Philo on the effeminates (1)

Text
Philo of Alexandria, Special Laws 3.7 (37-42):
In former days the very mention of (pederasty) was a great disgrace, but now it is a matter of boasting not only to the active partner but to the passive partners, who habituate themselves to endure the disease of effemination. They let both body and soul run to waste, and leave no ember of their male nature to smoulder. Mark how conspicuously they braid and adorn their hair, and how they scrub and paint their faces with cosmetics and pigments and the like. In fact, the transformation of the male to the female is practiced by them as an art and does not raise a blush … Certainly you may see these hybrids of man and woman continually strutting about through the thick of the market, heading the processions at the feasts, appointed to serve as unholy ministers of holy things, leading the mysteries and initiations and celebrating the rites of Demeter. Those of them who, by way of heightening still further their youthful beauty, have desired to be completely changed into women and gone on to mutilate their genital organs, are clad in purple like signal benefactors of their native lands … , each of them a curse and a pollution of his country.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Philo of Alexandria, Special Laws 3.7 (37-42)

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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