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HERODAS' MIMIAMB 7: DANCING DOGS AND BARKING WOMEN
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2015
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Herodas' Mimiamb 7 has often attracted scholarly attention on account of its thematic preoccupation with the sexuality of ordinary people, thus offering a realistic and exciting glimpse of everyday life in the eastern Mediterranean of the third century b.c.e. In addition, his obscure reference in lines 62–3 to the obsession of women and dogs with dildos has been the focus of long-standing scholarly debate: while most scholars agree that the verses employ a metaphor, possibly of obscene nature, their exact meaning is still to be clarified. In response, this article offers an additional paradigm which stresses the cultural osmosis between the Greeks and their eastern neighbours in the Hellenistic period; in my view, Herodas' peculiar choice of expression could be explained more aptly through this hitherto unnoticed perspective. Despite having frustratingly little information about the poet and his life, his familiarity with the Hellenistic East is often implied in his poetic settings: for example, Cos in Mimiamb 2 and probably locations in Asia Minor in Mimiambs 6 and 7 are considered likely to reflect the places where he lived. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that Herodas spent periods of his life in areas of the eastern Aegean where cultural interaction was practically unavoidable. Moreover, his first poem exhibits a certain amount of knowledge and admiration for Ptolemaic Egypt and, although this does not necessarily mean that he lived there, he must have been very familiar with Alexandria and its erudite circles. After all, Herodas, a contemporary of Theocritus who subscribed to his preference for short, elegant poetic forms, shared the latter's interest in the lowly mime, which both of them invested with learned language. Thus, specific motifs, such as the visit of an abandoned mistress to the witches in a desperate attempt to coax back a cruel lover, are treated by both poets and ultimately derive from the literary corpus of mimes by the influential Sophron. Theocritus was also familiar with locations in Cos, an island that appears to have been culturally diverse. One of the foreign communities that increasingly made its presence felt in third-century b.c.e. Asia Minor and the nearby islands of the eastern Aegean was that of the Jews, although the history of particular communities is often difficult to recover. Nevertheless, we do know that as early as the third century b.c.e. ‘various Jewish authors writing in Greek had adopted the prevailing patterns of Greek literature in its many forms, filling them with Jewish content’. The Jews had a prominent and well-documented presence at Alexandria, where their interaction with the Greeks was promoted by the Ptolemies. There, already by the middle of the third century b.c.e., the Pentateuch (the Hebrew Torah) had been translated into Koine Greek by royal request, which probably indicates a sizeable community able to participate dynamically in the cultural interface of Ptolemaic Alexandria. In the following pages, I shall revisit the past interpretations of the aforementioned verses in Mimiamb 7 before arguing that the key to their understanding lies in the interaction of the Greeks with near eastern cultures, particularly the Jews, who seemed to have employed a distinctive metaphor about ‘dogs’ and their perceived sexual habits.
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References
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14 Cunningham (n. 2, 1964), 33–5 and (n. 2, 1971), 174; cf. id. (n. 8), 25; Rist (n. 2), 440–1; Kutzko (n. 2), 167; Sumler, A., ‘A catalogue of shoes: puns in Herodas Mime 7’, CW 103.4 (2010), 465–75Google Scholar, at 465 argues that the list of shoes in poem 7 functions as a list of sexual double entendre to dildos, further linking poems 6 and 7, despite the lack of direct references to dildos in poem 7.
15 Lawall (n. 2), 165, Di Gregorio (n. 2), 279, Kutzko (n. 2), 168 and Zanker (n. 2), 215 argue that Kerdon is only displaying shoes. Rist (n. 2), 440–1 and Sumler (n. 14), 465 take the other position (as I also do).
16 See Cunningham (n. 2, 1964), 34–5; Rist (n. 2), 443; more recently, Sumler (n. 14), 465–6, esp. n. 3.
17 Lawall (n. 2), 165–9; contra, Schmidt, V., Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Herodas (Berlin, 1968)Google Scholar, 125; cf. Levin (n. 2), 345–55; Zanker (n. 2), 214–15.
18 Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven, 1991 2), 221Google Scholar; Rist (n. 2), 440–2, esp. n. 10 noted that in comedy baubones were typically made of scarlet leather citing Cunningham (n. 2, 1971) (cf. Rosen, R., ‘Hipponax, Boupalos and the conventions of psogos’, TAPhA 118 [1988], 29–41, at 35–6Google Scholar); thus, she claimed, the dildos' straps (ἱμαντίσκοι) in Mim. 6.71 could not be an allusion to dogs' (leathern) leashes; cf. Sumler (n. 14), 471, esp. nn. 41–2. The Suda s.v. ὅλισβος adds that Miletus was famous for the manufacture of dildos (citing Ar. Lys. 107–9). The references to Chios and Erythrai in Mim. 6.57–9 may denote places that had a reputation for making dildos and/or the lascivious disposition of their citizens; Rosen (op. cit.), 37 n. 28.
19 See Cunningham (n. 2, 1971), 34.
20 See Luc. Ind. 26.1: οὐδὲ γὰρ κύων ἅπαξ παύσαιτ’ ἄν σκυτοτραγεῖν μαθοῦσα (‘when a bitch has learnt once to gnaw leather it cannot stop’), which the much later (late fifteenth-century) Apostolius (Cent. 13.49 = Leutsch 2.587) explains as ὅτι τὸ ἔθος ἀμετάβλητον (because a habit is unalterable); see Kent, R.G., ‘Classical parallels to a Sanskrit proverb’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 33 (1913), 214–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 215 n. 1. However, as Kent pointed out, Apostolius takes the proverb to refer to a male dog (hence, he ends his rendition of the proverb with μαθών, while Lucian refers to a bitch [μαθοῦσα], which Gregorius Cyprius [thirteenth century] maintained [Cent. 4.74 = Leutsch 2.126]). Cf. Williams (n. 2), 97–100; also, Headlam and Knox (n. 2), 348 for a similar proverb quoted in the scholia to Plato's Resp. 563e.
21 On the performative aspects of the mimiamb, see Zanker (n. 2), 5–6, 129–30 with n. 3, and 199–201; cf. Mastromarco (n. 6), 65–80, esp. 75; Hordern (n. 3), 8–9, esp. n. 22; Puchner, W., ‘Zur Raumkonzeption der Mimiamben des Herodas’, Wiener Studien 106 (1993), 9–34Google Scholar, esp. at 29; Cameron, A., Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton, 1995), 89–90Google Scholar. Hunter, R.L., ‘The presentation of Herodas' Mimiamboi’, Antichthon 27 (1993), 31–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 32 wrote that Herodas' mimiambs were ‘composed … in a mode which strongly suggests … “performance” by more than one actor, rather than solo recitation’. But Panayotakis, C., Decimus Laberius: The Fragments (Cambridge, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 21 expresses doubts.
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25 Rist (n. 2), 441.
26 The verbs βιβρώσκω and βορέομαι had acquired sexual connotations from an early period; see Cyrino, M.S., In Pandora's Jar: Love-Sickness in Early Greek Poetry (Lanham, 1995), 140–1Google Scholar. For the equation of sexual parts with foods, see Henderson (n. 18), 29, 144 and 186.
27 For the vagina as ‘tongue-case’, see Henderson (n. 18), 186 (no. 390); also, Hermogenes (second century c.e.), Id. 2.3 argues that in his speech against Neaira Demosthenes claimed that ‘she plied her trade through three orifices’ (= mouth, vagina, anus), although this part was later removed because it was deemed too rude for the court; see Wooten, C.W. (trans.), Hermogenes' On Types of Style (Chapel Hill and London, 1987), 73Google Scholar; also, Parker, H.N., ‘Sex, popular beliefs, and culture’, in Toohey, P. and Golden, M. (edd.), A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Classical World (Oxford, 2011), 125–44Google Scholar, at 134 with n. 71 (on p. 239); cf. Keuls, E., The Reign of the Phallus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985)Google Scholar, 82 for Athenian men fantasizing about the insatiable desire of women for penetration with real or artificial penises.
28 Indeed the many references to shouting and grumbling in Mimiamb 6 make the women appear as neurotic and totally consumed by their need to acquire Kerdon's famous dildos (Mim. 6.13–17; 34; cf. 6.5–8 referring to Koritto's moaning slave; also, see Mim. 6.30, where Euboule is said to have grabbed Metro's dildo, ἁρπάσασα, and 6.17, 19 and 95–6 for Metro's determination to find out who Kerdon is).
29 See choria in Rist (n. 2), 442; cf. Theoc. Id. 10.10. Herodas, who is familiar with Hipponax's work (e.g. Ussher [n. 1, 1980], 65–76), was probably aware of his comparison of the male organ with a sausage (ἀλλᾶς); Hipp. fr. 86.17 with Rosen (n. 18), 38–9.
30 See, for example, the words κρέας (Ar. Eq. 428, fr. 130.3), κωλῆ (Ar. Nub. 52, 989, 1018; Lys. 2), ὄφον (Lyc. Alex. 49.1) cited in Henderson (n. 18), 47. Although numerous Greco-Roman proverbs refer to ‘dogs’ addiction to leathern goods', they do not have overt sexual connotations. See Kent (n. 20), 214; Williams (n. 2), 99–100; also, Henderson (n. 18), 133 and Kutzko (n. 2), 180.
31 The adjective σκύτινος is used by Ar. Lys. 110 to refer to the dildo Myrrhine was using in the absence of men (σκυτίνη ’πικουρία = leathery aid). One may surmise that while in Aristophanes nothing is as good as the real thing Herodas teases the fears of his male audience by confirming that they can be substituted by dildos.
32 Women were compared in ancient sources to bitches with regard to their alleged sexual voraciousness, albeit not as much as to other animals including wild sows and horses; i.e. Hom. Il. 3.180; 6.344; 6.356; Od. 8.319; 11.424–7; 19.154; cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. 7.7.1150b6; in Hist. an. 572a8–13 Aristotle claimed that in eagerness for sexual intercourse of all the female animals the mare comes first, next the cow; Carson, A., ‘Putting her in her Place: woman, dirt, and desire’, in Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (edd.), Before Sexuality (Princeton, 1990), 135–169Google Scholar, at 142–4, esp. n. 23.
33 See Henderson (n. 18), 127 no. 88 and 133 no. 117, citing Ar. Lys. 158 (where the phrase to ‘flay the flayed dog’ implies masturbation); also, see his no. 119.
34 One could compare the phrase with Mim. 7.18, where Kerdon bids quiet to the ‘greedy thing’ (λαίμαστρον), intentionally vague as to whether it refers to the slave Pistos or to Metro's private parts as she is about to see Kerdon's ‘products’.
35 See Headlam and Knox (n. 2), 289–90 and Cunningham (n. 2, 1971), 164; cf. Anth. Pal. 7.718 for Nossis compared to Sappho.
36 Stern (n. 7), 252–3.
37 Hom. Hymn Dem. 202 (Iambe); Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 2.20 (Baubo, the Orphic version of Iambe).
38 Cf. schol. ad Ap. Rhod. 1.1129; Graf, F., ‘Lesser mysteries – not less mysterious’, in Cosmopoulos, M.P. (ed.), Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults (London and New York, 2003), 241–62Google Scholar, at 246–9.
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40 De Young, J.B., Homosexuality: Contemporary Claims Examined in Light of the Bible and Other Ancient Literature and Law (Grand Rapids, 2000)Google Scholar, 242. During Rehoboam's reign (late tenth century b.c.e.), in the kingdom of Judah, ‘there were male temple prostitutes in the land. They committed all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel’ (1 Kings 14:23–4). All the same, Rehoboam's grandson, Asa, and his son, Jehoshaphat, also dealt with male prostitutes who had remained in the land (1 Kings 15:12 and 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7).
41 For the text of the Hebrew Bible, I used Van Dyke Parunak, H., Whitaker, R., Tov, E., Groves, A. et al. (edd.), The Michigan-Claremont-Westminster Hebrew Bible (Stuttgart, 1990)Google Scholar; for the Septuagint, I used Rahlfs, A. (ed.), Septuaginta (Stuttgart, 1935)Google Scholar.
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43 See Westenholz, J.G., ‘Tamar, qĕdēšā, qadištu, and sacred prostitution in Mesopotamia’, Harvard Theological Review 82.3 (1989), 245–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 246–8, arguing against the existence of sacred prostitution in the ancient Near East; in her opinion the Jewish word qědēša (the etymological equivalent of Akkadian qadištu), refers to someone consecrated to a pagan deity, and although the exact role of such persons is not clearly understood our evidence suggests that they had a special relation with Ištar (see her p. 253 referring to a letter from Sippar where the seals of the goddess participate in the procession of a qadištu woman; cf. her p. 256 for nu-nig, the Sumerian equivalent of qadištu, in the cult of Inanna). Budin, S., The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008), 35–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar discusses Hosea 4:14 referring to Jews sacrificing with the qedešôt as evidence for the cultic function. Also, see her Ch. 4 (pp. 58–92) discussing Herodotus' invention of Babylonian sacred prostitution. Although I agree with Budin that ‘sacred prostitution’ did not exist, in my view the misrepresentation of Babylonian customs does not originate in Herodotus but in our translations of his work (publication in preparation).
44 Hence, John in Revelation 22:15 refers to the κῦνες, the dogs who do not worship true God including the sexually immoral. Paul in the Philippians 3:2–3 warns Christians against the ‘dogs’ who mutilate their flesh, a reference so far understood to target the Jewish practice of circumcision; but, in Leviticus 21:5, mutilation of the flesh is described as an abomination of the pagans; cf. the Wisdom of Solomon 14:12–31, where pagan rituals are associated with sexual perversion.
45 Bottéro, J. and Petschow, H., ‘Homosexualität’, Reallexicon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie 4 (1975), 459–68Google Scholar, at 460–1 summarize textual and artistic evidence; Bachvarova, M., ‘Sumerian gala priests and Eastern Mediterranean returning gods: tragic lament in cross-cultural perspective’, in Suter, A. (ed.), Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Beyond (Oxford, 2008), 18–52Google Scholar, at 20 with n. 11 cites the poem of Inanna and Iddin-Dagan (available from ETCSL [= Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature] 2.5.3.1), where the kurgarrû appear as carrying female implements such as spindles (pilaqqu) and knives with which they slashed themselves in ritual ecstasy; also, see Teppo, S., ‘Sacred Marriage and the Devotees of Ishtar’, in Nissinen, M. and Uro, R. (edd.), Sacred Marriages: the Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (Winona Lakes, 2008), 75–92Google Scholar at 78–9 with n. 25; cf. Greenberg, C., The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago and London, 1988), 96Google Scholar; also, Henshaw, R.A., Male and Female, the Cultic Personnel: The Bible and the Rest of the Ancient Near East (Allison Park, 1994), 284–301Google Scholar and Leick, G., Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (London and New York, 1994), 147–56Google Scholar on sexual deviants.
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47 H. Hartmann, ‘Die Musik der sumerischen Kultur’ (Diss., Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat, 1960), 138; Cohen, M.E., Balag-Compositions: Sumerian Lamentation Liturgies of the Second and First Millennia b.c.e. (Malibu, 1974)Google Scholar, 11, 32; Bottéro and Petschow (n. 45), 465; Sefati, Y., Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi-Inanna Songs (Ramat Gan, 1998), 53–5Google Scholar; Bachvarova (n. 45), 19–22 and 40 with further bibliography. On the association of emesal with lamentation and female mourners, see Teppo (n. 45), 84 with nn. 53–4.
48 Gelb, I.J., ‘Homo ludens in early Mesopotamia’, Studia Orientalia 46 (1975), 43–76Google Scholar, at 73; Kramer, S.N., ‘BM 29616: the fashioning of the gala’, Acta Sumerologica 3 (1981), 1–12Google Scholar, at 2; Lambert, W.G., ‘Prostitution’, in Haas, V. (ed.), Aussenseiter und Randgruppen (Konstanz, 1992), 127–57Google Scholar, at 150–2; Balch (n. 42), 170–1. Also, see Teppo (n. 45), 80–1 and 83–5.
49 Text and trans. from ETCSL 6.1.02, no. 2.100; note that the word gala was written as UŠ.KU, with the first Sumerogram having also the reading GIŠ3 (= penis) and the second one, DUR2 (= anus). In addition, gala is homophonous with gal4–la (= vulva); G. Rubio, ‘Sumerian morphology’, in Kaye, A.S. (ed.), Morphologies of Asia and Africa (Winona Lakes, 2007), 1327–79Google Scholar, at 1369–70; Steinkeller, P., Third-Millennium Legal and Administrative Texts in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad (Winona Lakes, 1992)Google Scholar, 37, also cited by Teppo (n. 45), 84 with n. 57.
50 Gordon, E., Sumerian Proverbs: Glimpses of Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (Philadephia, 1959), 248–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar chose ‘excite’ instead of ‘remove’ (that which belongs to the goddess). Cf. Teppo (n. 45), 84.
51 Groneberg, B., ‘Die sumerisch-akkadische Inanna/Istar: Hermaphroditos?’, Die Welt des Orients 17 (1986), 25–46Google Scholar, at 33–9; Leick (n. 45), 157–69; Bachvarova (n. 45), 33–4, 44; also, see Henshaw (n. 45), 288. Launderville, D., Celibacy in the Ancient World: Its Ideal and Practice in Pre-Hellenistic Israel, Mesopotamia, and Greece (Collegeville, 2010), 38–9Google Scholar summarizes the bibliography on the androgynous nature of Inanna/Ištar mirrored in the ambivalent status of her gala priests.
52 Limet, H., ‘Le poème épique “Innina et Ebih”: une version des lignes 123 à. 182’, Orientalia 40 (1971), 12–28Google Scholar, at 21; Maul, S.M., ‘Kurgarru und assinnu und ihr Stand in der babylonischen Gesellschaft’, in Haas, V. (ed.), Aussenseiter und Randgruppen: Beitrage zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Alten Orients (Konstanz, 1992), 159–71Google Scholar, esp. 166; also, see George, A.R., ‘Four temple rituals from Babylon’, in George, A.R. and Finkel, L. (edd.), Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W.G. Lambert (Winona Lakes, 2000), 259–300Google Scholar, at 270 n. 21.
53 Erra and Išum, Tablet IV, lines 55–8 in Foster, B., Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 2 vols. (Bethesda, 1993)Google Scholar, 797. In the Uru-Amirabi lamentation Ištar also confirms her ability to reverse the order of things including turning a man into a woman. Tablet 20:64–9 in Volk, K., Die Ballag-Komposition Úru-Am-ma-ir-ra-bi: Rekonstruktion und Bearbeitung der Tafeln 18 (19 ff), 19, 20 und 21 der spätten, kanonischen Version (Stuttgart, 1989), 143–4Google Scholar and 150; Launderville (n. 51), 336–7.
54 Greenberg (n. 45), 30; also, see Crane, G., Calypso: Backgrounds and Conventions of the Odyssey (Frankfurt am Main Crane, 1988), 79–80Google Scholar, citing Oppenheim, A.L., ‘Mesopotamian mythology III’, Orientalia 19 (1950), 129–58Google Scholar, at 135, for the argument that the kalû priests were eunuchs and contra, Renger, J., ‘Untersuchungen zum Priestertum der altbabylonischen Zeit, 2. Teil’, Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 59 n.s. 25 (1969), 187–95Google Scholar, at 192–3. Rubio (n. 49), 1370 argues that, despite their notorious effeminacy, gala priests had wives and children; cf. Parpola, S., The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (Winona Lakes, 1997)Google Scholar, xxxiv; Nissinen (n. 42), 26–35, 49. Teppo (n. 45), 79 suggested that ‘The devotees used these techniques in order to reach an altered state of consciousness in which they could achieve union with the divine—a sacred marriage’. Also, see her pp. 85–6 where she suggests that their children could have been adopted or begotten before castration.
55 Nissinen (n. 42), 28–32, 41 with 147 n. 45; Teppo (n. 45), 81 with n. 35 listing the meanings of the Sumerian word UR (= dog) as ‘young man, a servant, a warrior, or an enemy’.
56 Skinner (n. 1), 113–27, esp. 126–9. On p. 299 n. 6, Skinner writes: ‘Strictly speaking, a kinaidos was a kind of dancer whose movements accompanied by the rattle of the tambourine included suggestive wriggling of the buttocks; an inscription from the temple of Isis [Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (= CIG) 4926] indicates that such dancing might be performed in honour of Dionysus’; cf. Williams, C.A., Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 2010 2)Google Scholar, 175 with n. 81 and 193. In Roman times, of course, kinaidoi were typically associated with the cult of Dionysus; see Taylor, R., ‘Two pathic subcultures in Ancient Rome’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 7.3 (1997), 319–71Google Scholar, at 337 and 351; Vout, C., Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (Cambridge, 2002), 155–6Google Scholar; cf. Dunbabin, K., ‘Problems in the iconography of Roman Mime’, in Hugoniot, C., Hurlet, F. and Milanezi, S. (edd.), Le statut de l'acteur dans l'Antiquité grecque et romaine (Tours, 2004), 161–81Google Scholar, at 170–5.
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58 CAD (= Chicago Assyrian Dictionary) K: 529, 557; Nissinen (n. 42), 28–33; Burns (n. 42), 3, esp. n. 3.
59 For the familiarity of the ancient Jews with the assinnu, see Malul, M., Knowledge, Control, and Sex: Studies in Biblical Thought, Culture, and Worldview (Tel Aviv, 2002), 290–2Google Scholar and 298–312.
60 See Leick (n. 45), 266; George (n. 52), 270–1; Boiy, T., Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon (Leuven, 2004)Google Scholar, 284.
61 For the similarities of Cybele's Galli with the assinnu, see Nissinen (n. 42), 32–3, 41. Also, see Bachvarova (n. 45), 33–6, who describes the Phrygian Galli as the descendants of the Sumerian gala priests tracing a connection between gala priests and the classical-period Dionysian lamentation rituals.
62 For the Jewish prejudice against eunuchs, see Leviticus 21:20 and Deuteronomy 23:1 (cf. Deuteronomy 22:5 forbidding cross-dressing); also, see Daube, D., ‘The Hebrew Bible prohibitions of homosexuality’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte Romanistische Abteilung 103 (1986), 447–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim argues that the Leviticus laws are comparable to Assyrian laws on passive homosexuality. However, it could be argued that in their polemic the Jews probably classified as ‘eunuchs’ all types of pagan priests and cult officials; cf. Williams (n. 56), 193–4.
63 Text and translation by Colson, F.H., On the Decalogue. On the Special Laws, Books 1–3 (Cambridge, MA and London, 1937), 500–1Google Scholar. Note that I have opted to translate ἀνδρογύνους as ‘androgynous creatures’, which Colson rendered as ‘hybrids of man and woman’. Also, note that, like Cybele, the Ephesian Artemis was also worshipped by self-emasculated eunuchs whom in the second century c.e. Clement [who had an Assyrian (Tatian?) and a Jewish teacher (Theophilus of Caesarea)] referred to as effeminate κίναιδοι (Pedag. 3.4). Ferguson, J., Clement of Alexandria (New York, 1974)Google Scholar, 50.
64 Keuls (n. 27), 1–4.
65 It seems that the ancient Jews shared their ambivalent attitude towards eunuchs/passive homosexuals, ranging from abject scorn to furtive attraction, with other near eastern societies and the Greeks; Hester, J.D., ‘Eunuchs and the postgender Jesus: Matthew 19.12 and transgressive sexualities’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28.1 (2005), 13–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 18–24; cf. Hdt. 8.105–6. Also, see Crompton, L., Homosexuality and Civilisation (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 53–4Google Scholar; Hubbard, T.K., Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (Berkeley, 2003), 86–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Greek Comedy) and 268–306 (Hellenistic Epigrams); on kinaidoi in the classical period, see Winkler, J.J., ‘Laying down the law: the oversight of men's sexual behavior in Classical Athens’, in Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J. and Zeitlin, F.I. (edd.), Before Sexuality (Princeton, 1990), 176–8Google Scholar, 188–90.
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67 Osiris had been allegedly castrated after death and Isis had made for him an artificial phallus worshipped in his festivals; cf. Plut. De Is. et Os. 358B; 353C; 380B–C; Diod. Sic. 1.22.6. Myśliwiec, K., Eros on the Nile, trans. Packer, G.L. (Ithaca, 2004), 27, 57–9Google Scholar discussed the similarities between Dionysian and Osirian phallic processions.
68 This is certainly what Clement believed; see Clement, Pedag. 3.4.29.3; cf. Paul's letter to the Romans 1:18–32 and Banister, J., ‘Ὁμοίως and the use of parallelism in Romans 1:26–27’, Journal of Biblical Literature 128.3 (2009), 569–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 588, esp. n. 38 for additional bibliography.
69 The maenads, followers of Dionysus, pound the ground with the thyrsus, which drips honey and causes milk and wine to gush up from the earth (Eur. Bacch. 700–15); the imagery here is strikingly close to the Mesopotamian hymns that celebrated the union of the fertility goddess and her consort; see, for example, hymn DI C in P. Lapinkivi, The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in Light of Comparative Evidence (Helsinki, 2004), 64; also, Leick (n. 45), 77.
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75 Even in the earlier Cursing of Agade, the Gutians, the city's enemies, are described as having canine instincts/feelings and monkey features. Text and trans. from ETCSL 2.1.5, lines 155–6; cf. Jastrow, M., A Dictionary of the Targumin, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and Midrashic Literature (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, 1.639 for keleb as a mean person in Aramaic; also, M.H. Pope, Job (New York, 1973), 219.
76 Hutton, J.M., ‘“Abdi-Aširta, the slave, the dog”: self-abasement and invective in the Amarna Letters, the Lachish Letters, and 2 Samuel 3:8’, Zeitschrift für Althebraistik 15–16 (2002/3), 2–18Google Scholar, at 5–6; Hutton disagrees with Margalith, O., ‘Keleb: homonym or metaphor?’, Vetus Testamentum 33 (1983), 491–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argued that keleb in Hebrew could mean dog (as a loan word from Akkadian) as well as slave. Also, see Miller, J.D., ‘Attitudes toward dogs in ancient Israel: a reassessment’, Journal for the Study of Old Testament 32.4 (2008), 487–500CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 497, suggesting that we should take the Deuteronomy text literally (that the price of selling a dog is compared to the price of hiring a prostitute), despite admitting on p. 495 that the ancient Israelites had associated dogs with pagan rituals which they abhorred.
77 Farber, W., ‘Mannam lušpur ana Enkidu: some new thoughts about an old motif’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 49.4 (1990), 299–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 299; Wasserman, N., Style and Form in Old-Babylonian Literary Texts (Leiden, 2002), 180–4Google Scholar.
78 Text and translation from Walls, N., Desire, Death and Discord: Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Myth (Boston, 2001)Google Scholar, 27 with n. 35, also citing the following: Whiting, R.M., ‘An old Babylonian incantation from Tell Asmar’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 75 (1985), 179–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 180–1; Cooper, J.S., ‘Magic and m(is)use: poetic promiscuity in Mesopotamian ritual’, in Vogelzang, M. and Vanstiphout, H. (edd.), Mesopotamian Poetic Language: Sumerian and Akkadian (Groningen, 1996), 47–57Google Scholar, at 47 with n. 4 and 51 with n. 16; Wilcke, C., ‘Liebesbeschwörungen aus Isin’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 75 (1985), 188–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 201; Foster (n. 53), 123, 144. Other incantations describe passion as a wolf, ‘tireless in running’ (lakāta mād), and one must remember that both wolves and dogs belong to the canids.
79 Note the euphemistic use of birkān, knees, for genitals in CAD s.v. birku. Also, see Geller, M.J., Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud (Berlin, 2004)Google Scholar, 18 n. 65, who refers to the rivalry between schools in Palestine and Babylonia in the third century c.e. As he points out, in the Talmud (Pesachim 113b), we read: ‘Our Rabbis taught: Three hate one another, viz.: dogs, fowls, and Parsee priests; some say, harlots too; some say, scholars in Babylonia too.’ As this beraita (= teaching external to the Mishnah) indicates, the ‘dogs’ and ‘fowls’ were replaced by prostitutes in another saying. Despite the late date of the Talmud (the Mishnah is dated around 200 c.e.), the oral tradition it relates goes back several centuries.
80 Hence, see Gleason, M.W., ‘The semiotics of gender: physiognomy and self-fashioning in the second century c.e.’, in Winkler, J.J., Zeitlin, F.I. and Halperin, D.M. (edd.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, 1990), 389–416Google Scholar, at 397–8 for prostitutes as the astrological twin of kinaidoi in second-century c.e. horoscopes on account of their sexual passivity.