"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece, and the roots of the Western World .... The Life of Apollonius of Tyana Philostratus {220 AD} Of Eunochs and Passion ...
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Spring of 1995

Of Eunochs and Passion ...

"But," answered the other, "O Apollonius, a child could tell you. For inasmuch as the operation has deprived them of the faculty, they are freely admitted into those apartments, no matter how far their wishes may go."

"But do you suppose the operation has removed their desires or the further aptitude?"

"Both," replied Damis, "for if you extinguish in a man the unruly member that lashes the body to madness, the fit of passion will come on him no more."

After a brief pause, Apollonius said: "To-morrow, Damis, you shall learn that even eunuchs are liable to fall in love, and that the desire which is contracted through the eyes is not extinguished in them, but abides alive and ready to burst into a flame; for that will occur which will feture your opinion. And even if there were really any human art of such tyrannic force that it could expel such feelings from the heart, I do not see how we could ever attribute to them any chastity of character, seeing that they would have no choice, having been by sheer force and artificially deprived of the faculty of falling in love. For chastity consists in not yielding to passion when the longing an impulse is felt, and in the abstinence which rises superior to this form of madness."

Accordingly Damis answered and said: "Here is a thing that we will examine another time, O Apollonius; but we had better consider now that answer you can make to-morrow to the king's magnificent offier. For you will perhaps asks for nothing at all, but you should be careful and be on your guard lest you should seem to decline any gift the king may offer, as they say, out of mere empty pride, for you see the land that you are in and that we are wholly in his power. And you must be on your guard against the accusation of treating him with contempt, and understand, that although we have sufficient means to carry us to India, yet what we have will not be sufficient to bring us back thence, and we have no other supply to fall back upon."

Now when the eunuch arrived and summoned him before the king, he said:

"I will come as soon as I have duly discharged my religious duties."

Accordingly he sacrificed and offered his prayer, and then departed, and everyone looked at him and wondered at his bearing. And when he had come within, the king said: "I present you with ten gifts, because I consider you such a man as never before has come higher from Hellas."

And he answered and said:

"I will not, O king, decline all your gifts; but there is one which I prefer to may tens of gifts, and for that I will most eagerly solicit."

And he at one told the story of the Eretrrians, beginning it from the time of Datis. [ED: This story referes to a tribe of people who were descended from an original expeditionary group of Greeks from hundreds of years before, and who now dwelt on a hill within the King's domains]

"I ask then," he said, "that these poor people should not be driven out of the latter."

The king then consented and said: "The Eretrians were, until yestereday, the enemies of myself and of my fathers; for they once took up arms against us, and they have been neglected in order that their race might perish; but henceforth they shall be written among my friends, and they shall have, as a satrap, a good man who will judge their country justly.

But why," he said, "will you not accept the other nine gifts?"

"Because," he answered, "I have not yet, O king, made any friends here."

"And do you yourself require nothing?" said the king.

"Yes," he said, "I need dried fruits and bread, for that is a repast which delights me and which I find magnificent."

While they were thus conversing with one another a hubbug was heard to proceed from the palace, of eunuchs and women shrieking all at once. And in fact an eunuch had been caught misbehaving with one of the royal concubines just as if he were an adulterer. The guards of the harem were now dragging him along by the hair in the way they do royal slaves. The senior of the eunuchs accordingly declared that he had long before noticed he had an affection for this particular lady, and had already forbidden him to talk to her or touch her neck or hand, or assist her toilette, though he was free to wait upon all the other members of the harem; yet he had now caught him behaving as if he were the lady's lover.

Apollonius thereupon glanced at Damis, as if to indicate that the argument they had conducted on the point that even eunuchs fall in love, was now demonstrated to be true; but the king remarked to the bystanders: "Nay, but it is disgraceful, gentlemen, that, in the presence of Apollonius, we should be enlarging on the subject of chastity rather than he.

What then, O Apollonius, do you urge us to do with him?"

"Why, to let him live, of course," answered Apollonius to the suprise of them all.

Whereon the king reddenced, and said: "Then you do not think he deserves to die may times for thus tryping to usurp my rights?"

"Nay, but my answer, O king, was suggested not by any wish to condone his offence, but rather to mete out to him a punishment which will wear him out. For if he lives with this disease of impotence on him, and can never take pleasure in eating or drinking, nor in the spectacles which delight you and your companions, and if his heart will throb as he often leaps up in his leep, as they say is particularly the case of people in love, - is there any form of consumption so wasting as this, any form of hunger so likely to enfeeble his bowels? Indeed, unless he be one of those who are ready to live at any price, he will entreat you, O king, before long even to slay him, or he will slay himsel, deeply deploring that he was not put to death straight away this very day."

Such was the answer rendered on this occasion by Apollonius, one so wise and humane, that the king was moved by it to spare the life of his eunuch.

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"The Buried Classic" from Ancient Greece, and the roots of the Western World .... The Life of Apollonius of Tyana Philostratus {220 AD} Of Eunochs and Passion ...
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Spring of 1995