- Isaiah 56:3-5

The purpose of this "Library" page is to make readily available literature excerpts and articles from all periods of Western history pertaining to homosexuality and eunuchs, that are otherwise not easy to access, and to allow the reader to get a sense of how cultural views of homosexuality have changed over time.

Introduction: A Brief History of Views About Homosexuality

To understand ancient views of homosexuality, it is important to recognize that the "superstitious" ancients distinguished (1) sexual penetration of "non-males" (i.e., men who were either naturally impotent with women or castrated) from (2) sexual penetration of "males" -- maleness being defined as the capacity to play the male role in procreation. Prior to the advent of rational philosophy, the ancient world generally considered the first category to be acceptable, in some cases even sanctified, while on the other hand, sexual penetration of adult free males was universally condemned as being opposed to and destructive of the nature of the male. The sexual use of free boys and beardless youths was controversial because of their ambiguous status as pre-males, and where it was allowed it was strictly controlled, as in ancient Greece. The sexual use of male slaves was permitted because slaves were not accountable for and had no rights regarding the use of their bodies, which belonged to their owners.

Beginning in the fifth century BCE, however, Socrates, Plato and their followers argued against any sexual use of boys and youth, and in fact Plato, that great promoter of reason as the sole source of wisdom and truth, went so far as to oppose all sexuality except for procreative purposes. In order to help win people over to this view, Plato suggested using the argument that non-procreative sexuality was hated by God, dishonorable, and against nature. (See my article on Plato and sexuality, as well as an excerpt  from Plato's Laws.) As these moral ideas spread among the ruling classes, laws were passed that prohibited the sexual molestation of young free pre-males (e.g. Lex Scantinia, 149 BCE) and eventually prohibited the penetration even of male slaves (Lex Julia de adulteriis, 17 BCE).

But Plato's stricter opposition to all sexuality outside marriage and heterosexual concubinage did not immediately catch on as well, and the sexual use of "non-males" continued, in spite of occasional overstated philosophical arguments that it too was unnatural because such non-males were by their own nature unnatural. However, with boys and male slaves now off limits, the lack of sufficient numbers of natural non-males to meet the demand for passive sex partners led regrettably to a rise in the castration of males, a practice against which laws had to be issued repeatedly in the Roman empire.

After Christianity took over control of the Roman empire in the fourth century CE, the distinct category of "non-males" was extinguished for purposes of the law. This was not because the Judeo-Christian tradition recognized only males and females -- there were plenty of eunuchs in the Bible. Rather, it was because the leaders of the main surviving branch of the Christian church in the late fourth century wanted to disenfranchise powerful eunuchs, who had rivaled them in the past for control of imperial policy and still rivaled them for the allegiance of the populace in matters of religious belief. Consequently, the sexual use of eunuchs, whether castrated or merely impotent with women, was prohibited on the spurious grounds that it was included in the sin of Sodom. Since that had been the only form of sexuality allowed in Rome outside of marriage, concubinage and prostitution, and since concubinage and prostitution were now also prohibited, the Church basically succeeded in instituting Plato's sexual ethics and then some.

Over the ensuing centuries, some of the finer legal distinctions that had been so important to the ancient world were forgotten, since almost everything you could do sexually, outside of the missionary position with your legal spouse, was forbidden as unnatural. Of course, people continued to have sex outside the law, since law enforcement was not as effective as it is today. Unless someone denounced you, which was rare, the courts would probably never take note of what you were doing.  On the other hand, if you were one of the unlucky few to be caught and convicted, you were liable to be burned at the stake or otherwise severely punished in some public spectacle.

That would change after the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, when states turned to rational principles as a new source of legitimacy for government.  Of course, politicial scientists were able to go all the way back to Plato's Republic and Laws and find that the prohibition of sex outside of marriage was not based merely on church prejudice but had once been derived as a rational principle. But unlike religious precepts, rational principles have to withstand rational challenges, and so debates followed as to whether and to what extent personal morality should be enforced by law.

An easing of moral statutes was all the more necessary since the means of enforcing the law were becoming more and more effective. It is one thing to have strict laws on sexual morals when these laws are basically unenforceable for technical reasons. Once society becomes so organized that effective l aw enforcement is technically possible, moral statutes have to adapt to what the population is actually doing. Otherwise, either extraordinarily large numbers of people have to be punished, or law enforcement has to turn a blind eye to law-breaking, which leads to corruption. Neither of these alternatives is acceptable in a society ruled by law.

Simultaneous with the easing of moral codes, progress in science led to the discovery and investigation of the "homosexual" or "invert" in the latter half of the nineteenth century. After much debate over the past century, it is now generally acknowledged that some people by nature cannot avoid homosexuality because, while their same-sex drives remain just as strong as any of the sex drives of other people, they (like the natural eunuchs of old) are provided by nature with no drive toward the opposite sex. The natural eunuch has thus been rediscovered under another name.
 

[Currently, an unsettled debate remains over whether the condition of homosexuality is an essential characteristic (nature) or a social construction (nurture); the debate has stalled because both sides in the dispute miss the full picture and simply assert their own half-truths against what they perceive to be the ignorance of the other side. My own belief is that, to the extent that most satisfied practising heterosexuals believe they "are" heterosexual, they have been conditioned toward that belief in accordance with modern social policy; history shows that different societies at different times and places have tolerated and manifested more widespread homosexual practice among the general population than what we tolerate today. The majority of homosexuals, on the other hand, are unable to internalize modern heterosexual conditioning because heterosexuality does not work for them by nature, while homosexuality does. In other words, social constructionists are mostly right about heterosexuals, while essentialists are mostly right about homosexuals.]

Many societies have found some accommodation under law for the fact that homosexual sex is part of created nature, has always been practiced and always will be practiced. In today's world, sexual acts are universally condemned only when they are nonconsenting (which includes all acts with children), although some sexual acts involving consenting adults, such as adultery and homosexuality, are still at issue in many societies. The present-day prohibition of even consenting sex with homosexuals under systems that attempt to enforce religious law, such as many Muslim countries, is due to a modern failure to take into account the old distinction between males and "non-males" underlying the ancient legal codes and religious scriptures that they claim to want to enforce. In countries where consenting homosexuality is prohibited without a religious foundation, especially countries that were once European colonies, the prohibition is based on the cynical political exploitation of moral prejudices instilled by colonial education systems during the Victorian era, and often there is a considerable amount of selective enforcement of the law.

Most of the works listed below had to be translated into English. Translations of material from 1500 CE and thereafter were mainly done by me, while most of the earlier material was translated by others. Many of the translators were 19th- and early 20th-century sexual moralists who felt the need to expurgate the ancient texts of all explicit sexual references for their readers. I have reserved the right to correct distortions of source texts introduced by these translations, in which case I note that the translation has been amended.

Source texts written from an avowedly Christian point of view are marked with a cross (+). Texts that primarily relate to pederasty and/or sodomy (the penetration of "males" as defined above) are marked with an asterisk (*). Texts related to eunuchs are marked with a percent sign (%).
 
 

[Secondary sources:]

% J. Bottéro and H. Petschow, "Homosexuality" in Reallexikon der Assyriologie

% G. Meier, "Eunuchs" in Reallexikon der Assyriologie

% Frans Jonckheere, "Eunuchs in Pharaonic Egypt", 1954

% Arthur Darby Nock, "Eunuchs in Ancient Religion", 1925-26
 

[Primary sources:]

% Code of Hammurabi § 178 - § 193

% Erra (Mesopotamian epic myth)

* Middle Assyrian Laws § 19 - § 20 *

The Bible
(Dating the books of the Hebrew Bible is notoriously difficult, although some, if not all, of the books grouped together here are later than this period, e.g. the events of Daniel are set in the 500's BCE. But since all of the books of the Bible exhibit a "pre-rational" view of divinity, for simplicity's sake I put them all in the category of the Age of Myth.)
* Genesis 19 *
* Judges 19 *
* Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 *
% Deuteronomy 23:1, 23:17
% All Biblical verses using the word saris (Hebrew for eunuch) including verses from Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel 
 

% Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places

% Herodotus, Histories
 
 

% Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus

* Plato,   The Republic, Symposium, Laws *

% Aristotle,   The Generation of Animals,   The History of Animals,   Problems

* Lex Scantinia * (see below Plutarch, "Marcellus", and Valerius Maximus, "Of Chastity")

% Terence, The Eunuch

* Plautus, Curculio *

% Wisdom of Sirach

% Strabo, Geography

* Lex Julia de adulteriis *

* % Philo,   On the Special Laws,   On Abraham, On the Contemplative Life

% + Gospel of Matthew 19:11-12 +

* % Martial, Epigrams

% Juvenal, Satires

% * Seneca, On Anger *  (lesbians:) Controversies 1.2.23

% * Statius, Silvae *

% Pliny the Elder, Natural History

% Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews

% Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars

* Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings, Book 6, Chapter 1: Of Chastity (describing the Lex Scantinia among other cases) *
 
 

[Secondary source:]

% Walter Bauer, "Matthew 19:12 and the Ancient Christians", 1914
 

[Primary sources:]

% Vatsyayana, Kamasutra

% Apuleius, The Golden Ass

% Babrios, Fables

% Cassius Dio, Roman History

% Lucian,   The Eunuch

% * Pseudo-Lucian, Amores *

* Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon *

% + Origen, Commentary on Matthew +

% The Talmud, Book of Yebamoth

% + Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies +

% + Minucius Felix,  Octavius +

% Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana

% Plutarch,    * % Demetrius   Alexander   * Marcellus *

% Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander

% + Clement of Alexandria,  Miscellanies and The Educator  +

% Roman legal scholars:  Ulpian,  Paulus,  Gaius,  Modestinus,  others
    Digest of Justinian, Title XXI, Book I, Section 1: The Edict of the Aedile, Rescission, and the Action f or Diminution
    This is the Roman legal text that proves on its own that many, if not most, eunuchs of the third century had no physical defects.

% Heliodorus of Emesa, Ethiopian Fantasy

% Tacitus,   Annales, Histories

% + Tertullian,  Monogamy +
 
 

% + Athanasius, History of the Arians +

% Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis  + The Error of the Pagan Religions +

% Sextus Aurelius Victor, Epitome of the Caesars

* Constantius II, Theodosian Code 9.7.3: "..ubi Venus mutatur..." *

% + Basil the Great, Letter 115, To Simplicia +

% + Basil of Ancyra, On True Integrity in Virginity +

% + Epiphanius of Salamis, Against Heresies and Concerning Faith +

% + Gregory of Nazianos, Oration 37 +

% + Jerome

+ Commentary on Matthew  and Letter to Eustochius +
+ On Isaiah +
+ Against Jovinian +

% Adamantios, Physiognomy

% Ammianus Marcellinus

% Libanius, Oration 18

% + Ambrose, Comparison of Mosaic and Roman Laws  +  On Widows  +

+ Apostolic Canons +

% Claudian, Against Eutropius
 
 

+ Augustine

+ Confessions +
+ City of God +
+ Adulterous Marriages +
+ Reply to Faustus the Manichaean +
+ Contra Adversarium +
+ On Marriage and Concupiscence +
+ On Virginity +

+ Sulpitius Severus, (Dubious) Letter 2

* Procopius of Caesarea,  Secret History

% + Nilus of Sinai +

% + Theodoret of Cyrus, On Isaiah +

* % + Justinian, New Constitutions +
 
 

The Qur'an (see quotes in essay on "Queer Sexuality in the Qur'an and Hadith")

% + Visigothic Code +

% Al-Bukhari, Authentic Hadith (see quotes in essay on "Queer Sexuality in the Qur'an and Hadith")

% Muslim, Collected Authentic Hadith (see quotes in essay on "Queer Sexuality in the Qur'an and Hadith")

% Mas'udi,  Meadows of Gold

% Al-Jahith,  The Animals,   Debate between the Advocate of Girls and the Advocate of Boys

% Ar-Razi (aka Rhazes), The Hidden Illness

% Arabic translation of Hippocrates' Airs, Waters, Places (see Pre-Socratic Era)

% + Isidore of Seville, Etymologicon +

% + Ishodad of Merw, Commentary on Matthew +

% + Leo VI, New Constitutions  +

% + Suidas, Lexicon entries for spadwn [eunuch] and eunoucoV +

Abu 'Abd ar-Rahman as-Sulami, Remembrance of Devoted Sufi Women, (Chapter I Rabi'a al-Adawiyya)

Abu Nasr al-Farabi, On the Perfect State

Article by Rodolphe Guilland on "Eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire", published in 1943
 
 

% + Liudprand of Cremona,   Antapodosis, Embassy to Constantinople   +

% Al-Nadhim, Kitab al-Fihrist

Ibn Hazm, * Neck-Ring of the Dove  *,   On Characters and Conduct

% + Theophylactus of Ochrid, Treatise in Defense of Eunuchs +

* Kai Ka'us ibn Iskandar, A Mirror for Princes (Qabus-Nama) *

* Al-Ghazali, Revival of the Religious Sciences, (Book 23: On Breaking the Two Desires) *

* Gratian, Decretum

% John Skylitzes, Synopsis of Histories

Al-Marghinani, Hedaya,
% (Book on Divorce, Chapter on Impotence)
    (Book on Punishments, Chapter on Carnal Conjunction which Occasions Punishment, and that which does not occasion it)
    (Book on Abominations, Section on the Commerce of the Sexes, and of looking at or touching any person)
    (Book on Hermaphrodites)

% Article by Rodolphe Guilland on "Eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire", published in 1943
 
 

* Ibn Taymiyya, Public Policy in Islamic Jurisprudence *

* Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah *
 
 

+ Lex Carolina § 116 , in the year 1539 +

* Egidio Bossi,  De stupro detestabili in masculos, in Tractatus varii

% Imamiya Code

Benedict Carpzov,   Practica nova imperialis Saxonia rerum criminalem, 1638
 
 

% William Wotton,   The History of Rome, 1701

% Charles Ancillon,   Treatise on Eunuchs, 1707

Franz Xavier Schmalzgrueber,   Crimen fori ecclesiastici, 1727

Luigi Maria Sinistrari,   De Sodomia, part of De Delictis et Poenis, 1754

% Jean-Jacques Rousseau,   Emile, or On Education, 1762

Cesare Beccaria,   On Crimes and Punishments, 1764

Johannes Sam.Fr. Boehmer,   Meditationes in Constitutionem Criminalem Carolinam, 1770 (in Latin)

Wilhelm Heinse,   "From the Foreword to the Translation of the Incidents in the Life of Encolpius" (Petronius' Satyricon), 1773

Johann Jakob Cella,   On Crimes and Punishments in Cases of Unchastity, 1787

Karl Grolman,   Fundamentals of the Science of Criminal Law, 1798
 
 

Paul Johann Feuerbach, Textbook of Common Criminal Law in Effect in Germany, 1801 (section on "Carnal Offences")

% + John Parkhurst, An Hebrew and English Lexicon, 1813 + [definition of Q-D-SH, or holy one = "sodomite" in the Bible]

% John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, published posthumously in 1829, based on travels in 1814

Heinrich Hoessli, Eros: The Male Love of the Greeks, or Researches into Platonic Love, 1836

Johann Ludwig Casper, On Rape and Pederasty and their Investigation by the Forensic Physician, 1852

Ambroise Tardieu, Medico-Legal Studies of Attacks on Morality, 1867

% G. Carter Stent, "Chinese Eunuchs", in Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1877

% John F. Keane (Hajj Mohammed Amin), Six months in Meccah: an account of the Mohammedan pilgrimage to Meccah, 1881.

Francis Burton, % Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah  (1893-4) %  * "Terminal Essay" (1885) (A comparison of Muslim versus Victorian values) *

Otto Seeck, Decline of the Ancient World, 1895

Exchange between Syed Ameer Ali and Malcolm Canon MacColl on alleged homosexuality in Muslim countries, 1895

% Arnold Hug, "Eunuchs", in Pauly's Realencyclopaedie der Classischen Alterthumswissenschaft, Supplement III

* Erich Bethe, "Dorian Pederasty", 1907 *
 
 

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, "Memnon": The Sexual Nature of the Man-Loving Uranian, A Natural-Scientific Description, 1868.

Karl Maria Benkert, "Section 143 of the Prussian Penal Code of April 14, 1851 and its Retention as Section 152 in the Draft of a Penal Code for the North-German League", 1869. [includes additional material from the previous two decades]

Carl Westphal, "Contrary Sexual Feeling", 1870

Gustav Jaeger, The Discovery of the Soul (chapter on homosexuality), 1880

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis: A Clinical-Forensic Study, 1886 (1892 edition)

George M. Beard, Sexual Neurasthenia, 1886

Venjamin Tarnovskii,  Morbid Manifestations of the Sexual Instinct: A Forensic-Psychiatric Study, 1886

Albert Moll,  Contrary Sexual Feeling, 1891

Albert von Schrenk-Notzing, Suggestion Therapy for Morbid Manifestations of the Sexual Instinct, 1892

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, The Homosexual in Criminal Court, 1894

Albert Eulenburg, Sexual Neuropathy: Genital Neuroses and Neuropsychoses of Men and Women, 1895

Havelock Ellis, A Note on the Treatment of Sexual Inversion, 1896

Alfred Hoche, "On the Question of the Forensic Assessment of Sexual Offences", 1897

August Cramer, "Contrary Sexual Feeling in Relation to § 175 of the [German] Criminal Code", 1897

Gustav Jaeger and Karl Maria Benkert, "A Previously Unpublished Chapter on Homosexuality from 'The Discovery of the Soul'", 1880

August Cramer, Forensic Psychiatry: A Guideline for Physicians and Jurists, 1900

Friedrich Wachenfeld, Homosexuality and Criminal Law, 1901

Albert Hagen, Sexual Osphresiology, 1901

Ferdinand Karsch, "Uranism, or Pederasty [male homosexuality] und Tribadism [female homosexuality], Among the Primitive Races", 1901

Eugen Wilhelm, A Synopsis and Criticism of Friedrich Wachenfeld's "Homosexuality and Criminal Law", 1902

Iwan Bloch, Contributions on the Etiology of the Psychopathia Sexualis, 1902

Magnus Hirschfeld, "The Causes and Essence of Uranism"

Benedikt Friedlaender, "Physiological Friendship as a Normal Basic Drive of the Human Being and as the Foundation of Sociality", 1904

Benedikt Friedlaender, "Draft of a Stimulus-Physiology-Based Analysis of Erotic Attraction, using mostly Homosexual Material as a Basis," 1905

Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on Sexual Theory, 1905
                "I. The Sexual Aberrations"
                "III.  The Transformations of Puberty"

Benedikt Friedlaender, Critique of the Recent Suggestions for Amendment of § 175, 1906

Iwan Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, 1907

Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion [first published in German in 1896, then continually revised until 1915]

Mathias Kohan-Bernstein, Unnatural Sexual Offense: A Contribution toward a Critique of German Criminal Law, 1909 [law school dissertation]
           Chapter I. Legal-Theoretical Premises.
           Chapter III. Unnatural sexual offense in general.
           Chapter IV. Homosexual activity and contrary sexual feeling.
 
 

* Wilhelm Kroll, Pederasty, article in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopaedie, after 1910

% August Horneffer, The Priest: His Past and Future, 1912

% Walter Bauer, "Matthew 19:12 and the Ancient Christians", 1914

% Richard Ganschinietz, "Combabus" (section of article on homosexuality, eunuchs and priesthood), in Pauly's Realencyclopaedie

% Arthur Darby Nock, "Eunuchs in Ancient Religion", 1925-26

% Eldon Rutter, The holy cities of Arabia, 1928

% C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century, 1931

% Theodor Hopfner, The Sexual Life of the Greeks and Romans, 1938

Th. Wilhelm Erdle, Attacks on the Morality of Juveniles and Attacks of Juveniles on Morality: Thoughts on the Problem of Homosexuality in the Future Criminal Law, 1938 [law school dissertation in Nazi Germany]

Sandor Rado, "A critical examination of the concept of bisexuality," in: Psychosomatic Medicine, 1940.

% Rodolphe Guilland, "Eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire", 1943

Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, 1948
                ("Chapter 21: Homosexual Outlet")
                (sections on homosexuality in other previous chapters)

Morris Ernst and David Loth, American Sexual Behavior and The Kinsey Report, 1948

Edmund Bergler, "The Myth of a New National Disease: Homosexuality and the Kinsey Report", 1948

Evelyn Hooker, "The adjustment of the male overt homosexual," in: Journal of Projective Techniques, 1957
 
 

Geoffrey Gorer, "Man to Man", 1961

Irving Bieber et al., Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study, 1962
                ("Chapter I: Concepts of Male Homosexuality")
                ("Chapter XII: Conclusions")

% M.A. Shaban, Islamic history: a new interpretation, 1971.

Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, originally in French in 1973
                (Chapter 4: "The frontier of the sexes")

American Psychiatric Association, "Position Statement on Homosexuality and Civil Rights", in: American Journal of Psychiatry (Official Actions), 1974

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Part I, 1976 (available in bookstores)

John McNeill, The Church and the Homosexual, 1976 (available in bookstores)
(p. 65: "... those eunuchs who have been so from birth ... is the closest description we have in the Bible of what we understand today as a homosexual.")

Kenneth Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 1978 (available in bookstores)

John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, 1980 (available in bookstores)

Harald Patzer, Greek Pederasty, 1982

David Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, 1990 (available in bookstores)

Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990
(expressly denies protection from discrimination based on "homosexuality and bisexuality" and "transsexualism")

Nancy Wilson, Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible, 1996. (available in bookstores)
(especially "A Nation of Barren Ones and Eunuchs" pp. 120-131; and "Jesus: De Facto Eunuch", pp. 132-134)

For more resources from the recent period see Recommended Books