Against Polycarp [Part Twenty Six]

So now we have finally come back to the place we started. Lucian's story about a stranger - an outsider - coming from Egypt (and presumably Alexandria) and going to Italy is the actual background to Polycarp's arrival in Rome. It can be demonstrated by the hypomnemata's seemingly contradictory claims that its author came to Rome via Corinth. We will support our claims in due course with additional evidence but for the moment the reader need only allow us to make this assertion which has been backed up at least generally by the work we have done demonstrating that Peregrinus was the historical Polycarp.

It has already been noted that the tradition associated with Polycarp acknowledges that he was a eunuch and promoted εὐνουχίαν as the proper state of the true believers in God. Now we will go back to Lucian's account to see that the exact place where Polycarp's ritual castration can actually be determined. We see in Peregrinus 17 an important but overlooked reference usually translated as follows:

Thereafter he went away a third time, to Egypt, to visit Agathobulus, where he took that wonderful course of training in asceticism, shaving one half of his head, daubing his face with mud, and demonstrating what they call 'indifference' by masturbating amid a thronging mob of bystanders, besides giving and, taking blows on the back-sides with a stalk of fennel, and playing the mountebank even more audaciously in many other ways. [Peregrinus 17]

It seems almost impossible to imagine how somebody would show indifference by pleasuring himself in public. The usual interpretation is that he was acting like Diogenes the Cynic, demonstrating 'indifference' for shallow social mores. The fact that Lucian is writing a satire rather than 'real history' also allows for this implausible interpretation simply owing to the fact that Lucian was 'trying to ridicule' his adversary.

Yet we should see that if we go back to the original Greek another very plausible interpretation is possible - one which dovetails perfectly with what we know was going on in Christian circles in Alexandria at this time:

Thereafter he went away a third time, to Egypt, to visit Agathobulus, where he took that wonderful course of training in asceticism, shaving one half of his head, daubing his face with mud, and demonstrating what they call 'indifference' by flagellating his privates (ἀναφλάων το αἰδοῖον) amid a thronging mob of bystanders, besides giving and, taking blows on the back-sides with a stalk of fennel, and playing the mountebank even more audaciously in many other ways.

Indeed Lidelll Scott's Greek dictionary directs the reader to the appearance of a related word in Aristophanes's Lysistrata 1099 where the Spartans declare to the Athenian representative "Polycharides, my friend! We too have suffered terrible things, so let’s not allow those prick-thieves see us so well and truly flagellated!" [ἀμπεφλασμένος] Yes to be sure genitals are involved but I don't see why this necessitates positing that Polycarp was understood to have 'jacked off' in front of the crowds. This makes no sense at all.

When we look at the root φλάω in this and other Greek dictionaries the same meanings keep appearing:

Middle Liddell

φλάω like θλάω

1. to crush, pound, Pind.
2. to bruise with the teeth, eat up, eat greedily, id=Pind.

Slater

φλάω
1. crush “ἀλλ᾽ οὔ νιν φλα?́σαν οὐδ̓ ἀνέχασσαν” N. 10.68
Lexicon to Pindar. William J. Slater. Berlin. De Gruyter. 1969.

In light of all this evidence I think scholars have mistranslated the section and the ritual being described here is ultimately related to eunuch priests called Galli in the Golden Ass and elsewhere who it is said:

would bend down their necks, and spin around so that their hair flew out at a circle; they would bite their own flesh; finally, everyone took his two-edged weapon and wounded his arms in diverse places ... Meanwhile there was one more mad than the rest, that fetched many deep sighs from the bottom of his heart, as though he had been ravished in spirit or filled full of divine power; noisily prophesying and accusing and charging himself, he finally flagellated himself daily with a wire-woven scourge.

Apuleius's account goes on to demonstrate how these same Galli ultimately castrated themselves in these rituals.