A Roman oversees a mass-castration.
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My dear Gaius Glaboris: Since being sent to this waste two years ago, I confess I have neglected my correspondence. You were not singled out for this neglect - even Marcus has not received more than a few letters and I have not seen him for over nine months. In truth, I have not wanted to talk about what has gone on here, but now that it is over I need to purge my mind of it, and writing is part of the attempt. As is known all too well, Lyccira, though a very small province, has taken years to subdue because of the mountainous terrain and, even more, the fierceness of the population. Even their women and children are dangerous, and they do not fight honorably. Having no strategic or agricultural value, some of us had to constantly persuade ourselves that its quarries from which high quality marble is extracted were worth fighting for. Lyccira is the nearest source from Thasos where we plan to expand the old port into a major facility and make it a regional capital with an impressive forum and civic buildings. But most of us were less than inspired by the prospect of rock for Thasos (which, if you ask me, will never be more than a rockpile no matter how it is stacked), and our low morale did not speed the conquest. One of the things we were promised in order to spur our fighting spirit was a bonus from the sale of slaves. If we had followed our usual policy with defeated armies, dispersing all to parts of the empire remote from their homeland, a lot of money could have been taken in despite the small size of the population. The more heroic of the soldiers would have become gladiators, bringing a good price. While many of the others would be sold at standard prices for hard labor in fields or galleys, many of the Lyccirean men are pretty and would have been made into eunuchs for household service or pleasure like those boys you have, also bringing good prices. But we were cheated. It was decided that the Lyccirean males were needed for the quarries in their homeland. Of course we could have brought in slave labor from other provinces, as is our usual practice since slaves are far less likely to rebel when they are on unfamiliar land and not of one nationality. But Partinus figured this would have been a lot of trouble and expense and, furthermore, the supply of slaves not already owned privately or committed to other projects was low. So it was decided even before the final defeat of the Lyccireans (though we soldiers were not told of this) that while their females would be dispersed throughout the empire, the males, retained in the province, would be castrated to make them more docile as well as to prevent another generation of Lyccireans from being bred. I was put in charge of this. Now, it is one thing to select a small percentage of men from a population to be made into eunuchs, a normal procedure that doesnt cause widespread panic. But it is quite another to castrate some twelve thousand men. In fact, this was something we had never attempted before on such a scale. It was easy to imagine that even unarmed, they are not likely to submit to the knife without resisting. They would have to be isolated in small camps, tied or shackled "for transport," then quickly trussed up and unmanned before word leaked. First, we had to assemble the large quantity of rope and chain needed to bind an entire army. Holding pens were constructed. We also needed a veritable army of cutters, three hundred if two men were to castrate forty slaves which seemed a realistic quota. Most of our soldiers had never so much as gelded an animal, so training was required. We needed to have the slaves be able to recover quickly, so the cutting had to be cleanly done. To minimize blood loss, the scrotum would only be slit at the bottom, the stones pushed out for pruning and the severed blood vessels cauterized. It was also decided that the cut in the bag should be stitched closed and brushed with pine sap. Ideally, the whole job of doing all twelve thousand should take no more than a day. The main thing would be to make them submit to being bound and to not give them any hint of what was ahead before the whole lot was secured. We began our task two days after the final victory. The soldiers had been herded into the pens and the males of the civilian population were rounded up and also segregated. Children below the age of twelve were shipped off with the women, though I understand that later they, too, were neutered. Our soldiers methodically and efficiently immobilized the captives, sorting them into groups according to their size and strength, and by early afternoon we were ready to begin the cutting. This was actually worse than I had imagined it would be - the shreiks and screams rose hideously through the entire province, and the smell of burnt flesh became nauseating. We did the strong ones first and more carefully, but, just as I had feared, this took too long. By mid afternoon it was clear we would not finish the work before sundown unless things were speeded up. So the weak and young were simply sliced, and some of these did not survive the loss of blood. We took more care with the most beautiful since we still had hope that they might eventually be sold. As night fell the last were processed, and our cutters, exhausted and covered with blood, were finally able to rest. Buckets of testicles, nearly twenty-four thousand of them, were dumped into the river or fed to pigs. I regret to report that some of our men made a sport of their task. There were a few incidents of rape, and some of the slaves were made to first spill their seed one last time to the hoots and jeers of onlookers. One of our lads as a grotesque mockery sewed smooth, rather large stones into the emptied bags of his subjects. But for the most part, the task was well carried out. I'll remind you as I remind myself that the Lyccireans were animals no more deserving of pity than cattle. There was no reason to breed more of them. It is less troublesome and expensive to replace slaves through conquests or purchases than to be burdened with their young. And while these slaves certainly resented their loss they, so far, have remained submissive. I hope to see you in three weeks and to talk about other things. Drusus