Sincopus described medieval reasons for castrating men

Attis, castrated priest of goddess Cybele

To make male animals more docile and subservient, their owners commonly castrate them. Reasons for castrating men have been more complex. In the ancient world, men were castrated to serve chastely the great goddess Cybele, to be servants who wouldn’t cuckold the master’s wife, or to be high-voiced, non-threatening singers in courts. Men were also castrated for socially constructed crimes against women. The subordination of men within gynocentric society is the primary and continuing reason for men’s castration. Gynocentrism, however, becomes merely a term of facile intellectual posing, like patriarchy, if deployed as a totalizing master narrative. In reality, men are active agents partly responsible for their own castration. The medieval poem about Sincopus, written in Latin about the year 1100, documents that men’s greed has contributed to castration culture.

The poem about Sincopus directly addresses castration. Sincopus, a castrated man, guarded and served the beautiful woman Flora. Although Flora’s husband hired Sincopus, he didn’t order Sincopus to be castrated. The poem’s narrator asked Sincopus why he was castrated:

For what reason do you lack your member and two testicles?
Perhaps Perifras cut them off with sharp metal
And now they are withered with dull sores,
Or perhaps a rupture with its burden grieved you immensely,
Or the decency of a common virgin was ravished,
Or the girl of a scarcely known family was prostituted,
Or the wife of a poor man was deluded by your gift;
Alas, speak! Tell me which of them you will admit is the truth [1]

The possibilities put forward in this question probably were relatively common reasons for castrating men.

Criminalizing men in relation to women contributes to castrating men. The poem about Sincopus describes as a reason for castration that “the decency of a common virgin was ravished.” The decency of a common virgin in public understanding almost surely meant the status of any unmarried woman without a notorious reputation for sexual activity. The charge against a man wouldn’t necessarily be rape. While ravish could mean rape, it could also mean having consensual sex, with penal responsibility for that sex effectively attributed to the man. Regulation of men’s sexuality at U.S. universities is moving back toward such a regime, but without the distinction for sexual reputation.[2]

Other reasons for castrating men underscore criminalizing men in relation to women. Men were castrated for having sex with other men’s wives. Those wives are figured as deluded women merely seeking gifts for sex to help support their impoverished families. Men were also castrated for prostituting a girl. U.S. legislation, building upon the history of the Mann Act, defines any person under age 18 having “any sex act on account of which anything of value is given to or received” as a victim of “sex trafficking.”[3] In conjunction with that broad definition of prostitution and its victims, the text of the legislation leaves no doubt that the victim-prostitutes of concern are female and the prostitution perpetrators, male.

The poem about Sincopus also indicates that men were castrated as medical treatment. The phrase “a rupture with its burden grieved you immensely” probably refers to a hernia in which a section of the intestine enters the scrotum. That’s a common form of hernia among men.[4] It can cause inflammation of the scrotum and sepsis. Castration is plausible medieval treatment for such a hernia.

The narrator’s reference to Periphras cutting off Sincopus’s genitals is obscure. The German verb fräsen means “to mill.” The Swedish word fräs indicates a milling machine or cutter. Peri is a Greek prefix meaning “around” or “in excess.” Periphras could be a descriptive name for a surgeon who castrated boys at the behest of parents or lords.[5]

“Periphrastic” characterizes Sincopus’s explanation of his castration. To the narrator’s well-circumscribed question, Sincopus responded:

“Nothing I’ve undergone,” says Sincopus, “has been unworthy of me,
I do not want you to think I am such a base man;
My soul was not remiss as you believe,
Entangling itself in such foul faults.
But since you ask me why I cut off my genitals,
Lest you hope for more, I shall tell you the story briefly.” [6]

In brief, Sincopus cut off his own genitals. The story Sincopus tells begins with a pompous, periphrastic oration:

Swollen with knowledge of the grammatical art,
Overflowing with brains but not wealthy in substance,
I was vexed, irritated with perpetual burning of the breast:
“What are you doing? Look! You have no riches
Or means whence to make a small gain grow;
If you have money you will always be honored;
There is no honor for you destitute, no friends for the needy;
If gold is lacking, no letters are pleasing! [7]

Sincopus felt that his learning made him deserving of wealth. He castrated himself so that he could join the fat Galli serving in luxury the goddess Cybele.

Sincopus’s greedy, self-interested service of the goddess ended badly. So as to ensure and legitimate favorable omens, Sincopus preserved  his severed genitals:

At last let me confess that my member, which I destroyed,
I turned into ash and put aside in the house,
And mixing it with ground pepper, I preserved it like gold. [8]

While performing his holy offices, Sincopus carried with him the pepper-preserved ashes of his genitals.

Having become through his castration an eminent person, Sincopus hosted numerous dinners. Sincopus’s house even hosted guests when Sincopus wasn’t home. At one such dinner, the guests wanted pepper. The servant-waiter searched about the house and couldn’t find any. He then went to seek some from the neighbors. The guests themselves then began to ransack the house for pepper. They broke open the chest in which Sincopus had stored the ashes of his genitals mixed with pepper. The guests used that mixture to season their food.[9]

After returning home two days later, Sincopus discovered the precious, preserved ashes of his genitals were gone. The servant explained that the guests had broken into the chest and used the pepper they found there to season a dinner “rich with fat fowl.” None of the servants knew what had been mixed with the pepper. Sincopus then delivered aloud a prolix lamentation. A servant muttered:

What are these words that our lord, alas! speaks?
Perhaps he pickled his genitals that he cut off;
He burned them in fire and mixed them with pepper.
I would consider myself stupid if I thought pepper thus became aged;
For seasoning his member is brought to our tables;
I dipped my meat in the meat of my lord. [10]

This sensational story rapidly spread from the servants to everyone in the city. Sincopus was disgraced. He lost his high position and was covered in a shower of spit. City leaders planned to dismember Sincopus: break his legs, cut off his hands, and tear out his tongue. Sincopus wisely fled. In a far away place, he found a job as guardian of Flora.

Sincopus ends the poem by requesting the poet not to disclose his secret to all. Castrating men is today of great public importance. After nearly a millennium, Sincopus’s secret must be further revealed. Castration culture should be a matter of careful study for all.

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Notes:

[1] Radulfus Tortarius, Epistle VI, l. 66-73, from Latin trans. Wolterbeek (1991) p. 181.  All subsequent quotes are from id. unless otherwise noted. I cite quotes by “Sincopus” and poem line numbers. I’ve made some minor changes to the translation for clarity and precision. Radulfus Tortarius doesn’t have a well-standardized name. His name also commonly appears as Raoul Le Tourtier and Rodulfus Tortarius. A French Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Fleury-sur-Loire, he was born in the mid-eleventh century and died after 1122.  His poetic works are preserved in only one manuscript, MS. Vat. Reg. 1357. Ogle & Schullian (1933) p. xxxii.

The name Sincopus is similar to the word syncope. The latter is a grammatical term meaning the taking away of sound from within a word. That can be understood as a grammatical metaphor for castration.

The poem about Sincopus has attracted little scholarly attention. A nineteenth-century commentator ignore its contents for being “coarse” and “of little taste.” Wolterbeek (1991) p. 88, referring to the view of Eugène Certain in an 1853 publication. Another scholar called it “strange on all sides” and suggested that it was an in-group burlesque for Radulphus Tortarius’s friends. Bar (1937) pp. 150-1, 158.

[2] Ancient belief about beavers provides an additional, relevant perspective on forced castration:

There are frequent references {in medieval and ancient literature} to the belief that the beaver was hunted for valuable medicine that could be extracted from his testicles and that, when chased, he bit off his testicles and left them to his pursuers with the hope that, satisfied with these, they would abandon the chase.

Sheridan (1980) p. 103, n. 129. Some early literary references are Cicero, Pro Scauro 2.5; Juvenal 12.34; Pliny 8.47. 109. Id. Alan of Lille’s De planctu naturae includes such a reference. Id. p. 103. Men being hounded and harassed on college campuses might sadly consider acting like beavers in similar circumstances.

[3] 114 Stat. 1464, Public Law 106–386 (Oct.  28, 2000), An act to combat trafficking in persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery, and involuntary servitude, to reauthorize certain Federal programs to prevent violence against women, and for other purposes. See Sec. 103(3),(8)(A), and (9).

[4] The ancient Greek text Philogelos refers to hernias. A scholar noted:

In the most common type of hernia suffered by men, some of the lower intestine enters the scrotum (which, of course, a eunuch lacks), distending it. For a joke on that swelling, see #262.

Quinn (2001), n. 10. Joke #262 in an English translation:

Whilst on a trip, a wag contracted the dropsy. When he got back home, his wife asked if he had brought her a present. “Nothing for you. But here’s a pillow for your thighs.”

From Greek trans. Baldwin (1983) p. 49.

[5] Bar (1937), p. 154, suggests that Sincopus was a patient of a surgeon named Periphras. But Sincopus says directly that he castrated himself. Id. also notes references to persons named Periphas in Virgil, Aeneid, II.476; Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII.400; and Statius, Thebaid, VII, 641, 643. Numerous persons carried the name Periphas in Greek mythology. The name Periphras is much more rare. The father of Oedipus’s second wife Euryganeia was Periphras. Robl (2003). That man was also known as Hyperphas.

[6] Sincopus l. 75-80. I’ve substituted “soul” for “mind” in translating animus and “fault” for “sin” in translating maculis.

[7] Sincopus l. 81-88. Cf. Juvenal, Satire 7. In medieval Byzantium, court eunuchs became powerful and fabulously wealth.  Constantine the Paphlagonian, the son of farmer in tenth-century Byzantium, was castrated for sake of advancement in Constantinople. Court opportunities for eunuchs “may have provided Byzantine families with strong economic incentive to castrate a relative.” Tougher (2008) pp. 61, 64.

[8] Sincopus l. 139-41. Pepper in medieval Europe was an expensive delicacy. Sheridan (1980) p. 174, n. 14.

The Shahnameh, an epic poem that Ferdowsi wrote in Persian about 1000, includes a story with similarities to Sincopus’s story. In the Shahnameh, King Ardeshir defeated King Ardavan and took his daughter as wife. She, after becoming pregnant, attempted to poison King Ardeshir. The King ordered his vizier to execute the woman. The vizier secretly didn’t carry out the execution and instead hid the woman in his palace. To prove his good intentions, he castrated himself, had his testicles placed in salt, and sealed them in a jeweler’s box.  He dated the box and gave it to the King to keep in his treasury. Many years later the contents of the box were revealed to the King to prove that the vizier had no sexual relations with the woman. For an English translation, see “The Reign of Ardeshir” in Davis (2007) pp. 554-60. I’m grateful to Geert Jan van Gelder for pointing out this story.

Statius, a Roman poet writing in the first century GC, wrote a poem in which Asclepius castrated the boy Earinus to “soften him up” and make him more pleasing to the Emperor. Earinus later sent a lock of his hair in a jeweled, golden box to Asclepius to honor him. Statius, Silvae 3.4.

[9] For a humorous, twelfth-century Arabic poem about out-of-control guests causing the host great hardship, see van Gelder (1995). Radulfus Tortarius’s second epistle includes the earliest known version of the Ami and Amile (Amicus and Amelius) legend. Like the Tristan and Iseult legend, the Ami and Amile legend involves a protagonist traveling with another’s wife and sleeping with a sword between him and her. That sword figure also occurs in an Arabic tale about Hatim Tai, an Arabic paragon of generosity. See note [4] and associated text in my post on friendship and the tale of Attaf.

[10] Sincopus l. 224-30.

[image] Attis, a castrated priest (Gallus) serving the goddess Cybele. Marble sculpture in Museum of Ephesus, Efes, Turkey. Thanks to Pvasiliadis and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Baldwin, Barry, trans. 1983. The Philogelos, or, Laughter-lover. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.

Bar, Francis. 1937. Les Epîtres latines de Raoul Le Tourtier (1065?-1114?); étude de sources; la légende d’Ami et Amile. Paris: E. Droz.

Davis, Dick, trans. 2007. Ferdowsi. Shahnameh: the Persian book of kings. London: Penguin.

Ogle, Marbury Bladen and Dorothy M. Schullian, eds. 1933. Rudolphus Tortarius. Rodulfi Tortarii Carmina. Rome: American Academy in Rome.

Quinn. John T. 2001. “45 Jokes from The Laughter Lover.” Online at Diotima.

Robl, Werner. 2003. Rudolf Tortarius: Ad Syncopum. Online commentary.

Sheridan, James J., ed. and trans. 1980. Alan of Lille. The plaint of nature {De planctu naturae}. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Tougher, Shaun. 2008. The eunuch in Byzantine history and society. London: Routledge.

Van Gelder, Geert Jan. 1995.  “The Joking Doctor: Abū l-Hakam ‘Ubayd Allah ibn al-Muzaffar (d. 549/1155).”  Pp. 217-28 in Concepción Vázquez de Benito & Miguel Ángel Manzano Rodríguez, eds. Actas XVI Congreso UEAI {Union Européene des Arabisants et des Islamisants}. Salamanca.

Wolterbeek, Marc. 1991. Comic tales of the Middle Ages: an anthology and commentary. New York: Greenwood Press.

Nazhun lamented al-Makhzumi loving every one-eyed

Castle at Almodóvar, earlier known as al-Mudawwar al-Adna

Since the beginning of human civilization, war has been predominately organized as men killing men. Yet some men have sought a better way. An Arabic anecdote about Nazhun and al-Makhzumi, poets living in Andalusia probably in the twelfth century, narrates though an invective contest alternatives for men’s lives.

The descriptive frame for the anecdote sets out a key contrast. The narrator explains:

Although the people of Andalusia were champions in the horse race of the holy war, rushing from the mountains and the canyons to respond to its call, they also kept, out of fear of satire, a special place for luxury, pleasure, wantonness, and the patronage of the poets. [1]

The word “people” obscures in generic identity that the persons fighting and dying in holy war were men. The dual spheres of war and luxury parallel the power of the sword and the pen. The man poet al-Makhzumi wielded the pen as a greatly feared satirist. That skill brought him to the place of luxury. Yet places of luxury are sustained as much with eulogy as with satire. Al-Makhzumi wrote weak poetic eulogy.

Al-Makhzumi’s weak poetic eulogy in the place of luxury generated an invective war between him and Nazhun. Positioning herself as one accustomed to living in the place of luxury, Nazhun ridiculed al-Makhzumi’s eulogy. Al-Makhzumi was from Almodóvar. Nazhun described Almodóvar as farm country. Al-Makhzumi’s first response to Nazhun’s attack on him was to spit. Nazhun in turn wished him ill health. They exchanged further verbal blows. With more daring than most educated men would dare today, al-Makhzumi called Nazhun a liar and “a red hot strumpet whose thing admits odors that can be smelled from miles.” The vizier Abū Bakr ibn Sa’id, acting the part of the benighted white knight of European chivalry, intervened to defend Nazhun. Al-Makhzumi then attacked Nazhun with disparagement of men’s genitals:

May God not allow her to hear good tidings, and may he show her nothing but a penis.

A penis is a wonderful organ that brings good tidings of joy, and on some occasions, new life. Appreciating this reality, Nazhun responded to al-Makhzumi:

Why, dirty old man, you contradict yourself! What could be better for a woman than what you have mentioned {a penis}?

Al-Makhzumi, upholding a sort of gender symmetry, then disparaged Nazhun’s vagina as being widely stretched. Within the place of luxury, al-Makhzumi was a verbal warrior willing to attack harshly women as well as men.

While men tend to idealize women as pure, sweet, and innocent, women are as capable of viciousness as are men warriors. Nazhun turned on al-Makhzumi with poetic invective:

Tell the vile one a word
To be recited until he meets his maker
In Almodóvar you were reared
And shit smells sweeter than that place
There the Bedouin have begun
To swing and sway in their walk
Therefore you became
Besotted with everything round
You were created blind
But you get lost in every one-eyed

In its Islamic context, the vague reference to “his maker” implicitly suggests a vile, demonic force. Associating Almodóvar with shit parallels the farm country insult that Nazhun made earlier. But turning Bedouins into effeminate men suggests in contrast urban life. That contrast leads into Nazhun’s new line of attack on al-Makhzumi. The Arabic word for Almodóvar comes from the Arabic word for round. The Arabic word for “one-eyed” naturally extends to mean penis by the penis’s single orifice. But neither “round” nor “one-eyed” are best understood to refer to penis.[2] These words more plausibly figure the low, backside presentation of male hips. Nazhun represents al-Makhzumi as enjoying the position of the pedagogue in an ancient form of male-male sexual-intellectual transmission.[3] Underneath Nazhun’s invective is two-eyed envy of the one-eyed’s special relationship with the blind teacher. Nazhun tried to figure herself as male:

I have responded to a poem in kind
So pray tell me, who is more poetic?
By creation, I may be female
But my poetry is male

Al-Makhzumi in turn poetically disparaged Nazhun as being sexually easily accessible.[4] Al-Makhzumi then amorously departed with a young male slave.

castle at Almodóvar del Río in Andalusia

Al-Makhzumi the pedagogue of invective had a foil in the vizier Abū Bakr. Al-Makhzumi reportedly was Nazhun’s teacher.[5] Abū Bakr defended Nazhun from al-Makhzumi, sought her love, and complained of her promiscuity. She wrote to him:

Oh Abū Bakr, you hold a place forbidden
to others in my heart, reserved for my best friend
However many lovers may be in truth
Love for Abū Bakr would have the foremost place [6]

Those words express what’s now known among men as friend-zoning. Men in the friend zone are loved non-erotically.

Men fight other men primarily to serve women in gynocentric society. So do men leaders of state. An alternative for men is to learn skills of invective and affiliate with men in the place of luxury that women inhabit. In the deep poetic irony of human society, such a turn makes men more erotically attractive to women.

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Notes:

[1] Anecdote about Nazhun and al-Makhzumi, al-Maqqarī’s version, from Arabic trans. Hammond (2010) p. 139. All subsequent quotes are from id., pp. 139-42, unless otherwise noted. I’ve made a few minor changes to the translations for clarity. The names Nazhun and al-Makhzumi are properly written as Nazhūn (Nazhūn al-Garnatī bint al-Qulā’ī) and al-Makhzūmī (Abū Bakr al-Makhzūmī). I use the former forms for accessibility. Schippers (1993) provides an alternate English translation based on the version in Ibn al-Khatīb’s Ihāta.

[2] Hammond (2010), pp. 135-6, finds “round” (mudawwar) and “one-eyed” (a’war) to refer to a penis. Those references seem to me to generate a less coherent, less meaningful interpretation of the poem. While possible, they are not necessary.

[3] Figural association of eyes, buttocks, and pedagogy occurs in the influential Life of Aesop. That work, written in Greek about the first century, diffused widely throughout the Islamic world.

Writing at the end of the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer associated the eye with the anus: “Absolon has kissed her lower eye {Absolon hath kist hir nether ye},” meaning Absolon has kissed Alisoun’s anus. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Miller’s Tale, v. 3852.

[4] Al-Makhzumi told Nazhun to listen and recited:

Why don’t you ask Nazhun
Why she gathers her tails so proudly
When she spots a friendly face
She lifts up her shirt as she has done so often for me

[5] Hammond (2010) p. 133, n. 19.

[6] From Arabic trans. Nykl (1946) p. 303, quoted in Segol (2009) p. 156.

[image] Castle at Almodóvar del Río in Andalusia. Thanks to Phillip Capper (first photo), Wolfgang Manousek (second photo), and Wikimedia Commons. A fortress on the hill in Almodóvar dates to 740. Almodóvar was then known as al-Mudawwar al-Adna.

References:

Hammond, Marlé. 2010. Beyond elegy: classical Arabic women’s poetry in context. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nykl, Alois Richard. 1946. Hispano-Arabic poetry, and its relations with the old Provenc̜al troubadours. Baltimore: J.H. Furst Co.

Schippers, Arie. 1993. “The role of woman in medieval Andalusian Arabic story-telling.” Pp. 139-152 in Jong, Frederick de. 1993. Verse and the fair sex: studies in Arabic poetry and in the representation of women in Arabic literature : a collection of papers presented at the 15th Congress of Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (Utrecht/Driebergen, September 13-19, 1990). Utrecht: Houtsma Stichting.

Segol, Marla. 2009. “Representing the Body in Poems by Medieval Muslim Women.” Medieval Feminist Forum 45:1: 147-169.

Modus Florum shows poetic, inner-truth alternative to history

So I held my tongue and said nothing;
I refrained from rash words;
but my pain became unbearable.

My heart was hot within me;
while I pondered, the fire burst into flame;
I spoke with my tongue

{ נאלמתי דומיה החשיתי מטוב וכאבי נעכר׃
חם־לבי בקרבי בהגיגי תבער־אש דברתי בלשוני׃ }

Literature developed along with concern about misuse of words. With his characteristic subtlety and audacity, Ovid about the time of Jesus proclaimed: “I speak the marvelous lies of the ancient bards {prodigiosa loquor veterum mendacia vatum}.”[1] For the turned-sober fourth-century scholar Augustine, knowledge of actual historical events provided the foundation for speaking and writing with understanding. Augustine warned that without such foundational knowledge, “you will seek to build on air {in aere quaeratis aedificare}.”[2] Poetry, however, has long been recognized as being more than lies and castles in the air. The medieval Latin poem Modus Florum provides an exemplum of poetic power relevant from ancient civilization to the present day.

Modus Florum evokes the court of an early emperor. A medieval king set out a poetic game in impersonal, historically distanced terms:

If anyone experienced in lying
should apply himself to deception
so well that he is called a deceiver
by the emperor’s own mouth, that man may marry the daughter.

{ Si quis mentiendi gnarus
usque adeo instet fallendo
dum cesaris ore fallax
predicitur, is ducat filiam. }[3]

A man saying that he is lying (is he telling the truth?) was a conundrum that an ancient philosopher put forward.[4] The poetic game was earlier and more serious. Provoking listeners to reject their explicit and willing embrace of deception — willing suspension of disbelief — is a virtuoso display of poetic power.[5]

Modus Florum tells of a Swabian triumphing in that poetic game. The Swabian tells the story of his hunt. On his hunt, he speared a hare. He gutted the hare, cut off its head, and tore off its hide. That could be a parody of brutal philosophical analysis. Then the Swabian turned to fantastic tale-telling:

And as I was lifting the severed head
with my hand,
a hundred measures of honey
spilled out from the wounded ear;
and when I touched the other ear,
it spilled out just as many measures of peas.
I bound them inside the skin and,
while carving the hare itself,
I grasped a royal charter hidden
at the very base of the tail

{ Cumque cesum manu
levaretur caput,
lesa aure effunduntur
mellis modii centeni
sotiaque auris tacta
totidem pisarum fudit.
Quibus intra pellem strictis
lepus ipse dum secatur,
crepidine summae caude }

That’s a story in the tradition of travelers’ tales and accounts of marvels, but more artful.[6] The Swabian then deftly shifted his story to near reality in characterizing the royal charter found at the base of the tail:

It confirms that you are my servant.

{ Que servum te firmat esse meum. }

Forgetting the agreed frame of deception, the king interjected:

“The charter lies,” the king shouts, “and so do you!”

{ “Mentitur,” clamat rex, “karta et tu!” }

In the work of a master poet, poetry can deceive so effectively as to compel persons to speak inner truth against their will.[7]

sun flower

The poetry game in Modus Florum is an obscure part of the ancient Story of Ahiqar. Part of that story survives in Elephantine Aramaic papyri dated to more than 2400 years ago. In a Syriac version probably from before the fifth century, the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, challenges Ahiqar, “tell me a word that I have never heard.”[8] That challenge addresses the whole tradition of poetry and story-telling. It’s a creative, linguistic challenge analogous to telling a deception so effectively that listeners are compelled to denounce its falsehood against their own willing suspension of disbelief.

Ahiqar triumphs by fabricating a letter declaring that the Pharaoh owes Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, a huge sum of money. The conclusion of the story isn’t directly recorded. Within understanding of the poetry game of Modus Florum, the conclusion is clear. The Pharaoh is forced to acknowledge that Ahiqar’s poetic skill is sufficient to create a new story against the will of his listeners. The Pharaoh is delighted with Ahiqar. The Pharaoh gives him tribute not related to the size of the loan claimed in the fabricated letter.

In addition to the freely creative poetry game, the Pharaoh sets for Ahiqar more narrow technical challenges related generally to myth-making and story-telling. Simile set-ups challenge Ahiqar to make mythic figures from the dress of the Pharaoh and his counselors. Creating a castle in the air — the poetic figure that Augustine explicitly disparaged — the Pharaoh sets as a challenge for Ahiqar. A challenge involving the interrupted realism of mares and stallions Ahiqar counters similarly with interrupted realism of a cat and a rooster. Ahiqar solves correctly a this-for-that allegory concerning a pillar and associated items. The story of Ahiqar also includes the fantastic challenges of making a rope of sand and sewing together a broken millstone. These seem to be challenges taken from a literature of labors. Unlike heroes in the literature of labors, Ahiqar resolves his tasks mostly through linguistic creativity.

The Life of Aesop, written about the first century, highlights the poetry game of Modus Florum in adapting the Story of Ahiqar. The Life of Aesop expanded the challenge section relative to other sections in the Story of Ahiqar. It eliminated the rope of sand and the millstone sewing challenges. It moved the poetry game to be the concluding challenge.[9] The Life of Aesop thus concludes the Pharaoh’s challenges with Aesop demonstrating complete verbal mastery of his opponents:

King Nectanebo’s friends lied and said, “We’ve seen this and heard of it many times.” Aesop said, “I’m glad you authenticate it. Let him pay the money on the spot, for the due date is past.” King Nectanebo said, “How can you be witnesses to a debt that I don’t owe?” They {Nectanebo’s friends} said, “We’ve never seen or heard of it.” [10]

Aesop, like Ahiqar, made a new account — one never seen or heard before — despite his opponents’ determination to deny to him that creativity.

Compared to the Story of Ahiqar and the Life of Aesop, Modus Florum presents poetic creativity more artfully. Modus Florum means the song of flowers. It depicts poetic creativity not with a conventional monetary instrument, but with a story that prompts an emotional assertion of truth. It ends with the King and the Swabian becoming family through marriage. That’s story and fundamental human experience.[11]

Languishing
for love of you
I arose
at dawn
and made my way
bare-footed
across the snows
and cold,
and searched
the desolate seas
to see if I could find
sails flying in the wind,
or catch sight of the prow
of a ship.

{ Nam languens
amore tuo
consurrexi
diluculo
perrexi-
que pedes nuda
per niues et
per frigora
atque maria
rimabar mesta
si forte uentiuola
uela cernerem,
aut frontem nauis
conspicerem. }

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Update: I’m grateful to Professor Ioannis Konstantakos, a leading authority on the Story of Ahiqar and the Life of Aesop, not just for important work informing this article, but also for corrections to it.

Notes:

Prologue / epilogue: Psalms 39:2-3. Cambridge Songs {Carmina Cantabrigiensia} 14A, “Languising {Nam languens},” Latin text and English translation from Ziolkowski (1994) p. 69.

[1] Ovid, Amores, 3.6.17, from Latin trans. Ziolkowski (1994) p. 219.

[2] Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.7: ne subtracto fundamento rei gestae, quasi in aere quaeratis aedificare. Similarly, Sermon 8.1: ne substracto fundamento, in aere velle aedificare videamur (“or else after removing the foundation, we seem to seek to build on air”). On the history of Christian concern not to be building the Christian church in the air, see Lubac (2000) pp. 47-50.

[3] Cambridge Songs 15, Modus Florum  / “The lying ballad that I sing {Mendosam quam cantilenam ago},” Latin text and English trans. Ziolkowski (1994). The subsequent three quotes are similarly from id. Modus Florum {manner of flowers} is the title given to this song is the another manuscript in which it survives, W: Wolfenbuttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS 3610, codex Augustanus 8 56.16, also from the eleventh century. Id. pp. xi, pp. 218-9.

Modus Florum is the earliest known tale of the type “Hero forces the Princess to say ‘that is a lie'” (ATU 852, Uther (2004) p. 41). Ziolkowski (1994) p. 218. A broader tale type is “contest in lying” (ATU 1920, Uther (2004) p. 514). The earliest known tale within that type is The Tale of Truth and Falsehood, an Egyptian story attested about 3300 years ago. Konstantakos (2011) pp. 229-30.

[4] The philosopher Eubulides of Miletus (4th century BGC), a pupil of Euclid, formulated the paradox, “A man says: ‘What I am saying now is a lie.'” Better known is the Cretan Epimenides of Knossos (c. 600 BGC). He was said to have composed, “The Cretans, always liars.” That’s echoed in Titus 1:12-3. But Epimenides is described as a figure living before Plato formulated philosophy as a rival of poetry. The context in Epimenides and Titus isn’t paradoxical. Analysis of Epimenides’s statement in relation to paradox is an artifact of eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy.

[5] The phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIV.  Coleridge sought to invoke “the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real.” Id.

[6] The contrast in quality between the honey and the peas and locating the royal charter at the hare’s rectum are striking poetic choices. For a brief review of ancient tales of marvels, Konstantakos (2011) p. 230.

[7] Modus Florum begins by presenting itself as a ridiculous trifle:

The lying ballad that I sing,
I will give (highly recommend) to little boys,
so that they may bring great laughter
to listeners through lying little measures of song.

Trans. Ziolkowski (1994) pp. 69, 71. The emphasis on lying seems to me programmatic, and the trivialization of the song, ironic.

[8] Story of Ahiqar, from Syriac trans. Conybeare, Harris & Lewis (1913) p. 119. On dating, id. p. 176. Ahikar is another common spelling for Ahiqar.

[9] The expansion and re-arrangement of the challenges (riddles) are described in Konstantakos (2013) pp. 11-4.

[10] Life of Aesop {Vita Aesopi}, from Greek trans. Lloyd Daly in Hansen (1998) p. 157. Kurke (2011) shows that the Life of Aesop provides important insights into the development of Greek prose from Herodotus in the fifth-century BGC. Modus Florum provides a similarly important perspective for understanding the development of poetry in relation to history.

[11] Modus Florum is not the work of merely a lyrical poet. The author of Modus Florum is closely associated materially, thematically, and stylistically with the author of the medieval Latin poem Modus Liebinc (Cambridge Songs 14), an early poetic version of the story of the snow child. Ziolkowski (1994) p. 219. Modus Liebinc provides forceful critique of unjust paternity attribution and forced fatherhood. Few persons throughout history have found potent means to speak about these continuing, oppressive social injustices.

[image] Photograph by Douglas Galbi.

References:

Conybeare, F. C., J. Rendel Harris, and Agnes Smith Lewis. 1913. The story of Ahikar from the Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Old Turkish, Greek and Slavonic versions. Cambridge: University Press.

Hansen, William F., ed. 1998. Anthology of ancient Greek popular literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Konstantakos, Ioannis M. 2011. “Ephippos’ Geryones: A comedy between myth and folktale.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 51 (3-4): 223-246.

Konstantakos, Ioannis M. 2013. Summary of Akicharos, vol. 3: The Tale of Ahiqar and the Vita Aesopi. Athens: Stigmi Publications.

Kurke, Leslie. 2011. Aesopic conversations: popular tradition, cultural dialogue, and the invention of Greek prose. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Lubac, Henri de. 2000. Medieval exegesis. Vol 2. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans.

Uther, Hans-Jörg. 2004. The types of international folktales: a classification and bibliography, based on the system of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica.

Ziolkowski, Jan M., ed. and trans. 1994. The Cambridge songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia). New York: Garland Pub.

rape: a fundamental principle of communication economics

Rape of women has been regarded as a serious offense throughout recorded history. Like violence against men generally, rape of men has been a much less prominent public issue. Today’s highly developed communication media make rape an insightful case study in communication economics. A fundamental principle is readily apparent: public communication highly favors criminalizing men in relation to women.

In 2013 the United Nations conducted a major international survey of violence against women (but not violence against men). The survey asked each man surveyed whether he:

Had sexual intercourse with his partner when he knew she didn’t want it but believed that she should agree because she was his wife/partner. [1]

The United Nations should be able to imagine that some persons understand love to encompass mutual sexual self-sacrifice. Mutual sexual self-sacrifice includes having sex with your spouse/partner, even if you don’t feel like having sex, because you love the other person, and you both understand that love encompasses such sex.

The United Nations defined that kind of love as rape. Moreover, it only surveyed the extent to which men receive such love from women. It produced a report that generated headlines in major newspapers. The Guardian of Britain headlined: “Nearly quarter of men in Asia-Pacific admit to committing rape.”[2] Since the survey was gender asymmetric, there was no risk of labeling a large share of women rapists.

Bias toward declaring men rapists goes far beyond United Nations bureaucracy and sensational journalism. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a leading expert government agency for public health. It sponsors the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. That survey has repeatedly revealed that men suffer rape about as frequently as women do. That important fact hasn’t been effectively communicated publicly.

One can easily see within the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violent Survey the acute anti-men gender bias in public understanding of rape. That survey provides both lifetime and past-year recall surveys of sexual victimization. Lifetime recall is useful for producing shocking share-of-population statistics for press releases. Past-year recall has less cognitive biases and is more scientifically credible. For factual understanding, lifetime statistics should be ignored in reading the survey results.

The definition of rape greatly affects rape statistics. The survey reports “rape” with three sub-headings: “completed forced penetration,” “attempted forced penetration,” and “completed alcohol- or drug-facilitated penetration.” So, if a man and a woman have a few drinks and then sex, the man, but not the woman, is defined in this categorization as a rapist. Some college sex-victimization experts explicitly support that gender bias in adjudicating actual sex-victimization claims. The survey reports a separate, non-rape category “other sexual violence.” Along with unwanted sexual banter, that category includes a sub-heading “made to penetrate” sexually another person. That’s how men are most frequently raped. That should count as real rape. Not including “made to penetrate” under rape shows anti-men gender bias in reporting rape.

According to the best available evidence, reasonably interpreted, women rape men more frequently than men rape women. For past-year recall, the 2011 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violent Survey shows that 1.7% of men are made to penetrate another sexually. That should count as real rape. Under the survey’s categorization of rape, the past-year recall figures indicate that 1.6% of women are raped.[3] These figures indicate that, even outside of prisons and jails, men are raped more frequently than women are.

The figure for women raped, moreover, is inflated by definition. Within the 1.6% estimate of women raped, 1.0% of women are alcohol/drug-sex raped. By definition, no men can be alcohol/drug-sex raped. That’s completely unreasonable. In addition, women and men commonly engaged in alcohol-facilitated sex. Most persons do not regard such behavior as the man raping the woman. A reasonable, gender-neutral definition of alcohol/drug-sex rape is likely to be much less than 50% of the reported figure. Discounting for alcohol-facilitated consensual sex, the total share of women raped is likely to be less than 1.1%.

According to the best available evidence, reasonably interpreted, women rape men more frequently than men rape women. Regarding the perpetrators of sexual victimization of men, the survey report states:

For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (an estimated 79.3%) had only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims had only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (an estimated 82.6%), sexual coercion (an estimated 80.0%), and unwanted sexual contact (an estimated 54.7%). [4]

Those figures indicate that 1.4% of men were made to penetrate sexually by a woman perpetrator.[5] That’s higher than the reasonably adjusted share of women that are raped. Just as for women’s violence against men, women raping men generates much less public concern than does men raping women. The facts of rape victimization don’t support that gender disparity in public concern.

Public discussion of rape shows that public communication favors criminalizing men in relation to women. Rape is a crime with severity of punishment just below murder. Yet major newspapers unjustly label a large share of men as rapists. On the expert side of public communication, technical victimization surveys define and report rape in a way that highlights women rape victims and obscures men rape victims.

horse manure smells better than public discussion of rape

Public communication favoring criminalizing men relative to women has effects readily apparent in the incarcerated population. The U.S. currently holds in prisons and jails five times as many persons per capita as other high-income democracies do. Among persons incarcerated, men outnumber women ten to one. Men are no more naturally criminal than they are naturally business and political leaders. The lowliest victims of gender bias are incarcerated men.

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Notes:

[1] Fulu et al. (2013) p. 20.  The corresponding question for women asked whether she:

Had sexual intercourse when she did not want to because she was afraid of what partner might do

Thus, by the United Nations’ measure, if a woman has sex because she is afraid that her partner will go out drinking with his buddies if she doesn’t, then he has raped her.

[2] Hodal (2013).

[3] Breiding et al. (2014) Table 1, p. 5. Under the survey’s definition of rape, rape of men is too infrequent for a population share to be estimated, given the survey’s sample size. Such rape occurs, but it’s relatively infrequent.

[4] Id. pp. 5-6. Apparently the survey, under its gender-biased definition of rape, was able to estimate sex shares of persons raping men, but not the share of men raped.

[5] The share of men suffering rape from a woman making the man sexually penetrate her is (1.7% men made to penetrate sexually another person) x (82.6% of perpetrators of men made to penetrate sexually are women) = 1.4%. The share of men raped is thus at least 1.4%. To the extent that some share of “completed alcohol- or drug-facilitated” sex is declared to be women raping men, rather than exclusively men raping women, the share of men raped by women is higher than 1.4%.

[image] Horse manure. Photo by Douglas Galbi.

References:

Breiding,  Matthew J.,  Sharon G. Smith, Kathleen C. Basile, Mikel L. Walters, Jieru Chen, Melissa T. Merrick. 2014. “Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization — National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011.” Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Surveillance Summaries. September 5, 2014 / 63(SS08):1-18.

Fulu, Emma, Xian Warner, Stephanie Miedema, Rachel Jewkes, Tim Roselli, and James Lang. 2013. Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women and How Can We Prevent It? Quantitative Findings from the United Nations Multi-Country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific. Bangkok:  United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and United Nations Volunteers (UNV).

Hodal, Kate. 2013. “Nearly quarter of men in Asia-Pacific admit to committing rape.” The Guardian (London). Sept. 10.