Citations:catamitism

English citations of catamitism

• 1686: Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (Monſieur du Buiſſon) [aut.] and Ferrand Spence [tr.], The History of the Life and Actions of that Great Captain of his Age the Viſcount de Turenne, Written in French by Monſieur du Buiſſon, Eldeſt Captain & Major of the Regiment de Verdelin. And Tranſlated into Engliſh By Ferrand Spence., page 312

  In a word the Viſcount de Turenne Eſcaping more happily than the World expected, he return’d his viſits as ſoon as he was in a Condition of going abroad, and being dayly more and more confirmed in his health, nothing any longer hindred him from repairing to the frontiere, but the Marriage of Mademoiſelle de Bouillon, Courted by the Duke of Elbaufi’s Eldeſt Son. This Prince was of ſo Illuſtrious a family, that all the kindred agreed immediately to the Match: For beſides this he had a great Eſtate, & might alſo pretend to ſome conſiderable Settlement at Court: but the Viſcount de Turenne, ſeeing farther than Others, oppos’d it Clandeſtinely, and Remonſtrated to Madam de Buillon, that this Prince having us’d his firſt Wife Ill, whom he had kick’d when with Child, of which ſhe dy’d, ‛twas expoſing her Daughter to the like treatment; that he was addicted to Wine and Women, Qualities not only unworthy a Perſon of his Rank, but allſo to a little Catamitiſm; that beſides he had a Son by his firſt Bed, who by Birthright wou’d have all his Father’s Eſtates and Offices; that thus it wou’d be rendering the Children that ſhou’d come of her Daughter and him ſo Unhappy, that they wou’d not have wherewithall to uphold the Luſtre of their Houſe; that it wou’d be better to think of providing for her in Germany, where they had already ſome Allyances, and where Enow other Matches might be found; that ſhe ought not to conſider that ſhe diſtanc’d her ſelf from her by doing this, that it were much better for her Daughter to be happy far off than unhappy at her Door; that the true kindneſs of a mother conſiſted in procuring her Children’s felicity and not her own; and that in brief any farther thoughts of this Match were ſteering the quite Contrary Courſe.

• 1973: Roy Temple House and Ernst Erich Noth [eds.], Books Abroad, volume 47, issue 3, page 574 (University of Oklahoma)

  Exhibitionists do not like to confess their venial sins — catamitism and group sex, yes, petty avarice and pettier maliciousness, no: the latter faults do not make for salable reading.

• 1989: The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, volume 22, page 136 (Department of English, Temple University)

  In Satire 4, Persius attacked Nero’s “depilation and heterosexual” lust; Dryden substituted homosexuality, catamitism, and impotency, alluding to William’s rumored sexual liaisons with his Dutch favorites.

• 1994: Michael Ryan, “Foucault’s Fallacy” in Reconstructing Foucault: Essays in the Wake of the 80s, edited by Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso and Silvia Caporale-Bizzini, page 175

  Women might therefore have been as much suborned because they represented the potential effeminacy of men as for any more inherent defect. Effeminacy, in other words, may not have been the quality that gave catamitism its meaning; rather, catamitism — the crossing of female and male in biological men — may have been the normative danger that qualified effeminacy as a threat to male heterosexual rule.

• 1996: Jacqueline Long, Claudian’s In Eutropium: Or, How, When, and Why to Slander a Eunuch, pages 76⁽¹⁾ and 80⁽²⁾

  ⁽¹⁾ Prestige, won for whatever reasons, influences the audience’s estimations; therefore it must be claimed for one’s own side and denied to the other.²⁹ But perhaps at the very criterion of prestige, the invective argument steps beyond the immediate political concerns into a morass of personal scandals. Lowly origins, misspent youths, gambling, debts, gluttony, drunkenness, shamelessness, dancing, effeminacy, adulteries, pederasty, catamitism, casual murders, and revolutionary ambitions are alleged with great representational vividness and sometimes very little rational support. Nor need they reflect fact. Cicero in his dialogue De Oratore explicitly recommends inventing material, if necessary, to make a characterization sufficiently lively (De Or. 2.240–41).

  ⁽²⁾ Using the same derogatory themes as classical speeches within the biographical and moral divisions of the rhetorical scheme, Libanius’s invective against Philip successively despises barbarian origins in and of themselves, mocks dependency, rebukes failure to learn cultural values, snidely notes catamitism, drowns practical achievements in the immorality alleged to have won them, and further damns character with accounts of unproductive vice, detests physical deformity, and enrolls the gods against the victim. Such masterful displays forcefully imprinted on students’ minds both the types of attack and the basic structure of the invective formula.

• 2005: Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and His Achievement, pages 206–207

  Only one of their criticisms does Gellius deign to answer, that of ‘paeniteat’ at Cael. 6: Caelius will never take the allegation of catamitism in his youth so hard ‘ut eum paeniteat non deformem esse natum’; that is silly, for we cannot repent of things like good looks that are not of our causation.