The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume X Part 69

[FN#367] De la Femme, Paris, 1827.

[FN#368] Die l.u.s.tseuche des Alterthum's, Halle, 1839.

[FN#369] See his exhaustive article on (Grecian) "Paederastie" in the Allgemeine Encyclopaedie of Ersch and Gruber, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1837. He carefully traces it through the several states, Dorians, aeolians, Ionians, the Attic cities and those of Asia Minor. For these details I must refer my readers to M.

Meier; a full account of these would fill a volume not the section of an essay.

[FN#370] Against which see Henri Estienne, Apologie pour Herodote, a society satire of xvith century, lately reprinted by Liseux.

[FN#371] In Sparta the lover was called or x and the beloved as in Thessaly or x.

[FN#372] The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. Zeus, who became Jupiter, was an ancient king, according to the Cretans, who were ent.i.tled liars because they showed his burial-place. From a deified ancestor he would become a local G.o.d, like the Hebrew Jehovah as opposed to Chemosh of Moab; the name would gain amplitude by long time and distant travel, and the old island chieftain would end in becoming the Demiurgus. Ganymede (who possibly gave rise to the old Lat. "Catamitus") was probably some fair Phrygian boy ("son of Tros") who in process of time became a symbol of the wise man seized by the eagle (perspicacity) to be raised amongst the Immortals; and the chaste myth simply signified that only the prudent are loved by the G.o.ds. But it rotted with age as do all things human. For the Pederastia of the G.o.ds see Bayle under Chrysippe.

[FN#373] See Dissertation sur les idees morales des Grecs et sur les dangers de lire Platon. Par M. Aude, Bibliophile, Rouen, Lemonnyer, 1879. This is the pseudonym of the late Octave Delepierre, who published with Gay, but not the Editio Princeps--which, if I remember rightly, contains much more matter.

[FN#374] The phrase of J. Matthias Gesner, Comm. Reg. Soc.

Gottingen i. 1-32. It was founded upon Erasmus' "Sancte Socrate, ore pro n.o.bis," and the article was translated by M. Alcide Bonmaire, Paris, Liseux, 1877.

[FN#375] The subject has employed many a pen, e.g.,Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola, D. P. A. (supposed to be Pietro Aretino--ad captandum?), Oranges, par Juann Wart, 1652: small square 8vo of pp. 102, including 3 preliminary pp. and at end an unpaged leaf with 4 sonnets, almost Venetian, by V. M. There is a re-impression of the same date, a small 12mo of longer format, pp. 124 with pp. 2 for sonnets: in 1862 the Imprimerie Racon printed 102 copies in 8vo of pp. iv.-108, and in 1863 it was condemned by the police as a liber spurcissimus atque execrandus de criminis sodomici laude et arte. This work produced "Alcibiade Enfant a l'ecole," traduit pour la premiere fois de l'Italien de Ferrante Pallavicini, Amsterdam, chez l'Ancien Pierre Marteau, mdccclxvi. Pallavicini (nat. 1618), who wrote against Rome, was beheaded, aet. 26 (March 5, 1644), at Avignon in 1644 by the vengeance of the Barberini: he was a bel esprit deregle, nourri d'etudes antiques and a Memb. of the Acad. Degl' Incogniti. His peculiarities are shown by his "Opere Scelte," 2 vols. 12mo, Villafranca, mdclxiii.; these do not include Alcibiade Fanciullo, a dialogue between Philotimus and Alcibiades which seems to be a mere skit at the Jesuits and their Peche philosophique. Then came the "Dissertation sur l'Alcibiade fanciullo a scola," traduit de l'Italien de Giambattista Baseggio et accompagnee de notes et d'une post-face par un bibliophile francais (M. Gustave Brunet, Librarian of Bordeaux), Paris. J. Gay, 1861--an octavo of pp. 78 (paged), 254 copies. The. same Baseggio printed in 1850 his Disquisizioni (23 copies) and claims for F. Pallavicini the authorship of Alcibiades which the Manuel du Libraire wrongly attributes to M. Girol. Adda in 1859. I have heard of but not seen the "Amator fornaceus, amator ineptus" (Palladii, 1633) supposed by some to be the origin of Alcibiade Fanciullo; but most critics consider it a poor and insipid production.

[FN#376] The word is from numbness, torpor, narcotism: the flowers, being loved by the infernal G.o.ds, were offered to the Furies. Narcissus and Hippolytus are often a.s.sumed as types of morose voluptas, masturbation and c.l.i.torisation for nymphomania: certain mediaeval writers found in the former a type of the Saviour, and 'Mirabeau a representation of the androgynous or first Adam: to me Narcissus suggests the Hindu Vishnu absorbed in the contemplation of his own perfections.

[FN#377] The verse of Ovid is parallel'd by the song of Al-Zahir al-Jazari (Ibn Khall. iii. 720).

Illum imp.u.b.erem amaverunt mares; p.u.b.erem feminae.

Gloria Deo! nunquam amatoribus carebit.

[FN#378] The venerable society of prost.i.tutes contained three chief cla.s.ses. The first and lowest were the Dicteriads, so called from Diete (Crete), who imitated Pasiphae, wife of Minos, in preferring a bull to a husband; above them was the middle cla.s.s, the Aleutridae, who were the Almahs or professional musicians, and the aristocracy was represented by the Hetairai, whose wit and learning enabled them to adorn more than one page of Grecian history. The grave Solon, who had studied in Egypt, established a vast Dicterion (Philemon in his Delphica), or bordel whose proceeds swelled the revenue of the Republic.

[FN#379] This and Saint Paul (Romans i. 27) suggested to Caravaggio his picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati.

[FN#380] Properly speaking, "Medicus" is the third or ring finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses,

Est pollex Veneris; sed Jupiter indice gaudet, Saturnus medium; Sol medic.u.mque tenet.

[FN#381] So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput. The modern Italian does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and medius to suggest the c.l.i.toris.

[FN#382] What can be wittier than the now trite Tale of the Ephesian Matron, whose dry humour is worthy of The Nights? No wonder that it has made the grand tour of the world. It is found in the neo-Phaedrus, the tales of Musaeus and in the Septem Sapientes as the "Widow which was comforted." As the "Fabliau de la Femme qui se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari," it tempted Brantome and La Fontaine; and Abel Remusat shows in his Contes Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom. Mr. Walter K. Kelly remarks, that the most singular place for such a tale is the "Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying" by Jeremy Taylor, who introduces it into his chapt. v.--"Of the Contingencies of Death and Treating our Dead." But in those days divines were not mealy-mouthed.

[FN#383] Glossarium erotic.u.m linguae Latinae, sive theogoniae, legum et morum nuptialium apud Romanos explanatio nova, auctore P. P.

(Parisiis, Dondey-Dupre, 1826, in 8vo). P. P. is supposed to be Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, an engineer who made a plan of Bordeaux and who annotated the Erotica Biblion. Gay writes, "On s'est servi pour cet ouvrage des travaux inedits de M. Ie Baron de Schonen, etc. Quant au Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues qu'on designait comme l'auteur de ce savant volume, son existence n'est pas bien averee, et quelques bibliographes persistent a penser que ce nom cache la collaboration du Baron de Schonen et d'Eloi Johanneau." Other glossicists as Blondeau and Forberg have been printed by Liseux, Paris.

[FN#384] This magnificent country, which the petty jealousies of Europe condemn, like the glorious regions about Constantinople, to mere barbarism, is tenanted by three Moslem races. The Berbers, who call themselves Tamazight (plur. of Amazigh), are the Gaetulian indigenes speaking an Africo-Semitic tongue (see Essai de Grammaire Kabyle, etc., par A. Hanoteau, Paris, Benjamin Duprat). The Arabs, descended from the conquerors in our eighth century, are mostly nomads and camel-breeders. Third and last are the Moors proper, the race dwelling in towns, a mixed breed originally Arabian but modified by six centuries of Spanish residence and showing by thickness of feature and a parchment-coloured skin, resembling the American Octaroon's, a negro innervation of old date. The latter are well described in "Morocco and the Moors," etc. (Sampson Low and Co., 1876), by my late friend Dr. Arthur Leared, whose work I should like to see reprinted.

[FN#385] Thus somewhat agreeing with one of the mult.i.tudinous modern theories that the Pentapolis was destroyed by discharges of meteoric stones during a tremendous thunderstorm. Possible, but where are the stones?

[FN#386] To this Iranian domination I attribute the use of many Persic words which are not yet obsolete in Egypt. "Bakhshish,"

for instance, is not intelligible in the Moslem regions west of the Nile-Valley, and for a present the Moors say Hadiyah, regalo or favor.

[FN#387] Arn.o.bius and Tertullian, with the arrogance of their caste and its miserable ignorance of that symbolism which often concealed from vulgar eyes the most precious mysteries, used to taunt the heathen for praying to deities whose s.e.x they ignored "Consuistis in precibus 'Seu tu Deus seu tu Dea,' dicere!" These men would know everything; they made G.o.d the merest work of man's brains and armed him with a despotism of omnipotence which rendered their creation truly dreadful.

[FN#388] Gallus lit. = a c.o.c.k, in p.o.r.nologic parlance is a capon, a castrato.

[FN#389] The texts justifying or enjoining castration are Matt.

xviii. 8-9; Mark ix. 43-47; Luke xxiii. 29 and Col. iii. 5. St.

Paul preached (1 Corin. vii. 29) that a man should live with his wife as if he had none. The Abelian heretics of Africa abstained from women because Abel died virginal. Origen mutilated himself after interpreting too rigorously Matt. xix. 12, and was duly excommunicated. But his disciple, the Arab Valerius founded (A.D.

250) the castrated sect called Valerians who, persecuted and dispersed by the Emperors Constantine and Justinian, became the spiritual fathers of the modern Skopzis. These eunuchs first appeared in Russia at the end of the xith century, when two Greeks, John and Jephrem, were metropolitans of Kiew: the former was brought thither in A.D. 1089 by Princess Anna Wa.s.sewolodowna and is called by the chronicles Nawje or the Corpse. But in the early part of the last century (1715-1733) a sect arose in the circle of Uglitseh and in Moscow, at first called Clisti or flagellants, which developed into the modern Skopzi. For this extensive subject see De Stein (Zeitschrift fur Ethn. Berlin, 1875) and Mantegazza, chaps. vi.

[FN#390] See the marvellously absurd description of the glorious "Dead Sea" in the Purchas v. 84.

[FN#391] Jehovah here is made to play an evil part by destroying men instead of teaching them better. But, "Nous faisons les Dieux a notre image et nous portons dans le ciel ce que nous voyons sur la terre." The idea of Yahweh, or Yah, is palpably Egyptian, the Ankh or ever-living One: the etymon, however, was learned at Babylon and is still found amongst the cuneiforms.

[FN#392] The name still survives in the Shajarat al-Ashara, a clump of trees near the village Al-Ghajar (of the Gypsies?) at the foot of Hermon.

[FN#393] I am not quite sure that Astarte is not primarily the planet Venus; but I can hardly doubt that Prof. Max Muller and Sir G. c.o.x are mistaken in bringing from India Aphrodite the Dawn and her attendants, the Charites identified with the Vedic Harits. Of Ishtar in Accadia, however, Roscher seems to have proved that she is distinctly the Moon sinking into Amenti (the west, the Underworld) in search of her lost spouse Izdubar, the Sun-G.o.d. This again is pure Egyptianism.

[FN#394] In this cla.s.sical land of Venus the worship of Ishtar-Ashtaroth is by no means obsolete. The Metawali heretics, a people of Persian descent and Shiite tenets, and the peasantry of "Bilad B'sharrah," which I would derive from Bayt Ashirah, still pilgrimage to the ruins and address their vows to the Sayyidat al-Kabirah, the Great Lady. Orthodox Moslems accuse them of abominable orgies and point to the lamps and rags which they suspend to a tree ent.i.tled Shajarat al-Sitt--the Lady's tree--an Acacia Albida which, according to some travellers, is found only here and at Sayda (Sidon) where an avenue exists. The people of Kasrawan, a Christian province in the Liba.n.u.s, inhabited by a peculiarly prurient race, also hold high festival under the far-famed Cedars, and their women sacrifice to Venus like the Kadashah of the Ph?nicians. This survival of old superst.i.tion is unknown to missionary "Handbooks," but amply deserves the study of the anthropologist.

[FN#395] Some commentators understand "the tabernacles sacred to the reproductive powers of women;" and the Rabbis declare that the emblem was the figure of a setting hen.

[FN#396] Dog" is applied by the older Jews to the Sodomite and the Catamite, and thus they understand the "price of a dog" which could not be brought into the Temple (Deut. xxiii. 18). I have noticed it in one of the derivations of cinaedus and can only remark that it is a vile libel upon the canine tribe.

[FN#397] Her name was Maachah and her t.i.tle, according to some, "King's mother": she founded the sect of Communists who rejected marriage and made adultery and incest part of worship in their splendid temple. Such were the Basilians and the Carpocratians followed in the xith century by Tranchelin, whose sectarians, the Turlupins, long infested Savoy.

[FN#398] A noted exception is Vienna, remarkable for the enormous development of the virginal bosoni, which soon becomes pendulent.

[FN#399] Gen. x.x.xviii. 2-11. Amongst the cla.s.sics Mercury taught the "Art of le Thalaba" to his son Pan who wandered about the mountains distraught with love for the Nymph Echo and Pan pa.s.sed it on to the pastors. See Thalaba in Mirabeau.

[FN#400] The reader of The Nights has remarked how often the "he"

in Arabic poetry denotes a "she"; but the Arab, when uncontaminated by travel, ignores pederasty, and the Arab poet is a Badawi.

[FN#401] So Mohammed addressed his girl-wife Ayishah in the masculine.

[FN#402] So amongst the Romans we have the Iatroliptae, youths or girls who wiped the gymnast's perspiring body with swan-down, a practice renewed by the professors of "Ma.s.sage"; Unctores who applied perfumes and essences; Fricatrices and Tractatrices or shampooers; Dropacistae, corn-cutters; Alipilarii who plucked the hair, etc., etc., etc.

[FN#403] It is a parody on the well-known song (Roebuck i. sect.

2, No. 1602):

The goldsmith knows the worth of gold, jewellers worth of jewelry; The worth of rose Bulbul can tell and Kambar's worth his lord, Ali.

[FN#404] For "Sindi" Roebuck (Oriental Proverbs Part i. p. 99) has Kunbu (k.u.mboh) a Panjabi peasant, and others vary the saying ad libitum. See vol. vi. 156.

[FN#405] See "Sind Revisited" i. 133-35.

[FN#406] They must not be confounded with the grelots lascifs, the little bells of gold or silver set by the people of Pegu in the prepuce-skin, and described by Nicolo de Conti who however refused to undergo the operation.

[FN#407] Relation des decouvertes faites par Colomb, etc., p.

137: Bologna 1875; also Vespucci's letter in Ramusio (i. 131) and Paro's Recherches philosophiques sur les Americains.