Marxist Moments

This serialised blog will be posted in several parts.  So the complete series will appear backwards! But never mind.

          WHERE IS THIS LEADING? (Part 1)

Byzantine Prelude -

          Being a eunuch at the Byzantine imperial court carried a number of advantages if the eunuch in question possessed the talent and ambition to succeed.  As a eunuch one was not dragged into bitter rivalries with the powerful as one could produce no issue for a competing dynasty in a direct line of succession. A eunuch was well-placed to be confidante to influential women who might indeed prefer confiding in a eunuch than in even another woman. A court eunuch – such as Emperor Justinian’s General Narses (who ruled over much of Italy in his early 90s) – could become rich and powerful in his own right. But the top prize – the clincher – would always elude him: the imperial crown. And for the same reason that he could get on so well otherwise: no possibility of establishing a dynasty of his own. Efficient eunuchs were highly-prized as servitors to the sovereign in the treacherous Byzantine and later Ottoman courts. No wonder a father’s ambition for his younger son could be the more greatly fulfilled if the boy were castrated at a very early age. (The priesthood was a less drastic form of celibacy in the Catholic West [Eastern Orthodox priests could marry] and without castration often led the way for a poor – and usually a younger - boy or girl towards riches and power.) The term ‘eunuch’ has come down to us as one of disparagement; at one time, in the East, it could be endowed, as it were, with respect if the eunuch in question was able, as well.

          Needless to say, there are advantages if one is possessed of an ultra-low libido, as a quite large proportion of men and women are: a good deal of storm-and-stress might well be avoided, and in any case you make of your life from what you have and what you have not. Those of us with strong or certainly insistent libidos may well ponder from time to time on whether constitutional celibacy might have saved us from the rather probably and periodically appalling fall-out we and others suffer at least in part because temptation was too great to resist at the time.

          But of course in a society that prizes sexuality above all else, one who lacks a sexual drive might well feel left out. Able to pronounce on various matters but not to experience them. But just as the old courts valued their eunuchs as being the only trustworthy ones they could turn to in times of trouble, or to do various jobs properly, so it is possible that we might put at least some trust in the judgment of those who are not themselves active. Even now people still, I think, turn to the aged ones as having little to gain in forwarding their own agendas for advice or for judgment or indeed for truth, being – not above the fray – but at some remove from it.

          Where is this leading?