The
Romans infibulated their singers to prevent coitus, and
consequent change in the voice, and pursued the same practice
with their actors and dancers. According to Celsus, Mercurialis,
and others, the gladiators were infibulated to guard against the
loss of vigor by sexual excesses. In an old Italian work there is
a figure of an infibulated musician--a little bronze statue
representing a lean individual tortured or deformed by carrying
an enormous ring through the end of the penis. In one of his
pleasantries Martial says of these infibulated singers that they
sometimes break their rings and fail to place them back--"et
cujus refibulavit turgidum faber peruem." Heinsius considers
Agamemnon cautious when he left Demodocus near Clytemnestra, as
he remarks that Demodocus was infibulated. For such purposes as
the foregoing infibulation offered a more humane method than
castration.
Infibulation by a ring in the prepuce was used to prevent
premature copulation, and was in time to be removed, but in some
cases its function was the preservation of perpetual chastity.
Among some of the religious mendicants in India there were some
who were condemned to a life of chastity, and, in the hotter
climates, where nudity was the custom, these persons traveled
about exposing an enormous preputial ring, which was looked upon
with adoration by devout women.
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