Laudator Temporis Acti

Kathryn M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 38-39 (notes omitted):

Eunuchs are regularly described with a rather extensive language of negation that defines them in terms of what they are not. These adjectives of negation are readily apparent in Greek because they all begin with the alpha privative prefix. Eunuchs are beardless (ἀγένειος), low-born (ἀγεννής), fruitless or unable to bear fruit (ἄκαρπος), unmanly (ἄνανδρας  [sic, read ἄνανδρος]), ignorant of war (ἀπειροπόλεμος), not working (ἀργός or ἀεργός), sickly (ἀσθενής), unsuckled or unweaned (ἄθηλος), unwilling to share (ἀμετάδοτος), not gentle, cruel (ἀπηνής), insatiable (ἀπροσκορής), dishonored (ἄτιμος), unworthy (ἄχρηστος). Theophylaktos of Ohrid is aware of this negative rhetoric and specifically lists negative charges leveled against eunuchs. They are labeled as ill-omened (ἀπαίσιος οἰωνός), disorderly (ἄκοσμος), undignified (ἄσεμνος), and unsociable (ἀκοινώνητος).

In this context, ἄθηλος doesn't mean unsuckled or unweaned. Rather it means unfeminine, just as ἄνανδρος means unmasculine. See e.g. Cyril of Alexandria, Homily 19 (Contra Eunuchos, in Patrologia Graeca, vol. 77, col. 1109, and in Georgii Monachi Chronicon, ed. Carolus de Boor, vol. 2, p. 654):

εἰκότως οὖν ἄθηλοι, ἄνανδροι [cod. al. ἄνανδρες], ἀνδρόγυνοι, σιδηροκατάδικοι καὶ γυναικομανεῖς προσηγορεύθησαν.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

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