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Book Review
Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History. By PIOTR O. SCHOLZ. Translated by JOHN A. BROADWIN and SHELLEY L. FRISCH. Princeton: Marcus Weiner Publishers, 2001. xii + 327 pp. $44.95 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).
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German cultural historian Piotr O. Scholz has written an interesting and unusual book documenting the presence and contributions of a little regarded group of historical figures. In Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History, Scholz seeks to provide his audience with more than a titillating read on the sexual practices of the ancients. Rather, the author intends to bring to light a previously disregarded and shrouded group of people who, he says, represent "a multiplicity of human behavioral patterns that reflect every aspect of good and evil" (p. x). In light of their historical absence, Scholz wishes to acquaint his readers with an array of human sexualities—homosexuality, androgyny, transsexualism, and transvestism, for instance—placing them within their historical, religious, and social contexts, or "life settings" as others have termed such contexts. Undeniably, however, as the title of the book makes clear, this work situates a particular group of men, eunuchs and castrati, at the center of a primarily religious and political life within a more global context than perhaps previously considered. Bringing to bear an innovative set of methodologies used to interpret art and archaeology, ancient biblical and mythological texts, Scholz's work ultimately attests to the existence of a richer and more complex set of social systems at play in the ancient and modern worlds. |
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