Eunuchs in history

[tjstill (imported)]

I found this site had an interesting article with some details I did not fully apreciate. Hope its not a repost.

http://obsoletevernacular.com/2008/06/3 ... -a-eunuch/

[colin (imported)]

Obsolete Commentary

So, You’re a Eunuch

By Mark Cichra ⋅ June 30, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Eunuchs – males who due to birth defect, injury, or surgical castration suffer a total or partial loss of male reproductive capability – were prominent enough in society in Roman antiquity to occasion a fair amount of comment in literary and legal texts. Their role and status will be explored below, but for the most part a eunuch slave began his existence as a sexual plaything of wealthier members of Roman society. But this role put him near those in positions of wealth and status. And perhaps as a consequence of this, eunuchs also appear in the literary record as having achieved high status for themselves.

The study of the market for eunuchs in Roman antiquity and of eunuchs’ status and upward social mobility provides an opportunity for the historian of the Roman economy to approach questions of human capital in ancient Rome from an unconventional path: not by education, training, nor by any other use of resources, but by the cost-free removal of a male slave’s testicles, an ordinary slave became an expensive human commodity suitable for a select purpose. A meager analogy in present-day Western societies exists in the prevalence of plastic surgery among celebrities or steroid use among athletes. The difference, however, lies in the high cost of these procedures and practices; castration in ancient Rome was a cost-free body modification which increased one’s worth and potential for upward mobility. The study of the economic issues of eunuchs, then, should remind us that though present-day economic concepts may aid the study of the ancient economy, we must ensure that our use of these concepts does not mask the many differences between the Roman economy and ours.

It is important to clarify what sort of persons are under consideration in a discussion of Roman eunuchs. The general term which applied to any eunuch was spado. Other more specific terms existed which distinguished eunuchs by the ways in which they became eunuchs. The most important of these was castratus, which identified a eunuch who had become so as the result of castration. Roman law made frequent distinctions between spadones and castrati, using the terms to differentiate those who were born eunuchs or became eunuchs through accidental injury from those who were castrated. In every instance (some of which will be considered in detail below), castrati had fewer rights than spadones.

From the literary record it seems the primary way by which one became a castratus was to be castrated as a slave, most likely in infancy, by slave-dealers and then sold as a eunuch: “…boys, mutilated by the art of a greedy slave dealer, grieve for the loss of their ravished manhood,” the Roman poet Martial wrote. Another option was that one would purchase a male child slave and castrate him himself. A passage from the collection of Roman law known as the Digest contains a legal discussion which must date from a period after castration became illegal. It describes the punishment for “one who castrates a man for lust or for gain (libidinis vel promercii causa).” Behind this proscription we can understand two paths to acquiring a castratus; “for lust” indicates castration of one’s own slave, “for gain” indicates castration for sale by a slave-dealer.

It was “for lust” that one sought to acquire a eunuch. Romans who engaged in pederasty (sexual intercourse with boys) seem to have preferred boys just beginning or currently undergoing puberty because such boys possessed a more effeminate appearance and had not yet begun to display adult male characteristics. Castrating a boy in infancy, before his testicles would produce the hormones which caused the onset of puberty, was a way of preserving this effeminate appearance in males for continued sexual satisfaction. A declamation from Seneca the Elder contains an argument against those who castrate boys: “They cut their darlings, to fit them to submit to their lusts over a longer period; and because they are themselves ashamed of being men, they make sure that as few men exist as possible.” As an aside, the satirist Juvenal also describes men castrated in adulthood by their mistresses who maintain their virility after castration and enjoy sex without fear of impregnating women. Results of the modern procedure of testicular removal (orchiectomy) confirms that removal of the testicles in adulthood may result in reduced sexual functioning but does not eliminate it. The recurring theme is that castrated males existed for the sexual gratification of another individual.

Since they seem to have existed primarily for sexual use, eunuchs were a luxury good which could be purchased only by those who had the necessary excess wealth. Pliny the Elder records the purchase of a certain eunuch for 50,000,000 sesterces – though he emphasizes that this extremely high price was exceptional. An attempt to estimate a more reasonable price for eunuchs may come from Terence’s comedy The Eunuch, in which eunuch slaves cost a character twenty minae while a regular slave woman costs three minae. Terence is an early source and the exaggeration and absurdity inherent in comedy mean that those figures should not be taken literally, but those numbers may give some sense of the difference in price between regular slaves and eunuchs. In much of the literary evidence eunuchs are positioned around those of the highest status, the emperors: Claudius, Titus, and Domitian are said to have been fond of eunuchs. But as we have seen, Juvenal portrays a eunuch belonging to an unnamed, undescribed Roman mistress (domina). Overall we can assume that eunuchs would only be in the possession of those with enough wealth to be able spend money on a new slave for purposes of sexual gratification or to be able to turn a male slave which could be used for other forms of labor into a slave designated for this superfluous purpose.

Beginning with the emperor Domitian (late first century AD), at least three Roman emperors attempted an empire-wide ban on castration. Suetonius reports that Domitian “prohibited the castration of males; the price of the remaining eunuchs in the hands of slave-dealers was regulated.” In what way would Domitian have regulated the price of eunuchs who had been castrated before the ban but not yet sold in order to help enforce the ban? He may have raised the price dramatically in order to put eunuchs out of reach of some of their consumers. But this would not have eliminated all buyers because, as we saw from Pliny the Elder, those with incredibly large amounts of wealth were willing to pay extremely high prices for the eunuchs they desired. High prices may have deterred some but not all of those in the market for castrated slaves. It is more likely that Domitian ordered that the price of eunuchs be reduced in order to eliminate slave-dealers’ incentive to violate the ban by illegally castrating more male slaves; if they would make no large amount of money by the sale of eunuchs then they would have no reason to produce them. In addition, perhaps part of the desirability of eunuchs lay in their higher price, in the way that part of the appeal of luxury cars, designer clothing, and caviar today lies in the mere fact that they are expensive. Such products are known in economics as Veblen goods. By reducing the price of eunuchs, Domitian may have reduced their desirability.

Keep in mind, however, that presumably it cost a slave dealer nothing to castrate a slave. Also recall that Domitian banned castration in the empire, not the ownership of eunuchs; indeed a passage from the Code of Justinian suggests that traders began importing eunuchs who had been castrated outside the borders of the empire. Therefore demand for eunuchs still existed in the Roman empire. Thus even if Domitian reduced the price of eunuchs to only slightly above or equal to the price of comparable male slaves, as long as demand existed for eunuchs the slave dealers would have had incentive to castrate slaves illegally and sell them if they could benefit. The only way to remove a slave-dealer’s incentive to castrate slaves illegally would have been to make the price of castrated slaves lower than that of comparable male slaves. The operative economic concept here is price elasticity of supply, which indicates how a change in a product’s price affects the supply of that product. If the price of eunuchs were regulated to be lower than the price of comparable male slaves, slave dealers would have been deterred from castrating more male slaves because they would have lost money from their sale. As for the castrated slaves in their possession at the time of the castration ban and price regulation, the slave dealers probably would not have attempted to pass them off as regular, un-castrated slaves, because such a deception was actionable under Roman law.

Domitian’s castration ban was probably not effective. This can be detected from the need for the emperors Nerva (97-98) and Hadrian (117-138) to prohibit castration again and again. The details of the penalties detailed in Hadrian’s rescript on castration preserved in the Digest are noteworthy for their economic nature: “The same deified Hadrian wrote in a rescript: ‘It is laid down, in order to end the practice of making eunuchs, that those who are found guilty of this crime are to be liable to the penalty of the lex Cornelia, and their goods must deservedly be forfeit to my imperial treasury. Slaves however, who castrate others are to be punished with the extreme penalty (ultimo supplicio).’ ” That non-slaves could be punished economically but slaves were punished with death makes sense given that economic penalties would not apply to slaves, who had no possessions.

To return to the ineffectiveness of castration bans: the remaining part of Hadrian’s rescript may help explain why the ban was not successful. The rescript required that those afflicted by castration be allowed to bring legal action against those who castrated them: “If those who have suffered this outrage announce the fact, the provincial governor must give those who have lost their manhood a hearing.” One can imagine any number of difficulties that would prevent such legal action from occurring or being successful. For example, in the event of a master castrating his own slave, unless this rescript is making an exception, a castrated male who was a slave would have had no ability to bring legal action against his master who had castrated him.

Under certain earlier emperors, as mentioned above, and especially during the later empire, eunuchs were common in the imperial court. It was noticed (and decried by some) that being an imperial eunuch offered an opportunity for upward mobility. Later, in the Byzantine empire, parents would even offer their children up for castration so that the children could become imperial eunuchs. This was not yet the case in the Roman empire; but in the manner of imperial freedmen a castrated slave could become part of the imperial court, gain favor with the emperor, eventually be freed, and possess the rights of a citizen and the high status that comes from affiliation with the emperor. Since castrated slaves were only owned by those of sufficient wealth to afford such a luxury (those who could either purchase a castrated slave for a high price or who were able to commit a slave already purchased to this purpose by castrating him), in the event that they were freed perhaps they were a bit more likely to be presented by their former masters (now their patrons) with opportunities to begin generating their own wealth and status.

But castrated freedmen would have been presented with an essential difficulty. The historian M. I. Finley demonstrated that it was not on himself but on his freeborn sons that a freedman “placed his hopes for those social and political consequences of wealth that the law denied him personally, public office in particular.” But for those slaves who were castrated before having any children (as most probably were), passing status onto one’s own issue was an impossibility. Not only that, but Roman law prohibited castrati from adopting or marrying (the prohibition did not apply to spadones, those born as eunuchs). It is worth reflecting on this prohibition in terms of issues of rank, class, and status. For those who were castrated surgically (castrati) and were not eunuchs by accidental injury or birth defect (spadones), Roman law applied prohibitions which ensured that the status of their former slavery could not be overcome by any means. Just as all freedmen were prohibited from public office by the mark of their former servitude, castrated slaves who became freedmen were prohibited from ever having an heir as an emphasis of the prior removal of their physical capability of producing an heir.

Thus, though freedmen castrati would have had the ability to make a will, they would have had no descendants by adoption to whom they could pass on their status. They might have chosen to make a will and institute other family members such as siblings as heirs if they existed. Or they could have instituted non-family members such as slaves, freedmen, and friends as heirs and left gifts for public benefaction. Or they might have decided not to make a will and die intestate (though dying without a will was distasteful to Roman sensibilities). In general, for a castrated former slave, who probably had no family members alive or that he was aware of, this would have meant that the property would go to the imperial treasury. And though the property could be managed in this way, nothing could be done to remedy the loss at death of the free status he received during his life.

A modern discussion of inheritance considers a hypothetical situation in which the government takes possession of all inheritances. The author makes the following claim: “The first consequence of the enactment of such a confiscatory inheritance tax would simply be that motives for accumulating capital would be much lower than otherwise. Indeed, everyone would plan to be dead broke on the day of his death” (Tullock 1971). The situation of castrati provides the occasion to consider whether or not a statement analogical to this one can be made for ancient Rome: did one only seek to acquire status if one had the hope of passing it on to descendants? The actions of castrati show that the answer was no; they in fact did ascend in status while fully aware of their inability to pass that status on to descendants. Whatever amount of truth may lie in Finley’s claim that freedmen placed their hopes of further upward mobility not on themselves but on their sons, we see castrati seeking to ascend in status despite the lack of any sons on which to place such hope, presumably driven solely by their own interests.

The study of economic issues concerning eunuchs – a small, exceptional category of people in ancient Rome with no parallel in present-day industrialized economies – can inform broader study by providing test cases for the applicability of general concepts to the history of the economy of ancient Rome. Eunuchs, specifically castrated slaves, provide an example of how an infinitesimal investment in human capital could instantly produce a person who was, basically, a luxury commodity. Like all slaves this person could have suffered abominable hardship but may also have had the opportunity (indeed may have had even more of an opportunity than most slaves) to become a freedman and acquire status and wealth. But unlike other freedmen who could perpetuate their status in their freeborn children, the ascent of the castratus ended with his death.

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

Thank you for posting the text. --FLO--