The Roman Castrati

Eunuchs in the Roman Empire

Shaun Tougher

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350164048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Eunuchs tend to be associated with eastern courts, popularly perceived as harem personnel. However, the Roman empire was also distinguished by eunuchs – they existed as slaves, court officials, religious figures and free men. This book is the first to be devoted to the range of Roman eunuchs. Across seven chapters (spanning the third century BC to the sixth century AD), Shaun Tougher examines the history of Roman eunuchs, focusing on key texts and specific individuals. Subjects met include the Galli (the self-castrating devotees of the goddess the Great Mother), Terence's comedy The Eunuch (the earliest surviving Latin text to use the word 'eunuch'), Sporus and Earinus the eunuch favourites of the emperors Nero and Domitian, the 'Ethiopian eunuch' of the Acts of the Apostles (an early convert to Christianity), Favorinus of Arles (a superstar intersex philosopher), the Grand Chamberlain Eutropius (the only eunuch ever to be consul), and Narses the eunuch general who defeated the Ostrogoths and restored Italy to Roman rule. A key theme of the chapters is gender, inescapable when studying castrated males. Ultimately this book is as much about the eunuch in the Roman imagination as it is the reality of the eunuch in the Roman empire.

1

Eunuchs of the Great Mother:

The Galli in Rome

Introduction

When Romans thought of eunuchs what seems to have come to mind automatically is the Galli, the supposedly self-castrating devotees of the Great Mother (Magna Mater). As late as the end of the fourth century AD, in the time of the Christian Roman Empire, the poet Claudian references the Great Mother when writing about the prominent court eunuch Eutropius, declaring that it would be more appropriate for him to be a Gallus and a devotee of the goddess.¹ The cult of the Great Mother was formally introduced to Rome from Asia Minor in 204 BC at the time of the empire’s conflict with the famous Hannibal the Carthaginian.² The goddess established a central place in Roman thinking about the security and well-being of the empire; she was, for instance, one of two deities who were the subject of ‘hymns’ by the last pagan emperor Julian in the middle of the fourth century AD.³ Indeed, the Great Mother and her cult must be one of the most written about elements of Roman religion. The objective of this chapter, however, is not to provide a comprehensive account of the cult throughout the span of the history of the Roman Empire but to address particular aspects of it and consider Roman ideas about the Galli rather than attempt to pin down their reality; for instance, while it is a matter of debate whether the Galli really were self-castrates it is still important that the Romans were fixated with the notion that they were.⁴ Focusing in particular on significant texts written in the first century BC and the first century AD, the chapter considers how and why the Great Mother was adopted by Rome, her association with Attis (her self-castrating consort), and the place of the Galli within the cult, which was in fact much more overt in Rome than in the Greek world.⁵ Roman writings about the cult reveal much about their concepts of eunuchs, notably their understanding of the gender implications of castration.

The Great Mother comes to Rome

While the cult of the Great Mother may be one of the most written about aspects of Roman religion it is also one of the most elusive.⁶ For knowledge of the introduction of her cult to Rome, historians are primarily dependent on several texts dating to the age of Augustus (the late-first century BC to the early-first century AD), while reconstructions of the cult and its rites are based on very fragmentary and late evidence, including Christian polemic.⁷ Nevertheless, the Great Mother and her cult exert a potent fascination; this was ostensibly a foreign import to Rome which flourished, and it seemingly entailed the placing at the heart of the empire, on the Palatine Hill, the dramatic prospect of self-castrating religious personnel.

The cult of the Great Mother (also referred to as Cybele and the Mother of the Gods) originated in Anatolia – centred on Phrygia – from where it spread to Greece and then to Rome.⁸ The cult began as early as 1000 BC, and from the end of the third century BC a major shrine to the goddess was established at Pessinus in Phrygia. A narrative of the importation of the Great Mother to Rome is found in Book 29 of Livy’s vast account of the history of Rome from its foundation down to his own time, terminating in 9 BC.⁹ He describes how in 205 BC an oracle was discovered in the Sibylline Books which stated that ‘if ever a foreign foe should invade that land of Italy, he could be driven out of Italy and defeated if the Idaean Mother should be brought from Pessinus to Rome’. Thus, the Senate despatched a delegation to Attalus the king of Pergamum (241–197 BC) to seek his assistance, the delegation receiving further divine support for their mission when on the journey they visited the oracle of Apollo at Delphi in Greece, which told them that ‘they should gain what they sought with the help of King Attalus; that after conveying the goddess to Rome they were then to make sure that the best man at Rome should hospitably welcome her’. The Roman envoys were well received by Attalus, who escorted them to Pessinus in Phrygia where they were entrusted with a sacred stone (the effigy of the Mother of the Gods). Travelling by ship to Rome’s harbour city of Ostia, the goddess was met there by the best man (Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica had been chosen, though Livy says there was no written record of why such a young man had been selected) in the company of the leading matrons of the city. Having received the stone from the goddess’s priests, Scipio handed it over to the matrons who then carried it into the city. Amongst the matrons Livy singles out Claudia Quinta, whose ‘repute, previously not unquestioned, as tradition reports it, has made her purity the more celebrated amongst posterity by a service so devout’. The goddess was conveyed to the temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill, on the day preceding the Ides of April, a holy day. Then ‘[t]he people thronged to the Palatine bearing gifts for the goddess, and there was a banquet of the gods, and games also, called the Megalesia’.¹⁰

Livy’s account of the importation of the Great Mother testifies to the significance and popularity of the goddess and her cult, but it is clear that aspects of it are problematic; for instance, other texts reflect variant traditions, and Livy fails to address some key questions and provide a fully satisfying narrative (he himself is frustrated about the lack of explanation of the selection of Scipio as the best man).¹¹ He even fails to mention apparently vital aspects of the cult, the figures of Attis and the Galli. He presents Attalus as acquiescent in the wishes of the Romans, but in Ovid’s On the Roman Calendar (Fasti, dated to AD 8) the king initially refuses the Roman request and is only persuaded when an earthquake expressed divine disapproval and the goddess declared that she wanted to go to Rome.¹² However, since Rome and Attalus had a common enemy in the shape of Philip V of Macedon (221–179 BC), it is likely that the king of Pergamum was keen to establish good relations with Rome and was thus a willing participant in this religious transaction. As to the site of the shrine from which the goddess was taken, Varro (writing in the middle of the first century BC) locates it in Pergamum rather than Pessinus, saying that the festival of the Great Mother (the Megalesia) was named after the Megalesion, her temple (near the city wall of Pergamum) from which she was brought to Rome.¹³ It has been argued that the naming of Pessinus as the site was an anachronism, for in 205 BC Pergamum did not have power over Pessinus.¹⁴ As Livy and other sources make clear anyway, the Great Mother was particularly associated with Ida, a mountain in the Troad, in proximity to the ancient city of Troy. Although Livy does not mention the factor of Troy in his narrative other writers do, such as Ovid. When the poet asks where the goddess came from the muse Erato answers ‘ “The Mother Goddess ever loved Dindymus, and Cybele, and Ida, with its delightful springs, and the realm of Ilium. When Aeneas carried Troy to the Italian fields, the goddess almost followed the ships that bore the sacred things” ’.¹⁵ The belief that the Romans were descended from Trojans would certainly explain why at the end of the third century BC Rome was interested in the Mother Goddess at all, a fact that is hard to fathom from Livy’s account. Another poet writing during the reign of Augustus emphasizes the connections between Rome, Troy and the Great Mother.¹⁶ This is Virgil, who in his famous poem the Aeneid relates the coming to Italy of the T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Eunuchs in the Roman Empire
• 1 Eunuchs of the Great Mother: The Galli in Rome
• 2 Greeks Bearing Gifts: Terence’s The Eunuch
• 3 Of Seed and Spring: Eunuch Slaves of Imperial Rome
• 4 Born Eunuchs: The Case of Favorinus of Arles
• 5 Eusebius and His Kind: Court Eunuchs of the Later Roman Empire 79
• 6 ‘Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’: Self-Castration and Eunuchs in Early Christianity
• 7 Military Eunuchs: The Case of Narses
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright