About 1,800 years ago, some unlucky youths living near the banks of the Thames River in ancient Londinium found their nether parts caught in the serrated grip of the bronze castration clamp shown here. (The implement, now on display in the British Museum, would have originally been hinged together at the top by a screw nut; the ring at the top kept the penis out of harm’s way while the scrotum was severed by a surgical knife.)
Castration was a fairly common procedure in the ancient world. First-millennium B.C. Assyrian officials installed eunuchs in positions of authority because they were thought to be less vulnerable than other men to sexual blackmail and corruption. Eunuchs also guarded harems and served as escorts for royal ladies. The Athenian historian Xenophon (428–354 B.C.) wrote that the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great (559–529 B.C.) “selected eunuchs for every post of personal service to him, from the doorkeepers up.”
Despite occasional bans on castration—issued by the emperors Domitian (81-96 A.D.) and Hadrian (117-138 A.D.), for example—the Roman military and civil service employed members of the “third sex,” as eunuchs were called. In fact, youths were sometimes pressured by their families to undergo castration to enhance their career prospects. Most eunuchs, however, were castrated as punishment or to make them more tractable. Attractive young male slaves were sometimes gelded to serve as sexual toys for wealthy men. The emperor Nero (54-68 A.D.) famously castrated a youth named Sporus and married him in a wedding ceremony in which the “bride” was garbed as an empress.
Whereas most eunuchs were castrated under duress, one group of self-castrating priests, known as the Gallae, embraced the procedure. The cult arose in central Anatolia by the seventh century B.C. and spread south and west, reaching Italy about 200 B.C. The Gallae dedicated their acts of self-mutilation to Cybele, the Phrygian goddess of nature and fertility. After parading through the streets sporting bright clothes, heavy jewelry and bleached hair, and chanting in falsetto, Gallae priests would slice off their testicles and fling the severed flesh into the crowd.
About 1,800 years ago, some unlucky youths living near the banks of the Thames River in ancient Londinium found their nether parts caught in the serrated grip of the bronze castration clamp shown here. (The implement, now on display in the British Museum, would have originally been hinged together at the top by a screw nut; the ring at the top kept the penis out of harm’s way while the scrotum was severed by a surgical knife.) Castration was a fairly common procedure in the ancient world. First-millennium B.C. Assyrian officials installed eunuchs in positions of authority because they […]
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