A social history of the role of eunuchs in the households and courts of Greece, Rome, China, Byzantine, medieval Europe and the East, which aims to challenge traditional preconceptions about their duties. Scholz demonstrates that many eunuchs were not slaves but were instead important household and government officials who exerted great influence, notably in the Near East. He also argues that androgeny was idealised as a liberated and pure condition in medieval Christian Europe.
