EUNUCHS AND SEX: BEYOND SEXUAL DICHOTOMY IN THE ROMAN WORLD _______________________________________ A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _____________________________________________________ by RHIANNON M. ROWLANDS Dr. Raymond Marks, Dissertation Supervisor MAY 2014 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled EUNUCHS AND SEX: BEYOND SEXUAL DICHOTOMY IN THE ROMAN WORLD presented by Rhiannon Rowlands, a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Raymond Marks Professor Dan Hooley Professor Mary Jo Neitz Professor Dennis Trout Professor Barbara Wallach To my parents, for all their support, and never asking “A Classics degree? What on earth are you going to do with that?” ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Doctor Ray Marks for his guidance throughout the entire process of writing this dissertation from beginning to end, for his encouragement, valuable criticism, and for making the sometimes seemingly opaque and mysterious university procedures clearer. In addition, I would like to thank the other members of my committee: Doctor Dan Hooley, Doctor Mary Jo Neitz, Doctor Dennis Trout, and Doctor Barbara Wallach for their comments and suggestions, making this final revision better than it otherwise would have been. I also would like to acknowledge my proof reader, science consultant, and father, biologist Doctor Peter Rowlands. Also Doctor Nancy Wonders, who pointed me to critical books on feminist research and gender studies very early on, when this dissertation was just a glimmer in my eye, and Doctor Marilyn Skinner who advised the MA thesis from which many ideas in this dissertation germinated. I would also like to thank Doctor Shaun Tougher for encouraging me to pursue my newly burgeoning interest in eunuchs during a brief meeting (but for me very memorable) when I was only a recent BA graduate. And last but not least, Doctor Cynthia Kosso for inspiring me to pursue studies in classics in the first place. This dissertation would be all the poorer without their assistance and support. All remaining errors and flaws are my own. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................. ii Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 The Social Construction of Biological Sex .................................................................................... 3 Survey of Scholarship on Eunuchs in Antiquity............................................................................ 8 Across Space and Time .............................................................................................................. 19 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 20 Chapter Two: Biological Sex in Greece and Rome ......................................................................... 22 Sex As Metamorphosis: From Aristotle to Twentieth Century Embryology .............................. 26 Biological Sex in the Roman Empire .......................................................................................... 35 Biological Sex and Society .......................................................................................................... 41 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 48 Chapter Three: Prepubescent Castration ...................................................................................... 50 An Overview of Castration (The How, When, and Why of Castration and the Eunuch Slave Trade) ......................................................................................................................................... 52 The Sex and Gender of Eunuch Slaves ....................................................................................... 59 Eunuchs Compared to Desirable Boys ....................................................................................... 62 Eunuchs Compared to Women .................................................................................................. 65 Eunuchs as a Category of Their Own ......................................................................................... 68 Eunuchs and the Preternatural .................................................................................................. 74 Can a Eunuch Also Be a Man? .................................................................................................... 78 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 84 iii Chapter Four: Self Castration and Cinaedi ..................................................................................... 85 A Brief History of the Cult of the Great Mother ........................................................................ 87 The Initiates of the Great Mother: Who were castrated and how? .......................................... 90 Sex and Bodies of Self-castrated Eunuch Initiates ..................................................................... 94 Galli and Cinaedi: the bodies of gender deviants ...................................................................... 99 Roman Attitudes towards Eunuchs of the Great Mother ........................................................ 104 Summary .................................................................................................................................. 112 Chapter Five: Eunuch Eroticism ................................................................................................... 115 Eunuch Slaves and Freedmen .................................................................................................. 116 Eunuchs Initiates ...................................................................................................................... 126 Analysis of Martial epigram 9.2 ............................................................................................... 130 Summary .................................................................................................................................. 135 Chapter Six: Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 137 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 141 VITA .............................................................................................................................................. 148 iv Chapter One: Introduction Alfred Kinsey wrote in his seminal study of human sexuality that, “It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.”1 Through empirical research, Kinsey proved that the cultural construction of the dichotomous categories of heterosexual and homosexual do not accurately reflect the range of actual human desire. In short, he brought attention to the discrepancy between sexual behavior and the societal interpretation and categorization of sexual behavior, a categorization so thoroughly imbedded in the social consciousness that it had previously been thought to be natural rather than cultural. Academics in a wide variety of disciplines generally accept this basic premise as it applies to human sexuality. Classicist David Halperin, for example, uses the phrase “the dark days before the Kinsey Reports” to describe a gynecological text published in 1943, marking Kinsey’s work as a pivotal moment in the study of sex and sexuality, as if the world of sexuality research can be divided into BK (before Kinsey) and AK (after Kinsey). 2 There is some quibbling about the exact nature of the continuum of sexuality, how many different axes ought be included and of what kind,3 but the question of whether or not human sexual orientation comes in two and only two discreet categories— heterosexual and homosexual—is considered settled with Kinsey and his concept of a 1 Alfred Kinsey, et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1948), 639. 2 David Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York: Routledge, 1990), 142. 3 For example, Dr. Fritz Klein’s orientation grid, as laid out in his book The Bisexual Option (Philadelphia: Haworth Press, 1978). 1 continuum on the winning side. The phrase “Kinsey scale” is even fairly well known outside academia and has filtered into the wider cultural consciousness. In the 1980s, this social constructionist view of sexuality gained further academic support across disciplines with Foucault’s History of Sexuality. Where Kinsey took a scientific, empirical approach, Foucault came at the problem from the direction of poststructuralist philosophy and history. Although Foucault’s work on sexuality received some criticism, particularly for the near-invisibility