A Note on the θήλεα νοῦσος of the Skythians

In a note on the Argive festival of the Hybristika I mentioned the diviners of Skythia as examples of that strange phenomenon familiar among many savage peoples, the magician who dresses as a woman. As the θήλεα νοῦσος has been somewhat of a crux to Herodotean scholars, I may perhaps be allowed to develop the point a little more at length. It has usually been suggested that the θήλεα νοῦσος must be explained either as a vice, or as a bodily disease, or as a mental affliction. None of these theories, however, accounts for all the features of the evidence which we possess, and can only be tortured into conformity by the Procrustean ingenuity of the scholar. Those, for example, who explain the θήλεα νοῦσος as a vice, have further to show why those who are afflicted with it form a definite class, why they are connected especially with Askalon, and why they are magicians

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• Melancholia Scytharum

  Open Access•Diederik F Janssen•History of Psychiatry•2021

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