Source: www.truthtree.com
Love and sexual relationships between young men and pubescent boys were accepted in Ancient Greece
The role and value of homosexuality in and to classical Mediterranean culture and society has only recently received significant study. Modern American society generally regards homosexuality as, at best, an intriguing subculture that often provides stock for humorists and satirists, or, at worst, a menacing counterculture that at times threatens impressionable adolescents with irreparable harm. Yet, homosexuality has not always been an aspect of 'others.' Ancient Greeks acknowledged homosexuality as an important tool in boys’ education. They institutionalized and regulated its practices within their law codes. True, opinions about it varied, but few aspects of any culture have ever stood without debate, both popular and forensic. Their homosexuality, almost universally intergenerational, resembled what modern societies call pederasty rather than homosexuality between adults. 1 It was an anomalous experiment in the education of youth.
Fathers of the middle classes and higher sent their sons to schools to learn mathematics and literacy using the alphabet adopted from Phoenicians by the middle of the ninth century BC. Students 12 and older also studied poetry, drama, music, history (after Herodotus [484 – 425 BC] and Thucydides [460 – 400 BC]) and athletics, which they practiced in the nude. Athletics included wrestling, foot races, the running long jump, javelin and discus throwing, and performance on hanging rings and parallel bars. 2 Most boys in general eagerly trained in athletics in hopes of attaining competitive levels for the Olympic games. If they could not win or compete in athletics, they may still have hoped for one of the prizes awarded for physical beauty.
At first, students learned athleticism outdoors at a dromos (an outdoor track for athletic performances). Later, schools and academies (for 'advanced' education in philosophy) built separate buildings, a gymnasium ('place to be nude'), dedicated to athletics, or a palaistra, a separate wrestling school. They also constructed viewing stands. Spectators came to watch not only regular games of competition, but also the actual training of pubescent youth and adolescents in the course of their daily education. Because women taught domestic duties to their daughters at home, viewing stands held only men, gymnasia and dromoi only nude boys. Schoolmasters cautioned naked students sitting trackside at dromoi to keep one leg forward to lessen the temptation to spectators and to smooth the sand when they stood up in order to obliterate the impression their genitals may have left. Furthermore, after their lessons in athletics concluded, boys did not wash below their navels, 4 for spectators also had access to dressing rooms, and the sight of boys washing their pubic areas would have tormented guests overbearingly. Continuing in their recognition of the appeal of young naked boys, gymnasia and palaistrae named one boy their most beautiful.
Ancient Greece had unofficial and unwritten rules enforcing decorous behavior at dromoi or in gymnasia and especially for relationships that at times started there, much as modern society has rules for how teenage sons of socialites must 'court and spark' their romantic interests. 5 Spectators normally came from the leisured moneyed class, young sons of leading citizens, for the working classes could scarcely afford the necessary leisure time. Occasionally one of those young scions of the social elite might take a favor to a particular boy in training. The young man might approach the boy after classes ended for the day, or he might send an intermediary to give his name and a message to the boy.
If the boy initially expressed no interest in meeting and getting to know the man, then the man could 'stalk' the boy, at first discreetly and silently following him from a respectful distance, gradually getting closer to him to beg him for favors. Whatever the man did, though, he must not touch the boy without the boy’s invitation or approval or, at the least, his acquiescence. Touching made the man liable to hubris, arrogant disregard of the law that led a person to mistreat another for his own satisfaction or to increase his status among his peers and betters (those of higher social class than himself). Hubris was a capital crime, and even the slightest touching of an unwilling boy opened a man to the charge. Cases of hubris brought to trial, of course, usually involved far more than slight touching.
On the other hand, if the boy showed an interest in returning the young man’s attention, the two started a friendship. The young man in such a relationship took the responsibility to teach the boy things that schools did not teach—moral rectitude, citizenship, patriotism to the polis, honesty, integrity, courage, etc. The friendship made the boy the eromenos of the man, who was the erastes (crudely, 'lover-boy' and 'boy-lover,' respectively) of the boy. Thereafter, they could appear in public and at social affairs as a pair.
The root 'eros' of both words, 'erastes' and 'eromenos,' referred to love that can have a satisfied resolution. 'Lust' comes closer than 'love' to how the ancient Greeks understood eros, neither mutual nor requited. Carnal knowledge satisfied eros of this kind. Eros also applied to, for instance, desire for victory, power, money, or returning home from travels or a sojourn. Philos, on the other hand, signified intellectual love, as for art or knowledge—philosopher—or a mutual respect between or among people, as within a close-knit family or a group of friends. Philos could be mutual and requited. 6 The love an erastes (plural erastai) felt for his eromenos (plural eromenoi) usually started as one-sided eros when he first saw the beautiful, naked boy, but at times, it developed into mutual philos after the pedagogical process had begun.
After a time of teaching his eromenos, an erastes offered the boy a gift. Exotic birds and plants were the most popular kinds of gifts, for they were rare and wondrous, expensive imports from distant foreign lands like equatorial Africa or India. Like the massive amount of available leisure time, the expense of the gift prohibited young men from lower economic classes from pursuing boys in the manner of the more financially capable. An eromenos might not accept a gift if it were not sufficiently rare or expensive.
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