"Eunuch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-eliminating. And not only self! Since he is manifestly unfit for things as they are, and since kind is prone to beget kind, it is necessary that his kind cease with him, that his progeny shall not be, that he play the eunuch's part in this twentieth century after Christ. And he plays it. He does not breed. Sterility is his portion, as it is the portion of the woman on the street. They might have been mates, ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... as one might say, he pitied her more than himself. Cleopatra was fully aware of this and hoped that if he should be informed that she was dead, he would not prolong his life but meet death at once. Accordingly, she hastened into the monument with one eunuch and two female attendants and from there sent a message to him to the effect that she had passed away. When he heard it, he did not delay, but was seized with a desire to follow her in death. Then first he asked one of the bystanders to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... took charge of him, and led him away by many intricate passages towards the entrance, where it seems the goldsmith had directed him on presenting the signet of Caracalla. The person who took charge of him was a dumb eunuch, a slave in the service ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... member (being men) are to have a free voyce in y^e choyce of their officers, &c. Now, we being perswaded that these 2. men were so quallified, as y^e apostle speaks to Timothy, wher he saith, A bishop must be blamles, sober, apte to teach, &c., I thinke I may say, as y^e eunuch said unto Philip, What should let from being baptised, seeing ther was water? and he beleeved. So these 2. servants of God, clearing all things by their answers, (and being thus fitted,) we saw noe reason but we might freely give our voyces for their election, after this triall. ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... c. 8, 'habens inter se cisternam, cujus camera lateritia sustinetur columnis marmoreis circiter sexaginta'; cf. Die byzant. Wasserbehaelter, pp. 59, 222-23. The bath of Kyzlar Aghassi Hamam may represent the bath built by the eunuch Nicetas, in the reign of Theophilus, and was probably supplied with water from the cistern beside it (Banduri, ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... celebrity beyond its boundaries, and represented him as reading "The Mulatto" to the Sultan's wives and the "Moorish Maiden" to those who were to be strangled, kneeling in rapture, while the Grand Eunuch, crowned his head with laurels. But in spite of obloquy and ridicule, Andersen continued his triumphant progress through all the lands of the civilized world, and even beyond it. In 1875 his tale, "The Story of a Mother," was published ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a virtuous and wise man, that having nothing, he has all. This is just his antipode, who, having all things, yet has nothing. He is a guardian eunuch to his beloved gold: Audivi eos amatores esse maximos sed nil potesse. They are the fondest lovers, but impotent ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... in the squeaky tones of a eunuch, shaking the young fellow by a button of his coat which he had laid hold of. "Do you want to know my opinion? Well, all your newspapers are of no use whatsoever. Come now, let us put a supposititious case. I am the father of a family, am I not? Good. I go to the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... like an osier wand: Then cried: "O pond'rous spoil of Actor slain, And never yet by Turnus toss'd in vain, Fail not this day thy wonted force; but go, Sent by this hand, to pierce the Trojan foe! Give me to tear his corslet from his breast, And from that eunuch head to rend the crest; Dragg'd in the dust, his frizzled hair to soil, Hot from the vexing ir'n, and smear'd with ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Hirnio declared. "The point is that Quadratus had a eunuch less worthless than most eunuchs. He became a very clever surgeon and physician, and endeared himself to Quadratus by many cures among his countless slaves, and even among his kin. Quadratus made him his chief physician and trusted ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... did not please him much. But this travesty of Hamlet was beyond all dreams of the preposterous. To make of the robust Dane, fat and pale, choleric, cunning, intellectual, subject to hallucinations, a woman,—not even a woman: for a woman playing the man can only be a monster,—to make of Hamlet a eunuch or an androgynous betwixt and between,—the times must be flabby indeed, criticism must be idiotic, to let such disgusting folly be tolerated for a single day and not hissed off the boards! The actress's voice infuriated Christophe. She had that singing, labored diction, that monotonous ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... perhaps, more than either, her unusual humility and submission may have moved him. For even as at that moment Ayoub—the sleek and portly eunuch, who was her wazeer and chamberlain—loomed in the inner doorway, salaaming, he vanished again upon the instant, dismissed by a peremptory wave of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... every day; and a poet within Tunis made the menacing verses: "Frank, knowest thou not that Tunis is the sister of Cairo? Thou wilt find before this town thy tomb, instead of the house of Lokman; and the two terrible angels, Munkir and Nekir, will take the place of the eunuch Sahil." ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... multitude caught the first token of the king. Down the road, through the gate, walked a man, bare-headed, bare-footed, alone,—Artaphernes, despot of all Lydia, going to pay his abject homage. Presently the eunuch priests of Cybele, perched above the gate, clashed their cymbals and raised their hymn of welcome. To the boom of drums the thousand chosen cavalry and as many picked footmen of the Life Guard entered, tall, magnificent soldiers,—caps and spear butts shining with gold. After ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... wicked men. Then I reached forth, and took God's waiting hand: And so He led me over mossy floors, Flowered with the silken summer of Shirar, Straight to the Imam's chamber. At the door Stretched a brawn eunuch, blacker than my eyes: His woolly head lay like the Kaba-stone In Mecca's mosque, as silent and as huge. I stepped across it, with my pointed knife Just missing a full vein along his neck, And, pushing by the curtains, there I ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... for a brief period, and then, as soon as a hurried dinner had been eaten, we all assembled again for the afternoon service. This second service lasted for five hours. After singing and prayer, I read the beautiful story of the Ethiopian eunuch, and the Baptismal Service. I endeavoured to explain what we meant by becoming Christians, and stated that I was willing to baptize all who would renounce their paganism, with its polygamy, conjuring, gambling, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... marble, crowned with sculptured capitals in high relief. The windows are appropriate in theme. They represent Noah with the ark; the building of the ark; Moses holding the tables of the law; the passage of the Red Sea; John the Baptist; the Baptism of the eunuch; St. Philip, the deacon; and the Baptism of Christ. In the center of the room stands the font upon an octagonal base of two steps. Its pedestal and bowl are traced with symbolic carvings. Over it is a canopy of elaborately carved ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... is done,' said this honest eunuch; 'I go to embark for Ceuta, and will take you to Italy. Ma ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... Queen's Eunuchs, with several of his Attendants, coming towards him, hunting about, in deep Concern, both here and there, like Persons almost in Despair, and seeking, with Impatience, for something lost of the utmost Importance. Young Man, said the Queen's chief Eunuch, have not you seen, pray, her Majesty's Dog? Zadig very cooly replied, you mean her Bitch, I presume. You say very right Sir, said the Eunuch, 'tis a Spaniel-Bitch indeed.—And very small said Zadig: She has had Puppies too lately; she's ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... the eunuch, as they went on their way, the eunuch said to Philip, "See, here is water: what doth hinder me to be baptized?" Nothing hindered. And Philip said, "If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest." And they both went down ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... an angle in the path that led towards the palace, he was met by one of the eunuch guards, who saluted him after the military style with his carbine, and marched steadily on in pursuance of his duty. The monarch did not even lift his eyes at the guard's salute—his thoughts were uneasy, and his brow dark ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... axle-tree, is said to make it go with half the ease and more than another cart; but we did not see the trial made. To the King's playhouse, and saw "The Faithful Shepherdess," [A dramatic pastoral, by J. Fletcher.] that I might hear the French eunuch sing; which I did to my great content; though I do admire his action as much as his singing, being both beyond all I ever saw ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... but after a while he returned to me bringing a roasted lamb, of which we ate till we had eaten enough, my heart yearning the while for a sight of the lady. Presently, as we sat, the postern opened and the keeper said to me, 'Rise and hide thee.' I did so; and behold, a black eunuch put his head out through the garden wicket and asked, 'O Shaykh, there any one with thee?' 'No,' answered he; and the eunuch said, 'Shut the garden gate.' So the keeper shut the gate, and lo! the Lady Dunya came in by the private door. When ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... persuade him to write them and let me translate them into English. The Sultan goes away to-day. Even water to drink has been brought from Constantinople; I heard that from Hekekian Bey, who formerly owned the eunuch who is now Kislar Aghasy to the Sultan himself. Hekekian had the honour of kissing his old slave's hand. If anyone tries to make you believe any bosh about civilization in Egypt, laugh at it. The real life and the real people are exactly as described ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... tell you he was the most sensible Christian I ever found? He said, 'Well!—after all, truly, any thing save the simple baptism with water was a man-made ordinance. The Ethiopian eunuch had no sponsors'— I don't know who he was, but I suppose the hermit did—'and he probably made as true a Christian for all that' 'In truth,' said I, 'the institution of sponsors seems good for little children—friends who promise to see that they shall be brought ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... make her forget Cyrus, and to love him no less than she had done his brother; but it was long before he could compass it. For the affection of Aspasia to Cyrus had taken so deep impression, that it could not easily be rooted out. Long after this, Teridates, the Eunuch died, who was the most beautiful youth in Asia. He had full surpassed childhood, and was reckoned among the youths. The King was said to have loved him exceedingly: he was infinitely grieved and ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... or, as they say, blad kebir, and is governed by a sheik, who is a eunuch, and a man of considerable importance; they appear to have all the necessaries of life in abundance, and are the most indolent people which the travellers ever met with. The women spin a little cotton, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... vestibule of the house; and there we stopped in order to conclude a discussion which had arisen between us as we were going along; and we stood talking in the vestibule until we had finished and come to an understanding. And I think that the door-keeper, who was a eunuch, and who was probably annoyed at the great inroad of the Sophists, must have heard us talking. At any rate, when we knocked at the door, and he opened and saw us, he grumbled: They are Sophists—he is not at home; and instantly ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... be a queer-looking bird to this Turk and her keeper—probably some Georgian going to a rich Mussulman's harem in company with his eunuch," ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Rufinianae, as if to begin on the following day her journey to the East; hither too came John at night in order to carry out the plan which had been agreed upon. Meanwhile the empress denounced to her husband the things which were being done by John to secure the tyranny, and she sent Narses, the eunuch, and Marcellus, the commander of the palace guards to Rufinianae with numerous soldiers, in order that they might investigate what was going on, and, if they found John setting about a revolution, that ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... the objectivity which we have to expect from this book. Not the soft, flabby, indifferent, contradictory objectivity of the scientific dilettante, of the arch-eunuch: but a mettlesome objectivity which is appropriate in this fighting age, the objectivity of one who honestly attempts to see everything and to know everything; but who, having done so, endeavours to organise his data in accordance ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... begin to broadly play their game. I use the sacramental expressions. What a disgusting monstrosity is a thorough politician! Not even a eunuch! There is nothing in a politician to be emasculated: no mind, no heart, no manhood. In what a galere I got—not by personal contact—but by intellectually observing the worms on the body politic of my—at any ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... after our arrival at Constantinople the princess sent to me the eunuch Sunbul, the Indian, who took me by the hand and conducted me into the palace. We passed four gates, near each one of which were benches, with armed men, the captain occupying a raised platform covered with carpets. When we had reached the fifth gate, the eunuch ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... organs do not grow, hair on the face does not appear, hair elsewhere on the body remains generally scanty, the voice continues as high-pitched as the child's, there is more or less muscle weakness, obesity, and mental sluggishness. In other words, we have an effeminate man, technically a eunuch. In the castrated female, the pelvis does not grow to the normal feminine size, the breasts do not swell as they should, more or less hair comes out on the face, the voice is low-pitched, and tends to be rather husky, the legs are longer, and again, the mentality is dulled. That is, a masculine ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... completely removes all suspicion of this iniquity among all men that those who wish to have their women kept under close guard employ eunuchs for that purpose, even as sacred history tells regarding Esther and the other damsels of King Ahasuerus (Esther ii, 5). We read, too, of that eunuch of great authority under Queen Candace who had charge of all her treasure, him to whose conversion and baptism the apostle Philip was directed by an angel (Acts viii, 27). Such men, in truth, are enabled to ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... ordinarily furnished in black wood furniture with red cloth cushions and silk curtains hanging from the three windows. We were not in this room more than five minutes when a gorgeously dressed eunuch came and said: "Imperial Edict says to invite Yu tai tai (Lady Yu) and young ladies to wait in the East side Palace." On his saying this, the two eunuchs who were with us knelt down and replied "Jur" (Yes). ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... to have been presented to Orsino as a eunuch!—Act i. sc. 2. Viola's speech. Either she forgot this, or else she had ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... names of all, but did not give the name of Callistus, knowing what things had been attempted by him. Marcia, having obtained her request from Commodus, hands the letter of emancipation to Hyacinthus, a certain eunuch rather advanced in life [or a presbyter], who, receiving it, sailed away to Sardinia. He delivered the letter to the person who at that time was governor of the territory, and he released the martyrs, with the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... they were calmed temporarily, but not long after they raised a rebellion which reached the dignity of war. Potheinos, a eunuch who had taken a prominent part in urging the Egyptians on, who was also charged with the management of Ptolemy's funds, was afraid that he might some time pay the penalty for his behavior. Therefore he sent secretly to Achillas ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... the intrigues of his secret enemies had excited the jealousy of Justinian. He was recalled, and the eunuch Narses was sent to Italy, as a powerful rival, to oppose the interests of the conqueror of Rome and Africa. The infidelity of Antonina, which excited her husband's just indignation, was excused by the Empress ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Constantinople, who asserted that the Turkish power might easily supplant that of the Portuguese in India. For this purpose, the Turkish emperor ordered a fleet to be fitted out at Suez, the command of which was given to the eunuch Solyman Pacha, governor of Cairo. Solyman was a Greek janizary born in the Morea, of an ugly countenance, short of stature, and had so large a belly that he was more like a beast than a man, not being able to rise up without the aid of four men. At this time he was eighty years of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... the inspector-general was written on the twelfth of the second month—which according to our reckoning is March of the twenty-third year of the reign of Vandel [i.e., Wanleh]. The eunuch's [21] letter was written on the sixteenth of the said month and year; and that of the viceroy, on the twenty-second ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... memoirs she says nothing about wandering along the shores of the Bosphorus in his company. Still, she says a good deal about Sir Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador, by whom, she declares, she was given a letter to the Chief Eunuch, admitting her to the Sultan's harem. But this, like many of her other statements, must be taken with a generous ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... his post. A permanent bass for the chorus, he betakes himself to the opera, prepared to become a soldier or an arab, prisoner, savage, peasant, spirit, camel's leg or lion, a devil or a genie, a slave or a eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy or sorrow, pity or astonishment, to utter cries that never vary, to hold his tongue, to hunt, or fight for Rome or Egypt, but always ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... Wazir's face, because he would have blackened my face in my husband's eyes!" Asked the King, "How so?"; and she answered, "He came in to me yesterday; but, before I could name the matter to him, behold, in walked Faraj the Chief Eunuch, letter in hand, and said:—Ten white slaves stand under the palace window and have this letter, saying:—Kiss for us the hands of our lord, Merchant Ma'aruf, and give him this letter, for we are of his Mamelukes with the baggage, and it hath reached us that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the eastward of the castle, and off the river mouth. I landed the merchants on the 13th; but the king did not come to town till the 15th, when he sent me his chop or licence to land, which was brought by an eunuch, accompanied by the Xabander and six or eight more, to whom I gave 120 mam. I landed along with them, and two hours afterwards the king sent me a present of some provisions, I having sent him on my landing a present of two pieces;[89] the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... and be very careful of the big fellow behind. He's what is called a eunuch—a sort of guardian. If you give these ladies the 'glad eye,' or attempt to touch them, he'll probably slit your throat with a razor. These women are veiled to all men except their husbands and nearest relations. Many of them are harem women. ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... And as material bodies bearing the generic marks of humanity are definite things, in so far only as they are modes of a Self or soul, enunciations of co-ordination such as 'the soul has been born as a man, or a eunuch, or a woman,' are in every way appropriate. What determines statements of co-ordination is thus only the relation of 'mode' in which one thing stands to another, not the relation of generic character, quality, and so on, which are of an exclusive nature ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... haue it perforce. Then the woman fearing violence, kepte the thing no longer secrete, but sente one of her Eunuches to Cyrus, to discouer the whole matter: which when he heard, he laughed hartely at Araspas, that sayde and made his vaunte that he was superiour to loue, sending Artabasus with the Eunuch, to commaund him not to force the woman: but if he could by fayre meanes allure her, he would not be against him. When Artabasus came to Araspas, he rebuked him, both for his infidelity in the thinge committed ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... play, the Eunuch of Menander, Which we are now preparing to perform, Was purchas'd by the AEdiles, he obtain'd Leave to examine it: and afterward When 'twas rehears'd before the Magistrates, "A Thief," he cried, "no Poet ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... leading tenor was the chief pain. He was large, stout, swathed in a cummerbund, and looked like a eunuch. This fattish, emasculated look seems common in stage heroes—even the extremely popular. The tenor sang bravely, his mouth made a large, coffin-shaped, yawning gap in his orange face, his little beard fluttered oddly, like a tail. He turned ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... his eyes to Heaven and said, "O Allah, rid me of this thing and deliver me therefrom." And immediately his prickle disappeared altogether and he became clean smooth. When his wife saw this, she said, "I have no occasion for thee, now thou are become pegless as a eunuch, shaven and shorn;" and he answered her, saying, "All this comes of thine ill-omened counsel and thine imbecile judgment. I had three prayers accepted of Allah, wherewith I might have gotten me my good, both in this world and in the next, and now two wishes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... each a battle scene. In the upper part of the largest were represented two chariots, each drawn by richly caparisoned horses at full speed, and containing a group of three warriors, the principal of which was beardless and evidently a eunuch, grasping a bow at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... conquest and plunder, wellnigh surpass those of the Slave kings. He had seized the throne by murdering his old uncle in the act of clasping his hand, and his own death was, it is said, hastened by poison administered to him by his favourite eunuch and trusted lieutenant, K[a]fur, who had ministered to his most ignoble passions. To the Khiljis succeeded the Tughluks, and the white marble dome of Tughluk Shah's tomb still stands out conspicuous beyond the broken line of grim grey walls which ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... house of Demetrios, whom she had not seen since the morning after he had wedded her. A month had passed. As yet she could not understand the language of her fellow prisoners, but Halaon, a eunuch who had once served a cardinal in Tuscany, informed her the proconsul was in the West Provinces, where an invading force had ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... foreigners more or less professing Judaism[51]; or, as in the case of the Samaritans, to such as were of mixed Jewish descent, and clung to the Law of Moses, though with manifold corruptions; or, again, to proselytes like the Ethiopian eunuch. The Apostles, we read, continued at Jerusalem, doubtless by God's command and under His ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... is the property of the Kislar Aga [kizlar-aghasi] (the slave of the Seraglio and guardian of the women), who appoints the Waywode. A pander and eunuch—these are not polite, yet true appellations—now governs the governor ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... destroys the baser passion of sense, or transfigures it so that we know it no longer. The idea-driven is callous to the blandishments of beauty, for his is a love stronger than the love to woman. The vestal, the virgin, the eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake are the exemplars of the love ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... the travellers halted under a tree before they were received by the king. But being tired of waiting, they presently went to the residence of Ebo, the chief eunuch, and the most influential man about the person of the sovereign. A diabolical noise of cymbals, trumpets, and drums, all played together, announced the approach of the white men, and Mansolah, the king, gave them a most hearty welcome, ordering Ebo to behead every ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... is good sense defaced Some are bewildered in the maze of schools [26] And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools In search of wit these lose their common sense And then turn critics in their own defense Each burns alike who can or cannot write Or with a rival's or an eunuch's spite All fools have still an itching to deride And fain would be upon the laughing side If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite [34] There are who judge still worse than ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... is a style indeed, for a man's senses to leap over, e'er they come at it: why, it is able to break the shins of any old man's patience in the world. My father read this with patience? Then will I be made an Eunuch, and learn to sing Ballads. I do not deny, but my father may have as much patience as any other man; for he used to take physic, and oft taking physic makes a man a very patient creature. But, Signior Prospero, had your swaggering Epistle here arrived in my father's hands ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... from China; and both the Chinese who had discovered the harbor to the English should be executed forthwith; and that in all other matters upon which we had written to him, our will should be his. Upon receipt of this message by us—the Viceroy, the Eunuch, and myself—we hereby send this our message to the Governor of Luzon, that his Excellency may know the greatness of the Emperor of China and of his Empire, for he is so powerful that he commands all upon which the sun and moon shine, and also that the Governor ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... created among vastly superior numbers of Persians is in nowise exaggerated. The pillar of skulls which Aga Mohammed Shah is represented as having erected in chapter vii. was actually raised by that truculent eunuch at Bam in Persian Beluchistan, and was there noticed by an English traveller, Sir Henry Pottinger, in 1810. I have seen the story of the unhappy Zeenab and her fate described a review of "Hajji Baba" as more characteristic of the seraglio at Stamboul ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Juvenal deplores the inroads of Eastern superstition into Rome. [14] Syria, Babylon, and Asia Minor had added their mysteries to the Roman ceremonial. Astrologers were consulted by small and great; the Galli or eunuch-priests of Cybele were among the most influential bodies in Rome; and the impure goddess Isis was universally worshipped. [15] Egypt, which in classic times had been held as the stronghold of bestial superstition, was now spoken of as a "Holy Land," and "the temple ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to this account and to one another, have clustered round his name, as was inevitable. He is supposed to have preached in Asia Minor; to have died as a young man, in his convent; to have become a hermit, a cobbler, a bishop (of Nicomedia), a eunuch, a politician. Two volumes of mediocre sermons in the Byzantine tongue have been ascribed to him. These and other crudities may be dismissed as apocryphal. Even his name has given rise to controversy, although its origin from the Greek word DODEKA, signifying twelve and alluding to the twelve ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... his chariot he read from Esaias the prophet. Philip went up into the chariot and preached unto him Jesus. The Eunuch was baptized by the wayside. The Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip. The Eunuch went on ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... the terror of all the City husbands. This fellow, in order to play a surer game, causes a report to be spread, that in his last illness, the surgeons had found it necessary to have him made a eunuch. Upon his appearing in this noble character, all the husbands in town flock to him with their wives, and now poor Homer is only puzzled about his choice. However, he gives the preference particularly to a little female peasant, a very harmless, innocent creature, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... the funeral streamer, it will not be imposing, and, in point of fact, the retinue will likewise be small." He therefore was exceedingly unhappy, in his own mind, when, as luck would have it, on this day, which was the fourth day of the first seven, Tai Ch'an, a eunuch of the Palace of High Renown, whose office was that of Palace Overseer, first prepared sacrificial presents, which he sent round by messengers, and next came himself in an official chair, preceded by criers beating the gong, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... men, and bastards, are envious. For he that can not possibly mend his own case will do what he can to impair another's; except these defects light upon a very brave and heroical nature, which thinketh to make his natural wants part of his honor; in that it should be said, that an eunuch, or a lame man, did such great matters; affecting the honor of a miracle; as it was in Narses[42] the eunuch, and Agesilaus[43] and Tamberlanes,[44] that were ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... gods should remain Celts (-Galli-) as they were called, and that no Roman burgess should devote himself to this pious eunuchism, yet the barbaric pomp of the "Great Mother" —her priests clad in Oriental costume with the chief eunuch at their head, marching in procession through the streets to the foreign music of fifes and kettledrums, and begging from house to house—and the whole doings, half sensuous, half monastic, must have ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... instance where any ignorant man hath been ever seduced by papistical book in English, unless it were commended and expounded to him by some of that clergy: and indeed all such tractates, whether false or true, are as the prophecy of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be UNDERSTOOD WITHOUT A GUIDE. But of our priests and doctors how many have been corrupted by studying the comments of Jesuits and Sorbonists, and how fast they could transfuse that corruption into the people, our experience is both late and sad. It is not forgot, since the acute and distinct ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... to the emperor himself (in the seventh century it was transferred to the exarch)—that of confirming the election of the pope. Narses seated Pelagius on the papal throne; but when one as mighty as the "eunuch general" arose in Gregory the Great, the power of the exarchate passed, slowly but surely, into the hands of the papacy. The changes of rulers in Italy, the policies of the falling Goths and of the rising Roman Empire, found their completion in the effects of the Lombard invasion. But before ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... Orleanists are using for their own ends. He has pertinacity, and he insists upon being heard. He may be listened to some day. But that he, or the others, will ever make anything of Orleans... pish! Orleans himself may desire it, but the man is a eunuch in crime; he would, but he can't. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... crippled foot, the harem, the barred lattice, the corset, the eunuch, the denial of education to women, the very text of the marriage-rites in all countries, are man's ideas of keeping woman for himself, from herself. The Orient is rotted ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... not the value of this lamp, and the interest that Aladdin, not to mention herself, had to keep it safe, entered into the pleasantry, and commanded a eunuch to take it, and make the exchange. The eunuch obeyed, went out of the hall, and no sooner got to the palace gates than he saw the African magician, called to him, and showing him the old lamp, said, "Give me a new lamp ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... again thought of sending a force to the relief of Italy; but the Sclavi, another northern people, having crossed the Danube and attacked Illyria and Thrace, prevented him, so that Totila held almost the whole country. Having conquered the Slavonians, Justinian sent Narses, a eunuch, a man of great military talent, who, having arrived in Italy, routed and slew Totila. The Goths who escaped sought refuge in Pavia, where they created Teias their king. On the other hand, Narses after the victory took Rome, and coming to an engagement ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... impropriety in my conversation in the whole of my days; and more than that, I will vouch for the cleanness of my thoughts and the absolute chastity of my life. At what, then, does it all work out? Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper man—the man with the right to existence—a raging stallion forever neighing after ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... sailed round Libya was that the ship could not advance any further but stuck fast. Xerxes however did not believe that he was speaking the truth, and since he had not performed the appointed task, he impaled him, inflicting upon him the penalty pronounced before. A eunuch belonging to this Sataspes ran away to Samos as soon as he heard that his master was dead, carrying with him large sums of money; and of this a man of Samos took possession, whose name I know, but I purposely ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... left the empire to his eight-year-old son Ying Tsung (1436-49 and 1459-64), who was entirely in the hands of the Yang clique, which was associated with his grandmother. Soon, however, another clique, led by the eunuch Wang Chen, gained the upper hand at court. The Mongols were very active at this time, and made several raids on the province of Shansi; Wang Chen proposed a great campaign against them, and in this campaign he ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... compassions; Yet for thy nobleness, for vertues sake, And if thou beest a man, for despis'd beauty, For honourable conquest, which thou doat'st on, Let not those cankers of this flourishing Kingdom, Photinus, and Achillas, (the one an Eunuch, The other a base bondman) thus raign over me. Seize my inheritance, and leave my Brother Nothing of what he should be, but the Title, As thou art ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Emperor followed the hereditary bent of his natural disposition, and left the provinces to fare as best they might, while he enjoyed the pleasures to which his opportunities invited him. The business of state fell very much into the hands of a eunuch named Jawid Khan, who had long been the favourite of the Emperor's mother, a Hindu danseuse named Udham Bai, who is known in history as the Kudsiya Begam. The remains of her villa are to be seen in a garden still bearing her name, on the Jamna ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... of Alexandria, the people would not, for the Egyptians do not love the Greeks. Then the guards cried that they were on Pharaoh's business, and still the people would not, asking what was their business. Whereon a eunuch among them who had made himself drunk in his fear, told them that they came to slay the child of Amenemhat, the High Priest, of whom it was prophesied that he should be Pharaoh and sweep the Greeks from Egypt. And then the people feared to stand longer in doubt, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... remember first what the Greek Empire was then, and who was the new Emperor. Anastasius the poor old Emperor, dying at eighty with his heart broken by monks and priests, had an ugly dream; and told it to Amantius the eunuch and lord chamberlain. Whereon Amantius said he had had a dream too;—how a great hog flew at him as he was in waiting in the very presence, and threw him down and eat him fairly up. Which came true—though not in the way Amantius expected. On the death of Anastasius he determined to ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... diamonds, and not a few of the uglies of London. The Duke,(551) like Osman the Third, seemed in the centre of his new seraglio, and I believe my lady and I thought that my Lord Anson was the chief eunuch. My Lady Coventry was dressed in a great style, and looked better than ever. Lady Betty Spencer, like Rubens's wife (not the common one with the hat), had all the bloom and bashfulness and wildness of youth, with all the countenance ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... were helping Chait Singh; it was necessary to get money from the wazir, and he bade him force the ladies to give up their treasure. The resident at Lucknow brought up some troops; the begams' palace at Faizabad was blockaded, and their eunuch-ministers imprisoned and maltreated until the resident obtained enough to liquidate the wazir's debt. The wazir threw the odium of this transaction on the English. Hastings defended his conduct as just and politic. He was not directly responsible for the severe measures adopted ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... St. Patrick, "is void when it is given to birds, just as the sacrament of marriage is void when it is given to a eunuch." ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... "No, by Allah, O my lady!: nor is there her like in all Baghdad; no, nor amongst the Arabs or the Daylamites nor hath Allah (to whom belong Might and Majesty!) created the like of her!" Thereupon Zuhaydah called for Masrur, the eunuch, who came and kissed the ground before her, and she said to him, "O Masrur, go to the Wazir's house, that with the two gates, one giving on the water and the other on the land, and bring me the damsel who dwelleth there, also her two children and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... blockade them into submission. I am now hard at work against the slave caravans; we have caught fifteen in two months, and I hope by a few judicious hangings to stop their work. I hanged a man the other day for making a eunuch without asking H.H.'s leave. Emin Effendi, now Governor of Equator Province, is Dr. Sneitzer; but he is furious if you mention it, and denies that is his name to me; he declares he is a Turk. There is something queer about him which I do not understand; he is a queer ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... helmet, and her surcoat of cloth of silver, and laid aside all her haughty arms, and dressed herself (hapless omen!) in black armour without polish, the better to conceal herself from the enemy. Her faithful servant, the good old eunuch Arsetes, who had attended her from infancy, and was now following her about as well as he could with his accustomed zeal, anxiously noticed what she was doing, and guessing it was for some desperate enterprise, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... they not only didn't kill any of the royal family, but they left them one of the palaces in the Imperial City and an income of four million dollars Mex. a year, and within this palace the kid who is now thirteen is still Emperor, is called that, and is waited upon by the eunuch attendants who crawl before him on their hands and knees. At the same time he is, of course, practically a prisoner, being allowed to see his father and his younger brother once a month. Otherwise he has no children to ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... of the hall was the colossal figure of the king in adoration before the supreme deity, or receiving from his eunuch the holy cup. He was attended by warriors bearing his arms, and by the priests or presiding divinities. His robes, and those of his followers, were adorned with groups of figures, animals, and flowers, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... yielding metal flowed to human form: Lely on animated canvas stole The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul. No wonder then, when all was love and sport, The willing Muses were debauched at court: On each enervate string they taught the note To pant, or tremble through an eunuch's throat. But Britain, changeful as a child at play, Now calls in princes, and now turns away. Now Whig, now Tory, what we loved we hate; Now all for pleasure, now for Church and State; Now for prerogative, and now for laws; Effects unhappy from a noble cause. Time was, a sober Englishman ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... The eunuch kissed the hem of her garment, and accepted the gift in silence. This man, hitherto omnipotent in his office, had never before encountered such pride in any of the women committed to his charge. Up to the present ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this story, owned that he was somewhat taken aback by the suddenness of this attack! Collecting his thoughts, however, and remembering the case of St. Philip the Deacon, who, though not the Apostle of that name, was undoubtedly an apostolic man, and who went up into the chariot of Queen Candace's eunuch, he answered quietly that they did so when convenience required it, and the occasion ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... that at the looting of the Summer Palace of Pekin, in 1860, bronze effigies of these dogs, known to be more than two thousand years old, were found within the sacred precincts. The dogs were, and are to this day, jealously guarded under the supervision of the Chief Eunuch of the Court, and few have ever found their way into ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... cried Peer, jumping down. "This is Ferdinand Pasha, Governor-General of the new Kingdom of Sahara—and this is His Highness the Khedive's chief pipe-cleaner and body-eunuch." ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... his own immortal works, for which he was near being thrashed and even stabbed. He still has a craze for singing arias, and accompanies his hideous squalling on a wretched jarring, jangling guitar, all out of tune. His faithful Pylades is an ill-bred dwarfish eunuch, whom the Romans call Pitichinaccio. There is a third member of the company—guess who it is?—Why, none other than the Pyramid Doctor, who kicks up a noise like a melancholy ass and yet fancies he's singing an excellent ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... was before me," in John i. 27; the miraculous troubling of the water in the Pool of Bethesda in John v. 3, 4; the narrative of the adulterous woman in John vii. 53 to viii. 11; the question of Philip and the answer of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts viii. 37; the significant and affecting incidents in Paul's conversion mentioned in Acts ix. 5, 6; and the well-known disputed text of the Three witnesses in Heaven, in 1 John v. 7. These omitted passages, which, from internal ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... possess, that belonging to the palace of Asshur-nazir-pal (884-860 B.C.) at Nimroud. It represents the king facing to right, with a bowl for libation in his right hand and his bow in his left, while a eunuch stands fronting him. The artistic style exhibited here remains with no essential change throughout the whole history of Assyrian art. The figures are in profile, except that the king's further shoulder is thrown ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... with a grain of Attic salt at that. Men were regarded as virtuous when they were brave, when they were honest; the idea of using the expression in its later sense occurred, if at all, in jest merely, as a synonym for the eunuch. It was the matron and the vestal who were supposed to be straight, and their straightness was wholly supposititious. The ceremonies connected with the phallus, and those observed in the worship of the Bona Dea, were of a nature that no virtue could withstand. Every altar, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... eyes, that see not the truth only, but ever something over and above the truth, lest they should seem to fail of their office. Imagine yourself, therefore, at a Persian banquet. Keep your eyes downwards, lest a eunuch should catch them resting on one of the concubines. For see, there stands another with his bow ever on the stretch: one glance at the forbidden object as you raise your cup, and his arrow is through your jaw before you ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... upon his head: he was accompanied by numerous attendants, and generally preceded and followed by the spearmen of the Royal Guard, and a detachment of horse-archers. Conspicuous among the attendants were the charioteer who managed the reins, and the parasol-bearer, commonly a eunuch, who, standing in the chariot behind the monarch, held the emblem of sovereignty over his head. A bow-bearer, a quiver-bearer, and a mace-bearer were usually also in attendance, walking before or behind the chariot of the king, who, however, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... the close companionship of a sail boat—while, in reality, the presence of Ira Forman, tending tiller and sheet, was as effective as the watchfulness of a duenna or the guardianship of a harem's chief eunuch. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... contrived for no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or can die away in raptures at the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part of Caesar or Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage. For my part, I have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned heads." Candide ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... although poor Peter needed them about as much as we need last year's snow. She said that his father had been in Zaporozhe, taken prisoner by the Turks, underwent God only knows what tortures, and having, by some miracle, disguised himself as a eunuch, had made his escape. Little cared the black-browed youths and maidens about his parents. They merely remarked, that if he only had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap, with dandified blue crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... Christ, every one according to his gifts, as S. Steven did; and both to Preach, and Baptize, as Philip did: For that Philip, which (Act. 8. 5.) Preached the Gospel at Samaria, and (verse 38.) Baptized the Eunuch, was Philip the Deacon, not Philip the Apostle. For it is manifest (verse 1.) that when Philip preached in Samaria, the Apostles were at Jerusalem, and (verse 14.) "When they heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, sent Peter and John to them;" by imposition of whose hands, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... kinsman's sepulchre, And by the holy Alcoran I swear, He shall be made a chaste and lustless eunuch, And in my sarell [164] tend my concubines; And all his captains, that thus stoutly stand, Shall draw the chariot of my emperess, Whom I have brought ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... Eunuch and Treasurer to Hassan Bassa king of Alger, which Assan Aga was the sonne of Fran. Rowlie of Bristow merchant, taken ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... amazement in the unwinking eyes it was plain that not till now had the eunuch taken cognizance of us. The amazement fled, was replaced with a black fire ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... board, and examined respecting the authenticity of the papers. Among other circumstances tending to establish the credit of these papers, it appears that Mr. Grant offered to make oath that the chief eunuch of the Begum had come to him on purpose to prevail on him not to send the papers, and had declared that the accounts were not to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... So did John, in the same sense; and so did "both Philip and the Eunuch;" but John and Philip did not, therefore, go under the water. But Mr. Kelly will tell you that down in to, and up out of, might as well have been translated to and from, in the case of the Eunuch. If you insist that going down into the water involves immersion, it follows that Philip went under ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... I am sure that they are nothing but Athenians. Oh! ho! I recognize one of these eunuchs; it is Clisthenes, the son of Sibyrtius.(1) Behold the effrontery of this shaven rump! How! great baboon, with such a beard do you seek to play the eunuch to us? And this other ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... up his money in close custody, and that which has power to open all locks is not able to set itself at liberty. If he ever lets it out it is upon good bail and mainprize, to render itself prisoner again whensoever it shall be summoned. He loves wealth as an eunuch does women, whom he has no possibility of enjoying, or one that is bewitched with an impotency or taken with the falling sickness. His greedy appetite to riches is but a kind of dog-hunger, that never digests what it devours, but still the greedier and more eager it crams itself becomes ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... remembered that the fatal limousine had been gray.) It was well known that he had bought it for a foreign woman whom he had brought from over-seas and installed in the palace of his fathers. Yes, he knew well where that palace was. His brother's wife's uncle was a eunuch there, but he was a hard man who held his own counsel and that ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... pale upon his noonday throne: At night two slaves he to her chamber sent,— One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown 2895 From human shape into an instrument Of all things ill—distorted, bowed and bent. The other was a wretch from infancy Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant But to obey: from the fire isles came he, 2900 A diver lean and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... mad? Did not the pentecostal converts 'eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God?' Did not the converts in Samaria 'make great joy in the city?' Did not the Ethiopian Eunuch, having obtained salvation, 'go on his way rejoicing?' And Charles Wesley, four days after his conversion, thus expressed ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... combination of the modern fakir plying his trade and the huge black steadily and systematically beckoning toward a stairway partially concealed beyond the curtain, and looking like some giant eunuch of ancient romance, there seemed something which caught and held the public eye and the public wonder; and they crowded about the improvised entrance, and formed an impassable wall between me and the man so short a distance ahead, yet ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... rather than from their opinions and their distribution of flattery and censure, it must be owned that Belisarius was only the greatest in a constellation of gallant warriors. Hilbud, Germanos, and Salomon, were his worthy companions in arms; and the eunuch Narses was all but his equal as a general, and greatly his superior ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... five years deacon, and twelve years priest, when Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople, dying in 397, the emperor Arcadius, at the suggestion of Eutropius the eunuch, his chamberlain, resolved to procure the election of our saint to the patriarchate of that city. He therefore dispatched a secret order to the count of the East, enjoining him to send John to Constantinople, but by some stratagem; lest his intended removal, if known at Antioch, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... circumstances drove him; he had become one of the Seven because his brethren appointed him, but his next step was in obedience to a specific command of Christ. He went and preached the Gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch, and then he was borne away from the new convert, and after the Spirit had put him down at Ashdod he had to tramp all the way up the Palestinian coast, left to the guidance of his own wits, until he came to Caesarea. There he remained for twenty years; and we do not hear a word about ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... There can be no doubt from the relation sent, as to the attitude of the king of China; for the three greatest magistrates whom he has in the province and dominion of Oquen (to which belongs the province of Chiencho)—that is, the viceroy, the inspector-general and the eunuch—write this, each one of them, in two letters, one of which is for the said archbishop and the other for the said ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... work-houses, and are withheld from and prohibited all communication with men; that into the women's apartments, or the closets of their confinement, no man is allowed to enter unless attended by a eunuch; and that the strictest watch it set to observe whether any of the women look with a lascivious eye or countenance at a man as he passes; and that if this be observed, the woman is sentenced to the whip; and in case she indulges her lasciviousness with any ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... sought out the boy and said to him, "The King summoneth thee, that good may betide thee from him and that he may ask thee a question; then shalt thou return safe and sound to thy dwelling." Asked the boy, "What is the King's need of me that he biddeth me to him on this wise?", and the eunuch answered, "My lord's occasion with thee is question and answer." "A thousand times hearkening and a thousand times obeying the commandment of the King!" replied the boy and accompanied the slave to the palace. When ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... sight of that loathsome creature has almost cured me; and how can I tell that he is a christian? an he were well searched, he may prove a Jew, for aught I know. And, besides, I have always longed for an eunuch; for they say that's a civil creature, and almost as harmless as yourself, husband.—Speak, fellow, are not you such a kind ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... pale men, clad in white, red-fringed robes, which fell straight to their feet. They had no beard, no hair, no eyebrows. In their hands, which sparkled with rings, they carried enormous lyres, and with shrill voice they sang a hymn to the divinity of Carthage. They were the eunuch priests of the temple of Tanith, who were often summoned by Salammbo to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... the punning riddles which are asked at feasts or the children's puzzle about the eunuch aiming at the bat, with what he hit him, as they say in the puzzle, and upon what the bat was sitting. The individual objects of which I am speaking are also a riddle, and have a double sense: nor can you fix them in your mind, either as being or ...
— The Republic • Plato
... court lined with the Black Guard, passed under a gateway, and were met by a shabbily dressed negress. Traversing a hot dazzle of polychrome tiles we reached another archway guarded by the chief eunuch, a towering black with the enamelled eyes of a basalt bust. The eunuch delivered us to other negresses, and we entered a labyrinth of inner passages and patios, all murmuring and dripping with water. Passing down long corridors where slaves in dim greyish garments ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... is something resulting from lust, just as inconstancy is, if by duplicity we understand fluctuation of the mind from one thing to another. Hence Terence says (Eunuch. act 1, sc. 1) that "love leads to war, and likewise to peace ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... boys have been taught the practice of masturbation in their early years, say from eight to fourteen years of age, if they survive at all they often have their powers reduced to a similar condition of a eunuch. They generally however suffer a greater disadvantage. Their health will be more or less injured. In the eunuch the power of sexual intercourse is not entirely lost, but of course there is sterility, and little if ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Thou eunuch of language: thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed: thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms: thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution: thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice: thou cobler, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Samaritans. [8:26]And an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Arise and go to the south, by the way that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza; this is a wilderness. [8:27]And he arose and went. And behold a man, an Ethiopian eunuch, an officer of Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasures, who had come to Jerusalem to worship, [8:28]and he was returning and sitting in his chariot reading the ...
— The New Testament • Various
... it depending on my look; as if there were no other heaven but in my smile, nor other hell but in my frown; that I might send for any man I list, and have his head cut off when I have done with him, or made an eunuch if he denied me; and if I saw a better face than mine own, I might have my doctor to poison it. What ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... few years there was a continual stream of East Indian embassies. During the last twenty years of the century, however, these became more rare, and in 1405 the Chinese emperor found it necessary to send a trusted eunuch, by name Cheng Ho, to visit the vassal states in the south. This man made several journeys, travelling as far as the shores of Africa, and his mission bore immediate fruit. Among others, Maraja Kali, king of Puni, although Cheng Ho does ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... England, and many of the Provincial Grand and subordinate lodges of America, the regulation is laid down that candidates must be "men of good report, free-born, of mature age, not deformed nor dismembered at the time of their making, and no woman or eunuch." It is true that at the present day this book possesses no legal authority among the craft; but I quote it, to show what was the interpretation given to the ancient law by a large portion, perhaps a majority, of the English and ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... uncle Al- Damigh, who rose to him and saluted him; after which quoth Gharib, "How is it with my wives Fakhr Taj[FN53] and Mahdiyah?" Al-Damigh answered, "They are both well and in good case." Then the eunuch went in and acquainted the women of the Harim with Gharib's coming, whereat they rejoiced and raised the trill of joy and gave him the reward for good news. Presently in came King Gharib, and they ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... in order to abolish sexual potency and desire as far as possible. Even when castration is effected in infancy, sexual desire is not necessarily rendered impossible. Thus Marie has recorded the case of an insane Egyptian eunuch whose penis and scrotum were removed in infancy; yet, he had frequent and intense sexual desire with ejaculation of mucus and believed that an invisible princess touched him and aroused voluptuous ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... save himself. This enactment, too, produced no good result, but we had a new set of tyrants in them. But the thing that was especially unseemly and most unworthy, both of the senate and of the Roman people,—we had a eunuch to domineer over us. He was a native of Spain, by name Sempronius Rufus, and his occupation that of a sorcerer and juggler (for which he had been confined on an island by Severus). This fellow was destined to pay the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... same inspired records also teach, that if men are destitute of this faith, if they believe not, they shall be damned, notwithstanding their baptism. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not, shall be damned," Matt. xvi. 16. And Philip said to the eunuch, "If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest be baptized," Acts viii. 37. "Repent and be baptized," Acts ii. 38; viii. 62; xviii. 8. Hence if baptism required previous faith and repentance, or conversion in adults, and if, when they were destitute of this faith or conversion, they ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... to appear in the Temple, except the deaf, an idiot, and a child, and a eunuch, and women, and slaves who are not free, and the lame, and the blind, and the sick, and the aged, and the man who cannot go afoot. "What is a child?" "Everyone who cannot ride on the shoulder of his father, and go up from ...
— Hebrew Literature
... it. I saw Lysimachus betrayed by his son; {172a} Antiochus intriguing with his mother-in-law; {172b} Alexander the Thessalian slain by his wife; and Attalus poisoned by his son: in another place I saw Arsaces killing his wife, and the eunuch Arbaces drawing his sword upon Arsaces; Spartim, the Mede, dragged by the heels from the banquet by his guards, and knocked on the head with a cup. In the palaces of Scythia and Thrace the same wickedness was going forward; and nothing could I see ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... me, Ali, about going to the Cadi," said the chief eunuch of Mahomed, who was standing by, "let me tell you I am no tale-bearer, and scorn to do an unmanly act. The young prince can beat the Giaours without the aid of those who are noisy enough in a coffee-house when ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... had not yet given an answer when, through the door leading from the harem, popped the Kizlar-Aga, the chief eunuch, a respectable, black-visaged gentleman with split lips, who had the melancholy privilege of passing in and out of the Sultan's harem at all hours of the day and night, and finding no ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... almost neglected her enquiries: finding, however, that she would be answered, he told her, that being by the permission of ALMORAN admitted to every part of the palace, except that of the women, he had found means to bribe the eunuch who kept the door; who was not in danger of detection, because ALMORAN, wearied with the tumult and fatigue of the day, had retired to sleep, and given order to be called at a certain hour. She then complained of the felicitations to which she was ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... of Lombard's vinegar: You will not lie in straw, whilst moths and worms Feed on your sumptuous hangings and soft beds; You know the use of riches, and dare give now From that bright heap, to me, your poor observer, Or to your dwarf, or your hermaphrodite, Your eunuch, or what other household-trifle ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... the hips and waist, and the whole being held in an undisplaceable position by a padlock. This was affixed to the woman whenever she was allowed outside the harem grounds, being placed in position by the eunuch, who carried the key at his girdle. In such a harness virtue can be considered perfectly safe; even safe from any mental depredation or revolution, as, with the plug causing such uncomfortable sensations, it is perfectly safe to infer that the imagination could ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... leaving them no other prospect than the sky, and did much the same with all the others in the house. In the gateway next the street, he erected a stable for a mule, and over it a straw loft, and a room for an old black eunuch, who was to take care of the mule. He raised the parapets round the flat roof of the house so high, that nothing could be seen above them but the sky, and that only by turning one's face upwards. In the inner ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
