Certainly we have already seen from the passage of _Lucian_ and from _Philo_ that Paederastia supplied a motive for the making of Eunuchs; but the passages quoted from _Athanasius_ and other Authors have also taught us that the pollution of boys was carried out in honour of Venus in her temples. As for the _auctoritas Valesii_ (authority of Valesius), _Stark_ adds in his notes (49): “Eandem vim his verbis tribuit, ut ex interpretatione ejus Latina Eusebii videre est. Histor. scriptor. ecclesiast. Paris 1677. fol. p. 211. B.” (He assigns the same force to these words, as may be seen from his Latin translation of Eusebius). To our regret we are unable to refer to this edition,—which it appears to us would have been a highly desirable precaution; for the one which lies before us,[381] a word for word, only more correct, re-impression of the Paris edition, gives the version of Valesius entirely in our sense: “Quippe effeminati quidam et feminae potius dicendi quam viri, abdicata sexus sui gravitate, _muliebria patientes_, daemonem placabant.” (Whereas certain effeminate men, that should rather be called women than men, abrogating the dignity of their sex, and suffering treatment proper to women, used in this way to propitiate their deity.) The same holds good of the translation given by _Stark_: “Viri effeminati et non viriles, naturae dignitatem ultro exuentes, _morbo muliebri_ deam placabant.” (Effeminate men and unmanly, of their own will putting off their nature dignity, used to propitiate the goddess _with feminine disease_.) Ought this to be taken as implying a claim on his behalf to the translation generally as adduced by him or merely to the rendering of the word γύννιδες by _viri effeminati_? The previous authorities, _Eustathius_, _Hesychius_ and _Zonaras_, at any rate refer only to γύννιδες, while _Stark_ himself assigns it the meaning of the _Vice of the Pathic_ in the last words quoted.
Bishop _Synesius_ (378-431 A.D.) in his Speech _De Regno_[382] addressed to the Emperor Arcadius exhorts the latter to set bounds to the insubordination in the army, and for the foreign subject peoples, that are continually meditating treason, to attack them and really conquer them, rather than wait till their hostile temper break out in open revolt. That the renown of the Romans stood fast, that they were victorious, wherever they came and marched through the countries of the world, like the gods, supervising men’s insolence and government. “But those Scythians, Herodotus tells us so, and we see it for ourselves, are all fallen under the νόσος θήλεια (feminine disease). And it is they of whom the subject peoples mainly consist, etc.” He goes on to say how they had submitted only in appearance, while secretly they laughed at the folly of the Romans, who took their submission seriously, etc. Now in the first place we must remember the fact that _Synesius_, like all Greek Orators and Fathers of later times, considered it his special duty to cite the Classical Greek authors as frequently as possible, and with this object made almost any peg do to hang a quotation on. He says of the Romans that they, ὡς Ὅμηρός φησι τοὺς θεούς