Male infibulation / [Eric John Dingwall].

  • Dingwall, Eric John.
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Male infibulation / [Eric John Dingwall]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    57/164 (page 43)
    during the whole time of their contests are not allowed to approach women ” (see p. 40, note), whilst Bus- semaker in dealing with the subject says, in speaking of the continence of the athletes, that “ pour se la rendre plus facile, il se faisaient faire des affusions froides, et s’appliquaient sur les reins des plaques de plomb pendant leur sommeil ou recouraient 4 rinfibulation.*M Having taken a hasty survey of a few of the most noteworthy passages dealing with the continence to be observed by athletes, we can now return to Rhodius, who, after a brief discussion of chastity in slaves, has a few words to say upon the material of the apparatus as used for infibulation.1 * 3 After remarking upon the curious fact that most authors are as silent as to its material as they are to its form, he deduces from the fact of Celsus saying “ quo levior, eo meliorthat it was made of some metallic substance, and in support he compares the statements of Pliny and Martial, which together with the opinion of the scholiasts on Juvenal make it seem probable that the fibula was sometimes at least in the form of a bronze ring. With this conclusion Rhodius goes on to speak of the description left by Pignorius, which we have already examined, from which it is clear that that author considered the fibula to be a ring, an opinion which Rhodius thinks is strongly supported by a remarkable discovery in a Roman rubbish heap. Here was found a small ring made of Corinthian bronze nearly rusted through from exposure. It was still elastic and contained a small gap, 1 U. C. Bussemaker in his article Athleta in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquiUs, vol. i, p. 518. Cf. also A. Cabanas, Moeurs intimes du pass£ (2e s6rie, Paris, [1910]), p. 46. How far athletes were actually infibulated with a riDg it is difficult to say, but I am inclined to think this was the exception rather than the rule. Their continence excited the desires of certain women, as we know from Athenaeus (Dipnosophistae; ed. G. Kaibel. 3 vols., Lipsiae, 1887-1890, iii, p. 275), a fact which reminds one of the passages already discussed in Martial and Juvenal. 3 J. Rhodius (op. cit.), p. 58.