Consider the Anus Radish

Now at first blush, it may seem I chose this topic for its shock value, for its “ewwww” factor, or just because it is silly and intriguing at the same time, so it made me laugh out loud and say quietly to myself “hmmmm.”  On reflection, I think all of those things are true.  It is shocking.  It is gross.  I’m giggling even now thinking about it as I type this sentence.  And it is one of those curiosities of antiquity that really interest me.

What is it?  Well I’m glad you asked.  It is, of course, rhaphanidosis:  the act of inserting the root of a plant of the raphanogenus (commonly known as a radish) into the anus.  It is mentioned by Aristophanes as a punishment for adultery in classical antiquity, specifically in Athens in the early years of the Hellenistic period in Greece (the 4th century BCE).

I was, as you’d imagine, immediately if not unnaturally intrigued by this nugget of ancient history and Googled it (and again I ask, should ‘Googled’ be capitalized when it is not being used as a proper noun but rather as a verb? – these are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night!).  Among other things, I learned that there is a Norwegian heavy metal band that have appropriated the name.  Nice!  But what really piqued my interest was the additional fact that the cuckolded husband of the woman caught in adultery had the additional right to ram a spiny fish such as a mackerel up the anus of the male offender.  This got me to thinking about how often in history I have read of things being inserted up the bumm as a punishment.

For example, according to legend, King Edward II of England was killed with a red-hot poker shoved up his anus at Berkeley Castle on September 21, 1327, at the age of 43. It is said to have been a punishment for his homosexual relationship with Piers Gaveston, a favorite at court until his head was chopped off by the nobility in 1312, or possibly Hugh le Despenser, son of the Earl of Winchester, who abused his ‘position’ as the king’s “favorite” courtier to acquire for himself a vast amount of land covering what is today most of south Wales.

I can sense you’re growing queasy at the thought of that, so let’s get back to the radishes.

The goal of the insertion of the radish, according to  Shawn O’Bryhim in his paper “Catullus’ Mullets and Radishes (c. 15.18-19),” seems to have been to transform the anal passage of the offender into a vagina by widening it, thus feminizing the adulterer and allowing the prosecutor, often the wronged-husband himself, to reassert dominance (or in the case of a prosecuting cuckold, his masculinity) over the adulterer by giving the cuckolding offender a vaginal cavity.  Danielle S. Allen in her work on public punishment in Greco-Roman times, The World of Prometheus:  The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens, notes that while citizens’ bodies were legally protected from torture, adulterers in particular could be punished corporally.  They could be killed on the spot if caught in the act; or, if brought to trial and convicted, they could be humiliated by the prosecuting party.

Turning to the Romans, there is some evidence they inherited or at least had knowledge of the Athenian vegetable punishment. In Catullus 15, Catullus, known for his sexually explicit themes, warns Aurelius of dire consequences should he harm the speaker’s beloved boy:

But if tempests of mind, and mad passion
impel you to too much sin, you wretch,
so you fill my boy’s head with deceptions,
then let misery, and evil fate, be yours!
Of him whom, with feet dragged apart, an open door,
radishes and mullets pass through.

Commentators on the practice that I could find seemed to be in agreement on one point:  it was meant as pseudo-phallic insertion into an anus in order to impose a feminine humiliation on the adulterer/offender.  Of course this begs the question in the modern era of what is humiliating about being feminine or femininity?  Obviously, being a woman in antiquity was something quite different than it is today, and our views today are different than they were even fifty years ago.  But the idea, the notion, that feminine qualities in a man are somehow “wrong” or indicative of homosexuality still persists today.

I have had people tell me, “I’d never have guessed you are gay.”  I always respond, “unless I told you or you’ve seen me in action, how could you?”  Most often, the conversation ends there, awkwardly.  But a few have dug a deeper hole for themselves, and follow up with, “it’s just you’re not all girly” or “you like rock music” (and in the interest of full disclosure, I loathe showtunes and I can’t stand Barbra Streisand).  It’s clear that they are trafficking in stereotypes, which gives me the opportunity to tell them of my gay friend who loves professional football (I believe it’s called the N-F-L) or my lesbian friend who retiled and grouted her own shower, although I have to be careful sharing the latter because that just reinforces the “butch dyke” stereotype.  Then I launch into my “we’re not all hairdressers and florists” speech, followed by my “not that there’s anything wrong with being a hairdresser or a florist” speech.