I was researching the History of the Huns when I found this tidbit:

The Huns were invading the civilized world and were about to attack the Eastern Roman Empire. Emperor Theodosius was unable to stop them because his armies were fighting in the Western Roman Empire.

Then in 398 CE, the consul of the Eastern Roman Empire, a eunuch named Eutropius, gathered a force together comprised of Romans and Goths and saved the Eastern empire from a Hunnish attack.

The administrators of the Chinese court, until the Twentieth Century were all eunuchs. (Apparently to keep them concentrated on their work.) Probably the best known was the great Chinese admiral Zheng He (Chen Ho) who would probably have sailed around the world a century before Magellan is the emperor had not decided that China already knew enough about the world and turned inward. Try this link http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?it ... ubcatid=90 and be amazed.

Uncle Mac seems almost surprised that a eunuch was both a general and a consul in the Roman Empire. Eutropius was but one of a great many eunuchs who rose to high positions through their military feats or who used their high position as an entry into military matters, though he was the only one to be appointed consul of the empire.

Jacqueline Long, in her analysis of Claudian’s diatribe against Eutropius, writes,

At this time the Roman Empire was ruled jointly by Theodosius the Great’s two sons. The younger, Honorius, reigned in the West, with his court based at Milan; the elder, Arcadius, reigned from his court in Constantinople over the eastern half of the empire. Eutropius was Arcadius’s grand chamberlain, or praepositus sacri cubicula. The post was often held by a eunuch, simply because eunuchs made up much of the emperor’s private domestic staff, just as they did in the households of private citizens. (Long, J., 1996, pp. 1-2) [see the Bibliography ( http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=17583) for full publication information.

In 398, Eutropius led an army that repelled invading Huns from Armenia, a province of Rome.

More important than Eutropius, though, was Narses, a eunuch general from Armenia who defeated the Ostrogoth Kingdom, which then controlled much of Italy, in a series of battles between 551 and 554. After recapturing Rome for the Roman Empire (which, by then, had its capital in Constantinople), he then remained to govern the province for another 12 years. (see Fauber 1990 for a detailed biography of Narses)

Coinflipper brings up Zheng He, the great Chinese admiral. More important, though, in Chinese history was Zheng He’s contemporary Yishiha (fl. 1409-1451) who secured the northern borders of the Ming Empire and extended Chinese rule far into modern Russia. After his military expeditions, he was put in charge of the Liaodong region (modern Shenyang Province in Manchuria) in 1435. He remained in that post for 15 years.

Eunuch generals were far from rare in the ancient world. Many were important in the Assyrian army (where there were entire ranks of eunuch archers as well). Prominent Assyrian families are known to have castrated younger sons to ensure them a secure future career. Judar Pasha, a Spanish eunuch who had been captured and castrated as a small child, lead a Moroccan army across the Sahara Desert to capture the important trading center of Timbuktu for the Saadi Dynasty. Many of the officers in Judar Pasha’s army were also eunuchs.

Mohammad Khan Qajar, the founder of the Qajar Dynasty that ruled Persia from 1794 to 1925 was a military leader who had been castrated at age 6. He was succeeded by a relative. There are many other examples of eunuch rulers to be found in history including eunuch pharaohs in Egypt and eunuch emperors in various Near Eastern empires. One of the Serbian kingdoms in the Balkan Peninsula was founded by a eunuch, though I haven’t been able to find my reference note in a quick search of my office.

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