it Sure?: 5/10 torn between ‘I want to believe’ and ‘dude i think that might just be you’ Creativity: 7/10 because I love it. The shippers were right.

EXAMPLE 7: Edward Prime-Stevenson, part 3. Book quote reading "Socrates was similsexual. Not readily can we dismiss the idea that Christ was such--and saints may have been Uranians."

Just Saying Shit: 9/10. Look at him go. Elaborate on that??? (P-S: no.) (that’s a lie he goes on other places to explain his ship manifesto for Christ and John the Baptist) (CATHOLICS IN THE AUDIENCE DO NOT @ ME I KNOW THEY'RE COUSINS. ARGUE WITH THE DEAD GUY.) Sure?: 9/10 we’ve all seen Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) Creativity: 3/10 again. we’ve all seen Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

EXAMPLE 8: Edward Prime-Stevenson, part 4. Book quote reading "The Instant Hostility of the Roman Church; and of Mariolatry. This was not all. For the sentiment hostile to similisexual love, bent on making it the most depraved of instincts, increased just as the Catholic Church exaggerated its respect for the humble mother of the Redeemer. The new Faith made the worship of the Feminine-Abstract, the Blessed Lady the Immaculate Version, a mysterious, strenuous cult; even to displacing by it the just adoration of Christ. Woman, as typified by the Virgin, was held up as the ideal of the world-heart. Mariolatry, the fine flower of feminine concepts became the special policy of the Roman Church, in shrewd concession to human, aesthetic impulses, and in a perpetual combat of male sexualism. Just as Christianity had darkened existence with the gloom and gore of the cross, so the sentiment of Mary worship was to effeminize the social and sexual life of the male."

Was I just supposed to leave out him calling the entire Roman Catholic Church emasculated. 

Just Saying Shit: 7/10 because he thinks he’s making a reasonable argument here Sure?: 4/10 my dude did you try to seduce a guy only for him to wax eloquent about the Virgin Mary Creativity: 2/10 I feel like this is just misogyny. Sorry people aren’t making religious statues of who you find hot

EXAMPLE 9: Walt Whitman's Anomaly--WC Rivers. Book quote reading "What really attracted him about manual labour was the picturesque male images it called up. "To be lean'd and to lean on," is quite an unfatiguing use of the seven-pound felling axe. Then there is his robust aspect. President Lincoln's exclamation on first seeing him-- "Well, he looks like a MAN!" --is much quoted by biographers."

Love this pamphlet. Just a dude in the 1910s going ‘I think Whitman was gay!’ with genuine delight and surprise. He a little confused but he got the spirit.

Just Saying Shit: 4/10 this is a very well documented quote but what a way to use it Sure?: 12/10 HEY ABE?? HEY ABE LINCOLN?? THIS IS UP THERE AS ONE OF THE GAYEST THINGS YOU EVER SAID Creativity: 7/10 for the circumstances in which this quote was employed namely in a chapter about possible objections to Whitman being gay 

FINAL TALLY

-God I love history

-why can’t I Just Say Shit

-Go read Shel Silverstein’s Fire Island Playboy cartoons

[intersex-support]

Hi! I’m not intersex so feel free to ignore or answer other questions first.

I am curious about how eunuchs tie into intersex history. There seems to be a lot of similarities, but I’m not sure how or if it’s related. And I’m curious if ideas around eunuchs tie into how society treats intersex people today, or if perhaps some eunuchs were intersex people? I don’t want to speculate becuase I don’t think it’s my place, but I definitely see similarities with what you talk about.

I’m not totally sure how to frame this question because it is incredibly broad, and covers vast swaths of time and many parts of the world, but I would appreciate any information you could provide that would allow for further research or understanding.

Thank you, I hope you have a lovely day.

Hey! So it definitely is a broad question and really, really depends on the region. I can speak a little about some of the relationship between eunuchs and intersex people in Ancient Rome and Greece because I can read those languages, but I’m not an expert on there or anywhere else.

So there’s quite a few sources that talk about intersex people in conjunction with eunuchs. The Pandects, Roman laws collected by Justinian I, used eunuch as an umbrella term to describe both eunuchs by nature and eunuchs who were made (there also does seem to be some distinction between the language use of eunuchus and castratus, but I’m not convinced that eunuchus was only used to described intersex people.) At a similar time, Pliny the elder was going around recognizing that there were multiple sexes, and indeed spent a lot of time trying to classify what intersex was and how many intersex variations there were. Philostratus, who was a Greek writer who spent some time at the Roman imperial court, wrote an anecdote about this intersex person named Favorinus who was tried for adultry, and we know he’s intersex because Philostratus refers to him as “ἀνδρόθηλυς” (intersex), but he also refers to him as “εὐνοῦχος” (eunuch). There’s a few other examples, but basically, at different points in Ancient Rome it’s clear that intersex people were distinctly recognized as different than eunuch, yet often were lumped in with eunuchs in terms of legal treatment, although some of the Latin can kind of best be translated as “congenital eunuch.”

In the Archaic period, the Roman legal treatment of intersex people viewed intersex births as “prodigies” which is…not a great thing in Roman law. Trigger warning for horrific intersexism, but there’s sixteen primary sources that show some proof that some intersex children were drowned at birth as a way of appeasing the gods. This is obviously not going to be the same treatment that adult eunuchs received under Roman law, so that’s defintely a departure. There were also some reports of people who discovered that they were intersex in adulthood being killed as well, but that’s a lot fewer. Once we start getting into later eras of the republic the legal status of intersex people changes again, and the last reported intersex execution is 95 BC. After 95 BC, there’s a lot more mentions of intersex children in sources, which also shows proof that fewer are getting killed at birth. There is a gradual shift in Roman society and intersex people start getting classified as either male or female under the law, with responsibilities and rights determined by their assignment. Pliny specifically argued that intersex men should be considered semiviri and given the exact same legal rights as eunuchs. Eunuch Roman law is complex as has a lot of specific things about the extent to which someone is a Eunuch and whether or not you can marry, write a will, all of that, so it’s clear that some intersex people were legally limited in similar ways to eunuchs. Eunuchs in Roman society had a complicated role, and often times were enslaved, although some eunuchs/intersex people like Favorinus were able to have aristocratic success. So basically Roman society was really pretty bad for eunuchs or intersex people.

When it comes to the Greeks, the most information around intersex people is about the mythologic god Hermaphroditus, child of Hermes and Aphrodite, who was a beautiful, divine, and celebrated figure. We do have more positive descriptions of intersex people from sources of that time, Phlegon of Tralles, a Greek writer, described an intersex person near Antioch who was known as a beautiful maiden but than turned into a man at puberty. There’s also another intersex person who lived at Epidaurus who was described as spending his life gardening, which I think is neat. I’m not as familiar with intersex people in Ancient Greece, but it seems to be more positive. Eunuchs also had a bit of a different reception in Greek society, and I couldn’t find a lot of sources on intersex people and eunuchs and I’m just not as familiar with Greek history as Roman.

So overall, I can say confidently that in Ancient Rome, the history of eunuchs and intersex people is very intertwined, and societal response was also filled with stigma, prejudice, and violence. I’d say that it’s probably pretty likely that in other cultures and times through the world, eunuchs and intersex people have been related. I don’t know enough history about other regions, but if anyone does know I would love to hear some more. I’m not sure how much of an affect that the treatment of eunuchs really has on intersex people in the contemporary world, but I definitely think that at certain times in world history, eunuchs and intersex people were associated with each other. I listed a few sources for what I summarized about Roman law, but massive trigger warning for slurs and descriptions of violent intersexism. Here’s also a link to a post I made about the treatment of intersex people in medieval Europe (with similar trigger warnings.)

https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/unromantest/chapter/transgender/

https://www.academia.edu/45639485/The_Legal_Treatment_of_Hermaphroditism_in_Ancient_Rome_From_Persecution_to_Integration

https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2015/09/15/favorinus-was-a-hermaphrodite-tried-for-adultery-philostratus-lives-of-the-sophists-489/amp/

[metmuseum]

Eunuchus, from The Comedie of Terence, 19th century reprint. n.d.. Credit line: Bequest of James Clark McGuire, 1930 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/387790

[gay-debord]

Eunuch posting. Eunuchmaxxing. Book of Eunuch. Eunuchnaki. Born under the sign of Eunuchus. Eunuch's Labyrinth.

[desert-anne]

in times of trouble, I cling to the fact that my name is neither Dirck Gryp nor Terence Eunuchus

[biointernet]

488-504 Cronos and Friends

“She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she'd been young, she'd had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn't understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. They peony, for its scent, also fine. When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within.”  ― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

488-504 Cronos and Friends

Vintage post stamps from Hourglass Collection Welcome to special website about Largest Hourglass Collection! https://hourglasscollection.org Austria 1966 Library, Chronos, Hourglass, Scythe, Heracles, Eunuchus 488-504 Cronos and Friends

MHC Virtual Museum

My Hourglass Collection virtual museum about Time and Light, Space and Love, Science and Magic MHC Virtual Museum based on the Hourglass Collection MHC – My Hourglass Collection virtual museum about Time and Light, Space and Magic  the Biointernet Hub on The Fantasy Network MHC Exhibitions – Dynamic Vision Board meta models

MHC Exhibitions – Dynamic Vision Board meta-models

Welcome to Exhibitions at MHC Virtual Museum! Authors: Adam Pierce, Oleg Bazhenov, Lena Rhomberg, Kirill Korotkov, Anton Fokin, Petr Mihailov, Rustam Adyukov and other MHC Exhibitions:Personification of Time – Father Time ExhibitionBeauty Bio Net – Dynamic Vision Board Mental ModelHourglass and Cards – Die Welt als Wille und VorstellungArt Glass by Anton FokinThe Full History of Time3D Hand Made – 3DHM ExhibitionHourglass Figure Sophia LorenHourglass Figure Marilyn MonroeDead Sea Collection ExhibitionHourglass – Masonic Symbol Exhibition Read the full article

[drarrily-we-row-along]

Day 171: Tacent

The lovely human who sent me this defined this word as 'silent'. I have a background in music and my brain- silly, dyslexic thing that it is- saw 'tacet' (which is when the voice takes a pause from singing). I went to read the definition, realized I'd thought of the wrong word, and found this instead: "They are silent, they praise enough. 'Silence is praise enough' is a line from Terence's Eunuchus, and probably acknowledges that rapt attention in an audience can be more flattering than applause." Thanks to that definition, here we are:

I wonder if he realizes what he sounds like when he talks? If he realizes the way his voice ebbs and swells, if he is aware that every word holds me captive, that I am strung gladly along by his turns of phrase and his passion.

It's an almost musical affair, the way he carries on, and I'm enraptured by him. There's nothing I love so much as listening to him speak, even when I haven't the foggiest idea what he's talking about.

Godric, he's brilliant. The way his mind works, turning over bits of information and examining them in ways that would never have occurred to me. I'm struck mute in my amazement of him.

"Are you listening to me?" Draco asks me, as though he wonders. As though I've spent even a single moment since I met him not invested in the words that were going to fall from his mouth.

"Always, love," I respond and he eases a bit, eyes going soft around the edges as I lean in to kiss the words on his lips. "Always."

-----------------

Day Something: The | Day 172: Flatmates

[fateology]

hiiii so i know u like classics/ancient roman stuff — how does one get into that? like what books do u recommend etc etc

HELLO and ok i’m so not an authority on this because i’m really just getting into the classical antiquity scene myself..but probably the start of my ancient rome madness was shakespeare’s julius caesar which i CANNOT stress enough slaps so hard. ***not like fully historically accurate i gather, but i love the drama and i’ve been delighted that actually most of roman politics WAS that dramatic in reality. cut bc i love to run my mouth

in terms of books i haven’t been reading that much because school term :-// but i read erich segal’s classical comedy anthology (aristophanes’ birds, menander’s samia, plautus’ menaechmi, terence’s eunuchus) recently because i wanted something free and easy and i liked the roman ones (plautus & terence)! recommend if you’d like something mindless (though ancient comedy does still tell u important stuff about society at the time) BUT much caution because as with a lot of classical antiquity the plays deal heavily with rape and misogyny (ancient comedian voice: watch how hard i can hate women!!!)

for poetry i’ve been in the middle of ovid’s metamorphoses (horace gregory’s translation) for a while but i like what i’ve read, like that the myths are split and small enough to uhh eat one at a time. ovid = snack real…….other stuff on my reading list are rubicon and attis by tom holland who other than being a critically acclaimed young british actor has also written some fantastically insightful historical non fiction …… this is a joke clap if you wish

what i HAVE been consuming however is loads of podcasts. they’re fantastic because i can put them on while i’m doing work..it’s really like SING MUSE! OF THE BATTLE OF PHILIPPI. come hither fair bard and play me some mother f*cking odes. in particular The Ancients which is on spotify and has loads of stuff on ancient history and the like; the guests on the show are all historians/classicists who’ve written about the content of their episode so if you like the topic you can do the further reading really conveniently. i recall that battle of philippi episode in particular made me very upset about cassius and the collapse of the roman republic….it’s a little scattered sometimes but i like it because it makes me feel like i’m piecing together gossip bit by bit. E.G. i think on one of the cicero episodes they mentioned his clodius feud and i, very unlearned at the time, went CLODIUS? OF THE CATULLUS BITTER BREAKUP POETRY FAME? WHO IS THIS GUY and i found other episodes of other podcasts about him and they just kept saying things. the scandals didn’t stop. #problematicfave #prettyboysupreme #legitimateplebeiantribune #gangleader

speaking of catullus YES also read catullus’ poetry. most of it you can find online and gay people on tumblr me included do translations like they’re being held at gunpoint (honestly maybe one of my favourite ways to consume translated works though it’s about the personal yet communal nature of it….sharing verses..sigh..) AND—re podcasts, i heard the cicero audio drama is really good, but it costs a bit to listen to and i haven’t figured out how debit cards work so that’s on hold for me rn, but i’m PLOTTING

ik you asked about ancient rome but ...read war music by christopher logue recently and ooohhh goodness. it’s great!!! i love fight scenes and the like so i suppose it appealed directly to me but it’s really cool in general (iliad books 16-19 translation/adaptation but guy didn’t speak greek at all! and it F*CKED! my idol). i’m in the middle of cold calls atm. i’d recommend the actual iliad but i can’t yet because i’m terrible, glossed it until i got to the river fight scene and haven’t gotten around to my reread, though i like caroline alexander’s translation a fair bit from what i remember. anne carson has loads of really good stuff but i’m biased bc autobiography of red cracked my head open and drank the meat the first time i read it. Float’s a great collection too and has the plus side of looking really pretty in a shelf. also gotta start the euripides play collection i got, eventually…! will update

[skepwith]

Bunnies Were Gay in Europe Too

So I knew from my PhD on The Untamed from Tumblr University that the copious rabbits in the show were a winking reference to Tu’er Shen, aka the Rabbit God, patron of homosexuals. But did you know that bunnies were gay in Europe too? Specifically, hares in medieval Europe. This is from “The Hare and Its Alter Ego in the Middle Ages” by Ilya Dines (Reinardus, v. 17, 2004):

Aside from hunting scenes, one may broadly divide ancient depictions of hares into two iconographical groups. In the first group, the hare embodies the love of a man for a woman. On numerous Greek vases, for example, we see a depiction of Eros, the God of Love, with his two symbols, the lyre and the hare ….

In the second group of scenes, the hare expresses homosexual love. On many ancient vases we find depictions of an adult male handing a hare to a young man, as a guarantee of their mutual affection. This perception of the hare is also found in ancient literature. In Terence’s comedy Eunuchus 3.1.35–36, the character Thraso says to a young man from Rhodes: ‘Quid ais, inquam, homo impudens? Lepus tute es, et pulpamentum quaeris’ (What are you saying, impudent creature? You are surely a hare and you seek flesh). The grammarian Donatus explains this phrase in the context of a hare’s supposed homosexuality or hermaphrodotism – ‘modo mas, modo femina’ (sometimes male, sometimes female). Thus in classical antiquity the hare was a symbol of sexual promiscuity, be it heterosexual or homosexual.

The belief that hares could change sex persisted in Britain until the end of the eighteenth century (Beryl Rowland, “Animal Imagery and the Pardoner’s Abnormality,” Neophilologus, v. 48, 1964, pp. 57-58).

I guess this was only true of hares, though, not rabbits? But! Tu’er Shen is often translated as “the Leveret Spirit,” a leveret being a young hare in its first year. But the word used is 兔 (tù), which can mean “rabbit” or “hare”; apparently Chinese speakers don’t usually make the distinction, and when they do it’s by adding “wild” or “pet” to mean hare or rabbit, respectively. (Disclaimer: I don’t read Chinese.)

This isn’t to say there’s some kind of connection, or that hares are inherently gay. I just thought it was cool. Also, the medieval mind is weird and mysterious.

[ma-pi-ma]

Se hai sale in zucca, non aggiungere altre pene a quelle che l'amore di per sé ti rifila.

Terenzio (Eunuchus, vv. 76-78)

[havadaabulut]

"Hiçbir söz yoktur ki, daha önce söylenmemiş olsun."

-Terentius, Eunuchus.

"Söylenmesi gereken her şey zaten söylendi. Fakat kimse dinlemediğine göre tekrar söylenmesi gerek!"

-André Gide

[thelibraryoflittleredwriting]

“In fact, nothing is said that has not been said before”

-Terence, Eunuchus

[aprilecchi]

Nullum est iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius

Impossibile dire qualche cosa che già non sia stata detta 

(Terenzio, Eunuchus, Prologo, v.41)