Taphoi wrote: Bagoas in the Mithridatic Wars is a likely eunuch, since he deposes one king and replaces him with another (why not become king himself? because he was a eunuch and so did not qualify!)
That is, yet again, to misrepresent the situation. Your wording is designed to show this Bagoas as operating independently and thus in a position to place himself uopn the throne. Boagoas was hardly acting alone. Mithraas and Bagoas were part of a wider campaign by Mithridates to reclaim areas taken from him by Roman fiat. Mithridates had two armies engaged at the one time. One, in Bithynia under Socrates (the Bithynian king Nicomedes' brother), was to depose to depose Nicomedes; another in Cappadocia under Mithraas and Bagoas was to restore Mithridates' control. Bagoas' remit, from Mithridates, was clear: he
and Mithraas were to remove and replace Ariobarzanes, the Romans' recently installed ruler of Cappadocia. Appian, Mith.2.10 (cf Livy, Periochae, 76.8 & 77.8):
Mithridates obeyed the order (of the Romans to restore Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes), but he put an army at the service of Socrates, surnamed Chrestus, the brother of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, who overthrew the latter and usurped the government. This Nicomedes was the son of Nicomedes the son of Prusias, who had received the kingdom of Bithynia as his patrimony at the hands of the Romans. Simultaneously Mithraas and Bagoas drove out Ariobarzanes, whom the Romans had confirmed as king of Cappadocia, and installed Ariarthes in his place.
Your other tenuous claims - claims represented as fact - in the above post have been succinctly dealt with by Amyntoros.
Taphoi wrote:We know that many Persian Royal Eunuchs acted as governors (viceroys) of Persian cities and provinces: Batis in Gaza, Hermias in Atarneus...
You have, in no way, demonstrated that such a class of eunuch ever existed yet you claim it as uncontested fact.
The plain fact is that Pliny believes that Bagoas was a word used in Persian for eunuch; nothing in that "incredible farrago", as Badian describes it (
The Eunuch Bagoas ,The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 8, No. 3/4, Nov., 1958, pp. 144-157), claims that Bagoas was the word/name for an alleged class of "royal eunuch" exercising royal power. On your own testimony (
Bagoas is Persian for those Eunuchs who rule in the sense of a king, i.e. exercise royal authority [..]that it is a name/title for Royal Eunuchs) the above are not these speculated "royal eunuchs" as they are nowhere referred to as Bagoas - the name/title you have us believe applied to this spurious class of eunuch.
What is plainly apparent is that Bagoas was a common name for a eunuch - nothing more and nothing less. So common, in fact, that Pliny thought it may be Persian for a eunuch. In Australian slang
Sheila can be used for girl / woman though this does preclude the naming of a girl by that name. Similarly the name Judas is now synonymous with traitor / betrayer.
It is not only the name Bagoas which is synonymous with eunuch. As I've shown above (Quintilian, Institutio Oratorio V.12.21), the Romans also regarded Megabyzus as synonymous with eunuch. Strabo (14.23) provides clear evidence of this synonymy in describing the eunuchs of the temple of Artemis in Ephesus:
"They had eunuchs as priests, whom they called Megabyzi". It is thus just as clear that Megabyzus, too, was synonymous with eunuch.
Megabyzus is a well attested Persian name. If it
"would have been perverse for any Persian nobleman to call himself by the name of a (supposed) royal eunuch" why would one of the "Behistun Seven" have been called such? Why was the son in law of Xerxes called a eunuch?
Whilst we're on the subject of names...
Taphoi wrote: Bagaeus is not Bagoas...
Megabyzus, the son in law of Xerxes, is clearly attested. Justin (III.1), repeating Ctesias' story (§33-§34 at Livius), calls him Baccabasus just as Athenaeus (609a) calls him Bagazus. Baccabasus is a transcription of Bagabuxsa - the Magabyzus of Herodotus - one of the Seven in Darius' Behistun inscription.
As such, I wouldn't be too sure in dismissing Bagaeus / Bagoas.
Taphoi wrote:etiam means "also" or "besides" in the Pliny ref (see below) - otherwise Pliny thinks all eunuchs were called Bagoas, which is gibberish, as Agesilaos has cogently pointed out. As I have said, we know that Persian Royal Eunuchs acted as viceroys.
regno is defined as "to exercise royal authority" or even just "to be a master" as can be seen below.,
That is not the only rendering.
If the noun is genitive:
B. [select] In gen., to be lord, to rule, reign, govern, be supreme (syn. dominor); “in a good sense: quoniam equitum centurias tenes, in quibus regnas,” Cic. Fam. 11, 16 fin.; [b}cf.: “regnare in judiciis,” Quint. 10, 1, 112[/b]: “vivo et regno,” Hor. Ep. 1, 10, 8. — “Esp., of the gods: caelo tonantem credimus Jovem Regnare,” Hor. C. 3, 5, 2: “Saturno regnante,” Ov. F. 1, 193: “secundo Caesare regnes,” Hor. C. 1, 12, 52.— “In a bad sense (very freq.),” to lord it, tyrannize, domineer, Cic. Sull. 7, 21: “regnavit is paucos menses,” id. Lael. 12, 41: “quin se ille interfecto Milone regnaturum putaret,” id. Mil. 16, 43: “Timarchidem fugitivum omnibus oppidis per triennium scitote regnasse,” Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 54, § 136: “nec jam libertate contentos esse, nisi etiam regnent ac dominentur,” Liv. 24, 29, 7 Drak.; cf. “so with dominari,” Cic. Rep. 3, 12, 21; Flor. 3, 12, 9.
Thus you would have Quintilian say Cicero's "contemporaries spoke of his
exercise of royal authority at the bar".
Regnavere clearly refers to what
some eunuchs did in the east (eos): governed or ruled. Thus "some also/even governed/ruled in the east/orient". Nothing suggests that a class of eunuch "exercised royal power amongst them" or ruled "amongst them".