The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (essential reading TXT) 📖

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.

 

Mokhther�a, depravity with boys.

 

Paidika, whence p�dicare (act.) and p�dicari (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.

 

Ph�nicissare ({Greek})= cunnilingere in tempore menstruum, quia hoc vitium in Ph�nicia generate solebat (Thes. Erot. Ling.

Latin�); 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 ({Greek}, from Siphnos, hod. Sifanto Island) =

digito podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus (see Mirabeau’s Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).

 

Thrypsis = the rubbing.

 

Pederast�a 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 f�minarum 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; 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 � cette esp�ce d’amour une note d’infamie, comme en pa�s de chr�tient�, says Bayle under “Anacreon.” The great C�sar, the Cinaedus calvus of Catullus, was the husband of all the wives and the wife of all the husbands in Rome (Suetonius, cap. Iii.); and his soldiers sang in his praise, Gallias C�sar, subegit, Nicomedes C�sarem (Suet. cies. xlix.); whence his sobriquet “Fornix Birthynicus.” Of Augustus the people chaunted

 

Videsne ut Cin�dus orbem digito temperet?

 

Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which the spinthri� (lit. women’s bracelets) were connected in a chain by the bond of flesh[FN#379] (Seneca Quaest. 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 copulentur; 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 Antinous,and the wild debaucheries of Heliogabalus seem only to have amused, instead of disgusting, the Romans.

 

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 caupon� wore sleeved tunics and dalmatics like women. As in modern Egypt pathic boys, we learn from Catullus, haunted the public baths. Debauch�es had signals like freemasons whereby they recognised one another. The Greek Skemat�zein was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had eggs, t�ter si les poulettes ont l’�uf: hence the Athenians called it Catapygon or sodomite and the Romans digitus impudicus or infamis, the “medical finger”[FN#380] of Rabelais and the Chiromantists. Another sign was to scratch the head with the minimus—digitulo caput scabere Juv. ix. 133).[FN#381] 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 anim�.

 

In the pagan days of imperial Rome her literature makes no difference between boy and girl. Horace na�vely says (Sat. ii.

118):—

 

Ancilla aut verna est praesto 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 Moli�re[FN#382]

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 c�linerie 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 every one 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?”

 

Erotic Latin glossaries[FN#383] give some ninety words connected with pederasty and some, which “speak with Roman simplicity,” are peculiarly expressive. “Averse 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. 7I). The Divisor is so called from his practice Hillas dividere or c�dere, something like Martial’s cacare mentulam or Juvenal’s Hestern� occurrere c�n�. 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 p�dicatione. Illicita libido is =

pr�postera seu postica Venus, and is expressed by the picturesque phrase indicare (seu incurvare) aliquem. Depilatus, divellere pilos, glaber, laevis 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, scarab�us and smerdalius explain themselves.

 

From Rome the practice extended far and wide to her colonies, especially the Provincia now called Provence. Athen�us (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 civilisation 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 Marocco,[FN#384] 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 licence: in one case the English wife failed to banish from the home “that horrid boy.”

 

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. There are four distinct references to Lot and the Sodomites in chapters vii. 78; xi. 77-84; xxvi.

I60-I74 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 judgment 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.[FN#385] 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.

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 Ghilm�n or Wuld�n, the beautiful boys of Paradise, the counter parts 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 debauch�es refer to it, the learned look upon the assertion as scandalous.

 

As in Marocco 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