Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 2.djvu/209

 upon the attitude of an institution placed, as it were, “between love and duty.” It should be recorded that this choir, in its recent visit to the United States, had but one artificial voice, and its owner was the oldest member of the choir.

Young home-born slaves were bought up by the dealers, castrated, because of the increased price they brought when in this condition, and sold for huge sums: Seneca, Controv. x, chap. 4; and kidnapping was frequently resorted to, just as it is in Africa today.

In Russia there is a sect called the “skoptzi,” whose tenets, in this respect, are indicated by their name. This sect is first mentioned in the person of a certain Adrian, a monk, who came to Russia about the year 1001. In 1041, 1090 to 1096, 1138 to 1147, 1326, they are noticed, and in 1721 to 1724 they are prominent. They call themselves “white doves” and are divided into smaller congregations which, in their allegorical terminology, they call “ships”; the leader of each congregation is called the “pilot” and the female leader, the “pilot’s mate.” Their tenets provide for two degrees of emasculation: complete and incomplete, and, in the case of the former, he who submitted to the operation had the “royal seal” affixed to him, this being their name for complete emasculation: in the case of the latter, the neophyte had Rh