However if any one should consider all this still insufficient to prove the case, and regard the indication given by _Longinus_ as not explicit enough, he may learn from _Tiberius the Rhetorician_[359] that as a matter of fact the Ancients understood the νοῦσος θήλεια in Herodotus in this and in no other sense. He says:
“Now a paraphrase is when authors alter a simple, straightforward statement of fact that is complete, for the sake of style or effect or sublimity of phrase, and express the matter in other words, and these more forcible and suitable; as e.g. in _Herodotus_, when he wrote ἐνέσκηψεν ἡ θεὸς θήλειαν νόσον (the goddess afflicted them with _feminine disease_) instead of “made them men-women or cinaedi”. The word ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman) is used here in the same way as in another passage where _Herodotus_ says[360], οἱ δὲ ἐνάρεες, οἱ ἀνδρόγυνοι (and the ἐνάρεες, the men-women). The false interpretation of this word has more than anything else led to misunderstanding as to the νοῦσος θήλεια, for it was supposed that by ἀνδρόγυνοι (men-women) actual eunuchs were intended, whereas pathics are meant and nothing more. How the case really stood might have been seen from _Suidas_, who tells us: _ἀνδρόγυνος_· ὁ Διόνυσος, _ὡς καὶ τὰ ἀνδρῶν ποιῶν καὶ τὰ γυναικῶν πάσχων_· ἢ ἄνανδρος καὶ Ἑρμαφρόδιτος· καὶ ἀνδρογύνων, ἀσθενῶν. γυναικῶν καρδίας ἐχόντων. (_man-woman_: Dionysus, _as both performing a man’s part and suffering a woman’s_. Synonyms, “unmanly”, and “Hermaphrodite”. Also of men-women, weakly men, having the hearts of women.) Dionysus[361] then _performed the act of coition as a man, and suffered himself to be used as a woman_, and for this reason was called ἀνδρόγυνος (man-woman). We find the word used in the same way in _Plato_[362], in the passage of _Dio Chrysostom_ quoted a little above, in various places in the _Writers on Physiognomy_, in _Philo_, loco citato, and in Artemidorus[363]. From the last we quote a passage highly interesting for our purpose:
“A man saw in a dream his penis covered with hair to the extreme tip, shaggy with very thick hair that grew all of a sudden on it. He was a notorious cinaedus, indulging in every abominable pleasure, effeminate and a man-woman; only never using his member as a _man_ does. In this way it happened that that part was so little employed, that through not being rubbed against another body hair actually grew on it.” The same author relates in another place[364]: “A man saw in a dream the rôle[365] of a man-woman played on the stage; _his privy member fell sick_. A man thought he saw a priest of Cybelé (a castrated man); _his privy member fell sick_. This happened in the first instance because of the name, in the second because of the coincidence of the fact with the spectator’s condition. And indeed you know what κωμῳδεῖν (to represent in comedy) signifies in dreams, and what it means to see a priest of Cybelé. You remember too that if any one dreams he sees a Comedy or Tragedy and remembers it afterwards, the event can be predicted according to the plot of the piece dreamed of.”