Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Over the Earth he flies

and the loud-echoing salt-sea.

He bewitches and maddens the heart

of the victim he swoops upon.

He bewitches the race of the mountain-huntin

lions and beasts of the sea,

and all the creatures that Earth feeds,

and the blazing sun sees—

and man, too—

over all you hold kingly power,

Love, you are the only ruler

over all these.

EURIPIDES,

Hippolytus²

One of the myths of ancient Greece tells of Caenis, “loveliest of the maids of Thessaly,” who, while walking alone on an isolated shore, was spied by Poseidon—god of the sea, elder brother of the king of the gods, and sometime rapist. Mad with lust, the god attacked her on the spot. Afterwards, he took pity, and asked what he might give in reparation. Manhood, was her answer. She wished to be transformed into a man—not just any kind of man, but one extravagantly male, a warrior and “invulnerable.” Then she would never again be subjected to such a humiliation. Poseidon agreed. The metamorphosis was completed. Caenis became Caeneus.

Time passed. Caeneus fathered a child. With his sharp and expertly wielded sword he killed many. But the swords and spears of his adversaries could not penetrate his body. The metaphor here is not hard to fathom. Eventually Caeneus became so full of himself that he scorned the gods. He erected his spear in the marketplace and made the people worship it and sacrifice to it. He insisted, on pain of death, that they worship no other gods. The symbolism is again lucid.

Extreme arrogance, of which this is a fair example, was called by the Greeks hubris. It was almost exclusively a male trait. Sooner or later it would attract the attention and then the retribution of the gods—especially toward those humans insufficiently deferential to the immortals. The gods craved submission. When news of Caeneus’s effrontery finally reached Zeus, whose desk was doubtless piled high with such casefiles, he ordered the centaurs—chimeras, half-man, half-horse—to execute his merciless judgment. Dutifully they attacked Caeneus, taunting him: “Do you not remember at what price you gained this false appearance of a man? … Leave wars to men.” But the centaurs lost six of their number to Caeneus’s swift sword. Their lances bounced off him “like a hailstone from a roof.” Disgraced at being “conquered by an enemy but half-man”—a hollow complaint, coming from a centaur—they resolved to smother him with timber, destroying vast stands of trees “to crush his stubborn life with forests for our missiles.” He had no special powers concerning breathing, and after a struggle they managed to subdue and then to suffocate him. When the time came to bury the body, they were amazed to find that Caeneus had reverted back to Caenis; the invincible warrior had become, once again, the vulnerable young woman.³

Perhaps poor Caenis had overdosed on the stuff that Poseidon used to effect the metamorphosis. There is a proper amount of whatever it is that makes one male, the ancient Greeks recognized, and too much or too little can get you into trouble.

——

The testicles of a sparrow are about a millimeter long and weigh about a milligram. (That’s one of the reasons you never hear that someone’s hung like a sparrow.) With testes intact, the scrappy birds enter into their mainly linear hierarchy, chase away other birds who invade their territory, and, if they’re high-ranking, make successful overtures to fertile females. But reach under those feathers, remove those two tiny organs, and, after the bird has recovered, all of these traits are lost, or nearly so. Aggressive birds become submissive, territorial birds become complacent about intruders, passionate birds lose interest in sex. Now inject a certain steroid molecule into the sparrow and it regains its plucky enthusiasm for sex, aggression, dominance, and territoriality.

Shortly after castration, male Japanese quails stop strutting, crowing, and copulating. They also fail to elicit the interest of female Japanese quails. Treat them with that same steroid and they’re back to strutting, crowing, and copulating, and the females find them irresistible once more. Castrate a young male fiddler crab and he will never develop his distinctive asymmetrical giant claw.

Humans have understood some of this for thousands of years. Captured warriors were castrated so they’d make no trouble. We still describe an ineffective leader as a “political eunuch.” Chieftains and emperors castrated men so they could guard the harems without succumbing to temptation (or at least—the compromise sometimes reached—without impregnating any of the residents); and so their loyalties to the leader would not be adulterated by family ties or other distracting affections and obligations. It is remarkable that almost exactly the same molecule should produce such fundamental changes in behavior in sparrows, quail, crabs, and humans.