In ancient Greece, Greek society allows romantic relationship between an adult male (the erastes) and a younger male (the eromenos), usually in his teens, a ‘secret’ greek homos3xuality called Pederasty.https://youtu.be/-JkhVvn_dow
It was a typical characteristic of the Archaic and Classical periods when the influence of pederasty on Greek culture of these periods was so pervasive that it has been called “the principal cultural model for free relationships between citizens.”
Members of the same s$x would partake in the pleasures of an intellectual and/or s$xual relationship as part of a socially acceptable ancient custom.
The question of whether the ideal pederastic relationship was the most common form of pederasty in Greece, or whether the reality of ancient same-s$x desire involved relationships between males of the same age, is one that has been contested between scholars for many years.
Even Plato wrote that same-s3x lovers were more blessed than ordinary mortals. But then he changed his mind, describing the act as ‘utterly unholy’ and ‘the ugliest of ugly things’. So why were the ancient Greeks so confused about homos3xuality?
The ideal pederastic relationship in ancient Greece involved an erastes (an older male, usually in his mid- to late-20s) and an eromenos (a younger male who has passed puberty, usually no older than 18).
This age difference between the erastes and the eromenos was of the utmost importance to the scheme of the ideal pederastic relationship.
The secret of Greek homosexuality has only ever been a secret to those who neglected to inquire. The Greeks themselves were hardly coy about it.
Their descendants under the Roman empire were amazed to read what their ancestors had written centuries earlier, drooling in public over the thighs of boys, or putting words into the mouth of Achilles in a tragic drama, as he remembered the “kis
ses thick and fast” he had enjoyed with his beloved Patroclus.
The Romans certainly noticed what they called the “Greek custom”, which they blamed on too much exercising with not enough clothes on.
Christians mocked a people who worshipped gods who kidnapped handsome boys like Ganymede, or who, like Dionysus, promised a man his body in exchange for information about how to get into the underworld.
In the Middle Ages, Greek Ganymede became a codeword for sodomitical vice, then laws were established forbidding men to “mix with” or even “chat” with boys.
Xenophon, who knew Sparta better than anyone, says that the Spartan lawgiver had laid down that it was shameful even “to be seen to reach out to touch the body of a boy”.
Slaves called “pedagogues” – paidagogoi – were employed by Athenians to protect their sons from unwanted attention, and by Plato’s time there were some people who had “the audacity to say” that homos3xual s3x was shameful in any circumstances.
At the end of the 17th century the great classicist Richard Bentley knew well enough that the Greek word for a male “admirer”, erastes, indicated a “flagitious love of boys”.
And in 1837, when Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier was asked to contribute a book-length article on the subject to a giant encyclopaedia of arts and sciences, he made no bones about it: “The spiritual elements of this affection were always mixed with a powerfully sensual element, the pleasure which had its origin in the physical beauty of the loved one.”
There has long been debate about the true nature of this Greek custom – what the Greeks called eros, a “passionate life-churning love”, or philia, “fond intimacy”. Was it essentially sublime or sodomitical?
A source of anxiety or a cause for celebration? Sometimes the Greeks seemed to approve of it wholeheartedly, even to suggest that it was the highest and noblest form of love.
And other times they seemed to condemn it. Sometimes the ideal seems to be a spiritual, passionate but unconsummated “Platonic” love.
