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The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10

R >> Richard F. Burton >> The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10




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 cachetic 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 met einen Thick." This has nothing in common with
the feminisme which betrays itself in the pathic by womanly gait,
regard and gesture: it is a something sui generic; 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-regale sur les Attentats
aux Moeurs," 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 medical 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,[FN#367] Rosenbaum[FN#368] and M. H. E. Meier.[FN#369] 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
AEtatis breve ver, et primos carpere flores.
Ovid Met. x. 79-85.

Euripides proposed Laius father of Oedipus as the inaugurator,
whereas Timaeus 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.)[FN#370] asserts with much more probability that the
Persians used eunuch boys according to the Mos Graeciae, long
before they had seen the Grecian main.

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 Section 21) gives a curious account of the violent
abduction of beloved boys ({Greek}) by the lover ({Greek}); of
the obligations of the ravisher ({Greek}) to the favourite
({Greek})[FN#371] and of the "marriage-ceremonies" which lasted
two months. See also Plato, Laws i. c. 8. Servius (Ad AEneid. x.
325) informs us "De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum
intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Lacones 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;[FN#372] 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 ({Greek}) lust. They both approved of pure
pederastia, 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. I9 and Xenophon, Synop. 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. AEschylus,
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
Alcaeus, 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[FN#373] and others;
Empedocles, Pausanias; Epicurus, Pytocles; Aristippus, Eutichydes
and Zeno with his Stoics had a philosophic disregard for women,
affecting only pederastia. 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"[FN#374] being violemment soupconne when under the
mantle:--non semper sine plaga ab eo surrexit. Athenaeus (v. c.
I3) declares that Plato represents Socrates as absolutely
intoxicated with his passion for Alcibiades.[FN#375] 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
paedicones." 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.

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 ''Lacedaemonius"
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 Boeotians who produced the famous Narcissus,[FN#376] described
by Ovid (Met. iii. 339);--

Multi ilium juvenes, multae cupiere puellae;
Nulli ilium juvenes, nullae tetigere puellae:[FN#377]

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 redactions on the fatal field of
Chaeroneia form their fittest epitaph. At last the Athenians,
according to AEschines, officially punished Sodomy with death; but
the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of
Karachi; 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 (AEsch. contra Tim.);
and paid a fixed tax to the state. The pleasures of society in
civilised Greece seem to have been sought chiefly in the heresies
of love--Hetairesis[FN#378] and Sotadism.

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 ,
pathic or passive lover.

The Agathonian song.

Aischrourgia = dishonest love, also called Akolasia, Akrasia,
Arrenokoitia, etc.

Alcinoan youths, or "non conformists,"

In cute curanda plus aequo operate 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 Batalos= a catamite.

Catapygos, Katapygosyne = puerarius and catadactylium from
Dactylion, the ring, used in the sense of Nerissa's, but applied
to the corollarium puerile.

Cinaedus (Kinaidos), the active lover ({Greek}) derived either
from his kinetics or quasi {Greek} = dog modest. Also
Spatalocinaedus (lascivia fluens) = a fair Ganymede.

Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in Euboea, a city famed
for love a posteriori; mostly applied to le lechement des
testicules by children.

Clazomenae = 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 paedicare (act.) and paedicari (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.

Phoenicissare ({Greek})= cunnilingere in tempore menstruum, quia
hoc vitium in Phoenicia generate 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 ({Greek}, from Siphnos, hod. Sifanto Island) =
digito podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus
(see Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).

Thrypsis = the rubbing.

Pederastia 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 foeminarum 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 a cette espece d'amour une note
d'infamie, comme en pais de chretiente, says Bayle under
"Anacreon." The great Caesar, 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 Caesar, subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem (Suet. cies. xlix.);
whence his sobriquet "Fornix Birthynicus." Of Augustus the people
chaunted

Videsne ut Cinaedus orbem digito temperet?

Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the
Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which
the spinthriae (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 cauponae wore sleeved tunics and
dalmatics like women. As in modern Egypt pathic boys, we learn
from Catullus, haunted the public baths. Debauchees had signals
like freemasons whereby they recognised one another. The Greek
Skematizein was made by closing the hand to represent the scrotum
and raising the middle finger as if to feel whether a hen had
eggs, tater si les poulettes ont l'oeuf: 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
animae.

In the pagan days of imperial Rome her literature makes no
difference between boy and girl. Horace naively 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 Moliere[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 calinerie 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 caedere, something like Martial's cacare mentulam or
Juvenal's Hesternae occurrere caenae. 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 paedicatione. Illicita libido is =
praepostera 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,
scarabaeus and smerdalius explain themselves.

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 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 Ghilman or Wuldan, 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 debauchees 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 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. 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.[FN#386] 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 (chaps. xv.), which formed the "delight
of the Egyptians." During the Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his
letter to General Bruix (p. I9) says, "Les Arabes et les
Mamelouks ont traite quelques-uns de nos prisonniers comme
Socrate traitait, dit-on, Alcibiade. Il fallait perir ou y
passer." Old Anglo-Egyptians still chuckle over the tale of Sa'id
Pasha and M. de Ruyssenaer, the high-dried 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.

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