Pederasty in ancient Greece

[4] It has no formal existence in the Homeric epics, and may have developed in the late 7th century BC as an aspect of Greek homosocial culture,[5] which was characterized also by athletic and artistic nudity, delayed marriage for aristocrats, symposia, and the social seclusion of women.

[9] The English word "pederasty" in present-day usage might imply the abuse of minors in certain jurisdictions, but Athenian law, for instance, recognized both consent and age as factors in regulating sexual behavior.

In Dover's strict dichotomy, the erastês (ἐραστής, plural erastai) is the older sexual actor, seen as the active or dominant participant,[12] with the suffix -tês (-τής) denoting agency.

[24] Another word used by the Greeks for the younger sexual participant was paidika, a neuter plural adjective ("things having to do with children") treated syntactically as masculine singular.

[26] Dover insisted that the active role of the erastês and the passivity of the erômenos is a distinction "of the highest importance",[19] but subsequent scholars have tried to present a more varied picture of the behaviors and values associated with paiderastia.

Although ancient Greek writers use erastês and erômenos in a pederastic context, the words are not technical terms for social roles, and can refer to the "lover" and "beloved" in other hetero- and homosexual couples.

A man (Ancient Greek: φιλήτωρ – philetor, "lover") selected a youth, enlisted the chosen one's friends to help him, and carried off the object of his affections to his andreion, a sort of men's club or meeting hall.

The initiate was called a parastatheis, "he who stands beside", perhaps because, like Ganymede the cup-bearer of Zeus, he stood at the side of the philetor during meals in the andreion and served him from the cup that had been ceremonially presented.

[34] The scene of Xenophon's Symposium, and also that of Plato's Protagoras, is set at Callias III's house during a banquet hosted by him for his beloved Autolykos in honour of a victory gained by the handsome young man in the pentathlon at the Panathenaic Games.

[41] However, adolescent citizens of free status who prostituted themselves were sometimes ridiculed, and were permanently prohibited by Attic law from performing some seven official functions[nb 1][43][44] because it was believed that since they had sold their own body "for the pleasure of others" (ἐφ' ὕβρει, eph' hybrei), they would not hesitate to sell the interests of the community as a whole.

By contrast, as expressed in Pausanias' speech in Plato's Symposium, pederastic love was said to be favorable to democracy and feared by tyrants, because the bond between the erastês and erômenos was stronger than that of obedience to a despotic ruler.

[49][50] Athenaeus states that "Hieronymus the Aristotelian says that love with boys was fashionable because several tyrannies had been overturned by young men in their prime, joined together as comrades in mutual sympathy".

The Athenian stranger in Plato's Laws blames pederasty for promoting civil strife and driving many to their wits' end, and recommends the prohibition of sexual intercourse with youths, laying out a path whereby this may be accomplished.

In these later tales, pederastic love is ascribed to Zeus (with Ganymede), Poseidon (with Pelops), Apollo (with Cyparissus, Hyacinthus and Admetus), Orpheus, Heracles, Dionysus, Hermes, and Pan.

Likewise, the tale of Dionysus and Polymnus, which tells that the former anally masturbated with a fig branch over the latter's grave, was written by Christians, whose aim was to discredit pagan mythology.

[61] Dover, however, believed that these myths are only literary versions expressing or explaining the "overt" homosexuality of Greek Archaic culture, the distinctiveness of which he contrasted to attitudes in other ancient societies such as Egypt and Israel.

Some vases do show the younger partner as sexually responsive, prompting one scholar to wonder, "What can the point of this act have been unless lovers in fact derived some pleasure from feeling and watching the boy's developing organ wake up and respond to their manual stimulation?

[76] Theocritus, a Hellenistic poet, describes a kissing contest for youths that took place at the tomb of a certain Diocles of Megara, a warrior renowned for his love of boys; he notes that invoking Ganymede was proper to the occasion.

[80] Some vase paintings, which historian William Percy considers a fourth type of pederastic scene in addition to Beazley's three, show the erastês seated with an erection and the erômenos either approaching or climbing into his lap.

[94] According to Xenophon, a relationship ("association") between a man and a boy could be tolerated, but only if it was based around friendship and love and not solely around physical, sexual attraction, in which case it was considered "an abomination" tantamount to incest.

Cartledge underscores that the terms "εισπνήλας" ("eispnílas") and "αΐτας" ("aḯtas")[clarification needed] have a moralistic and pedagogic content, indicating a relationship with a paternalistic character, but argues that sexual relations were possible in some or most cases.

[100] Megara cultivated good relations with Sparta, and may have been culturally attracted to emulate Spartan practices in the 7th century, when pederasty is postulated to have first been formalized in Dorian cities.

[102][103] In one poem, the Megaran poet Theognis saw athletic nudity as a prelude to pederasty, writing, "Happy is the lover who works out naked / And then goes home to sleep all day with a beautiful boy.

"[104] The legislator Philolaus of Corinth, lover of the stadion race winner Diocles of Corinth at the Ancient Olympic Games of 728 BC,[105] crafted laws for the Thebans in the 8th century BC that gave special support to male unions, contributing to the development of Theban pederasty in which, unlike other places in ancient Greece, it favored the continuity of the union of male couples even after the younger man reached adulthood, as was the case with him and Diocles, who lived together in Thebes until the end of their lives.

[106] According to Plutarch, Theban pederasty was instituted as an educational device for boys in order to "soften, while they were young, their natural fierceness", and to "temper the manners and characters of the youth".

The limited survival and cataloguing of pottery that can be proven to have been made in Boeotia diminishes the value of this evidence in distinguishing a specifically local tradition of paiderastia.

[109] The ethical views held in ancient societies, such as Athens, Thebes, Crete, Sparta, Elis and others, on the practice of pederasty have been explored by scholars only since the end of the 19th century.

[111] In Germany the study was continued by classicist Paul Brandt writing under the pseudonym Hans Licht, who published Sexual Life in Ancient Greece in 1932.

[112] A modern line of thought leading from Dover to Foucault to David M. Halperin holds that the erômenos did not reciprocate the love and desire of the erastês, and that the relationship was factored on a sexual domination of the younger by the older, a politics of penetration held to be true of all adult male Athenians' relations with their social inferiors—boys, women and slaves.

[115] Critics of the posture defended by Dover, Bloch and their followers also point out that they ignore all material which argued against their "overly theoretical" interpretation of a human and emotional relationship[116] and counter that "clearly, a mutual, consensual bond was formed",[117] and that it is "a modern fairy tale that the younger erômenos was never aroused".