We know very little about the life of the Roman poet Juvenal, the author of at least 16 satirical poems known as the Satires. It is guessed that he was born sometime in the 50s CE and died sometime in the 130s CE.

Several lines in Satire 6 deal with Juvenal’s perception of eunuchs. The most famous line of Satire 6 (and probably of Juvenal’s entire opus) is “quis custodiet ipsos custodes” – lines 347-48: “Who will watch the watchers?” or “Who will guard the guardians?” Various translations of the line are often quoted with no idea of the context in which it occurs in the original poem. Juvenal is warning a wealthy man (Postumus), to whom the entire poem is directed and who is planning to get married, that he needs to pay attention to the “eunuchs” who will be serving his wife. He should make certain that they have actually been castrated and are not intact males that she has chosen to serve her.

The entire poem of Satire 6 is a polemic against women in general and against marriage in particular.

Juvenal would have come to maturity during the time of the emperor Vespasian (r. 69-79 CE). Vespasian had served as governor of the Africa Province of the Roman Empire where he is reputed to have made friends, but not money. After his service, he returned to Rome nearly destitute. He had to mortgage most of his property to cover his debts. He then became a mulio. A mulio is literally a mule trader, however it also had the slang meaning of a slave trader, especially one who deals in eunuchs – ‘sterile mules’.

There are strong rumors from the period that Vespasian rebuilt his wealth by importing boys, castrating them, and selling them on the Roman market. He is also reputed to have been a discreet purchaser of the illegitimate children that wealthy women had with their intact male slaves. He is reputed to have then castrated the boys for sale.

These subjects figure in Juvenal’s poem.

The Sixth Satire devotes only a single line to the most common of Roman eunuchs, those which were to be found on display in the slave market – those castrated before puberty. “Mangonum pueros uera ac miserabilis urit debilitas, follisque pudet cicerisque relicti. ” (A truer, more wretched debility sears the slave-dealer’s boys, shamed by the purse and chickpeas that remain. – line 373) The “purse,” of course, is the empty scrotum. The word “chickpeas” refers to the glans penis, because the cleft in the head of the glans is reminiscent of a chickpea, and it will never grow larger in a boy castrated before puberty. It will remain the size of a chickpea. If the castrated slave boys were imported from North Africa, or if they were some of the 100,000 enslaved Jews shipped around the empire as a result of the First Jewish-Roman War, they would have been circumcised before castration with their glans clearly visible. These are the eunuchs that men would prefer, both as their own servants or sex toys, and to serve their women as safe attendants and guardians.

Juvenal, however, devotes most of his attention to eunuchs that women prefer – those castrated after puberty at the direction of a woman, not at the direction of a man. Juvenal depicts the post-pubertal eunuch as a woman’s version of a desirable man. These are men made by women to perform as women want. The intact male master is less sexually desirable than the eunuch. An adolescent boy raised in the household, selected partly on the basis of his larger than average penis, and sent out for castration by the wife. The result would be a eunuch who could provide sexual satisfaction with no risk of pregnancy.

Lines 366 to 368 begin the description of a woman’s preferred sex partner: Sunt quas eunuchi imbelles ac mollia semper oscula delectent et desperatio barbae et quod abortiuo non est opus. (“There are women thrilled by soft eunuchs, with their ever-gentle kisses and their absence of beards, there’s no need to use abortifacients.”)

This parallels an epigram by Martial, Juvenal’s older contemporary: Cur tantum eunuchos habeat tua Caelia, quaris, Pannyche? Volt futui Caelia nec parere. (“Do you ask, Pannicus, why your wife Caelia has only eunuchs about her? Caelia wishes to be fucked but not to give birth.” – Epigram VI.67).

Juvenal then goes on to describe the production of a woman’s preferred sex toy: Illa uoluptas summa tamen, quom iam calida matura iuuenta inguina traduntur medicis, iam pectine nigro. Ergo expectatos ac iussos crescere primum testiculos, postquam coeperunt esse bilibres, tonsoris tantum damno rapit Heliodorus. (“The very height of pleasure for them is when the boy’s testicles have grown large and they have a thick black bush. They are then dragged to the surgeon, where their testicles are snatched away. Only the barber loses.” – lines 368-72)

Only the barber feels the loss, as he has one less customer to shave. Boys castrated before they begin to grow a beard will never grow one. There is nothing in the poem about the boy feeling a loss with his castration. After all, he was only a slave. Heliodorus was a doctor who wrote a treatise on surgery that would have been well known at the time.

The section dealing with eunuchs in Satire 6 concludes with an exhortation to the master (Postumus) to not allow his puer delicatus (pretty boy catamite) to sleep with his wife’s eunuch. This despite the boy having possibly grown too old to meet his master’s desires. He is given the name Bromius (‘Roarer’) which may be an indication that he is old enough that his voice has broken. It’s stated that he is beyond childhood and no longer smooth and hairless. He is soon to have his hair cut to the adult male form, rather than that of a boy. Dormiat ille cum domina, sed tu iam durum, Postume, iamque tondendum eunucho Bromium committere noli. (“Let that eunuch sleep with your wife, Postumus, but don’t entrust your Bromius to the eunuch now that he’s no longer smooth and hairless.” – lines 376-78)

If the boy, now in mid-puberty, is no longer attractive to the master, why should he not be allowed to sleep with the wife’s eunuch? Most interpreters think that it is because he may come to prefer the eunuch’s penis to that of his master, demeaning his master yet further (even though the master might no longer find the boy to be sexually attractive). An alternative interpretation is that in sleeping with the eunuch, the wife will see that he is an attractive boy at the right age to be castrated to become her new sex toy. The master will lose his sex toy to his wife.

Juvenal has described two types of eunuchs: those castrated before puberty, who are preferred by men, and those castrated at middle to late puberty, who are preferred by women.

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(While my translations are a bit free to make them sound more contemporary, I hope that any who read Latin will find them to be acceptable. I used about a dozen sources for historical background and for translation aid. These are the most important of the set.)

Bosworth, Albert Brian. (2002). Vespasian and the Slave Trade. The Classical Quarterly, ns. 52: 350-357.

Nappa, Christopher. (2018). Making Men Ridiculous: Juvenal and the Anxieties of the Individual. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Watson, Lindsay & Patricia Watson, eds. (2014). Juvenal: Satire 6 (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics). Cambridge University Press.

Many thanks for this research!

I find it interesting how somehow familiar this felt, alongside what I already knew about same sex relationships in the Roman period. There is this overarching sense that as long as things conformed at a symbolic and legalistic level to a particular (bottom-phobic) power structure (male Citizen as State), pretty much anything could subsist. I'd like to understand more about the extent of agency and consent in all this. Enslaved people having sex with those who had power over them is deeply problematic, but also the implication that it would be 'safe' in any way to be intimate with someone who had been sent off for surgery implies the possibility that all this was seen as structural (the way things are) rather than personal (he/she did this to me). Another possibility is it was sometimes reckoned a career move, or a relationship move (this is how I make thinks work out for me). I have wondered before whether the hierarchical nature mandated for same sex relations was often complied with by a sort of lip service... I wonder whether a sort of gay community had a mutual understanding regarding surviving the expectations of society. (An illustrative example, I've found life flows more easily visiting family if the one of us whose side of the family we are visiting is implied to be the Dom/top). Likewise, I wonder if the older detesticulated lovers had any sense of class identity and mutual understanding.

Following on from this, I wonder about stigma, trauma, regret etc in the folk operated on as minors, and how their identity work might have responded to narratives of subjection to violence, victimhood, survival, status, and encounters with any voluntary detesticulated folk or public perceptions accommodating that possibility.

It was not only the satirists, Juvenal and Martial, who commented on the castration of boys who were to be used as sex toys in Rome. There are brief references by a number of other authors. I have been trying to track down more items in context, so that I can better understand them, and make certain that the translation is accurate and not euphemistic. The only English translation of Juvenal’s Sixth Satire in my local library simply omitted the lines referring to eunuchs. Other translations that I found used euphemisms such that the subject of eunuchs was well hidden.

Here are two more brief quotations from Seneca the Elder (c.54 BCE–c.39 CE) and his son, Seneca the Younger (4 BCE–65 CE). These bits were written 25 to 30 years apart.

Principes, inquit, viri contra naturam divitias suas exercent: castratorum greges habent, exoletos suos ut ad longiorem patientiam inpudicitiae idonei sint amputant.

Distinguished men use their wealth to combat nature: they own troops of castrated youths, they castrate their boys to fit them to submit to their lusts over a longer period. (Seneca the Elder: Controversiae 10.4.17)

Non vivunt contra naturam qui spectant, ut pueritia splendeat tempore alieno? Quid fieri crudelius vel miserius potest ? Numquam vir erit, ut diu virum pati possit ?

Is not a life contrary to nature lived by those who make sure boyhood’s glow lasts into a time not its own? What more pitiful––shall he never be a man, so as to submit to a man the longer? (Seneca the Younger: Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales 122.7)

JesusA (imported) wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 11:23 am An adolescent boy raised in the household, selected partly on the basis of his larger than average penis, and sent out for castration by the wife.

I guess that could be one source of a wife's eunuch sex toy, but I like to image a patrician Roman woman going with her girlfriends down to the slave market where they would all happily check out the sexual equipment of intact, post-pubertal male slaves. When they found a particularly well endowed slave the woman would tell the slaver to cut off the slaves balls and send him, when healed, to her address. Or maybe she would take the slave home, send for her own doctor, and the girls would all watch as the slave was prepared for sexual service.

I've also wondered, since there was probably plenty of poverty in ancient Rome, if some impoverished young males would choose to become paid eunuch sex toys for women, just as impoverished women might turn to prostitution for a living. Since apparently a lot of women feel that a castrated male is a good lover, who lets the the woman initiate sex on her terms, not his, is slow to ejaculate if ever, maximizing the woman's pleasure, and has dry orgasm if he does ejaculate (no mess), a eunuch brothel might be an attraction for women.

And lastly, I'm a bit of a romantic, so I would like to imagine a young male becoming enamored of an attractive, married woman, and allowing her to have him castrated so they can be together, sexually, without her husband opposing their liason because she might get pregnant.