Another Eunuch King

[JesusA (imported)]

The Kingdom of Pergamon in what is now southwestern Turkey, existed from 282 BCE to 133 BCE under the Attalid Dynasty. When the Lysimachian Empire, founded by one of the generals of Alexander the Great, collapsed, the treasurer, Philetaerus took control and declared himself king of the small bit surrounding the city of Pergamon. Under Philetaerus and his successors the kingdom grew in size and power.

Philetaerus was a eunuch who passed the kingdom to his nephew Eumenes I, who further passed it to a cousin Attalus I. There were five kings in the dynasty before Eumenes III died without an heir in 133 BCE. He bequeathed his kingdom to Rome in order to avoid a war of succession. Pergamon, under Roman protection remained a free and independent city until it was finally placed under full Roman control in 88 BCE.

The official story of Philetaerus' castration is that, as an infant, his nurse carried him to an important funeral where they were caught in the press of the crowd such that his testicles were crushed. While the official story is unlikely to be true, that it was believed and quoted as factual by contemporaries, is further evidence that eunuchs of the time were sometimes produced by crushing the testicles of infants.

The practice is hinted at in Assyrian documents where one of the words for "castration" is related for the word for "to crush" and it is mentioned in the medical texts of Paulus Aegineta (7th century CE), although Paulus recommends surgical castration as superior. Michael Psellos (late 11th century CE) mentions one court eunuch who was castrated by his mother crushing his testicles while he was an infant.