Initially, when the Romans took over Galilee, Zepphoris had refused to submit to Roman rule, and there had been a brief but bloody siege. The town had soon capitulated and the leaders of the revolt were executed. As my father said: there are only two ways to deal with the Romans – work with them or be beaten by them. If you resist, they will simply bring in more and more reinforcements until you are beaten – and they will beat you with utter ruthlessness – they show no mercy. However, that revolt was about 25 years before I was born, and happened when my father was about my age. He spoke of the rows of crosses along the main road just to the north of the city, and of the leaders of the revolt hanging, dying of thirst and exhaustion.

Zepphoris, the Greek word for Sapphire, (sometimes: Sepphoris or Tzipori), was known as “the Jewel of Gallilee”. It was a truly beautiful city: white marble columns everywhere. The main streets were all colonnaded, so that the citizens could walk about in the cool shade. My father had been fortunate to get a Greek patron. He was a metal worker, mainly working in bronze, copper, brass and tin but with little silver or gold. His work was highly skilled and eagerly sought. Helikos, the Greek merchant who was our patron, had seen my father’s work and offered him premises in Zepphoris in return for 40 days work each year. We had a shop with a window displaying some of our finer products. Inside was more like a living room, for father would sit with a customer and discuss his requirements over a drink of wine. In the back was the workshop with a forge and several workbenches. We had a few slaves to do the more repetitive work, but Father did the finest work himself, and taught me to execute fine work also.

We had a number of different product lines: The most ornamented was the tableware: wine kraters, wine-cups, knives and serving spoons, platters, bowls and jugs all deeply incised and carved with scenes from famous battles, tales from Greek mythology, or with more modern designs that took the fancy of the client. We made mirrors and brushes, perfume bottles and cosmetic boxes for Greek women to use in their toilet. There were door handles and knockers, hinges and catches, bolts and fasteners. For the walls of the house there were candle sconces, lamp-holders and torch brackets. Although the Romans did not strictly allow it, we made armaments for the Greek soldiers who protected the city: arrow heads, spear points, shield bosses, helmets, breast-plates and so on, especially the decorated pieces worn by the officers. We made kitchenware, very plain and heavy, as all kitchen work was done by slaves: pots and pans, knives, spoons and ladles, sieves and colanders. We made a lot of bits and pieces for horse harnesses and so on and many tools for various trades. Lastly, we made slave-goods: shackles for necks, arms and legs, chains, discipline devices including the tiny star-shaped blood-knots for whips, and, of course, infibulation rings.

- - - -

There was an active slave market in Zepphoris, as there was in every city throughout the known world. It was the Roman custom to ship slaves well away from the country where they had been brought up. Slaves kept close to home could too easily escape and disappear into the local underworld. Away from their own country, friendless and hardly able to speak the local language, they were far more compliant. Most of the trade was in the resale of existing slaves, but periodically, new stock would appear from some far-flung quarter of the empire. Then father would send a stall to the slave market, for most new owners, both Greek and Roman, wanted their slaves infibulated.

I asked my father why they wanted slaves to be infibulated. He reminded me that all our slaves were infibulated too. He said that there were several reasons:

To ensure that no slave would risk the chastity of the owner’s wife, or the wives of any member of the household;

To ensure that no slave could risk the purity of virgin daughters in the household;

To ensure that no women would be insulted by the sight of a slave’s erection;

To ensure that nobody would be offended by the sight of an exposed plum-head;

To ensure that female slaves did not get pregnant;

To ensure that slaves did not waste time and energy in sexual activities of any kind;

And because the Romans and Greeks believed that loss of semen caused loss of strength, and they wanted slaves to apply all their strength to their work.

It wasn’t until I was eleven that I went along to help with this process, for infibulation is a brutal and bloody affair. My father hardly ever attended this unless his patron required him to be present. It was the work of slaves to infibulate other slaves. First the rings had to be prepared. They were made of rods 1/8 inch across and just over 4 inches long. One end had a V-slot made in it using a chisel. The other end was beaten to a flattened point, which was then ground to form a sharp pointed blade. Then the whole thing was heated and bent around a cylinder to form a ring maybe 1½ inch across with a half-inch gap between the two ends. Then the rod was dipped into molten tin to coat it with a thin layer to prevent corrosion. We always had several dozen of these prepared ready for need. One of my jobs when I was first learning my metalworking skills was to prepare a batch of these, although at that time I did not know what they were for.

At the slave market we would set up a stall ready for trading to begin: a brazier of hot charcoal, rings, tongs and clamps, a bucket of water, rods of weld-metal. When a slave’s new owner wanted him infibulated, he would bring him over to us, and a copper coin or two would be paid. There would be a brief discussion as to just how it was to be done: on top of the pubis or at the side; through the shaft of the penis from side-to side or from top to bottom; some owners wanted an extra twist in the penis to make erections more painful. It appeared that the more contorted and knotted the end result was, the better the owner liked it.

Mostly the new slaves were beardless boys, some only five or six years old, and then it was easy: one slave held his arms, another his legs, and a third would feel at the base of his penis for the ligament that the ring had to pass through. There was a quick crunching sound, and the ring was through before the boy even felt it. Then, as he howled in shock and pain, his foreskin would be dragged well forward, (one of the objectives was to make sure that the plum of the penis never showed as this was considered obscene), a twin-bladed pair of forceps was applied to the penis just behind the plum, the gap between the blades just enough to accommodate the ring; another crunch and the ring was through. You had to position the forceps so that the urethra on the underside and the veins at the top were protected. If infibulating from side to side, the ring had to go between them; when infibulating from top to bottom, the ring went to right or left of them but well in from the side.

Then a slave would put a wet piece of leather with a slot in it over the boy’s loins, the ring coming through the slot. A clamp would be applied to bring the two ends of the ring together, the point neatly fitting into the V-slot. One slave would then pick up a lump of burning charcoal in the tongs, and hold it under the join in the ring, and blow the charcoal with a blowpipe whilst another applied a weld-rod to the join. The heat of welding would pass through the ring and sear the wound, stopping the bleeding, but the wet leather protected the flesh from the heat of the coal.

Once the weld was made, it was finished with tin against corrosion, and then water was splashed onto the joint and the clamp was released to check that it held. Just occasionally, the joint had to be redone, but generally the slaves were skilled. Then the wet leather was removed, and you would see the little penis straining to become erect. Every time a penis is impaled in this way, it immediately tries to become erect and stays like that for a long time.

On a small boy with a small penis, the rings often looked grotesque, far too large. Often the penis was shorter than the ring was wide, even when erect, and the penis could straighten but was held to one side. But, of course, the smallest penis grows big as the boy matures, and then it has to double back on itself, often with a severe twist.

When the subject was a mature man, the process was more difficult. They mostly knew what was going to happen to them, and did not want to be infibulated. They would struggle fiercely and it often needed five men to restrain them and strap them to the bench that we used for that purpose. I had expected them to shave off the bush of pubic hair so that they could see what they were doing, but they just parted it to see the skin below. The same size ring was used, but now the gap was quite small compared with the size of the ligament it had to go through and it was difficult to get it positioned right – often forceps had to be used to compress the flesh. And once the ring was through both the ligament at the base of the penis and the penis itself, there was only a little metal left exposed either side of the join where we had to weld. The flesh had to be squeezed back to clamp the ring. When we did the weld, we could smell the flesh cooking as the slave howled in agony.

The first time I saw this happen to a mature man, I asked one of our slaves what would happen next. “For the first couple of days, he will try to get erect all the time, but every erection will cause him extreme pain and he will soon learn that the only way to avoid the pain is to stay soft. He will learn to avoid all erections, to avoid all thoughts that might lead to erections. He will throw himself into his work to keep busy and avoid his mind wandering onto things that might cause erections. Five to eight days from now he will stop getting them at all during the daytime. Nighttime is different, though. He will be woken up many times every night by nighttime erections. It will be as much as two or three months before they stop. But the wound will not fully heal until all erections stop; every erection reopens the wound, and it takes a good two months from the last erection before the wound has fully healed and there is no more pain. By that time, he will have almost completely lost the ability to get an erection. Even if he is freed, and has the ring removed, he may not be able to get fully erect again. And even if he gets halfway hard, there will always be a twist and a bend in his cock – it will never be straight again – and what decent woman would want such a cock in her?”

All our slaves were infibulated. We had the full range of styles, so that a new owner who was not familiar with the options available could be shown how each of them would look. Davos, the slave I was talking to, had the ring to the left side of his pubis, with his penis twisted so that the under side of the tip was uppermost. “How old were you when you were done?”

“I would have been about nine. It is not so bad for a young boy. There are not so many erections and the wound heals more quickly. When puberty comes, and you start to want to do something with it, then it is difficult. Erections happen every night, but they always hurt and waken you, but the pain is not enough to stop you having erections. You desperately want to straighten it and let it expand fully, but you can’t. You can rub the tip and make yourself spurt, but you get whipped if you are caught, so it doesn’t happen very often.”

“Is no one ever tempted to take the ring out? I would have thought that a few minutes with a rough stone would do it.”

“The owner simply tells the slave: ‘take the ring out and I will have your cock cut off.’ No slave wants to lose his cock, even if he can’t use it. Every slave dreams that one day he will be set free; to be given freedom with no cock, that would be terrible. Anyway, four out of every five that get their cocks cut off will die from it.”

“But how do you pee without it getting all over you?”

“I have a tube, some use a hollow stick but I use a bronze tube. It goes down the gap between my thigh and my balls as I squat. I roll the foreskin back a little, put the tube against the pee hole and roll the skin forwards to make a seal. Then the pee all goes down the tube.”

At that time, I had heard that female slaves were infibulated also, but even my father was not liberal enough to allow me to see a naked female at that age, so I did not see this being done until another time and in another place.

- - - - -

My parents were, of course, Jewish. My father, Yoakhim, was something of a pragmatist, and happy to compromise his religious beliefs when it was a matter of business, profit and expediency. My mother, Anna, however, took her religion very seriously. For the first ten years of their marriage, she did not conceive. Each year they took a journey to the Temple at Jerusalem, and there she prayed for a child and promised that if she did conceive, the first-born child would be dedicated to the Lord.

Her first-born was a girl, and they called her Mirrim, and when she was four years old, they took her to Jerusalem where she was placed in a special women’s annex to the Temple. All of the sacred hangings and vestments used in the Temple had to be ritually pure and were woven and embroidered by young virgins who had not yet had their first flux of blood. Once they reached puberty, they were returned to their families to be married. Mirrim became one of these sacred virgins. The annex was entirely closed off, only women could enter. Several older women, widows beyond child-bearing age, lived in there to care for the young girls, but the sacred hangings and vestments were only handled and worked on by the young virgins. Each year, my parents would visit, and my mother and her sister could go and talk to Mirrim through the bars of the gate, but my father and I were not allowed to see her. Thus Mirrim became the only member of the family to escape the disaster when it happened.

I was named Yeshwe, the modern equivalent of the classical Hebrew name: Joshuah. I was the second child after Mirrim, and I had two younger brothers and a younger sister. I was circumcised, of course, and more tightly than people of my father’s generation. The traditional circumcision consisted of a single cut through the stretched-out foreskin of the baby boy. Some Jewish men, however, had become Romanised, and took to using the bathhouse, competing in games and so on. To do this, they had to conceal the plum head of the penis, for it was considered obscene for this to show at all. Some Roman and Greek men, however, had naturally short foreskins, and would use a “kynodesme”, (dog-leash), a short piece of cord tied around the foreskin to keep it forward. Jewish men circumcised in the traditional manner found that they could do this too.

The Rabbis were opposed to the Romanisation of Jewish men, and so adopted the newer form of circumcision, sometimes called the “double circumcision” or “strip circumcision”. Here, the foreskin is drawn forward and cut through as before, and then the inner skin is stripped back off the plum head and cut closely around the rim of the plum. This makes for a much tighter circumcision and the kynodesme cannot be used. I had been circumcised in this way.

I asked one of the slaves if they knew what happened to Jewish slaves that could not hide their plum head. “Oh, they fetch the lowest prices, for they cannot be used in a house or anywhere that civilised people might see them. Mostly they get send down the mines where they are worked to death in just a year or two.” Thus I had a justifiable dread of ever becoming a slave.

Herod had been made King of the Jews at that time, “Herod the Great” he was called. He was one of the Romanised Jews that the Rabbis were opposed to. Not that he was really a Jew; he was a “Son of Abraham” but descended through Isaac and Esau rather than through Isaac and Jacob; he was an Idumean, not a member of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Only a descendant of King David should ever become King, but the Romans ignored that and appointed Herod despite almost universal disapproval. My father and mother were both descended from King David, (as were many others), and thus I had a better claim to the throne than Herod did. We kept silent, though, for there were spies everywhere and to speak a single word of opposition could mean a horrible death.

- - - - -

I guess I would be about eight when I first caught the glad eye of one of the Greek merchants. I had known for some time that many Greeks had a penchant for young boys. In Jewish tradition the love of a young boy is considered very sinful, but in Greek culture it is extolled as a virtue: poets wrote about it as the finest kind of love. My father, ever the practical one, told me that if I ever had an offer, make sure that he knew where I was, and make sure that the man knew that he knew, then little harm could come to me. But I was to be sure that my mother did not find out.

I had a friend, Youssef, a couple of years older than me who told me more detail about what went on; he had been going for some time with a few of the Greeks. He took me with him a couple of times as a threesome, to gain a gentle introduction, and to let it be known that I was “available”.

I took to it like a duck to water. It was so easy to smile nicely, and show my strong white teeth, and say “No!” firmly but gently when they asked to do something that I didn’t feel ready for. I learned how to pump their cocks gently in my hand, or to use my mouth, when to squeeze hard or go fast, when to slow down, be gentle and prolong the action. Later, when I grew bigger, I let them use my bottom, but not until I was big enough, about eleven I suppose. Before that, they often liked to feel my thighs squeezing them tightly.

I soon learned, when someone came into the shop, to flash my eyes and smile, and run my fingers through my curly black hair. Sometimes, I was ignored, but often I got the “glad eye” in response and I knew that something would happen. Often an order would be made that required someone to go to the house to make measurements, or to make sure that a new piece would match what was already there. “Go along with the gentleman, Yessos, and make sure that you’re home before curfew.” My dad would say this in Greek so that the man knew the score. (My name in Aramaic was “Yeshuwe”, but he Greeks couldn’t say that, so I became Yessos). Often such an arrangement would result in a lot of repeat business, for I would say: “I cannot just come to your house when I want – I have work to do – I would need a reason to come here again.” So not only did I get handfuls of pocket money but my father got lots of repeat business.

Later, I had a small number of “regulars” who would take me to plays, poetry recitals or to the games; companionship and intelligent conversation seemed to be just as important as the sex. Thus I became fluent in Greek and came to understand a lot about Greek culture and history. The biggest frustration was that they could not take me to the bathhouse, for my circumcised state made this impossible. At that time I dreamed about how to make an artificial cover for my plum-head that would make me acceptable naked in company, but at that time it was just a dream.

Romans had a high regard for Greek culture, and most educated Romans would read Greek fluently and would listen to Greek poetry recitals or to Greek plays, and considered this to be the highest level of cultural enjoyment. Because of this, Romans would often visit the town, (although few were resident there), to visit the theatre or to listen to Greek poetry recitals. And some of these would visit our shop, as taking home a piece of bronze or brassware made in the Greek style was a popular thing to do. Army officers would often send high quality artistic objects home to their wives or families as gifts. I would smile at the Romans in the same way, but it was far less often that I got any sort of response. However, towards the end, I would be nearly twelve, I suppose, I did get a response from the new Centurion in charge of the Roman army encampment just outside the town.

Gabulus, the Centurion, taught me to speak Latin. I have always had an aptitude for languages, and pick them up easily. In the Synagogue, the Rabbi taught us classical Hebrew and we learned the Psalms and the Talmud, and I was always way ahead of the others of my age. By the time I was twelve, I could read, write and speak fluently in Classical Hebrew, Aramaic, (the language of Galilee), Greek and Latin.

We did a lot of business with that Centurion. Partly it was his excuse to get me on my own for a while, but he wanted to send home presents to the woman he was promised to. Perhaps it was some form of guilt, for he clearly preferred young boys to grown women – there were plenty of whores in Zepphoris but he didn’t seem to use them.

His love making, if you could call it that, had a totally different style from that of my Greek friends. Whereas the Greeks openly took delight in my company and respected me, it seemed as if Gabulus was secretive and simply using me as an object to get him off. I am sure that he felt guilty about what he was doing.

- - - - -

When I was twelve, Herod the Great died. Judah ben Hezekiah, who was the son of the leader of the first revolt, and who had harboured a grudge against the Romans for many years, saw Herod’s death as an opportunity and led a second revolt. They took over the armoury and seized all the weapons. The Romans from the nearby camp realised that they were too few to retake the city on their own, so they blocked all the exits and stopped anyone from coming in or out whilst reinforcements were called. Some people tried to escape, but Roman arrows and spears brought them down before they had got very far. Inside, people were starting to starve: food was in short supply.

It took about a month for Varus, the governor of Syria, to send in enough reinforcements and to prepare to retake the city. From the walls, we could watch them setting up camp and constructing siege engines. They used these to break down the walls and thus they retook the city. Those not killed in the battle were taken prisoner – everyone, whether involved in the revolt or innocent bystanders. All the slaves were sent off to the slave market. The men, those old enough to grow a beard, but not yet in their dotage, were crucified. Children under about five, and the elderly were simply put to the sword. The rest, all the women and girls, and all the boys between about five and fifteen including me, became slaves. We were held for a few days in a hastily-constructed camp outside the city whilst the men were put to work tearing down every building.

We were marched away from Zepphoris on the road towards Ptolemais, on the Mediterranean coast. For many miles, the road each side was lined with crosses. Trees were used, roof timbers from houses that had been demolished in Zepphoris, branches lashed together, whatever would serve. Some were straight, but most leaned at odd angles. Each cross held a man, straining to breathe, his arms behind him, the elbows over the horizontal member, wrists tied together at the back. Mostly, the arms held all the man’s weight; a few – lucky or unlucky – had a branch, a lump of bark or a notch in the tree that they could put a foot on. They were all black with thirst and sunburn, but silent, heads hanging limply. Each would be still for a long, long time, then would struggle to lift himself enough to draw a quick breath before slumping back down again in exhaustion. You cannot breathe when supported behind by your arms unless you can lift yourself up.

We did not want to look at so much suffering, but everyone needed to know what had become of their men: fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, friends. Every so often a small group of women and boys would leave the group and go up to a man hanging there to say their final goodbyes. The Roman soldiers were happy for this to occur, but would not let them touch the man or help him in any way; the Romans wanted news to spread about how they responded to resistance and revolt. I saw my father hanging there, and the parents of several of my friends. A number of the Greek merchants were among those crucified, including several that I had once been very friendly with. Behind us we could see the pillar of smoke and fire rising from the ruins of Zepphoris.

My friend Youssef was now a slave along with me. His father, also called Youssef, was spared crucifixion: he was a carpenter and had been out of town on the day that the revolt started, working on a roof in a nearby village, but he now had the distress of seeing his whole family, wife, sons and daughters, taken away into slavery. We could see him looking down from a nearby hill. We wrote a hasty message to him and left it on a stone near my father’s cross, gesticulating to him to get it once the Romans were out of sight. I don’t know if he ever received it. I asked him to take care of my sister Mirrim once she had been released from the Temple at Jerusalem; as the oldest male in our family, I was now technically responsible for her, and that was all I could do for her.

Ptolemais was a major seaport, and had an important slave-trading business. However, we were still under the control of the Roman Army until we had been shipped out of our country of origin. We were put into a large Roman army camp outside the city. Technically, we were spoils of war, and must be taken to Rome in triumph before being sold in the slave market. Fortunately for me, we slaves were being cared for by a group of the same soldiers that had been stationed outside Zepphoris, under the command of Gabulus. It is both boring and humiliating for a Roman Centurion to be put in charge of a large group of slave boys and women, so he was happy for me to take his mind of things during his off-duty hours.

The slaves were shipped out from the port a few dozen at a time as space became available in the galleys. Thus I said my last goodbyes to my mother, sisters and brother, and to all my remaining friends.

Knowing my metal-working skills, Gabulus had me working with his armourer making shackles and chains to keep the slaves secure during the journey. It was several months before I was shipped out with the last of the slaves from Zepphoris. Gabulus seemed a little regretful to part from me, but I sensed also some relief.

- - - - - -

I won’t dwell on the journey. The hold of a slave ship is not a pleasant place; it was crowded, hot and stinking. Many people were sick a lot of the time. I had no friend on board to give me preferential treatment. The overseers had their pick of the young women, and no one had the glad eye for me. There was too little food and not enough water. By the time we arrived we were a sorry-looking collection. Once we reached Ostia, the port on the coast nearest to Rome, we were marched in a coffle towards the city. We had all heard tales about Rome, but the reality, when we got there, made the tales seem tame. We stood below the outer walls of the buildings around the Forum, and felt them towering above us. We saw the glistening white senate house on the hill opposite and understood a little more of the might of the Roman Empire.

We were sold in batches to slave dealers. As a Jewish boy, I was not considered to be worth much, and was put in a loincloth for modesty, to hide my circumcision. The next day, we were told to scrub down, using a bucket of water, and to make ourselves presentable. I knew that I had little chance of avoiding the mines, but determined to do my best. I washed my hair and tossed it with my fingers and some grease from our food to make it shine and curl. I scrubbed my teeth with a stick. With a burnt piece of stick, I touched the corners of my eyes, and darkened my eyelashes.

Several potential buyers came by, but looked away as soon as they saw my loincloth – they knew what it hid. Then a man appeared in a leather apron. I knew him to be a metalworker from the type of apron and from the burn-scars on his hands. From his appearance, he was Greek. I turned on my best smile: “Kyrie, Dominus” I said, (“Lord” or “Master” in both Latin and Greek). He looked up. “I believe that I can make you a fortune if you buy me.”

He gave me a second look, and a little involuntary smile crept into his eyes – the “glad eye” at last. I was nearly there. “How do you think you can do that, Jew boy?”

“I need a forge, some tools and an anvil to explain that, but I also know how to give you a good time, if you want.”

A few more words exchanged between us, but the fish was on the hook and soon some coins changed hands and I had a new owner. He was a Greek called Xanthos Cheiron. He had lived most of his life in Rome and spoke Latin fluently, but his household spoke Greek within the family, and finding somebody who could speak fluent Greek and recite some Greek poetry was clearly important to him.

He had a wife and a substantial family living in the house – an elder son was married with a small child, and his wife had a widowed sister with several children who also lived there. Later that day, as the sun went down, he took me into his private room to find out what I was capable of, and so I gave him the full works, bringing him close to climax and then slowing down to prolong and intensify his feelings.

Later, as I lay in his arms whilst he recovered, he asked me how I proposed to make his fortune.

“There must be plenty of Jewish slaves like me, circumcised, and therefore of little value. You could buy any number for just a few As each.”

“True, but what is the purpose in that?”

“I realise that I will have to be infibulated. Perhaps you intend to do this immediately, or in the next few days. Certainly, I would prefer for it to be done before I reach puberty.”

“Certainly, but that won’t hide the plum-head, so you will still be worthless.”

“I have worked out a way to make a bronze cover for the end of my penis that can be used with an infibulation ring to make a Jewish slave acceptable in polite society.”

“So, any Jewish slave that I buy would become as valuable as any other slave.”

“Until other metal-workers found out how to do it and copied you.”

“So, we have to act quickly, and buy up a lot of Jewish slaves, infibulate them in the new way and sell them: a unique opportunity. But how will you test it?”

“On me, of course. I have to make a device and you put it onto me. I will remain covered by a loincloth or the leather metalworker’s apron until we are satisfied that it will work.”

“It will need to be tested on a full-grown Jewish man. You are still a boy. We need to find a Jewish slave with a really big penis – the biggest they get. Then you will be able to find out the right size to make it. Good idea, boy!”

So next day we went out looking for a Jewish slave with a big penis. It was not so easy. Existing Jewish slaves were mostly sent down the mines where they didn’t last long; they certainly didn’t come up for resale. We needed a shipload of new slaves from Judah or Galilee to look over. Fortunately there was one due to arrive in a few days so we told the dealer what we were looking for and asked him to pick one out for us. He got the impression that Xanthos had a peculiar fancy for a session with a well-hung but circumcised man. There was no point in telling him otherwise – it helped to maintain our secret, but would probably put the price up.

- - - - -

Yakob arrived a few days later, a large ungainly type, but hung like a mule. He was put into one of the slave-pens at the back of the workshop, and secured with chains. I went in to talk to him. He was from Judah, and my Aramaic sounded a bit coarse and agricultural to him, but we could understand one another. He knew little Latin and no Greek. He was aware that the mines were the fate of most Jewish slaves. I explained that infibulation was inevitable for him, and that he would just have to accept that, but that if he co-operated with us, he would be saved from the mines and an early death. I also promised that I could make his last few orgasms memorable ones. I had to explain what infibulation entailed, and what it would mean for him. He was not happy, but was bright enough to understand the alternatives.

I needed to measure his cock both flaccid and erect. Erect, he was an impressive sight. He was a big man, but the plum at the end reached well past his navel. He would have seriously endangered the health of the young wife that had been promised to him but now he was never to have. I wrote down the measurements on a wax tablet. Now I needed the flaccid measurements, so I set to work on this mighty tool, the largest I had ever played with. I could only just get the head into my mouth, with most men I could swallow half the shaft, but soon I had him gushing his seed all over his chest and belly, and the organ slowly and gently subsided to its still impressive flaccid state. I had to be quick with the measurements, for my manipulations soon started to make it swell again. I needed to measure both width and thickness at a series of distances along the length.

The next day I started on my project, making up a hard wooden form to the shape that I needed for the inside of my device. The end had to be long enough to contain the erect head, but only as wide and as thick as the flaccid member. Then the shaft belled out to the dimensions of the erect shaft, so as not to cut into it. I carefully carved out the wooden form and then sanded it smooth. Next I took a sheet of bronze, heated it and bent it around, and cut it to the shape I needed. At first it was not a good fit, but I carefully worked with the hammer and anvil until I had the shape I needed. Then I trimmed and welded the seam along the back, formed a nozzle for urine at the tip, rolled the edges around the base, and filed the whole thing smooth. There was a narrow nozzle for urine at one end, and a broadening oval bell below that. It even rung like a bell when I struck it. I made a hole in each side where the infibulation ring would pass through, half and inch up from the rolled edge, and I tinned and polished the inside so that there would be nothing to irritate the skin. We named it a “theca”, the Latin for a cover or enclosure. The same term was used for the bronze or silver enclosure for a glass perfume bottle.

I tried it for size against my own cock. It seemed ridiculously huge. I could not reach the end, even erect, and putting it into the position that it would take up with the infibulation ring just looked ridiculous. I feared that my idea was a failure. I went to talk to Xanthos.

“Does it need to be so big at the end? Why not make a smaller one, slide him into it with the help of some goose-grease, and see if he can still pee through it.”

I made two new wooden forms, one taking a sixteenth part off all the measurements, the other an eighth. From them I made two new thecae. This time when I tried them on they looked slightly less ungainly. Time to try them on Yakob.

Trying them on him was more difficult that I had expected. Each time I tried to fit him into the smallest theca, he would start to stiffen. Eventually, after making him spurt three times, he stayed flaccid long enough to fit the theca onto him; for now, it was just held into position with my hand. Now I needed to get him to pee, to make sure that he could do it inside this device. Jewish boys are used to privacy for peeing; having me hold the device in position and watching him made it difficult for him. I fetched a bucket and poured water from a beaker back into the bucket time and time again until, at last, pee started to gush out. The smallest size would work.

Now I needed to find a way of holding it in place for a few days without doing the full infibulation. To do this I pierced a tiny hole near the end of his penis just beside the fraenum and into his urethra. I used a thin tinned wire to do this and drew both ends out through the nozzle at the end of the theca, securing the wire in place by wrapping it around the nozzle a few times. He wasn’t very happy about the piercing, but I told him that I would let him fuck my bottom before he was properly infibulated, and this helped.

I showed the result to Xanthos who made one or two small suggestions, but generally approved. We needed to wait a few days to see if Yakob encountered any unforeseen problems.

One idea that Xanthos suggested was to offer his wealthier clients the option of decorating the theca, perhaps with a family crest or the owner’s initials. I asked if I might decorate the one intended for me, so that clients could get an idea of what was possible. He approved of this and told me to give some thought to the design.

When, after a couple of days, there had been no obvious signs of problems, other than a slight soreness at the site of the piercing, we constructed a harness with leather around his waist and loins to fasten the theca back into the infibulation position. Now he did encounter some problems, especially at night when he got erect. He threatened to tear out the piercing, or to tear off the harness, which he could easily have done, but I told him that I wouldn’t let him fuck my bottom if he did that.

After ten days, he was decidedly horny, as he had been unable to make himself ejaculate with the harness on. I snipped through the wire to release the theca and inspect his penis for problems. There were no visible signs; his plum-head had become much more sensitive, more like that of an uncircumcised man: purple rather than fawn, slick rather than dry. I worked plenty of goose-grease into my bottom, and gently lowered myself onto him, telling him that he would never have another experience like it. I hadn’t got myself more than halfway down before he exploded, and I could feel his hot seed pumping into me, filling me. He had three more goes before he was fully spent, but I could not fit more than three quarters of him into me without serious pain, and his extra sensitivity made him ejaculate quickly each time.

Now he was strapped to the bench for the full and final infibulation. We used a larger ring than normal and had to spread the ends of the ring to more than an inch to fit it through the holes in the sides of the theca. There was the usual crunch as the ring penetrated the ligament at the base of his cock. I clamped his penis behind the plum with the double-bladed forceps and pushed it into the theca. Another slave pushed the pointed end of the ring through the hole in the side of the theca, crunch through his cock between the blades of the forceps and out through the other hole in the theca. Now the ring had to be clamped to force the two ends together. This was more difficult than usual as there was so little left of the ring to get the clamp on. Finally the ring was welded into place. By the time we were finished Yakob was crying like a child for his imprisoned manhood.

- - - - -

Xanthos expressed himself pleased with the result. He started to make preparations for buying up a lot of Jewish boys. He had decided on forty as the number – that was the most he could accommodate in our slave-pens. So I, and a couple of trusted slaves, were put to making forty-one thecas to my design.

The first one was to be mine, and I had to get my ideas for decoration approved. Initially I thought of making it in the shape of an animal’s head, but I realised that the different positions that it would lie in, first now and later when I had matured, would make this look wrong. I thought of using Vesta, the perpetual virgin, as a symbol of my permanently chaste state, but this didn’t really fit with my past experiences, and I hoped that even when infibulated, I could still be attractive and give Xanthos a good time with hand, mouth and bottom. So I decided on Dionysus or Bacchus, the Greek and Roman good-time god as my subject, for I intended, despite being an infibulated slave, to have a good time during my life. I started sketching on a theca that I had made with rather heavier metal than before on the upper side.

Initially, I wanted to depict the god with a retinue in the procession from the wine harvest: baskets of grapes, the wine press, nymphs and satyrs. This was too much for the space available; it would be far too tiny to see. Instead, I chose a single figure, with a wine-cup in one hand, holding a bunch of grapes to his mouth in the other, leaning against a gnarled and woody grapevine, which was dripping with fruit and framing the figure. The proportions of the design fitted the tapering space, and so I started carving, deeply incising the metal to provide a clear bas-relief. I finished it by tinning everything, and then emphasising the bas-relief with touches of gilding. The other side, the side that would be permanently against my body, I polished smooth.

I showed the result to Xanthos. It was the first time that he had seen any of my decorative work. “That is fine work, well designed. I can see that you will be a very valuable slave to me. Are you ready to wear it?”

“As ready as I will ever be.”

And so, that day, I felt the finality of that crunch within me as metal penetrated sinew, and my still immature manhood was permanently and finally confined in the bell-shaped theca that I had invented, designed and constructed. I felt a deep inner ache of sickness within me, and yet I knew in my heart that it did not affect me as deeply as it had affected people like Yakob who were infibulated as adults. My immediate erection was fierce and prolonged, and it seemed as if a part within me sought to be rid of this impediment and would apply the maximum force possible towards doing so.

Later, when I tried to pee, I found it not so easy as Yakob had. His was a tight fit against the inside of the theca, and so all the pee came out of the nozzle; for me there was a gap all round, and pee went everywhere. Later, I tucked oiled leather all round the inside to make a watertight fit, but for a few days I had a messy problem every time I peed.

I felt very unwell for a few days as the wound healed. I was given some salve that I worked under the rim of the theca, which seemed to help. I spent the time making thecae for the Jewish slave boys that would soon arrive.

- - - - -

Before they arrived, however, we were warned of the imminent arrival of a batch of female slaves for infibulation. I had heard of female slaves being infibulated, but had never seen it and did not know how it was to be done. The first job was to prepare the rings. Whilst a single ring is used for a man, for a girl, forty-eight are needed. They are smaller, about a twelfth of an inch thick and maybe three quarters of an inch across. As we were expecting about twenty slave girls, nearly a thousand rings had to be made, each one sharpened at one end to cut through the flesh, but they were left flat at the other – no V-slot.

I don’t know what country they came from, for they spoke no language that I knew, no Greek and little Latin. They had fair curly hair, blue eyes and pale skins; they suffered and went red in the heat of the sun. Two were mature women, maybe fourteen or fifteen, the rest still flat-chested girls. Just as I had done, many of the girls would have tried to gain advantage during their journey by offering sex, and so any that were old enough to become pregnant were put into one of the slave pens. They would not be infibulated until their next flux of blood had started. Meanwhile, they were given food containing preparations known to “bring on the flux” – abortificants. It made them sick, but most would start to bleed within a few days.

The younger girls were put into other pens. Early the next morning, the six biggest were each given a potion to take. I was told that it contained ground up poppy seed, hemp-weed and some hemlock blended with vinegar, honey and a little wine. It made them very sleepy and insensitive, but not quite unconscious. Three teams of slaves did the infibulations.

The first girl that I helped with was laid along the bench, her legs wide apart. It was the first time that I had seen a naked girl up close. I remember her particularly as she had a big mole on her belly below her navel. I was curious but not excited. I had got to the stage with my infibulation that I had almost ceased to get erect at all during the day.

The leader of the team had a set of wooden scale rulers that he held against her sex. They were of different lengths, and each was marked in twelve equal divisions. He used the one that best matched the length of her slit, and made a series of equally spaced marks on each side of her sex, stabbing quite deeply with a point that he dipped each time into powdered charcoal. This made a mark that would not disappear when the blood was wiped away nor when water was splashed on. The two lines of marks were about half an inch apart. The lowest mark was midway between the end of her slit and her anus; the top-most was just above the top of her slit in the fatty mound above. In her drugged state, she moaned slightly as the pricking was done.

He worked from the bottom upwards, posting the ring into the flesh through one mark and out the other side as close to the other mark as he could, using double-bladed forceps to support the flesh. Then the wet leather with the slit went on, the clamp closed the ring, and I had to hold the hot charcoal against the join with the tongs and blow on it with the blowpipe whilst another slave made the weld. The weld was rough, just a blob of metal, and as soon as it held, the clamp was removed, a spoonful of water was splashed on and the leather removed. The rings over the lower part of the slit came out above the inner labia, which were folded inwards, and then into the other side and out at the other mark. When we reached the upper part of the slit, I was shown the clitoris, the miniature penis by which a woman got pleasure, and I was told that the ring had to pass underneath this, close to the bone, so that the clitoris would be contained within the row of rings. At the top of the clitoris there is a ligament similar to but smaller than that on the man, and one of the rings had to pass through this. Finally the first row of rings was done.

No marks were made for the other rows, the rings already in place dictated where these rings would go, for we were making a sort of chain maille. This type is the simplest maille form, “four in one” it is called: each ring has four others linked through it. Each new ring in the second row passes through two rings in the first. Thus the first ring in the second row passed through numbers one and two in the first row, the second ring passed through numbers two and three, and so on. The rings in the first row were angled downwards towards her bottom, and so the rings in the second row leaned up. For this reason, we started at the top and worked downwards. Each ring went through the next two rings in the first row, and then through half an inch of flesh and out. Wet leather, clamp, weld, splash and we started again with the next ring. There were ten rings in the rows either side of the centre, and eight in the outer rows, making forty-eight rings in five rows.

When it was finished, her whole sex was covered top to bottom, and side to side with an impenetrable chain maille. You could just see the tiny clitoris, but there was no way that even a little child’s finger could touch it. Finally some salve was rubbed in and she was carried away to recover.

I asked one of the slaves about the effects. “She’ll walk with her legs apart for a few days, for the rings rub against the tops of her thighs as she walks. It will burn when she pees for a bit. The weight will trouble her – each ring weighs only a quarter of an ounce, which may not seem a lot, but forty-eight of them means a full pound of metal hanging down between her legs. But the biggest effect will be when she tries to sit down: for the rest of her life she will have to sit on the edge of a chair or stool, any pressure on these rings will pinch the flesh horribly. She will probably still be able to do sex doggy fashion with her bottom, but even that could easily cause pain if the rings are pressed, so the man would either have to be very careful or very cruel.”

“But why would they not want a slave to get pregnant? Surely the child could be sold as a slave?”

“There used to be slave breeding farms, but there are so many slaves available from the conquests, from rebels and so on that there is not enough profit in it. The child would have to be reared to about five or six to be worth selling. Anyway, what if it got out that an important man was the father of a slave? Think of the disgrace, the shame!”

It had taken a good two hours to infibulate the first girl. The next was brought in, almost insensible from the drug, and the same procedure was repeated on her. Each of the three teams had done two girls by the end of the morning. We stopped for the lunch-break and the siesta before doing the last six in the afternoon.

The last six were the smallest ones. These took a little longer as their tiny parts required a little more care to be taken to position the rings just right. Chain maille can be compressed from the sides, bunched up, but if you stretch it, it reaches a limit and will not stretch beyond that. On a small girl we had to build it in the bunched up state, and that meant carefully judging where each ring in the outer rows should go. It took longer, for there was less space to do the welding.

Meanwhile, those operated on in the morning were recovering. They moaned and cried in pain. I had fresh memories of the single ring that impaled me; the idea of forty-eight was unthinkable. I felt sorry for them, but there was not much that I could do, as I had no language to communicate with. I did the thing that I thought would be of most value to them in the future – taught them some basic Latin words and phrases. This proved to be useful, as slaves that can speak some Latin fetch a better price and get better positions. Later, some of the dealers would ask for me to teach other slaves some Latin before they sold them.

A couple of them had a problem with bleeding or suppuration from one or two of the rings. I was told that it was because not enough heat had been used, and the ring was heated again to sear the wound. After about five days, the swelling was starting to go down for most of them. They were kept there for about ten days until they could move about with reasonable ease and do some useful work. Then they were sent back to their owners. A couple were kept back for another two or three days.

- - - - - -

Meanwhile one of the mature women, she would be my age, about fourteen or fifteen, (women mature younger than men, of course), had started her flux, and it had run for a couple of days, so we could now infibulate her. The other one would need further action if she did not start soon, and a few days later one of our slaves, skilled in this process, put a narrow bronze rod with a rounded end right up inside her and left it in for half a day, agitating it a little every hour or so. She started a heavy bleed almost right away, and seemed to be in some distress. One of the slaves said that it looked as if she had been about three months gone, and we would have to wait a few days to make sure that everything was out before sealing her up.

For infibulating a mature woman, we started by shaving off all the hair. The infibulation procedure is a little different. The lines of marks either side of the slit were a full inch apart; as the rings were just three quarters of an inch across, that meant that the flesh was be drawn in from the sides. Similarly, when the second and third rows of rings were put in, the flesh was drawn together in both directions. A secondary effect was that, as with the mature men, there was not much visible ring left to clamp and weld, so there was more heating and burning of the flesh.

I was told: “When a young girl is infibulated, the chain maille stays the same size as she grows, and so the flesh is drawn inwards. That way the whole sex is protected, but there is no interference with her movements, with her work. When we infibulate an older woman, we use the same size rings, and so the flesh has to be pulled together both fore and aft and from the sides. She will feel some tension for a day or two, but she soon gets used to it. There is another reason to do this. Some women can get themselves off by clenching their internal muscles, but with this tension, when they try to do that, it tugs on the rings and hurts, so it stops them.”

A few days later, I saw one of the women trying to frig herself at night. She didn’t get very far and just moaned with frustration and gave up. Later she would be whipped for even trying, but for now, I just watched. I had watched this one get herself off a few times before the infibulation, and I found it interesting to compare what happens with a woman with what I already knew of men.

- - - - -

At last all but the adult women had been sent away, and we had room for most of the Jewish boys and young men, who had been held for a few days by the dealers. It did not take long to infibulate the boys, fitting each with a theca. I explained the advantages that this would bring them, but for some reason, they did not seem at all grateful.

They mostly came from Judea, near to Jerusalem, and I asked several if they had any news of Zepphoris, or of any of the people that I had known, but it was too far away for them. One was able to give me some news from the Temple: apparently Mirrim had finished her time in the women’s place there, and had been given in marriage to Youssef and was now pregnant. It made sense: he was now responsible for her but not a blood relative; he was without wife or child, (a person whose wife had been taken into slavery was considered a widower), and neither of them had any property to form a dowry, so marriage would leave them no worse off. I pitied her that her husband was so much older than her.

After my success at teaching Latin to the girls, I spent a few days teaching these boys Latin, on the basis that this would improve their price still further. Some of them knew a little already, and a few made good students, but some were hopeless. We decided to let them heal for a few days before trying to sell them. There were three that we decided to keep as demonstration of what the finished theca would look like, with different ring positions and different amounts of twist to the penis; and also because they knew something of metalwork and could be of use to us. The rest we carefully fed and exercised so that they were in good condition.

There was quite a stir when we took them to the slave market. At first there was some suspicion that the thing would not work long term, but we showed them Jakob’s and mine and we both stated that there had been no problems. The decoration on mine caused some comment, and we were asked to change the thecas for decorated ones on several of the slaves that we sold. At the end of the day, Xanthos had made a substantial profit and was very pleased. He took me to his bed and teased my theca-covered cock as he fucked my bottom.

Longer term, the prices paid for Jewish slave-boys went up which did not please the mine owners. Theca making became a substantial part of our business, as many other metalworkers that tried it took short cuts and caused problems, so we got a reputation for reliability.

One unexpected result was a demand for thecae from Romanised Jewish free men. Some were freed slaves, others chose to come to Rome. Wearing a theca made it acceptable for them to use the baths or to take part in athletic games. The design, however, was very different. Instead of being held in place by an infibulation, there was a small piercing in the shaft-skin of the penis, as with a woman’s earring, and a catch on the theca. Often the theca was finished in silver or gold and some had elaborate decorations.

- - - - -

Twenty-five years have passed. I still work for Xanthos, spending most of my time doing the elaborate decorative work on pieces that other slaves had built. My decorative work is known all over the Roman Empire, and fetches a high price. I have developed methods of melting coloured glass into the surface of the metal for decoration, (enamelling), as well as silver and gold decoration on the bas-relief.

I am most famous for my Bacchanalian scenes, (Dionysian if you are Greek): vast orgies of scantily clad nymphs and bearded satyrs coupling in a sea of grapes and fountains of wine. Ironic that this should be so as I have never experienced sex since Xanthos tired of me when I matured, and had never tasted wine since becoming a slave.

Today a strange thing happened. A pair of slaves came into the workshop: a man and a woman. I say slaves, but they had just been given their manumission; their owner had freed them as a reward for long and dutiful service on the occasion of his retirement. I recognised Yakob immediately from his size, although I had not seen him since he had been sold by Xanthos after I had become mature enough to demonstrate the theca on a mature man. It had soon become clear that he would never make a useful metalworker. Yakob wanted me to remove his theca and ring.

I didn’t recognise the girl but she told me that I had been part of the team that had infibulated her. She wanted her rings removed also. They had been in love for years, an unconsummated love, of course, and with their manumission, they wanted to become free of the rings. I told them, of course, that they might not be able to do anything, but they were clear that they wanted to try.

Normally, I would have had one of the other slaves do this sort of job, but on this occasion, I was happy to do the work myself. It took only a few minutes to remove Yakob’s ring and theca. A chisel will cut through the metal with a few hammer-blows, but this leaves a sharp edge that must be filed away before it can be withdrawn through the flesh. His penis looked healthy enough with few signs of damage from the constant pressure of the theca. There was a big hole through the shaft from side to side, of course, but the plum-head was healthy and free from scarring. It hung down for the first time in twenty years with a pronounced curve in its still monstrous bulk. Later, in private, perhaps with his love’s help, he would try to stimulate it to erection, but he would not do so now with me watching.

He asked me to make him a theca that was more typical of those worn by a freeman – this would allow him to use a bathhouse without embarrassment.

Esta, for that was her name, I recognised once she took off her gown: there was a large mole below her navel. Hers was my very first female infibulation. Her hair had darkened with age, and her skin had soaked up a lot of sun and was covered all over with freckles, but her eyes were still blue.

Removing a woman’s rings is a longer and more difficult job. It is difficult to position an anvil to cut through the rings – I kept accidentally pinching her tender flesh - and all forty-eight have to be filed so that they can be withdrawn through the flesh without injury. It took almost as long to remove them as it had taken to put them in. You could see how the rings had drawn the flesh inwards: some of the holes had elongated. Along the centre slit, the flesh had scarred together across from side to side in several places. She would have to cut or tear these adhesions apart, which would hurt and bleed. There was some accumulated matter around the inner lips and clitoris, where she had been unable to clean; it had caused some irritation and redness – a constant itch that she could never get at.

When I had done, I said: “Come back sometime and tell me how you got on!” They thanked me with an uncertain smile and left. It was a few months before I saw them again. Her belly was visibly swelling with motherhood so I guess that they had found a way.

Footnote:

The events of this story take place between about 8BC and 1BC with a short coda set about 19 AD.

I am indebted to Josephus’ “Historia” for much of the information about the revolt in Zepphoris in 4BC. The names of the major players are historically correct.

I am indebted to E.J. Dingwall “Male Infibulation” for much information about the practice of infibulating slaves, and of the use of thecae by both slaves and freemen. I do not know, of course, who invented the theca, nor precisely when, but it must have been at about this time, when Jewish mohels started to perform the double or “strip” circumcision.

The Romans used a system of measurements was very similar to the Imperial measurement system in the UK. The Roman pes, (foot), was about 3% shorter than the modern foot. The Roman unica, (inch), was 1/12 of a foot. They also used common fractions of these measurements. Similarly, with the Roman units of weight: the unica, (ounce – yes, the inch and the ounce had the same name), was almost exactly the same as an Imperial ounce, however the libra, (pound) was 12 ounces.

“Xanthos” is Greek for “brown”, and “Cheiron” means “low” or “inferior”. You will find a “Brownlow” theme running through many of my writings.