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Meinsius thinks that the custom of infibulating may be traced back to the time of the siege of Troy, for the singer Demodocus, who was left with Clytemnestra by Agamemnon, appears to that critic, to have been a eunuch, or, at least, to here been infibulated.
In one of his pleasantries Martial says of these infibulated singers that they sometimes break their rings and fail to place them back "et cujus refibulavit turgidum faber peruem." Heinsius considers Agamemnon cautious when he left Demodocus near Clytemnestra, as he remarks that Demodocus was infibulated. For such purposes as the foregoing infibulation offered a more humane method than castration.
The Romans infibulated their singers in order to preserve their voice: "Si gaudet cantu; nullius fibula durat Vocem vendentis prætoribus." They even subjected to the same operation most of their actors: "Solvitur his magno comœdi fibula. Sunt, quæ Chrysogonum cantare vetent." "Take from Chrysogonus the power to sing, Loose, at vast prices, the comedian's ring."
In this connection the celebrated Harvey mentions a mare with infibulated genitals, but these did not prevent successful labor. Occasionally infibulation has been used as a means of preventing masturbation. De la Fontaine has mentioned this fact, and there is a case in this country in which acute dementia from masturbation was cured by infibulation.
Winkleman furnishes us with a description of an infibulated musician, it being a small bronze statue representing a naked deformed individual, as thin as a skeleton, and carrying a ring in his enormi mentula.
Infibulation of the male and female external genital organs for the prevention of sexual congress is a very ancient custom. The Romans infibulated their singers to prevent coitus, and consequent change in the voice, and pursued the same practice with their actors and dancers.
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