Maybe I’m in the mood for bawdy jokes because a friend of mine is getting married - though on a more sanctifying note, we’re also beginning a novena today for the intention of a happy and holy marriage. Yesterday, at the Off the Record blog, Diogenes put up a link to this article in the Boston Globe, whose headline was: “Neuroscientist, once a woman, says he saw gender bias firsthand.” Now for Diogenes’ own headline to his posting of this link were these words: “Venus huic erat utraque nota.”

Generally, if you come across something like this, the assumption is that it’s a quotation and not Diogenes’ own composition on the spur of the moment. If I were educated and lettered, I might have recognized it, but thankfully, or sadly, Google came to my rescue and pointed me towards Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book III. I then had the fun of translating the passage to find out why Teresias lost his sight and what in the world this had to do with “Both sexual pleasures were known to this man” (the title of Diogenes’ post).

I paste it here for those interested:

Metamorphoses III, lines 316-338

Dumque ea per terras fatali lege geruntur
tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi,
forte Iovem memorant diffusum nectare curas
seposuisse graves vacuaque agitasse remissos
cum Iunone iocos et ‘maior vestra profecto est,
quam quae contingit maribus’ dixisse ‘voluptas.’
illa negat. placuit quae sit sententia docti
quaerere Tiresiae: Venus huic erat utraque nota.
nam duo magnorum viridi coeuntia silva
corpora serpentum baculi violaverat ictu
deque viro factus (mirabile) femina septem
egerat autumnos; octavo rursus eosdem
vidit, et ‘est vestrae si tanta potentia plagae’
dixit, ‘ut auctoris sortem in contraria mutet,
nunc quoque vos feriam.’ percussis anguibus isdem
forma prior rediit, genetivaque venit imago.
arbiter hic igitur sumptus de lite iocosa
dicta Iovis firmat: gravius Saturnia iusto
nec pro materia fertur doluisse suique
iudicis aeterna damnavit lumina nocte;
at pater omnipotens (neque enim licet inrita cuiquam
facta dei fecisse deo) pro lumine adempto
scire futura dedit poenamque levavit honore.

And here is a verse translation of the same passage:

‘Twas now, while these transactions past on Earth,
And Bacchus thus procur’d a second birth,
When Jove, dispos’d to lay aside the weight
Of publick empire and the cares of state,
As to his queen in nectar bowls he quaff’d,
“In troth,” says he, and as he spoke he laugh’d,
“The sense of pleasure in the male is far
More dull and dead, than what you females share.”
Juno the truth of what was said deny’d;
Tiresias therefore must the cause decide,
For he the pleasure of each sex had try’d.
It happen’d once, within a shady wood,
Two twisted snakes he in conjunction view’d,
When with his staff their slimy folds he broke,
And lost his manhood at the fatal stroke.
But, after seven revolving years, he view’d
The self-same serpents in the self-same wood:
“And if,” says he, “such virtue in you lye,
That he who dares your slimy folds untie
Must change his kind, a second stroke I’ll try.”
Again he struck the snakes, and stood again
New-sex’d, and strait recover’d into man.
Him therefore both the deities create
The sov’raign umpire, in their grand debate;
And he declar’d for Jove: when Juno fir’d,
More than so trivial an affair requir’d,
Depriv’d him, in her fury, of his sight,
And left him groping round in sudden night.
But Jove (for so it is in Heav’n decreed,
That no one God repeal another’s deed)
Irradiates all his soul with inward light,
And with the prophet’s art relieves the want of sight.

Going back to the article from the Boston Globe, the man, though once a woman, had surgery in order to change that situation - not so magical as Tiresias striking the coeuntia corpora serpentum and probably somewhat more expensive. I guess it depends, though, on how you’re reckoning the tab, for at the end of the day, Tiresias had lost sight (though he was gifted with vision of the future), but this she-man in Boston got to be a successful scientist or something (I didn’t actually read the article).

But the important bit, which becomes the bawdy bit, when one considers Diogenes’ appellation of this article, is why Tiresias lost his sight. So Juppiter and Juno are lazily lounging, and Juppiter insists that the pleasure of the woman in conjugal relations is greater than the man’s: maior vestra voluptas est quam quae contingit maribus. Juno is inclined to disagree and Tiresias is selected to arbitrate because, Venus huic erat utraque nota. Apparently, in the seven years (septem autumnos egerat) he spent as a woman, he was found not unattractive by the members of his/her (an acceptable use of the slash!) former sex. And in this time he learned that maior voluptas femineis in coeundo contingit quam maribus.

All of which goes to show, I think, that, first, there’s still a case to be made that we’ll all be men in heaven, where no base, carnal creatures are allowed ; ) and, second, that if only this scientist had known his Ovid, he might never have made the switch!

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