In Our Time - The Eunuch

Episode Date: February 26, 2015

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and significance of eunuchs, castrated men who were a common feature of many civilisations for at least three thousand years. Eunuchs were typically employed as servants in royal households in the ancient Middle East, China and classical antiquity. In some civilisations they were used as administrators or senior military commanders, sometimes achieving high office. The tradition lingered until surprisingly recently, with castrated singers remaining a feature of Vatican choirs until the nineteenth century, while the last Chinese eunuch of the imperial court died in 1996.With:Karen Radner Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at University College LondonShaun Tougher Reader in Ancient History at Cardiff UniversityMichael Hoeckelmann British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at King's College LondonProducer: Thomas Morris.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, when an elderly Chinese man called Sun Yauting died in 1996, a brutal tradition lasting almost 3,000 years was brought to an end. He was the last Chinese imperial eunuch, castrated in childhood, and sent to work as a servant to the emperor in the forbidden city, the royal palace in the centre of then, Peking, now Beijing. Unix are known to have been part of the Chinese royal court for millennia,

but there are also a feature of many other civilizations, including the vast Assyrian Empire, Rome, Byzantium, and India. Typically, eunuchs were palace servants, where their sexual impotence meant that they could be trusted to look after royal women. In some civilizations, they achieved great power, commanding armies, and acting as spies and senior government positions. and the eunuch singers known as Castrati took part in services in the Vatican until the late 19th century,

and so went on to become stars of that new entertainment, the opera. With me to discuss the history of Unix are Karen Radner, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at UCL, Sean Tucker, a reader in ancient history at Cardiff University, and Michael Herkelmann, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at King's College London. Karen Radner, some of the earliest heavens we have for Unix and their activities, comes from the Assyrian Empire around 1,000 BC. What part of the world are we talking about, and where did that tradition come from?

Well, the center of the Assyrian kingdom at that time was what we know as northern Iraq, so Mosul, an area that is in the news a lot, so I trust that everyone knows where that is. The evidence is palace decrease, a collection of decrees that various kings of Assyria passed from the 13th century onwards, and the decrease concern the running of the palace household,

and UNOX are attested in the context of the royal women and of caring for access and the prohibition of access to the royal household. So that's how it starts. But did it start there, or did it come there? Had it been trickling through previous? That's what we have around. thousand BC, this collection of palacidics, but by that time, eunuchs have been around for a very long time.

We are talking about an agrarian culture, where animals, of course, have been castrated for a very, very long time. We don't quite know when the practice was... So you think they copied the castles, they saw that if you castrated an animal, they got fatter, and if you castrated a bull, it was less violent, and these two were good things. Yeah, I don't think that the fattening aspect was... very important, but obviously, especially in the context of a royal household, the pedigree is important,

the purity of the line is important, and then it is very important to make sure that only the stallion procreates. And the easiest way to do that is to make sure that most other people who have access to the royal women would be gelded. So to me, it's an obvious solution to an obvious problem. And when this started, we do not know, but by the time it is well attested in a major kingdom of the

Middle East, it's an old tradition. Very, very old tradition. So we talked about a harim here. Well... Because there's a lot of concubines as well as wives, and the fear is that there be persons other than the king interfering with their persons

and messing up the royal line of the Emperor, and in that case, a leader who was the only hereditary position there? Royal line had to be pure. It doesn't even have to be many women. It's enough that there are some. And the whole point of a royal household is, of course, to guarantee that there is a next generation. Assyria stands out as a kingdom that really has an unbroken line of succession. For a thousand years, it was members of the same family that sat on the throne of Assyria among the royal houses. in Europe, it's just Denmark that can post something similar. So that's quite an achievement. And one has to point out that this is in effect a monogamous society. So the only person who had several legitimate wives, meaning their children could inherit, was the king.

And that's a very special household. And therefore the setup of the household is special. And that's where the UNOX come in. Eunox were not a phenomenon that you'd find elsewhere. It was really, at that time, in the late second millennium, a palace phenomenon. So they became servants to these women, and they were servants and guardians? They were not servants to the women, they were servants specifically of the king. But they guarded the women? Yes.

And that was their main function. They also guarded the king himself. That's equally important. Not only were they trusted because they couldn't cause. trouble in the royal succession, but they were, and that's what the name that the Assyrians used for them. He of the head, they were the personal attendance of the king. Which becomes very important as time goes on. Sean Tucker, there were also a feature of classic antiquity. How did they reach Rome, ancient Rome? Rome really started using eunuchs

as luxury slaves. The Greeks hadn't really consumed eunuch slaves, but when Alexander of the great conquered the Persian Empire, the Macedonian kingdoms in East, in Egypt and in Asia, did start copying Persian custom and started using court eunuchs as well. And eventually Rome takes up the practice of using eunuch slaves as well. Are they using them for the same reasons that Karen know? No, these are sort of more personal household slaves to begin with. Why do they want them as personal household slaves, if not to go? I think, I mean, there's a lot of Greek influence on the Roman Empire,

so I think in a way they're copying sort of Hellenistic custom, but also eunuch slaves are very expensive. They're at top of the range slaves, so it's a way of expressing wealth in Roman society. And the Romans were familiar with the idea of the eunuch from at least the second century BC, because the Roman playwright Terence adapted a Greek play called the eunuch. But our evidence really gets much better,

sort of in the early imperial period with Augustus, one of Augustus's friends, the first emperor, Mysinas, apparently it was famous for having an escort of eunuchs and he was incredibly rich, so it was a way of expressing his sophistication and wealth. So it's almost a mark of celebrity status in the room, where it seems to be a mark of the way the court functioned in Syria,

but are you talking, the emphasis is rather different here? I think it's simple. And in fact, it's all about social status. It is a way of expressing power. Maybe in a political setting, it has particular ramifications. But it lets people know how wealthy you are, how important you are, and how sophisticated you are, I think.

I have an impression from reading out there are in Syria, there were a lot. And we're going to talk about the way they adapted and changed. But there weren't very many in Rome. Rome took it up as a luxury item. Yes. That's certainly impression. I mean, we hear about Unix in the Palace in particular, so First Century AD we begin to get more references to Unix at court.

Claudius used a Unic food taster, for instance, and then there are particular favourites. Nero had a favourite unit called Sporos, and then Domitian, very famously, had a unit called Eureenus and poets wrote about him, so contemporary poets wrote about him, celebrating his beauty and his social position, really. So was the aesthetic reasons, though?

Yes, I mean, clearly the Romans do think that eunuchs can be very beautiful and attractive, and they're compared to sort of heroic figures from myth or celebrated beautiful boys like Ganymed, for instance. So there is that sort of sexual, aesthetic, physical aspect. Because there was this hairlessness about that, on-beardiness. Yes, if they're castrated before puberty, you know, they can't grow beards. So they're sort of associated with youth, and that that is celebrated in these poems. Michael Herclman, let's go to China now.

And some of the earliest references to UNIX in China indicate that being castrated as a punishment. Let's talk about the punishment first. What was that for and how is it used? Yes, I think something you pointed out just a minute ago is very important in this context, that at least in the Chinese context, we have to distinguish, between Unix, or let me phrase it in another way. Being a Unic is not a biological condition, it's a political function. So in the Chinese context, we should clearly distinguish between castration as a punishment

and the role of a eunuch at the court, because those develop quite independently. The earliest evidence for castration as a punishment comes from the earliest written records from China, the so-called oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty. Which we were. About the middle of the second millennium BC. And in those oracle bones, which usually consists of a set of questions and answers to oracle questions asked by the king to his divine ancestors, there appear several instances, cases in which the king seems to have ordered the castration of prisoners of war from an ancient ancestors. neighboring tribe. Now, then castration as a punishment enters the book of documents, which is one of

the Confucian classics, as one of the five punishments among tattooing, cutting off the nose, amputating a lack and capital punishment. But then it gets abolished quite early in Chinese history for the first time in the second century BC. And then after a brief interlude, in the fourth century, it gets reintroduced by barbarian nomadic regimes in the north. It finally gets abolished in the 6th century AD, and that's the end, officially the legal end of castration as a punishment. But now castration as a fact for these young boys to become, to grow up in the court and to become part of the court,

in much the way that Karen was talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you tell us a bit about that in China? because it was well developed in China. Yes, indeed. It was well developed in China, and most Unix came from the lower strata of society. So if not the Unic himself had decided to undergo castration,

there are some cases in Chinese history where Unix are supposed to have castrated themselves, then the decision rested with the family. So the family, families that couldn't afford the Confucian education that was, necessary that was required to make an official career, they would decide to have one of their sons castrated and sent him into the palace in the hope that once he rose to a considerable position of power, he would help his own family, his own kin.

Was the function at that court similar to the function that Karen outlined at the Assyrian courts? They first were domestic slaves, you might call it. column that way, though the term slave in the context of China is a bit problematic. So they appear in the context, but their original function is a bit fuzzy in the sources. It's not referred to that explicitly. What's referred to is that they guarded the gates to the imperial Harim, or Hoogun, the rear palace as it was called in China.

And other than in ancient Assyria, this was not a monogamous society, it was a polygamous society. So we all know Chinese empress, they had many wives and especially concubines. And really many. When we say many, what are we talking about? We're talking about hundreds here. And the more the number of concubines in the rear palace increases, the more the number of eunuchs increases. So by the end of the Ming dynasty in the 17th century AD, we are, said to have 70,000 Unix in the Imperial Capital.

In Beijing alone? Yes. That's an extraordinary number, isn't it? It is an extraordinary number. And they're all working, they're all inside the palace? Not necessarily, not by the end of the Ming and not by the end of other dynasties that employed Unix on a large scale. Because once they are firmly established in the Imperial Palace,

where first at the beginning of the dynasty, they're usually restricted to domestic service. So they become dogs' bodies of the emperor and his spouses. They then gradually take over the management of the whole imperial palace. So from acquiring, from the acquisition of food through the management of the imperial wardrobe to the imperial stables, they then, move out and spread out into the political administration. Can I go back to Karen Radner on this one? Because same in the Syria.

It's sort of parallel, isn't it? Well, that'll do for this discussion. The eunuchs began to be given important positions, some extraordinary important positions. Heads of armies, heads of fleets. So how did that move take place? How and why did that move take place? Let's stick to Assyria with you.

Yeah. So we are now in the early first millennium BC, so one and a half millennia before the situation that Michael just discussed. And Syria is a very long-lived state, as we said. And in the 9th century, this is at the end of a period of reconquest. Yeah, they get back regions in the Middle East from what is today, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, that they'd controlled earlier, and they'd lost them. And when they reconquered and reclaimed these regions,

some creative minds set up new principles of government in a way in order to guarantee that this loss wouldn't happen again. And they came up with all sorts of interesting new administrative innovations. And one of them is that the UNOX got a new job description and were sort of basically sent out into the world. Up to that point, they had been a hallmark of civilized palace life, and in the 9th century, they were sent out into the provinces and ruled. It seems a big transition, doesn't it?

Yes. You're a eunuch. You've been a eunuch since you was 10, and you're being trained to look after the harrow. Let's leave it at that. That's the deal that you've given yourself, but you can seek favours and so maybe your family would benefit in some remote way

and so, but mostly not you're shaking your hand. Okay, fine. I'm ready in somebody's notes. Anyway, there you go. But then there's the move to being used as civil servants, to be in the army, to be in the Navy, to become powerful people.

Was there any... Can you just give us some clue as to why that happened? Well, this is not the first time that they take up the military function. I said earlier on they are not merely the guardians

of the royal women, but they are from the start the personal attendance of the king. And that also includes guarding the king. So they for a long time, by that point, have been the personal bodyguards of the king, which means, of course,

that fighting isn't new at all to the work description of the UNOQ. But it's still a big step to sort of leave the personal bodyguard function behind and then take up the highest administrative offices far away from court and that's what happens

in the 9th century and that's very radical we have to be aware of the fact that. Is there a reason? I mean it's silly but this is a conversation and not a 600 page book. Is there one reason why this happened then? It's a creative minds coming up with

with new it's a complete. It's a completely novel scenario. But you can also, you know, there are other very, very new things that happen at that time. Why they came up with that? I don't know, but it's a very, very, very good solution.

Was there anything similar happening, Sean Tucker, in Rome, in the Roman world? Yes, absolutely. There is a change in the position of Unix in Rome, and it sort of emerges in the third century, AD with the Emperor Diocletian. We begin to see Unix as a regular, presence at court, a more institutional presence in the role of Chamberlains.

And that seems to be connected with the changing status of the emperor himself. Initially, the emperor is just meant to be the first citizen. But over time, it becomes obvious that he is an absolutist monarch. So he begins to have a court like Assyria and China. Once you get that sort of court, you get those sort of uniform. Yes, yes, there is this idea that it is to do with absolutist monarchies. And it's a feature of those kinds of systems. I mean, it's a bit complicated.

there's debate about exactly the hard the process develops, but we do begin to see it at the end of the third century into the fourth century. And our first really famous court eunuch is a man called Eusebius, who was the Grand Chamberlain of the Emperor Constantine.

What does the Grand Chamberlain mean in those days? Well, and that's a good question. I mean, they're called Chamberlains, but in actual fact, they can do whatever the Emperor wants them to do. So can we find a contemporary reference that's useful for us? Because Grand Chamberlain is sort of Gilbert and Sullivan, really.

Yes. But what is actually going on with the Grand Chamber in there? Oh, well, he works in close proximity with the Emperor. I mean, he might be in the palace, but he might be out on special missions. You know, he's not stuck with the Emperor all the time. But he's kind of head of the Imperial Household in a way, but he does whatever the Emperor does, so they don't really have job descriptions as such. But has he in his own right, does he in his own right have power?

Can he hire people? Can he bring things together? Can he do things without too much reference to the emperor? Yes, I mean, that's what the sources indicate that these men are basically running the empire and that they're more powerful than the emperor himself and they have very high social status and have high careers and can be very rich.

So absolutely, yes. And I mean, another example is utropius at the end of the 4th century who was actually a consul. He became consul. Is there any sense, Michael Heckelman, in which we've come to China now, because I've got China on right, to Syria in the middle, and Rome on the left.

As I said, it's a bit United Nations this programme, but is there a sense in which the Emperor is using the Unix to bypass the assumed inherited privileges of the rich and powerful, the aristocracy, whatever we

want to call them in different. This is his gang, isn't it? That he can control them, they owe allegiance only to him, and they're not going to breed. And so he's not going to breed. And so he's not to be worried about their sons and so on attacking him? Well, once you mentioned their sons,

that's a very interesting question with regard to China because they start to adopt children on a huge scale. But before they adopt children, why would they promote it so? It's not only the emperor using the Unix, it's also the Unix using the emperor. But you're absolutely right. I think one very useful image which is laid down in the Chinese bureaucracy we can use to describe that is the difference between the inner court and the outer court. So in China, the inner court consists of the emperor, his spouses, his in-laws, and the eunuchs.

The outer court mainly consists of career officials from various backgrounds in medieval times. It's more in aristocracy. In late imperial times, they go through the civil service examinations. What happens, especially in long-lasting dynasties, is quite a reverse to Rome and Assyria. The role of Unix outside of the imperial palace never gets systematized. It's never made official that they take on any roles outside of the domestic service to the emperor. but they take on these functions more or less ex officio. So they have a position in a special body inside the imperial palace.

And from there, they are dispatched on an ad hoc basis to the provinces to serve certain functions, yes. Do the emperors in many cases feel very secure, much more secure than with any other abharmes? the previous chief advisors. Yes, they certainly feel more secure in especially the long-lasting dynasties when the inner court and the outer court get more and more alienated from each other. So what happened, for instance, in the 8th and 9th century,

is that after a huge rebellion in the 8th century, the emperors couldn't trust their military any longer. And then they allow unic. to take on military functions. The reason for that is plain and simple. The Unix would have been those persons in the environment of the emperor whom he knew and could trust from early childhood on. He would grow up with Unix in the palace.

Often they were the only male company he was allowed to have. There's this famous or a very, very nice, depiction in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor when Pui, the last emperor, plays with his eunuchs hide and seek, which is dripping with

homosexual overtones. So there's really a very strong bond between not only the Emperor, but already the crown prince and his unix. Can we go back? Karen, Randke, can you tell us in Assyria how these eunuchs were chosen

and what methods were to turn them into Unix? Well, that's all not completely clear, but clear enough. The main attraction of the Unix was that they were not at least officially affiliated with any of the important families of the realm. So they lacked this association.

They may, in effect, have been originally part of these families, because we do not really know where they sort of got them from, but the moment they became, royal eunuchs. That's what they were. Sorry, sorry. I just want to get some detail here because we'll be talking about this. How old would they, what would be the general age of the time that they were

frustrated? This would have been before puberty because... By 10 or 11, that sort of thing. Yeah, I guess you don't quite know when puberty hit people in the first... ...general idea, yeah. We can just... Yeah, let's say 10, 12. We can work with the rough idea, I think.

Let's say 10 or 12. In any case, Assyrian eunuchs were always shown in art. completely beardless. So this implies that they never grew a beard, which means that they were castrated before purity. One has to point out that Assyrian Unox didn't

lose their penis. They only lost the function of their testicles. And so if one compares that with the Chinese evidence, that's a very, very big distinction, really. Why, what's happening in China, Michael? Everything is cut off.

Yeah. This is way more dangerous, of course. whereas, you know, interrupting the function of the testicles, that's a very minor procedure. Anyone who breathes cattle can do it, I promise you. My breath away, that one. Trust me, it's simple. Certainly not. It is simple, medically speaking.

But in any case, so the eunuchs that served the king, they were castrated before puberty. and all the things that Michael said about the closeness between the royal household and the UNOX applies as well because these boys effectively grew up then in the palace. They were trained in the palace. They received the education of future civil servants. The UNOX lacked a past. The past before they entered the household was really not important, was not considered important at all.

They, among all the other people in Assyria, did not identify themselves with reference to their father's name. Everyone else was such and such son of such and such, they were not. That's very, very important. Also, we've already discussed, a key attraction is that they cannot father any children, which is hugely important in a society

where the existence of a family across generations is one of the key incentives of human life, yeah? You sort of achieved eternal life by having children who would then invoke your name in regular rituals. Obviously, that couldn't happen with the eunuch. The royal family instead took on that responsibility. One can describe the eunuchs as almost adopted children of the royal family. But then what happened in China, as you began to say, Michael, that the eunuchs began to adopt children in order that these children would do exactly what Karen was saying,

would have prayers or whatever. Ceremonies were gone through after their death to keep them alive as their ancestors. Yes, indeed. And just as Karen was saying, like in ancient Assyria, kinship and family was all important in China. And when eunuchs were castrated,

they even kept what was formally attached to their bodies in order to be buried with it, the so-called three treasures kept in a jar because they had to show them in regular intervals at the imperial court. Anyway, so the eunuchs, they start to adopt children at a very early stage

in order to requite their property and in order to continue the family line because what they had done or what has been done to them, the castration was actually a breach of filial piety. They were not able to continue the family line, at least

not biologically. Can I just... I don't have drawn on this just briefly this one. The established people, let's say the Confucians who, the civil servants, they ran things, then up come these other people whom they resented mightily and were

either one way out war with. They believed that they were cosmologically improper. Often open warfare. Though I wouldn't necessarily say that they consider them as cosmologically improper. there was a cosmological justification for the existence of Unix at the Imperial Court. And one of the most interesting things, as previous scholars have pointed out, is that even though the Confucians,

especially from the 11th, 12th century, onward, those people we used to call Neo-Confucians, they start to rail against Unix in an extremely hostile way. but none of them goes as far as to propose the abolishment of the Unic institution. It's seen as a necessary part of the monarchy. Sean Tucker, when we're talking about Rome, there's a religious aspect comes into play here, isn't it, with the castration? There is.

Yes, I mean, eunuchs or castrates can be found in religious context as well, and the Romans imported the cult of the great mother. at the end of the third century BC into Rome. And this cult apparently came with self-custrating devotees known as the galley. Some people think they're priests. Some people think they're just sort of hangers-on of the cult. And there's a lot of debate about why castration features in religion.

What's your view? Well, the most obvious reason is that as part of the cults, there was this figure Attis, who was the lover of the mother goddess and who had been driven mad and castrated himself. So some people think the galley are imitating that part of the myth. But it might be for reasons of chastity or a sign of extreme devotion to the mother goddess, giving up their fertility to the goddess. Was there an interconnection with Christianity at that time?

Yes. The growing idea of chastity, which was a growth after the first century, as I understand it. Yes, I mean chastity. So they began to interplay. And what did chastity mean, therefore, and it's extreme, it might have meant castration. Yes. In chastity was valued in pagan context too, but definitely in Christianity. And even in early Christianity, we encounter self-castration.

There is this famous passage in the Gospel of Matthew, where Christ talks about three types of eunuchs, the born eunuchs, and the people are made eunuchs by other people, and the people who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. And some early Christians thought this meant that they were meant to castrate themselves, and there are examples of that. We've been hearing about China and Syria. On anything like the scale in Rome, it is to these two great civilizations? Eventually, I would say.

I mean, it definitely develops in the third and fourth centuries. And then obviously it continues on into Byzantium, as another medieval Roman Empire. So, yes, it's very extensive. Unix can hold specialized positions at the Byzantine court, but also take up other non-unuchrills as well. And once you go up that is just one moment, just to finish off a thought with Karen.

Were there any limits? to the power of Munich. We've talked about them going out into the world, going to far-flung parts of the empire, running states, running armies, admirals of fleets, we haven't talked about it, but they did all that sort of stuff. Were there any limits?

Were there things that you cannot go there? Well, you could obviously not become the king of Assyria. In order to be the king of Assyria, you had to be a member of a very specific family, okay, but you also had to be the perfect man, and that, of course, included the ability to father children. So that office was by definition not open to them. And then also they were enabled really to take up various religious functions

that also required want to be a fully functioning male. So while they were able to have the highest political power in religious context, they were automatically excluded from a range of activities that we would describe as pre-speople. And these were very important activities. It's a big part of the state. Yes, it's not just a big part of the state. It's an even bigger part, I'd say, of community life, of society.

But they were first and foremost servants of the state. So from that point of view, this didn't matter. They'd made them even more attractive, you know. Can I come back to something you mentioned, Sean Tucker, in the Byzantine Empire? It goes on from the Roman to the Byzantine. It's almost like a baton being handed on. Yes.

It's not quite a bad image. What was a position of Eunice in the Byzantine? Well, I think it's more than a battle. I mean, basically Byzantium is the Roman Empire, so it's just a continuation. But in Byzantium, there are changes. And the most obvious change is that families, native families, begin to castrate their own children in the Roman Empire.

Unix tends to be slaves and foreigners. But why a noble family? Did you say noble family? No, just native families, yes. And this is because, well, one of the reasons is that, you know, they realize unit careers are good careers. You know, you get a lot of money from it. You can promote your family.

So there are stories about farmers in Paphligonia, castrating their own sons and sending them to Constantinople to be trained up and to hopefully get a big career and help the rest of the family. And there are cases of, you know, well-known cases of Unix who are belonging to Byzantine families. There's Basil the Bastard in the 10th century and John, the head of the orphan.

in the 11th century and they have strong family connections and promote their families. Were you wanting to come in there? No, I just wanted to stress that it was farmers who come up with this brilliant idea. They would be of course very well positioned to know what they were doing. Yeah. We haven't talked about, mentioned the effect that this had on the men that you've told said they stopped the growth of the facial hair and so on. They also tended to be taller and to be plumber.

And we can see on the Assyrian reliefs, we can see to be easily distinguished by those factors. Yeah. Well, that obviously is a very physical characteristic that would make them stand out. They sort of branded them in a way as UNOX. you would be able to recognize a eunuch from far away. This is a culture where grown males would always wear a very full beard,

sort of a Victorian beard or a hoxton hipster bear, really full beard. And a grown man without a beard would stand out enormously. Then the fact that they are taller, plumper, well, we already discussed that many of them were warriors, that was actually a good thing. We have to always bear in mind. As I said, this is an agrarian civilization, so these characteristics were very well known from cattle, of course. Can I come back to you, Michael?

I've mentioned Unix went out to do great things in fields with which we don't associate Unix. Can you give us a specific example, like Admiral Zeng, for instance? Zhang He, you're referring to Admiral Zhang He in the early 15th century who was commanding the treasure fleet on several expeditions.

Preunciation department let me down there. No worries. Okay, well you go. It's the same man, yes. He was captured in one of the early wars of unification of the Ming Dynasty in the late 14th century

was sent to the capital. Was castrated either on the way or when he reached the capital. He commanded the treasure fleet on several, I think, was seven or eight expeditions during, between the years 1405. The treasure fleet was a big and important fleet, I presume.

I think so. You're the expert. I'm not an expert on 14th century or 15th century nautical history. But I mean, the fleets are supposed to be. to have been extremely big and extremely impressive when they reached ports in India. They even got as far as Africa

and the Arab Peninsula because one interesting fact about Zheng He, apart from being Unique, is that he was a Muslim. So he wanted to go to Mecca. Do you want me to talk about other famous Unix? No, I think that'll do.

We've got a hang of it. I mean, if he's... I just wanted to put a person in place of my generalisations. Now, Sean wants to come in. Yeah, I just wanted to sort of pick up on this reference to military eunuchs because in Byzantium we find them as well. And there's a very famous general in the 6th century, Narcys who eventually defeats the Goths in Italy

and becomes basically ruler of Italy. But Byzantium, you know, does eunuchs a lot to kind of head campaigns, rather than be active fighters themselves, I would say, but to sort of command and interact with their men and to be the representative of the emperor. So the military role is very interesting one. And in Byzantium, the association between, there's a, begins or maybe continuous,

an association between eunuchs and music? Absolutely, yes. I mean, most people think, you know, eunuch singers came in with opera, but clearly in the ancient world and in Byzantium, they knew the special qualities of the eunuch voice, and there are emperors who were interested in church music and who founded monasteries for eunuchs

and the ideas that, you know, they were employed. in church music. But the crusaders, the crusaders who came as part of the second crusade to Constantinople, did see eunuch choirs

in the city. Karen, they fell out of favor. Did they fall out of favor? Was it the change of empire? What happened? Briefly? In the 7th century, BC, at the end of that century,

the Assyrian Empire is gone from the earth, and the successor state is the Neo-B Babylonian Empire, And they don't continue the UNOQ institution on the scale that the Assyrians had them. Does it continue in China on the scale, that big scale for a long time, Michael? Well, first of all, in China it simply stops at a certain point. Which is that point?

At the beginning of the 20th century, because we have a revolution. as we mentioned earlier the function of Unix is closely attached to the role of the Emperor or position of the emperor and once we don't have an emperor any longer there's no need for Unix so the last Qing Unix

among them Sunya Ting you mentioned earlier are driven out of the forbidden palace and on the streets but even before in the no

No, I'm going to go to Shawna. Yeah, no, just to sort of pick up on the end of the eunuch phenomenon in Byzantium, I mean, it does seem to tail off towards the end of the empire into the 15th century, and people associate that with sort of the rise of aristocratic government. But, of course, the Ottoman Empire uses eunuchs, most famously black eunuchs, and that continued on into the 20th century, so it's got a very long history. And the Catholic Church in Europe is using Castrata until into the 19th century. That's right.

Some of those people turning into famous opera singers. Yes, and I think, you know, even into the early 20th century, I think. Well, the UNOQ institution does not end with the end of the Syrian Empire, but it then shrinks back basically to this royal household role. And then we basically pick up again with the Hellenistic period that Sean already briefly discussed. But the UNOX stay around for most of known world history. That's the important thing really.

For us today, this is a very exotic, very strange. phenomenon, but up to a hundred years ago, you would barely ever be anywhere in the world where you wouldn't be likely in certain contexts to come across a eunuch. It wouldn't have been an entirely alien, strange phenomenon. And I think that's very important to emphasize. It's very much associated with the state, with the emperor, with the king, but it's not an outlandish freakish phenomenon as such. Well, thank you very much, Karen Radner, Sean Tucker and Michael Herkelman.

And next week we'll be talking about Bear Wolf, where we have the first known dragon in one of the earliest works of English literature. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we covered a wide area there, don't you? You're going to tell me what we didn't talk about, I know we didn't talk. We didn't talk about India really at all. But that would fit with these cultic castrates that one also has in Mesopotamia.

I mean, the mother goddess of course is a Near Eastern deity. And I would really keep that very, very much apart from this palace and state context. But what the Indian experience, though, you were obviously... You're geared up to speak about it, we didn't get to it. It's one of those things. but it was a very different experience, isn't it? Because it's seen sort of, in a way,

and it sort of still goes on. Yes, yeah, the Hidras. The Hidra. How do you pronounce it? I must get my pronunciation sort of about in this program. It's not my particular specialism, but obviously I'm interested in comparative history of Unix. But yes, the Hidras in India still survive today,

and they're associated with the religious context. You know, that's the tradition. But there are sort of communities of men who, ideally, do castrate themselves, dress as women, use female kinship terms or kind of outcasts. Are those people we see

dancing in exotic ways in the market? That's right. Swirling dancing, yeah. Yes, I mean, there's been a lot of anthropological studies of the Hidras and Western media is kind of obsessed with them and kind of makes fun of it, but, you know, there are sort of lower serious studies

of these people, and they are now recognised as a third gender category. And that's, of course, something that is not only confined to India at all. But it's a very, very different category of castrated men than the one that we've been discussing, really. And the key thing is really this bridge function between the male and the female sex. Yeah, that's the key thing there. Whereas the eunuchs that we've been discussing, they were perceived as male, of course.

Male, entirely male, they were men. They were not seen in any way as effeminate, not at all. They were seen as authoritarian the basically strong arms of the ruler. That's why I emphasize so much that they have much more in common with an ox that drags the plow. In Assyrian, to serve the kingdom means to

wear the yoke of the state. And so there's this metaphor of the ox, who serves the farmer. That's what the eunuch is. Totally different from the hetra. Yeah, but I think even in Rome and in the Greek world and in Byzantium, there is this sort of uncertainty about gender, and they do sort of talk about, or can talk about them being effeminate and like women,

and sort of not manly. So maybe that's part of the Greek culture. That does persist in Byzantium, they do agonise about gender. At other times, you know, they do just treat them as men, and only men could have such political positions anyway. How do the Chinese today look back on the Unis? Are there any current literature saying? Have they wiped up, erasers completely?

Erased them. Well, that's something I wanted to mention when we talked about Zheng He, or if we look at other cases of famous eunuchs in Chinese history, that those usually don't feature in lists, because the Chinese they like to draw up the ten most vicious eunuchs of Chinese history. There are all these stereotypes of the powerful eunuch

who monopolize. power in the palace who, from being the dog's body of the emperor made the emperor his dog's body. And then you have these figures like Zheng He or the famous Chinese historian Sima Qian, who in his case became a eunuch quite late in his life, I think in his 40s, who by most Chinese are commonly not perceived as eunuchs at all. Even if you look up lists of eunuchs in Chinese history, Zheng He is conspicuously missing from that list. I'm not even sure if most Chinese are aware of the fact that he was a eunuch. But most Chinese nowadays look back at it as a feature of what they call feudal society in communist China.

So it's something really rather despicable. Here's Tom. He harold's tea. There are many more Radio 4 Arts and Discussion programs to download for free. Find these on the website. at BBC.com.uk slash radio 4.