In an old Italian work there is a figure of an infibulated musician--a little bronze statue representing a lean individual tortured or deformed by carrying an enormous ring through the end of the penis.

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.
Infibulation by a ring in the prepuce was used to prevent premature copulation, and was in time to be removed, but in some cases its function was the preservation of perpetual chastity.

Among some of the religious mendicants in India there were some who were condemned to a life of chastity, and, in the hotter climates, where nudity was the custom, these persons traveled about exposing an enormous preputial ring, which was looked upon with adoration by devout women.

It is said these holy persons were in some places so venerated that people came on their knees, and bowing below the ring, asked forgiveness--possibly for sexual excesses.
Rhodius mentions the usage of infibulation in antiquity, and Fabricius d'Aquapendente remarks that infibulation was usually practiced in females for the preservation of chastity.