"'Thou didst imagine, surely, that thy machinations would pass unnoticed
by the Gods, who, following righteous laws, have enticed thee, who hath
committed unholy deeds, into my hands, so that thou canst not complain of
the punishment I shall inflict upon thee.'

"When he had thus upbraided him, his sons being brought into his
presence, Panionius was compelled to castrate his own sons, who were four
in number; and, being compelled, he did it; and after he had finished it,
his sons, being compelled, castrated him. Thus did vengeance and
Hermotimus overtake Panionius." Herodotus, viii, ch. 105-6.

Mention of the Galli, the emasculated priests of Cybebe should be made.
Emasculation was a necessary first condition of service in her worship.
(Catullus, Attys.) The Latin literature of the silver and bronze ages
contains many references to castration. Juvenal and Martial have
lavished bitter scorn upon this form of degradation, and Suetonius and
Statius inform us that Domitian prohibited the practice, but it is in the
"Amoures" attributed to Lucian that we find a passage so closely akin to
the one forming a basis of this note, that it is inserted in extenso:

"Some pushed their cruelty so far as to outrage Nature with the
sacrilegious knife, and, after depriving men of their virility, found in
them the height of pleasure. These miserable and unhappy creatures, that
they may the longer serve the purposes of boys, are stunted in their
manhood, and remain a doubtful riddle of a double sex, neither preserving
that boyhood in which they were born, nor possessing that manhood which
should be theirs. The bloom of their youth withers away in a premature
old age: while yet boys, they suddenly become old, without any interval
of manhood. For impure sensuality, the mistress of every vice, devising