the cretin to hissmiling mistress. How much bigger an imbecile than the cretin is the husband!
47
Some Romans were actually prepared to pay more for deformed slaves than for physically perfect ones .… another of Martial’s epigrams has the speaker claiming that he paid a vast sum for a slave advertised by the dealer as being an idiot, and now demanding his money back because the slave is anything but a fool!
Plutarch says that, in Rome, the demand for freaks was so great that, in addition to the conventional markets where one could purchase run-of-the-mill handsome boys and beautiful girls, there also existed a ‘monster market’ .…
Pliny even tells of a dealer called Toranius Flaccus who managed to palm off two exceptionally handsome look-alike slaves as twins for 200,000 sesterces in spite of the fact that they camefrom different parts of the empire and therefore spoke different dialects. When the fraud was exposed, the shrewd Toranius replied that this was precisely why he had charged so much — because, although there was nothing remarkable about fraternal twins looking alike, ‘to find such similarity in persons who belonged to different races was something that was beyond price.’
The fad for dwarfs sees to have originated in Pharaonic Egypt where confidential positions were assigned to ugly dwarfs, and the practice became widespread at the court of the Ptolemies, from where it travelled to Rome. According to Aelius Lampridus, the emperor Commodus favoured a certain individual ‘whose penis was larger than that of most animals’, on whom he ostentatiously bestowed the title of Onos or Donkey in deference to his majestic member. Moreover, at a dinner party he once exhibited two misshapen hunchbacks, who had been smeared in mustard, on a silver platter .…
Phenomenally large penises were in great demand in the Roman world a certain Hostius Quadra, described by Seneca as a monstrum , used to cruise round the public baths looking for the man with the largest sexual organ. A glutton for excess, Hostius then underwent sodomy in a room with enlarging mirrors ‘in order to take pleasure in the false size of his partner’s member by pretending that it was really that big.’ It seems the proud possessor of an outsized organ was treated with some respect, as in Martial’s epigram: ‘If from the baths you hear a round of applause, Maron’s giant prick is bound to be the cause.’ ( 48 )
The emperor Elagabalus (AD 204–22) is even said to have rounded up all those who were endowed with an unusually large sexual organ, presumably for no loftier scientific purpose than that of comparing their respective lengths .… on another occasion he ordered all hernia sufferers to be brought to his baths so that he could have the perverse pleasure of bathing in their company.
Elagabalus possessed so many living deformities that his successor, Alexander Severus, was obliged to dispose of the entire collection, including the palace dwarfs, fearful that theirmaintenance would exhaust his treasury. ‘Male and female dwarfs, imbeciles, and catamites, and all the entertainers and mimes Alexander gave to the public.…’
48
The Roman emperor himself was also often regarded as a monster or prodigy of a kind — this belief that the behaviour of extraordinary individuals can be accounted for in terms of some physical aberration is certainly still with us, as in the case of the entertaining theory that Adolf Hitler only had one ball, as alleged in a popular British wartime song.
Pliny compiled a catalogue of human oddity — about the tallest giants, the shortest dwarfs, record reproductivity, record longevity, etc. He says King Masinissa of Numidia (third century BC) became a father when he was over 86 years old .… Julius Caesar could simultaneously dictate four different letters to four different secretaries.
Aristotle tells us that the largest number of offspring ever produced at a single delivery was five —
47
Some Romans were actually prepared to pay more for deformed slaves than for physically perfect ones .… another of Martial’s epigrams has the speaker claiming that he paid a vast sum for a slave advertised by the dealer as being an idiot, and now demanding his money back because the slave is anything but a fool!
Plutarch says that, in Rome, the demand for freaks was so great that, in addition to the conventional markets where one could purchase run-of-the-mill handsome boys and beautiful girls, there also existed a ‘monster market’ .…
Pliny even tells of a dealer called Toranius Flaccus who managed to palm off two exceptionally handsome look-alike slaves as twins for 200,000 sesterces in spite of the fact that they camefrom different parts of the empire and therefore spoke different dialects. When the fraud was exposed, the shrewd Toranius replied that this was precisely why he had charged so much — because, although there was nothing remarkable about fraternal twins looking alike, ‘to find such similarity in persons who belonged to different races was something that was beyond price.’
The fad for dwarfs sees to have originated in Pharaonic Egypt where confidential positions were assigned to ugly dwarfs, and the practice became widespread at the court of the Ptolemies, from where it travelled to Rome. According to Aelius Lampridus, the emperor Commodus favoured a certain individual ‘whose penis was larger than that of most animals’, on whom he ostentatiously bestowed the title of Onos or Donkey in deference to his majestic member. Moreover, at a dinner party he once exhibited two misshapen hunchbacks, who had been smeared in mustard, on a silver platter .…
Phenomenally large penises were in great demand in the Roman world a certain Hostius Quadra, described by Seneca as a monstrum , used to cruise round the public baths looking for the man with the largest sexual organ. A glutton for excess, Hostius then underwent sodomy in a room with enlarging mirrors ‘in order to take pleasure in the false size of his partner’s member by pretending that it was really that big.’ It seems the proud possessor of an outsized organ was treated with some respect, as in Martial’s epigram: ‘If from the baths you hear a round of applause, Maron’s giant prick is bound to be the cause.’ ( 48 )
The emperor Elagabalus (AD 204–22) is even said to have rounded up all those who were endowed with an unusually large sexual organ, presumably for no loftier scientific purpose than that of comparing their respective lengths .… on another occasion he ordered all hernia sufferers to be brought to his baths so that he could have the perverse pleasure of bathing in their company.
Elagabalus possessed so many living deformities that his successor, Alexander Severus, was obliged to dispose of the entire collection, including the palace dwarfs, fearful that theirmaintenance would exhaust his treasury. ‘Male and female dwarfs, imbeciles, and catamites, and all the entertainers and mimes Alexander gave to the public.…’
48
The Roman emperor himself was also often regarded as a monster or prodigy of a kind — this belief that the behaviour of extraordinary individuals can be accounted for in terms of some physical aberration is certainly still with us, as in the case of the entertaining theory that Adolf Hitler only had one ball, as alleged in a popular British wartime song.
Pliny compiled a catalogue of human oddity — about the tallest giants, the shortest dwarfs, record reproductivity, record longevity, etc. He says King Masinissa of Numidia (third century BC) became a father when he was over 86 years old .… Julius Caesar could simultaneously dictate four different letters to four different secretaries.
Aristotle tells us that the largest number of offspring ever produced at a single delivery was five —
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