No, Ancient Skythian Enarees Didn’t Drink Urine from Pregnant Mares as a Primitive Form of HRT

The Skythians were an ancient mostly nomadic people who inhabited the northern Eurasian steppes in what is now Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan. They were known in antiquity as a very warlike people and were especially known for their skills at horseback riding and archery. The ancient Greeks generally regarded them as archetypal barbarians and Greek ethnographers were deeply fascinated by their culture. They wore trousers, which the Greeks regarded as the most barbaric kind of garment, and they practiced tattooing.

As I discuss in this post I wrote in August 2020, various groups of people existed in ancient world who might fit the definition of the modern word transgender. The Enarees were one such kind of gender-variant people who existed among the ancient Skythians. Although they were assigned male at birth, they wore women’s clothing, took on roles traditionally assigned to women, and spoke in a feminine manner.

A story has become widely circulated online in recent years claiming that the Enarees drank estrogen-rich urine harvested from pregnant mares in order to feminize their bodies as a form of primitive gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Sadly, as awesome as it would be if this story were true, it has absolutely no basis in any kind of historical evidence and is entirely a piece of unfounded modern speculation.

Herodotos’s explanation for the Enarees’ effeminacy

Let’s begin by talking about what the ancient sources actually say about the Enarees. Unfortunately, no work written by any ancient Skythian person describing the Enarees has survived and it is unlikely that any such work ever existed in antiquity. Instead, virtually everything that is known about the Enarees comes from ancient Greek ethnographic sources, which consistently portray the Skythians as a barbaric, foreign people and are not necessarily reliable.

Ancient Greek authors offer a wide variety of creative explanations for why the Enarees are supposedly feminine. For instance, the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BCE), who is the earliest known author to mention the Enarees, claims in his Histories 1.105.2–4 that the Enarees are feminine because a group of Skythians plundered the temple of the goddess Astarte, whom the Greek identified with Ouranian (i.e., “Heavenly”) Aphrodite, at Askalon and, in retribution, the goddess cursed the Skythians who plundered her temple and all their descendants with the “disease” of effeminacy. Herodotos writes:

“οἳ δὲ ἐπείτε ἀναχωρέοντες ὀπίσω ἐγένοντο τῆς Συρίης ἐν Ἀσκάλωνι πόλι, τῶν πλεόνων Σκυθέων παρεξελθόντων ἀσινέων, ὀλίγοι τινὲς αὐτῶν ὑπολειφθέντες ἐσύλησαν τῆς οὐρανίης Ἀφροδίτης τὸ ἱρόν. ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο τὸ ἱρόν, ὡς ἐγὼ πυνθανόμενος εὑρίσκω, πάντων ἀρχαιότατον ἱρῶν ὅσα ταύτης τῆς θεοῦ: καὶ γὰρ τὸ ἐν Κύπρῳ ἱρὸν ἐνθεῦτεν ἐγένετο, ὡς αὐτοὶ Κύπριοι λέγουσι, καὶ τὸ ἐν Κυθήροισι Φοίνικές εἰσὶ οἱ ἱδρυσάμενοι ἐκ ταύτης τῆς Συρίης ἐόντες.”

“τοῖσι δὲ τῶν Σκυθέων συλήσασι τὸ ἱρὸν τὸ ἐν Ἀσκάλωνι καὶ τοῖσι τούτων αἰεὶ ἐκγόνοισι ἐνέσκηψε ὁ θεὸς θήλεαν νοῦσον: ὥστε ἅμα λέγουσί τε οἱ Σκύθαι διὰ τοῦτο σφέας νοσέειν, καὶ ὁρᾶν παρ᾽ ἑωυτοῖσι τοὺς ἀπικνεομένους ἐς τὴν Σκυθικὴν χώρην ὡς διακέαται τοὺς καλέουσι Ἐνάρεας οἱ Σκύθαι.”

This means, in my own translation:

“And, when they were returning back, they came to the city Askalon of Syria and the majority of the Skythians passed by without harming, but a few of them, staying behind, plundered the temple of Ouranian Aphrodite. And this temple, as I found out by inquiring, is the most ancient of all temples of this goddess; for even the temple in Kypros was founded from it, as the Kyprians themselves say, and the one among the Kytherians the Phoinikians who founded it were from this same land of Syria.”

“And, to those of the Skythians who plundered the temple in Askalon and to those who are ever descendants of them, the deity cast a feminine disease: so that now the Skythians say that, because of this, they are cursed, and those who travel to the Skythian land see for themselves how those whom the Skythians call ‘Enarees’ are situated.”

This conception of the Enarees’ effeminacy as a curse from Aphrodite fits well with the conception of women as essentially deformed men, which was fairly widespread among educated Greek men of the upper classes in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.

This notion also fits well with the popular Greek conception of Aphrodite as a deity associated with gender-bending and nonconformity, which shows up in some other ancient sources. For instance, a fragment from the Atthis of the historian Philochoros of Athens (lived c. 340 – c. 261 BCE), which has been preserved through quotation by the Roman antiquarian Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, who lived in around the early fifth century CE, in his Saturnalia 3.8.2, records that, in Athens, men made sacrifices to a male form of Aphrodite known as Aphroditos while wearing women’s clothing and women made sacrifices to him while wearing men’s clothing.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble bust of the Greek historian Herodotos, based on an earlier Greek original

The Hippokratic treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places and its explanation for the Enarees’ effeminacy

On Airs, Waters, and Places is a medical treatise written in the Greek language sometime in the fifth or early fourth century BCE. The treatise is traditionally attributed to the physician Hippokrates of Kos (lived c. 460 – c. 370 BCE) and is included the Hippokratic Corpus. As I previously discussed in this post I wrote in August 2019, though, modern scholars generally agree that the works included in the Hippokratic Corpus cannot all have been written by a single author, since they differ drastically in language and medical approach. The real author of the treatise is therefore unknown.

On Airs, Waters, and Places is a fascinating work of Classical Greek ethnography that seeks to explain various foreign peoples’ perceived characteristics using the theory of environmental determinism, which holds that the environment in which a certain people reside determines their physical and cultural characteristics. The author of the work especially talks about the Skythians at length and, in chapter 22 of the work, he specifically tries to explain why the Enarees are so feminine using environmental theory.

The author of the treatise records that the Skythians themselves believe that a deity has made the Enarees effeminate and that they therefore regard them with fear and awe and worship them. He writes:

“οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐπιχώριοι τὴν αἰτίην προστιθέασι θεῷ καὶ σέβονται τούτους τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ προσκυνέουσι, δεδοικότες περὶ ἑωυτῶν ἕκαστοι.”

This means, in my translation:

“The natives therefore attribute the cause [of the Enarees’ effeminacy] to a deity and they regard these human beings with awe and pay obeisance to them, each one fearing for themself.”

The author, however, rejects this explanation. He argues that the Enarees disproportionately come from the upper classes of Skythian society, but, if some deity were the cause of their effeminacy, then one would expect the disease of effeminacy to disproportionately affect the poor, because rich people can afford to make frequent and lavish offerings to the deities and are therefore favored, while the poor cannot afford to make so frequent or lavish offerings and therefore would be more likely to suffer the divine curse of effeminacy.

Having rejected what he claims is the Skythians’ own explanation, the author of the treatise argues that the real reason why the Enarees are so effeminate is because they ride on horseback so much, which causes swelling at the joints. He says that the Skythians cure themselves of this swelling by cutting the veins behind each ear, but this causes them to become sexually impotent. The author also attributes the Enarees’ supposed impotence to the fact that they wear trousers, they spend the majority of their time riding on horseback, and they live in a cold climate, so that “μήτε χειρὶ ἅπτεσθαι τοῦ αἰδοίου” (“they do not fasten with the hand their privy parts”) and therefore lose their sexual potency.

He claims that Skythian men who repeatedly try to have sexual intercourse with women and find they cannot do so because they cannot make their penises become erect attribute their erectile dysfunction to a divine curse and therefore adopt feminine clothing and a feminine lifestyle out of humiliation.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a marble bust dating to the first century CE intended to represent the Greek physician Hippokrates of Kos, to whom the medical/ethnographic treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places is traditionally (but spuriously) attributed

Ovid’s two brief mentions of the “poison of the lusting mare”

The story that the Enarees drank urine harvested from pregnant mares in order to feminize their bodies as a primitive form of HRT is never mentioned anywhere in any ancient source. You won’t find it anywhere in Herodotos, On Airs, Waters, and Places, or any other text. Some readers may therefore wonder how on earth this bizarre misconception could have arisen, given its complete absence in the ancient sources.

The answer to this question is that the misconception appears to have arisen as a bit of wild speculation drawing on knowledge of the Enarees’ effeminacy, the Skythians’ general association in the ancient sources with horses, and two other strains of evidence that have absolutely no connection to the ancient Skythians.

One of these strains of evidence is the fact that the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (lived 43 BCE – c. 17 CE), who is most commonly known today in English as “Ovid,” mentions twice in his extant poetic corpus women in Roman Italy harvesting an unspecified “poison” from mares in heat and using it for some kind of harmful spell or potion.

In both instances, however, it is not clear at all whether Ovid is even talking about urine, rather than some other horse byproduct. Furthermore, he says absolutely nothing that would link this “poison” in any way to Skythia or the Enarees, nor does he say anything whatsoever about this “poison” having feminizing effects.

Ovid’s earlier mention of the “poison” occurs in his Amores or Loves, which is usually considered his earliest surviving work. He originally published the Amores in 16 BCE in a five-book version, but he later substantially revised and redacted it into a shorter three-book version. This later three-book version is the only one that has survived to the present day. The work consists of a series of elegies written from the perspective of a male speaker describing his personal relationship with a woman named Corinna.

The mention of the “poison” harvested from mares in heat occurs when the speaker is describing his girlfriend as consulting an old woman named Dipsas who is highly skilled in occult practices. He describes Dipsas’s magic powers as follows in the Amores 1.8.5–8:

“Illa magas artes Aeaeaque carmina novit
inque caput liquidas arte recurvat aquas;
scit bene, quid gramen, quid torto concita rhombo
licia, quid valeat virus amantis equae.”

This means, in my own translation:

“That woman knows the Aiaian magic arts and incantations
and, with her art, she can make flowing waters turn back to their source;
she knows well which herb [to use], how you whirl the cords for bullroarer,
and what power the poison of the lusting mare possesses.”

Ovid’s second mention of the mysterious “poison” harvested from mares in heat occurs in his Medicama Faciei Feminae or Medicines for the Face of a Woman, a didactic poem in elegiac couplets in which he defends women’s use of cosmetics and gives advice for women on the subject. Scholars generally agree that Ovid probably wrote the Medicama in around 2 BCE or slightly earlier.

The specific reference to the “poison” of mares in heat occurs in lines 35–38 when he is trying to defend women as using makeup because of love and not for the sake of any kind of nefarious charms or potions. He says:

“Sic potius vos urget amor quam fortibus herbis,
quas maga terribili subsecat arte manus.
Nec vos graminibus nec mixto credite suco,
nec temptate nocens virus amantis equae.”

This means, in my own translation:

“Thus, instead love urges you, rather than strong herbs,
which the hand with terrible magic art trims.
Neither do you believe in herbs nor in mixed juice,
nor do you attempt the noxious poison of the lusting mare.”

The exact Latin phrase that Ovid uses in both of these passages is “virus amantis equae,” which I have translated above as “the poison of the lusting mare.” The Latin word virus is, of course, the source for the English word virus, but, in Latin, it can have a wide variety of possible meanings, including “poison,” “venom,” “bitterness,” “stench,” or “slime.”

The word is vague enough that, in this context, it could refer to just about any substance harvested from a mare in heat for the purpose of any kind of magic poison or curse. It does not necessarily refer to mare urine and could just as easily refer to vaginal secretions, milk, blood, or any number of other bodily substances.

Furthermore, although the emperor Augustus did eventually banish Ovid in 8 CE to the settlement of Tomis in the remote land of Lesser Skythia or Scythia Minor (which occupied the territories that are now part of eastern Romania and part of northeastern Bulgaria), Ovid wrote both the Amores and the Medicama Faciei Feminae long before his banishment, while he was still living in Roman Italy.

In both cases where he mentions women harvesting “poison” from mares in heat, the most parsimonious explanation is that he is talking about women living in Roman Italy, not Skythia. There is absolutely nothing in either of these passages to indicate any connection to Skythia, the Enarees, or any kind of bodily feminization.

ABOVE: Frontispiece illustration for an edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses printed in 1731 in Leipzig, showing what the illustrator imagined Ovid might have looked like. (No one knows what he actually looked like.)

Twentieth-century use of conjugated equine estrogens in gender-affirming HRT for trans women

The second strain of evidence that has nothing to do with ancient Skythia that has nonetheless helped give rise to the misconception about the Enarees supposedly drinking mare urine is the fact that, in the early 1940s, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer figured out how to harvest forms of estrogen known as conjugated equine estrogens (CEEs) from the urine of pregnant mares.

Pfizer manufactured and sold CEEs under the brand name Premarin, which is an abbreviation for the phrase “pregnant mare urine.” Premarin first became commercially available in Canada in 1941 and it became available in the United States the following year, making it one of the earliest commercially available estrogen medications.

Physicians throughout the latter half of the twentieth century commonly prescribed Premarin to cisgender perimenopausal and postmenopausal women as a form of menopausal HRT to help alleviate the symptoms associated with menopause. They also, however, prescribed it to transgender women as part of gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy.

Nowadays, physicians still sometimes prescribe CEEs for cisgender perimenopausal and postmenopausal women, but, for transgender women, they have largely switched to using bioidentical estradiol, which is the exact same form of estradiol that occurs naturally in the human body. They have done this mainly because bioidentical estradiol is significantly less likely than CEEs to cause blood clots and liver damage and is therefore considered safer.

ABOVE: Photograph from WebMD showing both sides of a red Premarin oral tablet

Conclusion: Timothy Taylor’s invention of the story about the Enarees drinking mare urine

In 1996, at a time when Premarin was still widely used in gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy for trans women, the British anthropologist Timothy Taylor published a book for popular audiences through Random House titled The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture, which contains a great deal of wild speculation based on extremely flimsy evidence.

Among other things, in the book, Taylor claims that some ancient Skythian people assigned male at birth drank urine from pregnant mares for survival reasons, not knowing its hormonal effects, and this had the accidental and unexpected side effect of causing their bodies to become more feminine.

In support of this, he cites the descriptions of the Skythian Enarees in Herodotos’s Histories and the Hippokratic On Airs, Waters, and Places (neither of which mentions anything about mare urine), Ovid’s vague references to the “poison of the lusting mare,” and the modern use of conjugated equine estrogens for gender-affirming HRT as his only evidence.

In this answer to a question in r/AskHistorians, u/Trevor_Culley identifies Taylor’s The Prehistory of Sex as the ultimate source of the misconception about the Enarees using pregnant mare urine to make themselves look more feminine, noting that Taylor does not cite any sources for the claim and that they cannot find any reference to the claim in any source written before 1996.

Sadly, since the publication of Taylor’s book, his completely unfounded speculations have become widely circulated online as though they were fact. One difference is that, while Taylor seems to have assumed that Enarees drank pregnant mare urine without realizing its feminizing effects and that their bodies became feminized by accident, online iterations of the story generally assume that they drank pregnant mare urine knowing its effects full well because they wanted their bodies to become more feminine. In some cases, the claim about the Enarees drinking pregnant mare urine has even become falsely attributed to Herodotos and/or Hippokrates.

ABOVE: Front cover of the book The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture by Timothy Taylor, published in 1996 by Random House, which is the ultimate source of the false claim that the Enarees drank pregnant mare urine