I'm sorry if this question is a bit obscure; I am unfamiliar with much of its context. I'm reading Norwich's The Popes and in Chapter 2 he writes the following brief passage about Christians in the Roman Empire in the second century:
"For Christians (...) life under Commodus was a good deal easier (...) to the point where a eunuch named Hyacinthus became the first (and almost certainly the last) man in history to combine the duties of controller of a 300-strong harem and a presbyter of the Christian Church."
I tried to find a bit more information about this Hyacinthus, who apparently raised the emperor's favourite concubine and played some kind of role in the successes of Pope Victor I. Norwich doesn't mention anything else and I haven't been able to find much. I found a reference to the Philosophumena (IX, 12) but this source doesn't actually seem to back up any of these statements very strongly, referring to Hyacinthus only as 'a eunuch,' although it does relate him being sent on important business.
Does anyone know more about Hyacinthus or the surrounding story?
Woof, you've found an obscure one! I spent a while working on this last night and didn't find anything more than what you have here. One problem I ran into is that there was a 5th century eunuch of the same name, so be cautious of that when you are doing your googling. I have checked for you Eunuchs in antiquity and beyond and The eunuch in Byzantine history and society (which has a small "who's who" of eunuchs as an appendix) and The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium, all do not reference your particular fellow.
If you're really keen on this I suspect the man who'd know would be Dr. Shaun Tougher, who has a book on Roman eunuchs coming out next year. You can try shooting him an email, most professors are pretty friendly!
There is apparently a reference to him in connection to his concubine-mistress Marcia Aurelia Ceionia Demetrias, concubine of Commodus. I found a small refernce to him working for Marcia in "Christian Grave-Inscriptions from the Familia Caesaris" by Paul McKechnie in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. There is also another possible reference in "The Roman Church at the End of the Second Century" by George La Piana in Harvard Theological Review from 1925, but I'm having trouble accessing it.
I've got to head out, but I'll try and come back later to see what I can find.