LYCINUS 
Well said, and you have me voting with you in this.
But when they had their fill of hard words, and their
fill of caustic observations, Diocles at length said in
conclusion that it was not at all permissible for
Bagoas to lay claim to philosophy and the rewards
of merit in it, since he was a eunuch; such people
ought to be excluded, he thought, not simply from
all that but even from temples and holy-water bowls
and all the places of public assembly, and he declared
it an ill-omened, ill-met sight if on first leaving home
in the morning, one should set eyes on any such
person. He had a great deal to say, too, on that
score, observing that a eunuch was neither man nor
woman but something composite, hybrid, and
monstrous, alien to human nature.
 PAMPHILUS 
The charge you tell of, Lycinus, is novel, anyhow,
and now I too, my friend, am moved to laughter,
hearing of this incredible accusation. Well, what
of the other? Held his peace, did he not? Or did
he venture to say something himself in reply to this?


 
 LYCINUS 
At first, through shame and cowardice—for that
sort of behaviour is natural to them—he remained
silent a long while and blushed and was plainly in a
sweat, but finally in a weak, effeminate voice he said
that Diocles was acting unjustly in trying to exclude
a eunuch from philosophy, in which even women had
a part; and he brought in Aspasia, Diotima, and
Thargelia Thargelia of Miletus was a famous hetaera, mistress of the Antiochus who was king of Thessaly ca. 520-510 B.c. She outlived him for thirty years, and was active in the cause of Persia at the time of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. Aeschines the Socratic wrote about her, the sophist Hippias spoke of her as beautiful and wise, and Aspasia is said to have taken her as a pattern. Diotima is the priestess of Mantinea to whom, in Plato’s Symposium, Socrates ascribes the discourse on love which he repeats.1o the company. Subsequent mention of her seems to derive from that passage, and it is possible that Plato invented her. to support his also a certain Academic
eunuch hailing from among the Pelasgians, who shortly
before our time achieved a high reputation among
the Greeks. The allusion is to Favorinus of Arles, known to us from Philostratus and especially from Aulus Gellius. Part of his treatise on exile has been recovered recently from an Egyptian papyrus and poe ished by Medea Norea and Vitelli. But if that person himself were alive
and advanced similar claims, Diocles would (he
said) have excluded him too, undismayed by his
reputation among the common sort ; and he repeated
a number of humorous remarks made to the man by
Stoics and Cynics regarding his physical imperfection. Among the Cynics was Demonax; see Lucian’s Demonax, 12 and 13 (I, pp. 150 ff.). 
 
That was what the judges dwelt upon, and the point
thenceforward at issue was whether the seal of approval
should be set upon a eunuch who was proposing himself for a career in philosophy and requesting that
the governance of boys be committed to him. One





 

said that presence and a fine physical endowment
should be among the attributes of a philosopher, and
that above all else he should have a long beard that
would inspire confidence in those who visited him
and sought to become his pupils, one that would
befit the ten thousand drachmas which he was to
receive from the Emperor, whereas a eunuch was in
worse case than a cut priest, for the latter had at
least known manhood once, but the former had been
marred from the very first and was an ambiguous sort
of creature like a crow, which cannot be reckoned
either with doves or with ravens.

 

The other pleaded
that this was not a physical examination; that there
should be an investigation of soul and mind and
knowledge of doctrines. Then Aristotle was cited
as a witness to support his case, since he tremendously
admired the eunuch Hermias, the tyrant of Atarneus,
to the point of celebrating sacrifices to him in the
same way as to the gods. Moreover, Bagoas ventured
to add an observation to the effect that a eunuch was
a far more suitable teacher for the young, since he
could not incur any blame as regards them and would
not incur that charge against Socrates of leading the
youngsters astray. And as he had been ridiculed
especially for his beardlessness, he despatched this
shaft to good effect—he thought so, anyhow: “If
it is by length of beard that philosophers are to be
judged, a he-goat would with greater justice be given
preference to all of them!”
 
At this juncture a third person who was present—
his name may remain in obscurity—said: The anonymous speaker may safely be considered the writer himself, as in the Peregrinus; cf. p. 8, n. 2. “As a
matter of fact, gentlemen, if this fellow, so smooth


 

of jowl, effeminate in voice, and otherwise similar to
a eunuch, should strip, you would find him very
masculine. Unless those who talk about him are
lying, he was once taken in adultery, commissis
membris, as the table of the law says. At that time
he secured his acquittal by resorting to the name of
eunuch and finding sanctuary in it, since the judges
on that occasion discredited the accusation from the
very look of him. Now, however, he may recant, I
suppose, for the sake of the pelf that is in view.”