{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_32022/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_32022","id":"gutenberg_32022","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32022","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Gender & Sexuality Studies","Category: History - Ancient","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Ethics -- Greece","Greece -- Social life and customs","Homosexuality"],"text":"Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This ebook was\nproduced from scanned images of public domain material at\nGoogle Books.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA\n\nPROBLEM\n\nIN\n\nGREEK ETHICS\n\nBEING\n\nAN INQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENON OF\n\n_SEXUAL INVERSION_\n\nADDRESSED ESPECIALLY TO MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS AND JURISTS\n\nBY\n\nJOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS\n\n_PRIVATELY PRINTED_\n\nFOR\n\nTHE AREOPAGITIGA SOCIETY\n\nLONDON\n\n1908\n\n_Privately Printed in Holland for the Society._\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe following treatise on Greek Love was written in the year 1873, when\nmy mind was occupied with my _Studies of Greek Poets_. I printed ten\ncopies of it privately in 1883. It was only when I read the Terminal\nEssay appended by Sir Richard Burton to his translation of the _Arabian\nNights_ in 1886, that I became aware of M. H. E. Meier's article on\nP\u00e6derastie (Ersch and Gruber's _Encyclop\u00e6die_, Leipzig, Brockhaus,\n1837). My treatise, therefore, is a wholly independent production. This\nmakes Meier's agreement (in Section 7 of his article) with the theory I\nhave set forth in Section X. regarding the North Hellenic origin of\nGreek Love, and its Dorian character, the more remarkable. That two\nstudents, working separately upon the same mass of material, should have\narrived at similar conclusions upon this point strongly confirms the\nprobability of the hypothesis.\n\nJ. A. SYMONDS.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\nI. INTRODUCTION: Method of treating the subject.\n\nII. Homer had no knowledge of paiderastia--Achilles--Treatment of Homer\nby the later Greeks.\n\nIII. The Romance of Achilles and Patroclus.\n\nIV. The heroic ideal of masculine love.\n\nV. Vulgar paiderastia--How introduced into Hellas--Crete--Laius--The\nmyth of Ganymede.\n\nVI. Discrimination of two loves, heroic and vulgar. The mixed sort is\nthe paiderastia defined as Greek love in this essay.\n\nVII. The intensity of paiderastia as an emotion, and its quality.\n\nVIII. Myths of paiderastia.\n\nIX. Semi-legendary tales of love--Harmodius and Aristogeiton.\n\nX. Dorian Customs--Sparta and Crete--Conditions of Dorian life--Moral\nquality of Dorian love--Its final degeneracy--Speculations on the early\nDorian _Ethos_--Boeotians' customs--The sacred band--Alexander the\nGreat--Customs of Elis and Megara--_Hybris_--Ionia.\n\nXI. Paiderastia in poetry of the lyric age. Theognis and\nKurnus--Solon--Ibycus, the male Sappho--Anacreon and Smerdies--Drinking\nsongs--Pindar and Theoxenos--Pindar's lofty conception of adolescent\nbeauty.\n\nXII. Paiderastia upon the Attic stage--_Myrmidones_ of\n\u00c6schylus--_Achilles' lovers_, and _Niobe_ of Sophocles--The _Chrysippus_\nof Euripides--Stories about Sophocles--Illustrious Greek paiderasts.\n\nXIII. Recapitulation of points--Quotation from the speech of Pausanias\non love in Plato's _Symposium_--Observations on this speech. Position of\nwomen at Athens--Attic notion of marriage as a duty--The institution of\n_Paidagogoi_--Life of a Greek boy--Aristophanes' _Clouds_--Lucian's\n_Amores_--The Pal\u00e6stra--The _Lysis_--The _Charmides_--Autolicus in\nXenophon's _Symposium_--Speech of Critobulus on beauty and\nlove--Importance of gymnasia in relation to paiderastia--Statues of\nEr\u00f4s--Cicero's opinions--Laws concerning the gymnasia--Graffiti on\nwalls--Love-poems and panegyrics--Presents to boys--Shops and _mauvais\nlieux_--Paiderastic _Hetaireia_--Brothels--Ph\u00e6don and Agathocles.\nStreet-brawls about boys--_Lysias in Simonem_.\n\nXIV. Distinctions drawn by Attic law and custom--_Chrestoi\nPornoi_--Presents and money--Atimia of freemen who had sold their\nbodies--The definition of _Misthosis_--_Eromenos_, _Hetairekos_,\n_Peporneumenos_, distinguished--_\u00c6schines against Timarchus_--General\nConclusion as to Attic feeling about honourable paiderastia.\n\nXV. Platonic doctrine on Greek love--The asceticism of the\n_Laws_--Socrates--His position defined by Maximus Tyrius--His science of\nerotics--The theory of the _Ph\u00e6drus_: erotic _Mania_--The mysticism of\nthe _Symposium_: love of beauty--Points of contact between Platonic\npaiderastia and chivalrous love: _Mania_ and Joie: Dante's _Vita\nNuova_--Platonist and Petrarchist--Gibbon on the \"thin device\" of the\nAthenian philosophers--Testimony of Lucian, Plutarch, Cicero.\n\nXVI. Greek liberty and Greek love extinguished at Ch\u00e6ronea--The\nIdyllists--Lucian's _Amores_--Greek poets never really gross--_Mousa\nPaidik\u00e9_--Philostratus' _Epistolai Erotikai_--Greek Fathers on\npaiderastia.\n\nXVII. The deep root struck by paiderastia in\nGreece--Climate--Gymnastics--Syssitia--Military life--Position of Women:\ninferior culture; absence from places of resort--Greek leisure.\n\nXVIII. Relation of paiderastia to the fine arts--Greek sculpture wholly\nand healthily human--Ideals of female deities--Paiderastia did not\ndegrade the imagination of the race--Psychological analysis underlying\nGreek mythology--The psychology of love--Greek mythology fixed before\nHomer--Opportunities enjoyed by artists for studying women--Anecdotes\nabout artists--The \u00e6sthetic temperament of the Greeks, unbiased by\nmorality and religion, encouraged paiderastia--_Hora_--Physical and\nmoral qualities admired by a Greek--Greek ethics were\n\u00e6sthetic--_Sophrosyne_--Greek religion was \u00e6sthetic--No notion of\nJehovah--Zeus and Ganymede.\n\nXIX. Homosexuality among Greek women--Never attained to the same dignity\nas paiderastia.\n\nXX. Greek love did not exist at Rome--Christianity--Chivalry--The _modus\nvivendi_ of the modern world.\n\n\n\n\nA PROBLEM IN GREEK ETHICS.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\nFor the student of sexual inversion, ancient Greece offers a wide field\nfor observation and reflection. Its importance has hitherto been\nunderrated by medical and legal writers on the subject, who do not seem\nto be aware that here alone in history have we the example of a great\nand highly-developed race not only tolerating homosexual passions, but\ndeeming them of spiritual value, and attempting to utilise them for the\nbenefit of society. Here, also, through the copious stores of literature\nat our disposal, we can arrive at something definite regarding the\nvarious forms assumed by these passions, when allowed free scope for\ndevelopment in the midst of refined and intellectual civilisation. What\nthe Greeks called paiderastia, or boy-love, was a phenomenon of one of\nthe most brilliant periods of human culture, in one of the most highly\norganised and nobly active nations. It is the feature by which Greek\nsocial life is most sharply distinguished from that of any other people\napproaching the Hellenes in moral or mental distinction. To trace the\nhistory of so remarkable a custom in their several communities, and to\nascertain, so far as this is possible, the ethical feeling of the Greeks\nupon this subject, must be of service to the scientific psychologist. It\nenables him to approach the subject from another point of view than that\nusually adopted by modern jurists, psychiatrists, writers on forensic\nmedicine.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nThe first fact which the student has to notice is that in the Homeric\npoems a modern reader finds no trace of this passion. It is true that\nAchilles, the hero of the _Iliad_, is distinguished by his friendship\nfor Patroclus no less emphatically than Odysseus, the hero of the\n_Odyssey_, by lifelong attachment to Penelope, and Hector by love for\nAndromache. But in the delineation of the friendship of Achilles and\nPatroclus there is nothing which indicates the passionate relation of\nthe lover and the beloved, as they were afterwards recognised in Greek\nsociety. This is the more remarkable because the love of Achilles for\nPatroclus added, in a later age of Greek history, an almost religious\nsanction of the martial form of paiderastia. In like manner the\nfriendship of Idomeneus for Meriones, and that of Achilles, after the\ndeath of Patroclus, for Antilochus, were treated by the later Greeks as\npaiderastic. Yet, inasmuch as Homer gives no warrant for this\ninterpretation of the tales in question, we are justified in concluding\nthat homosexual relations were not prominent in the so-called heroic age\nof Greece. Had it formed a distinct feature of the society depicted in\nthe Homeric poems, there is no reason to suppose that their authors\nwould have abstained from delineating it. We shall see that Pindar,\n\u00c6schylus and Sophocles, the poets of an age when paiderastia was\nprevalent, spoke unreservedly upon the subject.\n\nImpartial study of the _Iliad_ leads us to the belief that the Greeks of\nthe historic period interpreted the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus\nin accordance with subsequently developed customs. The Homeric poems\nwere the Bible of the Greeks, and formed the staple of their education;\nnor did they scruple to wrest the sense of the original, reading, like\nmodern Bibliolaters, the sentiments and passions of a later age into the\ntext. Of this process a good example is afforded by \u00c6schines in the\noration against Timarchus. While discussing this very question of the\nlove of Achilles, he says: \"He, indeed, conceals their love, and does\nnot give its proper name to the affection between them, judging that the\nextremity of their fondness would be intelligible to instructed men\namong his audience.\" As an instance the orator proceeds to quote the\npassage in which Achilles laments that he will not be able to fulfil his\npromise to Menoetius by bringing Patroclus home to Opus. He is here\nclearly introducing the sentiments of an Athenian hoplite who had taken\nthe boy he loved to Syracuse and seen him slain there.\n\nHomer stood in a double relation to the historical Greeks. On the one\nhand, he determined their development by the influence of his ideal\ncharacters. On the other, he underwent from them interpretations which\nvaried with the spirit of each successive century. He created the\nnational temperament, but received in turn the influx of new thoughts\nand emotions occurring in the course of its expansion. It is, therefore,\nhighly important, on the threshold of this inquiry, to determine the\nnature of that Achilleian friendship to which the panegyrists and\napologists of the custom make such frequent reference.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nThe ideal of character in Homer was what the Greeks called heroic; what\nwe should call chivalrous. Young men studied the _Iliad_ as our\nancestors studied the Arthurian romances, finding there a pattern of\nconduct raised almost too high above the realities of common life for\nimitation, yet stimulative of enthusiasm and exciting to the fancy.\nForemost among the paragons of heroic virtue stood Achilles, the\nsplendour of whose achievements in the Trojan war was only equalled by\nthe pathos of his friendship. The love for slain Patroclus broke his\nmood of sullen anger, and converted his brooding sense of wrong into a\nlively thirst for vengeance. Hector, the slayer of Patroclus, had to be\nslain by Achilles, the comrade of Patroclus. No one can read the _Iliad_\nwithout observing that its action virtually turns upon the conquest\nwhich the passion of friendship gains over the passion of resentment in\nthe breast of the chief actor. This the Greek students of Homer were not\nslow to see; and they not unnaturally selected the friendship of\nAchilles for their ideal of manly love. It was a powerful and masculine\nemotion, in which effeminacy had no part, and which by no means excluded\nthe ordinary sexual feelings. Companionship in battle and the chase, in\npublic and in private affairs of life, was the communion proposed by\nAchilleian friends--not luxury or the delights which feminine\nattractions offered. The tie was both more spiritual and more energetic\nthan that which bound man to woman. Such was the type of comradeship\ndelineated by Homer; and such, in spite of the modifications suggested\nby later poets, was the conception retained by the Greeks of this heroic\nfriendship. Even \u00c6schines, in the place above quoted, lays stress upon\nthe mutual loyalty of Achilles and Patroclus as the strongest bond of\ntheir affection: \"regarding, I suppose, their loyalty and mutual\ngoodwill as the most touching feature of their love.\"[1]\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\nThus the tale of Achilles and Patroclus sanctioned among the Greeks a\nform of masculine love, which, though afterwards connected with\npaiderastia properly so-called, we are justified in describing as\nheroic, and in regarding as one of the highest products of their\nemotional life. It will be seen, when we come to deal with the\nhistorical manifestations of this passion, that the heroic love which\ntook its name from Homer's Achilles existed as an ideal rather than an\nactual reality. This, however, is equally the case with Christianity and\nchivalry. The facts of feudal history fall below the high conception\nwhich hovered like a dream above the knights and ladies of the Middle\nAges; nor has the spirit of the Gospel been realised, in fact, by the\nmost Christian nations. Still we are not on that account debarred from\nspeaking of both chivalry and Christianity as potent and effective\nforces.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\nHomer, then, knew nothing of paiderastia, though the _Iliad_ contained\nthe first and noblest legend of heroic friendship. Very early, however,\nin Greek history boy-love, as a form of sensual passion, became a\nnational institution. This is proved abundantly by mythological\ntraditions of great antiquity, by legendary tales connected with the\nfounding of Greek cities, and by the primitive customs of the Dorian\ntribes. The question remains how paiderastia originated among the\nGreeks, and whether it was introduced or indigenous.\n\nThe Greeks themselves speculated on this subject, but they arrived at no\none definite conclusion. Herodotus asserts that the Persians learned the\nhabit, in its vicious form, from the Greeks;[2] but, even supposing this\nassertion to be correct, we are not justified in assuming the same of\nall barbarians who were neighbours of the Greeks; since we know from the\nJewish records and from Assyrian inscriptions that the Oriental nations\nwere addicted to this as well as other species of sensuality. Moreover,\nit might with some strain on language be maintained that Herodotus, in\nthe passage above referred to, did not allude to boy-love in general,\nbut to the peculiarly Hellenic form of it which I shall afterwards\nattempt to characterise.\n\nA prevalent opinion among the Greeks ascribed the origin of paiderastia\nto Crete; and it was here that the legend of Zeus and Ganymede was\nlocalised.[3] \"The Cretans,\" says Plato,[4] \"are always accused of\nhaving invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus, which is designed to\njustify themselves in the enjoyment of such pleasures by the practice of\nthe god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver.\"\n\nIn another passage,[5] Plato speaks of the custom that prevailed before\nthe time of Laius--in terms which show his detestation of a vice that\nhad gone far toward corrupting Greek society. This sentence indicates\nthe second theory of the later Greeks upon this topic. They thought that\nLaius, the father of OEdipus, was the first to practise _Hybris_, or\nlawless lust, in this form, by the rape committed on Chrysippus, the son\nof Pelops.[6] To this crime of Laius, the Scholiast to the _Seven\nagainst Thebes_ attributes all the evils which afterwards befell the\nroyal house of Thebes, and Euripides made it the subject of a tragedy.\nIn another but less prevalent Saga the introduction of paiderastia is\nascribed to Orpheus.\n\nIt is clear from these conflicting theories that the Greeks themselves\nhad no trustworthy tradition on the subject. Nothing, therefore, but\nspeculative conjecture is left for the modern investigator. If we need\nin such a matter to seek further than the primal instincts of human\nnature, we may suggest that, like the orgiastic rites of the later\nHellenic cultus, paiderastia in its crudest form was transmitted to the\nGreeks from the East. Its prevalence in Crete, which, together with\nCyprus, formed one of the principal links between Phoenicia and Hellas\nproper, favours this view. Paiderastia would, on this hypothesis, like\nthe worship of the Paphian and Corinthian Aphrodite, have to be regarded\nas in part an Oriental importation.[7] Yet, if we adopt any such\nsolution of the problem, we must not forget that in this, as in all\nsimilar cases, whatever the Greeks received from adjacent nations, they\ndistinguished with the qualities of their own personality. Paiderastia\nin Hellas assumed Hellenic characteristics, and cannot be confounded\nwith any merely Asiatic form of luxury. In the tenth section of this\nEssay I shall return to the problem, and advance my own conjecture as to\nthe part played by the Dorians in the development of paiderastia into a\ncustom.\n\nIt is enough for the present to remark that, however introduced, the\nvice of boy-love, as distinguished from heroic friendship, received\nreligious sanction at an early period. The legend of the rape of\nGanymede was invented, according to the passage recently quoted from\nPlato, by the Cretans with the express purpose of investing their\npleasures with a show of piety. This localisation of the religious\nsanction of paiderastia in Crete confirms the hypothesis of Oriental\ninfluence; for one of the notable features of Gr\u00e6co Asiatic worship was\nthe consecration of sensuality in the Phallus cult, the _Hiero douloi_\n(temple slaves, or _bayad\u00e8res_) of Aphrodite, and the eunuchs of the\nPhrygian mother. Homer tells the tale of Ganymede with the utmost\nsimplicity. The boy was so beautiful that Zeus suffered him not to dwell\non earth, but translated him to heaven and appointed him the cupbearer\nof the immortals. The sensual desire which made the king of gods and men\nprefer Ganymede to Leda, Io, Dana\u00eb, and all the maidens whom he loved\nand left on earth, is an addition to the Homeric version of the myth. In\ncourse of time the tale of Ganymede, according to the Cretan reading,\nbecame the nucleus around which the paiderastic associations of the\nGreek race gathered, just as that of Achilles formed the main point in\ntheir tradition of heroic friendship. To the Romans and the modern\nnations the name of Ganymede, debased to Catamitus, supplied a term of\nreproach, which sufficiently indicates the nature of the love of which\nhe became eventually the eponym.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\nResuming the results of the last four sections, we find two separate\nforms of masculine passion clearly marked in early Hellas--a noble and a\nbase, a spiritual and a sensual. To the distinction between them the\nGreek conscience was acutely sensitive; and this distinction, in theory\nat least, subsisted throughout their history. They worshipped Er\u00f4s, as\nthey worshipped Aphrodite, under the twofold titles of Ouranios\n(celestial) and Pandemos (vulgar, or _volvivaga_); and, while they\nregarded the one love with the highest approval, as the source of\ncourage and greatness of soul, they never publicly approved the other.\nIt is true, as will appear in the sequel of this essay, that boy-love in\nits grossest form was tolerated in historic Hellas with an indulgence\nwhich it never found in any Christian country, while heroic comradeship\nremained an ideal hard to realise, and scarcely possible beyond the\nlimits of the strictest Dorian sect. Yet the language of philosophers,\nhistorians, poets and orators is unmistakable. All testify alike to the\ndiscrimination between vulgar and heroic love in the Greek mind. I\npurpose to devote a separate section of this inquiry to the\ninvestigation of these ethical distinctions. For the present, a\nquotation from one of the most eloquent of the later rhetoricians will\nsufficiently set forth the contrast, which the Greek race never wholly\nforgot:[8]--\n\n     \"The one love is mad for pleasure; the other loves beauty. The one\n     is an involuntary sickness; the other is a sought enthusiasm. The\n     one tends to the good of the beloved; the other to the ruin of\n     both. The one is virtuous; the other incontinent in all its acts.\n     The one has its end in friendship; the other in hate. The one is\n     freely given; the other is bought and sold. The one brings praise;\n     the other blame. The one is Greek; the other is barbarous. The one\n     is virile; the other effeminate. The one is firm and constant; the\n     other light and variable. The man who loves the one love is a\n     friend of God, a friend of law, fulfilled of modesty, and free of\n     speech. He dares to court his friend in daylight, and rejoices in\n     his love. He wrestles with him in the playground and runs with him\n     in the race, goes afield with him to the hunt, and in battle fights\n     for glory at his side. In his misfortune he suffers, and at his\n     death he dies with him. He needs no gloom of night, no desert\n     place, for this society. The other lover is a foe to heaven, for he\n     is out of tune and criminal; a foe to law, for he transgresses law.\n     Cowardly, despairing, shameless, haunting the dusk, lurking in\n     desert places and secret dens, he would fain be never seen\n     consorting with his friend, but shuns the light of day, and follows\n     after night and darkness, which the shepherd hates, but the thief\n     loves.\"\n\nAnd again, in the same dissertation, Maximus Tyrius speaks to like\npurpose, clothing his precepts in imagery:--\n\n     \"You see a fair body in bloom and full of promise of fruit. Spoil\n     not, defile not, touch not the blossom. Praise it, as some wayfarer\n     may praise a plant--even so by Phoebus' altar have I seen a young\n     palm shooting toward the sun. Refrain from Zeus and Phoebus' tree;\n     wait for the fruit-season and thou shall love more righteously.\"\n\nWith the baser form of paiderastia I shall have little to do in this\nessay. Vice of this kind does not vary to any great extent, whether we\nobserve it in Athens or in Rome, in Florence of the sixteenth or in\nParis of the nineteenth century;[9] nor in Hellas was it more noticeable\nthan elsewhere, except for its comparative publicity. The nobler type of\nmasculine love developed by the Greeks is, on the contrary, almost\nunique in[10] the history of the human race. It is that which more than\nanything else distinguishes the Greeks from the barbarians of their own\ntime, from the Romans and from modern men in all that appertains to the\nemotions. The immediate subject of the ensuing inquiry will, therefore,\nbe that mixed form of paiderastia upon which the Greeks prided\nthemselves, which had for its heroic ideal the friendship of Achilles\nand Patroclus, but which in historic times exhibited a sensuality\nunknown to Homer.[11] In treating of this unique product of their\ncivilisation I shall use the terms _Greek Love_, understanding thereby a\npassionate and enthusiastic attachment subsisting between man and youth,\nrecognised by society and protected by opinion, which, though it was not\nfree from sensuality, did not degenerate into mere licentiousness.\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n\nBefore reviewing the authors who deal with this subject in detail, or\ndiscussing the customs of the several Greek states, it will be well to\nillustrate in general the nature of this love, and to collect the\nprincipal legends and historic tales which set it forth.\n\nGreek love was, in its origin and essence, military. Fire and valour,\nrather than tenderness or tears, were the external outcome of this\npassion; nor had _Malachia_, effeminacy, a place in its vocabulary. At\nthe same time it was exceedingly absorbing. \"Half my life,\" says the\nlover, \"lives in thine image, and the rest is lost. When thou art kind,\nI spend the day like a god; when thy face is turned aside, it is very\ndark with me.\"[12] Plato, in his celebrated description of a lover's\nsoul, writes:[13]--\n\n     \"Wherever she thinks that she will behold the beautiful one,\n     thither in her desire she runs. And when she has seen him, and\n     bathed herself with the waters of desire, her constraint is\n     loosened and she is refreshed, and has no more pangs and pains; and\n     this is the sweetest of all pleasures at the time, and is the\n     reason why the soul of the lover will never forsake his beautiful\n     one, whom he esteems above all; he has forgotten mother and\n     brethren and companions, and he thinks nothing of the neglect and\n     loss of his property. The rules and proprieties of life, on which\n     he formerly prided himself, he now despises, and is ready to sleep\n     like a servant, wherever he is allowed, as near as he can to his\n     beautiful one, who is not only the object of his worship, but the\n     only physician who can heal him in his extreme agony.\"\n\nThese passages show how real and vital was the passion of Greek love. It\nwould be difficult to find more intense expressions of affection in\nmodern literature. The effect produced upon the lover by the presence of\nhis beloved was similar to that inspiration which the knight of romance\nreceived from his lady.\n\n     \"I know not,\" says Ph\u00e6drus, in the _Symposium_ of Plato,[14] \"any\n     greater blessing to a young man beginning life than a virtuous\n     lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle\n     which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live--that\n     principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any\n     other motive is able to implant so well as love. Of what am I\n     speaking? Of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which\n     neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And\n     I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act,\n     or submitting, through cowardice, when any dishonour is done to him\n     by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved\n     than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any\n     one else. The beloved, too, when he is seen in any disgraceful\n     situation, has the same feeling about his lover. And if there were\n     only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made\n     up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors\n     of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour; and emulating one\n     another in honour; and when fighting at one another's side,\n     although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what\n     lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his\n     beloved, either when abandoning his post, or throwing away his\n     arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure\n     this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of\n     danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to\n     the bravest, at such a time; love would inspire him. That courage\n     which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the soul of heroes,\n     love of his own nature inspires into the lover.\"\n\nWith the whole of this quotation we might compare what Plutarch in the\nLife of Pelopidas relates about the composition of a Sacred Band;[15]\nwhile the following anecdote from the _Anabasis_ of Xenophon may serve\nto illustrate the theory that regiments should consist of lovers.[16]\nEpisthenes of Olynthus, one of Xenophon's hoplites, saved a beautiful\nboy from the slaughter commanded by Seuthes in a Thracian village. The\nking could not understand why his orders had not been obeyed, till\nXenophon excused his hoplite by explaining that Episthenes was a\npassionate boy-lover, and that he had once formed a corps of none but\nbeautiful men. Then Seuthes asked Episthenes if he was willing to die\ninstead of the boy, and he answered, stretching out his neck, \"Strike,\"\nhe says, \"if the boy says 'Yes,'[17] and will be pleased with it.\" At\nthe end of the affair, which is told by Xenophon with a quiet humour\nthat brings a little scene of Greek military life vividly before us,\nSeuthes gave the boy his liberty, and the soldier walked away with him.\n\nIn order further to illustrate the hardy nature of Greek love, I may\nallude to the speech of Pausanias in the _Symposium_ of Plato.[18] The\nfruits of love, he says, are courage in the face of danger, intolerance\nof despotism, the virtues of the generous and haughty soul.\n\n     \"In Ionia,\" he adds, \"and other places, and generally in countries\n     which are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to be\n     dishonourable; loves of youth share the evil repute of philosophy\n     and gymnastics because they are inimical to tyranny, for the\n     interests of rulers require that their subjects should be poor in\n     spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or\n     society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely\n     to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by experience.\"\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\n\nAmong the myths to which Greek lovers referred with pride, besides that\nof Achilles, were the legends of Theseus and Peirithous, of Orestes and\nPylades, of Talos and Rhadamanthus, of Damon and Pythias. Nearly all the\nGreek gods, except, I think, oddly enough, Ares, were famous for their\nlove. Poseidon, according to Pindar, loved Pelops; Zeus, besides\nGanymede, was said to have carried off Chrysippus. Apollo loved\nAyacinth, and numbered among his favourites Branchos and Claros. Pan\nloved Cyparissus, and the spirit of the evening star loved Hymen\u00e6us.\nHypnos, the god of slumber, loved Endymion, and sent him to sleep with\nopen eyes, in order that he might always gaze upon their beauty. (Ath.\nxiii. 564). The myths of Phoebus, Pan, and Hesperus, it may be said in\npassing, are paiderastic parallels to the tales of Adonis and Daphne.\nThey do not represent the specific quality of national Greek love at all\nin the same way as the legends of Achilles, Theseus, Pylades, and\nPythias. We find in them merely a beautiful and romantic play of the\nmythopoeic fancy, after paiderastia had taken hold on the imagination of\nthe race. The case is different with Herakles, the patron, eponym, and\nancestor of Dorian Hellas. He was a boy-lover of the true heroic type.\nIn the innumerable amours ascribed to him we always discern the note of\nmartial comradeship. His passion for Iolaus was so famous that lovers\nswore their oaths upon the Theban's tomb;[19] while the story of his\nloss of Hylas supplied Greek poets with one of their most charming\nsubjects. From the idyll of Theocritus called _Hylas_ we learn some\ndetails about the relation between lover and beloved, according to the\nheroic ideal.\n\n     \"Nay, but the son of Amphitryon, that heart of bronze, he that\n     abode the wild lion's onset, loved a lad, beautiful Hylas--Hylas of\n     the braided locks, and he taught him all things as a father\n     teaches his child, all whereby himself became a mighty man and\n     renowned in minstrelsy. Never was he apart from Hylas,..... and all\n     this that the lad might be fashioned to his mind, and might drive a\n     straight furrow, and come to the true measure of man.\"[20]\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\n\nPassing from myth to semi-legendary history, we find frequent mention\nmade of lovers in connection with the great achievements of the earliest\nage of Hellas. What Pausanias and Ph\u00e6drus are reported to have said in\nthe _Symposium_ of Plato, is fully borne out by the records of the\nnumerous tyrannicides and self-devoted patriots who helped to establish\nthe liberties of the Greek cities. When Epimenides of Crete required a\nhuman victim in his purification of Athens from the _Musos_ of the\nMegacleid\u00e6, two lovers, Cratinus and Aristodemus, offered themselves as\na voluntary sacrifice for the city.[21] The youth died to propitiate the\ngods; the lover refused to live without him. Chariton and Melanippus,\nwho attempted to assassinate Phalaris of Agrigentum, were lovers.[22] So\nwere Diocles and Philolaus, natives of Corinth, who removed to Thebes,\nand after giving laws to their adopted city, died and were buried in one\ngrave.[23] Not less celebrated was another Diocles, the Athenian exile,\nwho fell near Megara in battle, fighting for the boy he loved.[24] His\ntomb was honoured with the rites and sacrifices specially reserved for\nheroes. A similar story is told of the Thessalian horseman\nCleomachus.[25] This soldier rode into a battle which was being fought\nbetween the people of Eretria and Chalkis, inflamed with such enthusiasm\nfor the youth he beloved, that he broke the foemen's ranks and won the\nvictory for the Chalkidians. After the fight was over Cleomachus was\nfound among the slain, but his corpse was nobly buried; and from that\ntime forward love was honoured by the men of Chalkis. These stories\nmight be paralleled from actual Greek history. Plutarch, commenting upon\nthe courage of the sacred band of Thebans,[26] tells of a man \"who, when\nhis enemy was going to kill him, earnestly requested him to run him\nthrough the breast, that his lover might not blush to see him wounded in\nthe back.\" In order to illustrate the haughty temper of Greek lovers,\nthe same author, in his _Erotic Dialogue_, records the names of Antileon\nof Metapontum, who braved a tyrant in the cause of the boy he loved;[27]\nof Crateas, who punished Archelaus with death for an insult offered to\nhim; of Pytholaus, who treated Alexander of Pher\u00e6 in like manner; and of\nanother youth who killed the Ambracian tyrant Periander for a similar\naffront.[28] To these tales we might add another story by Plutarch in\nhis Life of Demetrius Poliorketes. This man insulted a boy called\nDamocles, who, finding no other way to save his honour, jumped into a\ncauldron of boiling water and was killed upon the spot.[29] A curious\nlegend, belonging to semi-mythical romance related by Pausanias,[30]\ndeserves a place here, since it proves to what extent the popular\nimagination was impregnated by notions of Greek love. The city of\nThespia was at one time infested by a dragon, and young men were offered\nto appease its fury every year. They all died unnamed and unremembered\nexcept one, Cleostratus. To clothe this youth, his lover, Menestratus,\nforged a brazen coat of mail, thick set with hooks turned upwards. The\ndragon swallowed Cleostratus and killed him, but died by reason of the\nhooks. Thus love was the salvation of the city and the source of\nimmortality to the two friends.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt would not be difficult to multiply romances of this kind; the\nrhetoricians and moralists of later Greece abound in them.[31] But the\nmost famous of all remains to be recorded. This is the story of\nHarmodius and Aristogeiton, who freed Athens from the tyrant Hipparchus.\nThere is not a speech, a poem, essay, a panegyrical oration in praise of\neither Athenian liberty or Greek love which does not tell the tale of\nthis heroic friendship. Herodotus and Thucydides treat the event as\nmatter of serious history. Plato refers to it as the beginning of\nfreedom for the Athenians. \"The drinking-song in honour of these lovers,\nis one of the most precious fragments of popular Greek poetry which we\npossess. As in the cases of Lucretia and Virginia, so here a tyrant's\nintemperance was the occasion, if not the cause, of a great nation's\nrising. Harmodius and Aristogeiton were reverenced as martyrs and\nsaviours of their country. Their names gave consecration to the love\nwhich made them bold against the despot, and they became at Athens\neponyms of paiderastia.\"[32]\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\n\nA considerable majority of the legends which have been related in the\npreceding section are Dorian, and the Dorians gave the earliest and most\nmarked encouragement to Greek love. Nowhere else, indeed, except among\nthe Dorians, who were an essentially military race, living like an army\nof occupation in the countries they had seized, herding together in\nbarracks and at public messes, and submitting to martial drill and\ndiscipline, do we meet with paiderastia developed as an institution. In\nCrete and Laced\u00e6mon it became a potent instrument of education. What I\nhave to say, in the first instance, on this matter is derived almost\nentirely from C. O. M\u00fcllers's _Dorians_,[33] to which work I refer my\nreaders for the authorities cited in illustration of each detail. Plato\nsays that the law of Lycurgus in respect to love was _Poikiles_,[34] by\nwhich he means that it allowed the custom under certain restrictions. It\nwould appear that the lover was called Inspirer, at Sparta, while the\nyouth he loved was named Hearer. These local phrases sufficiently\nindicate the relation which subsisted between the pair. The lover\ntaught, the hearer learned; and so from man to man was handed down the\ntradition of heroism, the peculiar tone and temper of the state to\nwhich, in particular among the Greeks, the Dorians clung with obstinate\npertinacity. Xenophon distinctly states that love was maintained among\nthe Spartans with a view to education; and when we consider the customs\nof the state, by which boys were separated early from their homes and\nthe influences of the family were almost wholly wanting, it is not\ndifficult to understand the importance of the paiderastic institution.\nThe Laced\u00e6monian lover might represent his friend in the Assembly. He\nwas answerable for his good conduct, and stood before him as a pattern\nof manliness, courage, and prudence. Of the nature of his teaching we\nmay form some notion from the precepts addressed by the Megarian\nTheognis to the youth Kurnus. In battle the lovers fought side by side;\nand it is worthy of notice that before entering into an engagement the\nSpartans sacrificed to Er\u00f4s. It was reckoned a disgrace if a youth found\nno man to be his lover. Consequently we find that the most illustrious\nSpartans are mentioned by their biographers in connection with their\ncomrades. Agesilaus heard Lysander; Archidamus, his son, loved\nCleonymus; Cleomenes III, was the hearer of Xenares and the inspirer of\nPanteus. The affection of Pausanias, on the other hand, for the boy\nArgilus, who betrayed him according to the account of Thucydides,[35]\nmust not be reckoned among these nobler loves. In order to regulate the\nmoral conduct of both parties, Lycurgus made it felony, punishable with\ndeath or exile, for the lover to desire the person of a boy in lust;\nand, on the other hand, it was accounted exceedingly disgraceful for the\nyounger to meet the advances of the elder with a view to gain. Honest\naffection and manly self-respect were exacted on both sides; the bond of\nunion implied no more of sensuality than subsists between a father and a\nson, a brother and a brother. At the same time great license of\nintercourse was permitted. Cicero, writing long after the great age of\nGreece, but relying probably upon sources to which we have no access,\nasserts that, \"Laced\u00e6moni ipsi cum omnia concedunt in amore juvenum\n_pr\u00e6ter stuprum_ tenui sane muro diss\u00e6piunt id quod excipiunt:\n_complexus enim concubitusque permittunt_.\"[36] The Laced\u00e6monians, while\nthey permit all things except outrage in the love of youths, certainly\ndistinguish the forbidden by a thin wall of partition from the\nsanctioned, for they allow embraces and a common couch to lovers.\"\n\nIn Crete the paiderastic institutions were even more elaborate than at\nSparta. The lover was called _Philetor_, and the beloved one _Kleinos_.\nWhen a man wished to attach to himself a youth in the recognised bonds\nof friendship, he took him away from his home, with a pretence of force,\nbut not without the connivance, in most cases, of his friends.[37] For\ntwo months the pair lived together among the hills, hunting and fishing.\nThen the _Philetor_ gave gifts to the youth, and suffered him to return\nto his relatives. If the _Kleinos_ (illustrious or laudable) had\nreceived insult or ill-treatment during the probationary weeks, he now\ncould get redress at law. If he was satisfied with the conduct of his\nwould-be comrade, he changed his title from _Kleinos_ to _Parastates_\n(comrade and bystander in the ranks of battle and life), returned to\nthe _Philetor_, and lived thenceforward in close bonds of public\nintimacy with him.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe primitive simplicity and regularity of these customs make it appear\nstrange to modern minds; nor is it easy to understand how they should\never have been wholly free from blame. Yet we must remember the\ninfluences which prevalent opinion and ancient tradition both contribute\ntoward preserving a delicate sense of honour under circumstances of\napparent difficulty. The careful reading of one _Life_ by Plutarch,\nthat, for instance, of Cleomenes or that of Agis, will have more effect\nin presenting the realities of Dorian existence to our imagination than\nany amount of speculative disquisition. Moreover, a Dorian was exposed\nto almost absolute publicity. He had no chance of hiding from his\nfellow-citizens the secrets of his private life. It was not, therefore,\ntill the social and political complexion of the whole nation became\ncorrupt that the institutions just described encouraged profligacy.[38]\nThat the Spartans and the Cretans degenerated from their primitive ideal\nis manifest from the severe critiques of the philosophers. Plato, while\npassing a deliberate censure on the Cretans for the introduction of\npaiderastia into Greece,[39] remarks that _syssitia_, or meals in\ncommon, and _gymnasia_ are favourable to the perversion of the passions.\nAristotle, in a similar argument,[40] points out that the Dorian habits\nhad a direct tendency to check the population by encouraging the love of\nboys and by separating women from the society of men. An obscure passage\nquoted from Hagnon by Athen\u00e6us might also be cited to prove that the\nGreeks at large had formed no high opinion of Spartan manners.[41] But\nthe most convincing testimony is to be found in the Greek language: \"to\ndo like the Laconians, to have connection in Laconian way, to do like\nthe Cretans,\" tell their own tale, especially when we compare these\nphrases with, \"to do like the Corinthians, the Lesbians, the Siphnians,\nthe Phoenicians, and other verbs formed to indicate the vices localised\nin separate districts.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nUp to this point I have been content to follow the notices of Dorian\ninstitutions which are scattered up and down the later Greek authors,\nand which have been collected by C. O. M\u00fcller. I have not attempted to\ndraw definite conclusions, or to speculate upon the influence which the\nDorian section of the Hellenic family may have exercised in developing\npaiderastia. To do so now will be legitimate, always remembering that\nwhat we actually know about the Dorians is confined to the historic\nperiod, and that the tradition respecting their early customs is derived\nfrom second-hand authorities.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt has frequently occurred to my mind that the mixed type of paiderastia\nwhich I have named Greek Love took its origin in Doris. Homer, who knew\nnothing about the passion as it afterwards existed, drew a striking\npicture of masculine affection in Achilles. And Homer, I may add, was\nnot a native of northern Greece. Whoever he was, or whoever they were,\nthe poet, or the poets, we call Homer, belonged to the south-east of the\n\u00c6gean. Homer, then, may have been ignorant of paiderastia. Yet\nfriendship occupies the first place in his hero's heart, while only the\nsecond is reserved for sexual emotion. Now Achilles came from Phthia,\nitself a portion of that mountain region to which Doris belonged.[42] Is\nit unnatural to conjecture that the Dorians in their migration to\nLaced\u00e6mon and Crete, the recognised headquarters of the custom, carried\na tradition of heroic paiderastia along with them? Is it unreasonable to\nsurmise that here, if anywhere in Hellas, the custom existed from\nprehistoric times? If so, the circumstances of their invasion would have\nfostered the transformation of this tradition into a tribal institution.\nThey went forth, a band of warriors and pirates, to cross the sea in\nboats, and to fight their way along the hills and plains of Southern\nGreece. The dominions they had conquered with their swords they occupied\nlike soldiers. The camp became their country, and for a long period of\ntime they literally lived upon the bivouac. Instead of a city-state,\nwith is manifold complexities of social life, they were reduced to the\nnarrow limits and the simple conditions of a roving horde. Without\nsufficiency of women, without the sanctities of established domestic\nlife, inspired by the memory of Achilles, and venerating their ancestor\nHerakles, the Dorian warriors had special opportunity for elevating\ncomradeship to the rank of an enthusiasm. The incidents of emigration\ninto a distant country--perils of the sea, passages of rivers and\nmountains, assaults of fortresses and cities, landings on a hostile\nshore, night-vigils by the side of blazing beacons, foragings for food,\npicquet services in the front of watchful foes--involved adventures\ncapable of shedding the lustre of romance on friendship. These\ncircumstances, by bringing the virtues of sympathy with the weak,\ntenderness for the beautiful, protection for the young, together with\ncorresponding qualities of gratitude, self-devotion and admiring\nattachment, into play, may have tended to cement unions between man and\nman no less firm than that of marriage. On such connections a wise\ncaptain would have relied for giving strength to his battalion, and for\nkeeping alive the flame of enterprise and daring. Fighting and foraging\nin company, sharing the same wayside board and heath-strewn bed,\nrallying to the comrade's voice in onset, relying on the comrade's\nshield when fallen, these men learned the meanings of the words\n_Philetor_ and _Parastates_. To be loved was honourable, for it implied\nbeing worthy to be died for. To love was glorious, since it pledged the\nlover to self-sacrifice in case of need. In these conditions the\npaiderastic passion may have well combined manly virtue with carnal\nappetite, adding such romantic sentiment as some stern men reserve\nwithin their hearts for women.[43] A motto might be chosen for a lover\nof this early Dorian type from the \u00c6olic poem ascribed to Theocritus:\n\"And made me tender from the iron man I used to be.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn course of time, when the Dorians had settled down upon their\nconquered territories, and when the passions which had shown their more\nheroic aspect during a period of warfare came, in a period of idleness,\nto call for methods of restraint, then the discrimination between\nhonourable and base forms of love, to which Plato pointed as a feature\nof the Dorian institutions, took place. It is also more than merely\nprobable that in Crete where these institutions were the most precisely\nregulated, the Dorian immigrants came into contact with Phoenician vices,\nthe repression of which required the adoption of a strict code.[44] In\nthis way paiderastia, considered as a mixed custom, partly martial,\npartly luxurious, recognised by public opinion and controlled by law,\nobtained among the Dorian Tribes, and spread from them throughout the\nstates of Hellas. Relics of numerous semi-savage habits--thefts of food,\nravishment as a prelude to marriage, and so forth--indicate in like\nmanner the survival among the Dorians of primitive tribal institutions.\n\nIt will be seen that the conclusion to which I have been drawn by the\nforegoing consideration is that the mixed form of paiderastia, called by\nme in this essay \"Greek love,\" owed its peculiar quality, what Plato\ncalled its intricacy of \"laws and customs,\" to two diverse strains of\ncircumstances harmonised in the Greek temperament. Its military and\nenthusiastic elements were derived from the primitive conditions of the\nDorians during their immigration into Southern Greece. Its refinements\nof sensuality and sanctified impurity are referable to contact with\nPhoenician civilisation. The specific form it assumed among the Dorians\nof the historic period, equally removed from military freedom and from\nOriental luxury, can be ascribed to the operation of that organising,\nmoulding and assimilating spirit which we recognise as Hellenic.\n\nThe position thus stated is, unfortunately, speculative rather than\ndemonstrable; and in order to establish the reasonableness of the\nspeculation, it would be natural at this point to introduce some account\nof paiderastia as it exists in various savage tribes, if their customs\ncould be seen to illustrate the Doric phase of Greek love. This,\nhowever, is not the case. Study of Mr. Herbert Spencer's Tables, and of\nBastian's _Der Mensch in der Geschichte_ (vol. iii. pp. 304-323),\ntogether with the facts collected by travellers among the North American\nIndians, and the mass of curious information supplied by Rosenbaum in\nhis _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume_, makes it clear to my mind\nthat the unisexual vices of barbarians follow, not the type of Greek\npaiderastia, but that of the Scythian disease of effeminacy, described\nby Herodotus and Hippocrates as something essentially foreign and\nnon-Hellenic. In all these cases, whether we regard the Scythian\nimpotent effeminates, the North American Bardashes, the Tsecats of\nMadagascar, the Cordaches of the Canadian Indians and similar classes\namong Californian Indians, natives of Venezuela, and so forth--the\ncharacteristic point is that effeminate males renounce their sex, assume\nfemale clothes, and live either in promiscuous concubinage with the men\nof the tribe or else in marriage with chosen persons. This abandonment\nof the masculine attributes and habits, this assumption of feminine\nduties and costume, would have been abhorrent to the Doric custom.\nPrecisely similar effeminacies were recognised as pathological by\nHerodotus, to whom Greek paiderastia was familiar. The distinctive\nfeature of Dorian comradeship was that it remained on both sides\nmasculine, tolerating no sort of softness. For similar reasons, what we\nknow about the prevalence of sodomy among the primitive peoples of\nMexico, Peru and Yucatan, and almost all half-savage nations,[45]\nthrows little light upon the subject of the present inquiry. Nor do we\ngain anything of importance from the semi-religious practices of\nJapanese Bonzes or Egyptian priests. Such facts, taken in connection\nwith abundant modern experience of what are called unnatural vices, only\nprove the universality of unisexual indulgence in all parts of the world\nand under all conditions of society. Considerable psychological interest\nattaches to the study of these sexual aberrations. It is also true that\nwe detect in them the germ or raw material of a custom which the Dorians\nmoralised or developed after a specific fashion; but nowhere do we find\nan analogue to their peculiar institutions. It was just that effort to\nmoralise and adapt to social use a practice which has elsewhere been\nexcluded in the course of civil growth, or has been allowed to linger\nhalf-acknowledged as a remnant of more primitive conditions, or has\nre-appeared in the corruption of society; it was just this effort to\nelevate paiderastia according to the \u00e6sthetic standard of Greek ethics\nwhich constituted its distinctive quality in Hellas. We are obliged, in\nfact, to separate this, the true Hellenic manifestation of the\npaiderastic passion, from the effeminacies, brutalities, and gross\nsensualities which can be noticed alike in imperfectly civilised and in\nluxuriously corrupt communities.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBefore leaving this part of the subject, I must repeat that what I have\nsuggested regarding the intervention of the Dorians in creating the type\nof Greek love is a pure speculation. If it has any value, that is due to\nthe fixed and regulated forms which paiderastic institutions displayed\nat a very early date in Crete and Sparta, and also to the remnants of\nsavage customs embedded in them. It depends to a certain extent also\nupon the absence of paiderastia in Homer. But on this point something\nstill remains to be said. Our Attic authorities certainly regarded the\nHomeric poems as canonical books, decisive for the culture of the first\nstage of Hellenic history. Yet it is clear that Homer refined Greek\nmythology, while many of the cruder elements of that mythology survived\nfrom pre-Homeric times in local cults and popular religious observances.\nWe know, moreover, that a body of non-Homeric writings, commonly called\nthe cyclic poems, existed by the side of Homer, some of the material of\nwhich is preserved to us by dramatists, lyrists, historians, antiquaries\nand anecdotists. It is not impossible that this so-called cyclical\nliterature contained paiderastic elements, which were eliminated, like\nthe grosser forms of myth, in the Homeric poems.[46] If this be\nconceded, we might be led to conjecture that paiderastia was a remnant\nof ancient savage habits, ignored by Homer, but preserved by tradition\nin the race. Given the habit, the Greeks were certainly capable of\ncarrying it on without shame. We ought to resist the temptation to seek\na high and noble origin for all Greek institutions. But there remains\nthe fact that, however they acquired the habit, whether from North\nDorian customs antecedent to Homer, or from conditions of experience\nsubsequent to the Homeric age, the Greeks gave it a dignity and an\nemotional superiority which is absent in the annals of barbarian\ninstitutions. Instead of abandoning it as part of the obsolete lumber of\ntheir prehistoric origins, they chose to elaborate it into the region of\nromance and ideality. And this they did in spite of Homer's ignorance of\nthe passion or of his deliberate reticence. Whatever view, therefore, we\nmay take about Homer's silence, and about the possibility of paiderastia\noccurring in the lost poems of the cyclic type, or lastly, about its\nprobable survival in the people from an age of savagery, we are bound to\nregard its systematical development among the Dorians as a fact of\nparamount significance.\n\nIn that passage of the _Symposium_[47] where Plato notices the Spartan\nlaw of love as _Poikilos_, he speaks with disapprobation of the\nBoeotians, who were not restrained by custom and opinion within the same\nstrict limits. Yet it should here be noted that the military aspect of\nGreek love in the historic period was nowhere more distinguished than at\nThebes. Epaminondas was a notable boy-lover; and the names of his\nbeloved Asopichus and Cephisodorus are mentioned by Plutarch.[48] They\ndied, and were buried with him at Mantinea. The paiderastic legend of\nHerakles and Iolaus was localised in Boeotia; and the lovers, Diocles and\nPhilolaus, who gave laws to Thebes, directly encouraged those masculine\nattachments, which had their origin in the Pal\u00e6stra.[49] The practical\noutcome of these national institutions in the chief town of Boeotia was\nthe formation of the so-called Sacred Band, or Band of Lovers, upon whom\nPelopidas relied in his most perilous operations. Plutarch relates that\nthey were enrolled, in the first instance, by Gorgidas, the rank and\nfile of the regiment being composed of young men bound together by\naffection. Report goes that they were never beaten till the battle of\nCh\u00e6ronea. At the end of that day, fatal to the liberties of Hellas,\nPhilip of Macedon went forth to view the slain; and when he \"came to\nthat place where the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead\ntogether, he wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers,\nhe shed tears, and said, 'Perish any man who suspects that these men\neither did or suffered anything that was base.'\"[50] As at all the other\nturning points of Greek history, so at this, too, there is something\ndramatic and eventful. Thebes was the last strong-hold of Greek freedom;\nthe Sacred Band contained the pith and flower of her army; these lovers\nhad fallen to a man, like the Spartans of Leonidas at Thermopyl\u00e6,\npierced by the lances of the Macedonian phalanx; then, when the day was\nover and the dead were silent, Philip, the victor in that fight, shed\ntears when he beheld their serried ranks, pronouncing himself therewith\nthe fittest epitaph which could have been inscribed upon their stel\u00eb by\na Hellene.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAt Ch\u00e6ronea, Greek liberty, Greek heroism, and Greek love, properly\nso-called, expired. It is not unworthy of notice that the son of the\nconqueror, young Alexander, endeavoured to revive the tradition of\nAchilleian friendship. This lad, born in the decay of Greek liberty,\ntook conscious pleasure in enacting the part of a Homeric hero, on the\naltered stage of Hellas and of Asia, with somewhat tawdry histrionic\npomp.[51] Homer was his invariable companion upon his marches; in the\nTroad he paid special honour to the tomb of Achilles, running naked\nraces round the barrow in honour of the hero, and expressing the envy\nwhich he felt for one who had so true a friend and so renowned a poet to\nrecord his deeds. The historians of his life relate that, while he was\nindifferent to women,[52] he was madly given to the love of males. This\nthe story of his sorrow for Hephaistion sufficiently confirms. A kind of\nspiritual atavism moved the Macedonian conqueror to assume on the vast\nBactrian plain the outward trappings of Achilles Agonistes.[53]\n\nReturning from this digression upon Alexander's almost hysterical\narchaism, it should next be noticed that Plato includes the people of\nElis in the censure which he passes upon the Boeotians. He accused the\nEleans of adopting customs which permitted youths to gratify their\nlovers without further distinction of age, or quality, or opportunity.\nIn like manner, Maximus Tyrius distinguishes between the customs of\nCrete and Elis: \"While I find the laws of the Cretans excellent, I must\ncondemn those of Elis for their license.\"[54] Elis,[55] like Megara,\ninstituted a contest for beauty among youths; and it is significant that\nthe Megarians were not uncommonly accused of _Hybris_, or wanton lust,\nby Greek writers. Both the Eleans and the Megarians may therefore\nreasonably be considered to have exceeded the Greek standard of taste in\nthe amount of sensual indulgence which they openly acknowledged. In\nIonia, and other regions of Hellas exposed to Oriental influences, Plato\nsays that paiderastia was accounted a disgrace.[56] At the same time he\ncouples with paiderastia, in this place, both addiction to gymnastic\nexercise and to philosophical studies, pointing out that despotism was\nalways hostile to high thoughts and haughty customs. The meaning of the\npassage, therefore, seems to be that the true type of Greek love had no\nchance of unfolding itself freely on the shores of Asia Minor. Of\npaiderastic _Malakia_, or effeminacy, there is here no question, else\nPlato would probably have made Pausanias use other language.\n\n\n\n\nXI.\n\n\nBefore proceeding to discuss the conditions under which paiderastia\nexisted in Athens, it may be well to pause and to consider the tone\nadopted with regard to it by some of the earlier Greek poets. Much that\nis interesting on the subject of the true Hellenic Er\u00f4s can be gathered\nfrom Theognis, Solon, Pindar, \u00c6schylus, and Sophocles; while the lyrics\nof Anacreon, Alc\u00e6us, Ibycus, and others of the same period illustrate\nthe wanton and illiberal passion (_Hybris_) which tended to corrode and\nundermine the nobler feeling.\n\nIt is well known that Theognis and his friend Kurnus were members of\nthe aristocracy of Megara. After Megara had thrown off the yoke of\nCorinth in the early part of the sixth century, the city first submitted\nto the democratic despotism of Theagenes, and then for many years\nengaged in civil warfare. The larger number of the elegies of Theognis\nare specially intended to instruct Kurnus how he ought to act as an\nillustrious party-leader of the nobles (_Esthloi_) in their contest with\nthe people (_Deiloi_). They consist, therefore, of political and social\nprecepts, and for our present purpose are only important as illustrating\nthe educational authority assumed by a Dorian _Philetor_ over his\nfriend. The personal elegies intermingled with these poems on conduct\nreveal the very heart of a Greek lover at his early period. Here is one\non loyalty:--\n\n     \"Love me not with words alone, while your mind and thoughts are\n     otherwise, if you really care for me and the heart within you is\n     loyal. But love me with a pure and honest soul, or openly disown\n     and hate me; let the breach between us be avowed. He who hath a\n     single tongue and a double mind is a bad comrade, Kurnus, better as\n     a foe than a friend.\"[57]\n\nThe bitter-sweet of love is well described in the following couplets:--\n\n     \"Harsh and sweet, alluring and repellent, until it be crowned with\n     completion, is love for young men. If one brings it to perfection,\n     then it is sweet; but if a man pursues and does not love, then it\n     is of all things the most painful.\"[58]\n\nThe same strain is repeated in the lines which begin, \"a boy's love is\nfair to keep, fair to lay aside.\"[59] As one time Theognis tells his\nfriend that he has the changeable temper of a hawk, the skittishness of\na pampered colt.[60] At another he remarks that boys are more constant\nthan women in their affection.[61] His passion rises to its noblest\nheight in a poem which deserves to rank with some of Shakespeare's\nsonnets, and which, like them, has fulfilled its own promise of\nimmortality.[62] In order to appreciate the value of the fame conferred\non Kurnus by Theognis, and celebrated in such lofty strains, we must\nremember that these elegies were sung at banquets. \"The fair young men,\"\nof whom the poet speaks, boy-lovers themselves, chaunted the praise of\nKurnus to the sound of flutes, while the cups went round or the lyre was\npassed from hand to hand of merry-making guests. A subject to which\nTheognis more than once refers is calumny:--\n\n     \"Often will the folk speak vain things against thee in my ears, and\n     against me in thine. Pay thou no heed to them.\"[63]\n\nAgain, he frequently reminds the boy he loves, whether it be Kurnus or\nsome other, that the bloom of youth is passing, and that this is a\nreason for showing kindness.[64] This argument is urged with what\nappears like coarseness in the following couplet:--\n\n     \"O boy, so long as thy chin remains smooth, never will I cease from\n     fawning, no, not if it is doomed for me to die.\"[65]\n\nA couplet, which is also attributed to Solon, shows that paiderastia at\nthis time in Greece was associated with manly sports and pleasures:--\n\n    \"Blest is the man who loves brave steeds of war,\n    Fair boys, and hounds, and stranger guests from far.\"[66]\n\nNor must the following be omitted:--\n\n    \"Blest is the man who loves, and after play,\n    Whereby his limbs are supple made and strong,\n    Retiring to his home, 'twixt sleep and song,\n    Sports with a fair boy on his breast all day.\"[67]\n\nThe following couplet is attributed to him by Plutarch,[68] nor does\nthere seem any reason to doubt its genuineness. The text seems to be\ncorrupt, but the meaning is pretty clear:--\n\n     \"In the charming season of the flower-time of youth thou shalt love\n     boys, yearning for their thighs and honeyed mouth.\"\n\nSolon, it may be remembered, thought it wise to regulate the conditions\nunder which the love of free youths might be tolerated.\n\nThe general impression produced by a careful reading of Theognis is that\nhe entertained a genuine passion for Kurnus, and that he was anxious to\ntrain the young man's mind in what he judged the noblest principles.\nLove, at the same time, except in its more sensual moments, he describes\nas bitter-sweet and subject to anxiety. That perturbation of the\nemotions, which is inseparable from any of the deeper forms of personal\nattachment, and which the necessary conditions of boy-love exasperated,\nwas irksome to the Greek. It is not a little curious to observe how all\nthe poets of the despotic age resent and fret against the force of their\nown feeling, differing herein from the singers of chivalry, who\nidealised the very pains of passion.\n\nOf Ibycus, who was celebrated among the ancients as the lyrist of\npaiderastia,[69] very little has been preserved to us, but that little\nis sufficient to indicate the fervid and voluptuous style of his art.\nHis imagery resembles that of Anacreon. The onset of love, for instance,\nin one fragment is compared to the down-swooping of a Thracian\nwhirlwind; in another the poet trembles at the approach of Er\u00f4s like an\nold racehorse who is dragged forth to prove his speed once more.\n\nOf the genuine Anacreon we possess more numerous and longer fragments,\nand the names of his favourites, Cleobulus, Smerdies, Leucaspis, are\nfamous. The general tone of his love-poems is relaxed and Oriental, and\nhis language abounds in phrases indicative of sensuality. The following\nmay be selected:--\n\n     \"Cleobulus I love, for Cleobulus I am mad, Cleobulus I watch and\n     worship with my gaze.\"[70]\n\nAgain:--\n\n     \"O boy, with the maiden's eyes, I seek and follow thee, but thou\n     heedest not, nor knowest that thou art my soul's charioteer.\"\n\nIn another place he speaks of[71]--\n\n    \"Love, the virginal, gleaming and radiant with desire.\"\n\n_Syneban_ (to pass the time of youth with friends) is a word which\nAnacreon may be said to have made current in Greek. It occurs twice in\nhis fragments,[72] and exactly expresses the luxurious enjoyment of\nyouthful grace and beauty which appear to have been his ideal of love.\nWe are very far here from the Achilleian friendship of the _Iliad_. Yet,\noccasionally, Anacreon uses images of great force to describe the attack\nof passion, as when he says that love has smitten him with a huge axe,\nand plunged him in a wintry torrent.[73]\n\nIt must be remembered that both Anacreon and Ibycus were court poets,\nsinging in the palaces of Polycrates and Hippias. The youths they\ncelebrated were probably little better than the _exoleti_ of a Roman\nEmperor.[74] This cannot be said exactly of Alc\u00e6us, whose love for\nblack-eyed Lycus was remembered by Cicero and Horace. So little,\nhowever, is left of his erotic poems that no definite opinion can be\nformed about them. The authority of later Greek authors justifies our\nplacing him upon the list of those who helped to soften and emasculate\nthe character of Greek love by their poems.[75]\n\nTwo Athenian drinking-songs preserved by Athen\u00e6us,[76] which seem to\nbear the stamp of the lyric age, may here be quoted. They serve to\nillustrate the kind of feeling to which expression was given in public\nby friends and boy-lovers:--\n\n     \"Would I were a lovely heap of ivory, and that lovely boys carried\n     me into the Dionysian chorus.\"[77]\n\nThis is marked by a very delicate, though na\u00eff, fancy. The next is no\nless eminent for its sustained, impassioned, simple, rhythmic feeling:--\n\n     \"Drink with me, be young with me, love with me, wear crowns with\n     me, with me when I am mad be mad, with me when I am temperate be\n     sober.\"\n\nThe greatest poet of the lyric age, the lyrist _par excellence_ Pindar,\nadds much to our conception of Greek love at this period. Not only is\nthe poem to Theoxenos, whom he loved, and in whose arms he is said to\nhave died in the theatre at Argos, one of the most splendid achievements\nof his art;[78] but its choice of phrase, and the curious parallel which\nit draws between the free love of boys and the servile love of women,\nhelp us to comprehend the serious intensity of this passion. \"The\nflashing rays of his forehead,\" and \"is storm-tossed with desire,\" and\n\"the young-limbed bloom of boys,\" are phrases which it is impossible\nadequately to translate. So, too, are the images by which the heart of\nhim who does not feel the beauty of Theoxenos is said to have been\nforged with cold fire out of adamant, while the poet himself is compared\nto wax wasting under the sun's rays. In Pindar, passing from Ibycus and\nAnacreon, we ascend at once into a purer and more healthful atmosphere,\nfraught, indeed, with passion and pregnant with storm, but no longer\nsimply sensual. Taken as a whole, the Odes of Pindar, composed for the\nmost part in the honour of young men and boys, both beautiful and\nstrong, are the work of a great moralist as well as a great artist. He\nnever fails to teach by precept and example; he does not, as Ibycus is\nreported to have done, adorn his verse with legends of Ganymede and\nTithonus, for the sake of insinuating compliments. Yet no one shared in\nfuller measure the Greek admiration for health and grace and vigour of\nlimb. This is obvious in the many radiant pictures of masculine\nperfection he has drawn, as well as in the images by which he loves to\nbring the beauty-bloom of youth to mind. The true Hellenic spirit may be\nbetter studied in Pindar than in any other poet of his age; and after we\nhave weighed his high morality, sound counsel, and reverence for all\nthings good, together with the passion he avows, we shall have done\nsomething toward comprehending the inner nature of Greek love.\n\n\n\n\nXII.\n\n\nThe treatment of paiderastia upon the Attic stage requires separate\nconsiderations. Nothing proves the popular acceptance and national\napproval of Greek love more forcibly to modern minds than the fact that\nthe tragedians like \u00c6schylus and Sophocles made it the subject of their\ndramas. From a notice in Athen\u00e6us it appears that Stesichorus, who first\ngave dramatic form to lyric poetry, composed interludes upon paiderastic\nsubjects.[79] But of these it is impossible to speak, since their very\ntitles have been lost. What immediately follows, in the narrative of\nAthen\u00e6us, will serve as text for what I have to say upon this topic.\n\"And \u00c6shylus, that mighty poet, and Sophocles, brought masculine loves\ninto the theatre through their tragedies. Wherefore some are wont to\ncall tragedy a paiderast; and the spectators welcome such.\" Nothing,\nunfortunately, remains of the plays which justified this language but a\nfew fragments cited by Aristophanes, Plutarch, Lucian, and Athen\u00e6us. To\nexamine these will be the business of this section.\n\nThe tragedy of the _Myrmidones_, which formed part of a trilogy by\n\u00c6schylus upon the legend of Achilles, must have been popular at Athens,\nfor Aristophanes quotes it no less than four times--twice in the\n_Frogs_, once in the _Birds_, and once in the _Ecclesiazus\u00e6_. We can\nreconstruct its general plan from the lines which have come down to us\non the authority of the writers above mentioned.[80] The play opened\nwith an anap\u00e6stic speech of the chorus, composed of the clansmen of\nAchilles, who upbraided him for staying idle in his tent while the\nAchaians suffered at the hands of Hector. Achilles replied with the\nmetaphor of the eagle stricken by an arrow winged from one of his own\nfeathers. Then the embassy of Phoenix arrived, and Patroclus was sent\nforth to battle. Achilles, meanwhile, engaged in a game of dice; and\nwhile he was thus employed Antilochus entered with the news of the death\nof Patroclus. The next fragment brings the whole scene vividly before\nour eyes.\n\n\"Wail for me, Antilochus, rather than for the dead man--for me,\nAchilles, who still live.\" After this, the corpse of Patroclus was\nbrought upon the stage, and the son of Peleus poured forth a lamentation\nover his friend. The _Threnos_ of Achilles on this occasion was very\ncelebrated among the ancients. One passage of unmeasured passion, which\ndescribed the love which subsisted between the two heroes, has been\nquoted, with varieties of reading, by Lucian, Plutarch, and\nAthen\u00e6us.[81] Lucian says: \"Achilles, bewailing the death of Patroclus\nwith unhusbanded passion, broke forth into the truth in self-abandonment\nto woe.\" Athen\u00e6us gives the text as follows:--\n\n     \"Hadst thou no reverence for the unsullied holiness of thighs, O\n     thou ungrateful for the showers of kisses given.\"\n\nWhat we have here chiefly to notice is the change which the tale of\nAchilles had undergone since Homer.[82] Homer represented Patroclus as\nolder in years than the son of Peleus, but inferior to him in station;\nnor did he hint which of the friends was the _Erastes_ of the other.\nThat view of their comradeship had not occurred to him. \u00c6schylus makes\nAchilles the lover; and for this distortion of the Homeric legend he was\nseverely criticised by Plato.[83] At the same time, as the two lines\nquoted from the _Threnos_ prove, he treated their affection from the\npoint of view of post-Homeric paiderastia.\n\nSophocles also wrote a play upon the legend of Achilles, which bears for\nits title _Achilles' Loves_. Very little is left of this drama; but\nHesychius has preserved one phrase which illustrates the Greek notion\nthat love was an effluence from the beloved person through the eyes into\nthe lover's soul,[84] while Stob\u00e6us quotes the beautiful simile by which\nlove is compared to a piece of ice held in the hand by children.[85]\nAnother play of Sophocles, the _Niobe_, is alluded to by Plutarch and by\nAthen\u00e6us for the paiderastia which it contained. Plutarch's words are\nthese:[86] \"When the children of Niobe, in Sophocles, are being pierced\nand dying, one of them cries out, appealing to no other rescuer or ally\nthan his lover: Ho! comrade, up and aid me!\" Finally, Athen\u00e6us quotes a\nsingle line from the _Colchian Women_ of Sophocles, which alludes to\nGanymede, and runs as follows:[87] \"Inflaming with his thighs the\nroyalty of Zeus.\"\n\nWhether Euripides treated paiderastia directly in any of his plays is\nnot quite certain, though the title _Chrysippus_, and one fragment\npreserved from that tragedy--\n\n    \"Nature constrains me though I have sound judgment\"--\n\njustify us in believing that he made the crime of Laius his subject. It\nmay be added that a passage in Cicero confirms this belief.[88] The\ntitle of another tragedy, _Peirithous_, seems in like manner to point at\nfriendship; while a beautiful quotation from the _Dictys_ sufficiently\nindicates the high moral tone assumed by Euripides in treating of Greek\nlove. It runs as follows:--\"He was my friend; and never may love lead me\nto folly, nor to Kupris. There is, in truth, another kind of love--love\nfor the soul, righteous, temperate, and good. Surely men ought to have\nmade this law, that only the temperate and chaste should love and send\nKupris, daughter of Zeus, a-begging.\" The philosophic ideal of\ncomradeship is here vitalised by the dramatic vigour of the poet; nor\nhas the Hellenic conception of pure affection for \"a soul, just,\nupright, temperate and good,\" been elsewhere more pithily expressed. The\nEuripidean conception of friendship, it may further be observed, is\nnobly personified in Pylades, who plays a generous and self-devoted part\nin the three tragedies of _Electra_, _Orestes_, and _Iphigenia in\nTauris_.\n\nHaving collected these notices of tragedies which dealt with boy-love,\nit may be well to add a word upon comedies in the same relation. We hear\nof a _Paidika_ by Sophron, a _Malthakoi_ by the older Cratinus, a\n_Baptoee_ by Empolis, in which Alcibiades and his society were satirised.\n_Paiderastes_ is the title of plays by Diphilis and Antiphanes;\n_Ganymedes_ of plays of Alkaeus, Antiphanes and Eubulus.\n\nWhat has been quoted from \u00c6schylus and Sophocles sufficiently\nestablishes the fact that paiderastia was publicly received with\napprobation on the tragic stage. This should make us cautious in\nrejecting the stories which are told about the love adventures of\nSophocles.[89] Athen\u00e6us calls him a lover of lads, nor is it strange if,\nin the age of Pericles, and while he was producing the _Achilles'\nLoves_, he should have shared the tastes of which his race approved.\n\nAt this point it may be as well to mention a few illustrious names\nwhich, to the student of Greek art and literature, are indissolubly\nconnected with paiderastia. Parmenides, whose life, like that of\nPythagoras, was accounted peculiarly holy, loved his pupil Zeno.[90]\nPheidias loved Pantarkes, a youth of Elis, and carved his portrait in\nthe figure of a victorious athlete at the foot of the Olympian Zeus.[91]\nEuripides is said to have loved the adult Agathon Lysias, Demosthenes,\nand \u00c6schines, orators whose conduct was open to the most searching\ncensure of malicious criticism, did not scruple to avow their love.\nSocrates described his philosophy as the science of erotics. Plato\ndefined the highest form of human existence to be \"philosophy together\nwith paiderastia,\" and composed the celebrated epigrams on Aster and on\nAgathon. This list might be indefinitely lengthened.\n\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\n\nBefore proceeding to collect some notes upon the state of paiderastia at\nAthens, I will recapitulate the points which I have already attempted to\nestablish. In the first place, paiderastia was unknown to Homer.[92]\nSecondly, soon after the heroic age, two forms of paiderastia appeared\nin Greece--the one chivalrous and martial, which received a formal\norganisation in the Dorian states; the other sensual and lustful which,\nthough localised to some extent at Crete, pervaded the Greek cities\nlike a vice. Of the distinction between these two loves the Greek\nconscience was well aware, though they came in course of time to be\nconfounded. Thirdly, I traced the character of Greek love, using that\nterm to indicate masculine affection of a permanent and enthusiastic\ntemper, without further ethical qualification, in early Greek history\nand in the institutions of the Dorians. In the fourth place, I showed\nwhat kind of treatment it received at the hands of the elegiac, lyric,\nand tragic poets.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt now remains to draw some picture of the social life of the Athenians\nin so far as paiderastia is concerned, and to prove how Plato was\njustified in describing Attic customs on this point as qualified by\nimportant restriction and distinction.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI do not know a better way of opening this inquiry, which must by its\nnature be fragmentary and disconnected, than by transcribing what Plato\nputs into the mouth of Pausanias in the _Symposium_.[93] After observing\nthat the paiderastic customs of Elis and Boeotia involved no perplexity,\ninasmuch as all concessions to the god of love were tolerated, and that\nsuch customs did not exist in any despotic states, he proceeds to\nAthens.\n\n     \"There is yet a more excellent way of legislating about them, which\n     is our own way; but this, as I was saying, is rather perplexing.\n     For observe that open loves are held to be more honourable than\n     secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if\n     their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially\n     honourable. Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all\n     the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing\n     anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he\n     fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit of his love, the custom of\n     mankind allows him to do many strange things, which philosophy\n     would bitterly censure if they were done from any motive of\n     interest or wish for office or power. He may pray and entreat, and\n     supplicate and swear, and be a servant of servants, and lie on a\n     mat at the door; in any other case friends and enemies would be\n     equally ready to prevent him, but now there is no friend who will\n     be ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will charge him\n     with meanness or flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace\n     which ennobles them, and custom has decided that they are highly\n     commendable, and that there is no loss of character in them; and\n     what is strangest of all, he only may swear or forswear himself\n     (this is what the world says), and the gods will forgive his\n     transgression, for there is no such thing as a lover's oath. Such\n     is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover,\n     according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world.\n     From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens to love\n     and to be loved is held to be a very honourable thing. But when\n     there is another regime, and parents forbid their sons to talk with\n     their lovers, and place them under a tutor's care, and their\n     companions and equals cast in their teeth anything of this sort\n     which they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the\n     reprovers, and do not rebuke them; any one who reflects on all this\n     will, on the contrary, think that we hold these practices to be\n     most disgraceful. But the truth, as I imagine, and as I said at\n     first, is, that whether such practices are honourable or whether\n     they are dishonourable is not a simple question; they are\n     honourable to him who follows them honourably, dishonourable to him\n     who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to\n     the evil, or in an evil manner; but there is honour in yielding to\n     the good, or in an honourable manner. Evil is the vulgar lover who\n     loves the body rather than the soul, and who is inconstant because\n     he is a lover of the inconstant, and, therefore, when the bloom of\n     youth, which he was desiring, is over, takes wing and flies away,\n     in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the\n     noble mind, which is one with the unchanging, is lifelong.\"\n\nPausanias then proceeds, at considerable length, to describe how the\ncustoms of Athens required deliberate choice and trial of character as a\ncondition of honourable love; how it repudiated hasty and ephemeral\nattachments, and engagements formed with the object of money-making or\npolitical aggrandisement; how love on both sides was bound to be\ndisinterested, and what accession both of dignity and beauty the passion\nof friends obtained from the pursuit of philosophy, and from the\nrendering of mutual services upon the path of virtuous conduct.\n\nThis sufficiently indicates, in general terms, the moral atmosphere in\nwhich Greek love flourished at Athens. In an earlier part of his speech\nPausanias, after dwelling upon the distinction between the two kinds of\nAphrodite, heavenly and vulgar, describes the latter in a way which\nproves that the love of boys was held to be ethically superior to that\nof women.[94]\n\n     \"The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is\n     essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the\n     meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of\n     youths, and is of the body rather than the soul; the most foolish\n     beings are the objects of this love, which desires only to gain an\n     end, but never thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore\n     does good and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddess who is his\n     mother is far younger than the other, and she was born of the union\n     of the male and female, and partakes of both.\"\n\nThen he turns to the Uranian love.\n\n     \"The offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother\n     in whose birth the female has no part. She is from the male only;\n     this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older,\n     has nothing of wantonness. Those who are inspired by this love turn\n     to the male, and delight in him who is the most valiant and\n     intelligent nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in\n     the very character of their attachments; for they love not boys,\n     but intelligent beings whose reason is beginning to be developed,\n     much about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in\n     choosing them as their companions they mean to be faithful to them,\n     and pass their whole life in company with them, not to take them in\n     their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them,\n     or run away from one to another of them. But the love of young boys\n     should be forbidden by law, because their future is uncertain; they\n     may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much noble\n     enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the good\n     are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be\n     restrained by force, as we restrain or attempt to restrain them\n     from fixing their affections on women of free birth.\"\n\nThese long quotations from a work accessible to every reader may require\napology. My excuse for giving them must be that they express in pure\nAthenian diction a true Athenian view of this matter. The most salient\ncharacteristics of the whole speech are, first, the definition of a code\nof honour, distinguishing the nobler from the baser forms of\npaiderastia; secondly, the decided preference of male over female love;\nthirdly, the belief in the possibility of permanent affection between\npaiderastic friends; and, fourthly, the passing allusion to rules of\ndomestic surveillance under which Athenian boys were placed. To the\nfirst of these points I shall have to return on another occasion. With\nregard to the second, it is sufficient for the present purpose to\nremember that free Athenian women were comparatively uneducated and\nuninteresting, and that the hetairai had proverbially bad manners. While\nmen transacted business and enjoyed life in public, their wives and\ndaughters stayed in the seclusion of the household, conversing to a\ngreat extent with slaves, and ignorant of nearly all that happened in\nthe world around them. They were treated throughout their lives as\nminors by the law, nor could they dispose by will of more than the worth\nof a bushel of barley. It followed that marriages at Athens were usually\nmatches of arrangement between the fathers of the bride and the\nbridegroom, and that the motives which induced a man to marry were less\nthe desire for companionship than the natural wish for children and a\nsense of duty to the country.[95] Demosthenes, in his speech against\nNe\u00e6ra, declares:[96] \"We have courtesans for our pleasures, concubines\nfor the requirements of the body, and wives for the procreation of\nlawful issue.\" If he had been speaking at a drinking-party, instead of\nbefore a jury, he might have added, \"and young men for intellectual\ncompanions.\"\n\nThe fourth point which I have noted above requires more illustration,\nsince its bearing on the general condition of Athenian society is\nimportant. Owing to the prevalence of paiderastia, a boy was exposed in\nAthens to dangers which are comparatively unknown in our great cities,\nand which rendered special supervision necessary. It was the custom for\nfathers, when they did not themselves accompany their sons,[97] to\ncommit them to the care of slaves chosen usually among the oldest and\nmost trustworthy. The duty of the attendant guardian was not to instruct\nthe boy, but to preserve him from the addresses of importunate lovers or\nfrom such assaults as Peisthet\u00e6rus in the _Birds_ of Aristophanes\ndescribes.[98] He followed his charge to the school and the gymnasium,\nand was responsible for bringing him home at the right hour. Thus at the\nend of the _Lysis_ we read:[99]--\n\n     \"Suddenly we were interrupted by the tutors of Lysis and Menexenus;\n     who came upon us like an evil apparition with their brothers, and\n     bade them go home, as it was getting late. At first, we and the\n     bystanders drove them off; but afterwards, as they would not mind,\n     and only went on shouting in their barbarous dialect, and got\n     angry, and kept calling the boys--they appeared to us to have been\n     drinking rather too much at the Herm\u00e6a, which made them difficult\n     to manage--we fairly gave way and broke up the company.\"\n\nIn this way the daily conduct of Athenian boys of birth and good\ncondition was subjected to observation; and it is not improbable that\nthe charm which invested such lads as Plato portrayed in his _Charmides_\nand _Lysis_ was partly due to the self-respect and self-restraint\ngenerated by the peculiar conditions under which they passed their life.\n\nOf the way in which a Greek boy spent his day, we gain some notion from\ntwo passages in Aristophanes and Lucian. The Dikaios Logos[100] tells\nthat--\n\n     \"in his days, when justice flourished and self-control was held in\n     honour, a boy's voice was never heard. He walked in order with his\n     comrades of the same quarter, lightly clad even in winter, down to\n     the school of the harp-player. There he learned old-fashioned hymns\n     to the gods, and patriotic songs. While he sat, he took care to\n     cover his person decently; and when he rose, he never forgot to rub\n     out the marks which he might have left upon the dust lest any man\n     should view them after he was gone. At meals he ate what was put\n     before him, and refrained from idle chattering. Walking through the\n     streets, he never tried to catch a passer's eye or to attract a\n     lover. He avoided the shops, the baths,[101] the Agora, the houses\n     of Hetairai.[102] He reverenced old age and formed within his soul\n     the image of modesty. In the gymnasium he indulged in fair and\n     noble exercise, or ran races with his comrades among the\n     olive-trees of the Academy.\"\n\nThe Adikos Logos replies by pleading that this temperate sort of life is\nquite old-fashioned; boys had better learn to use their tongues and\nbully. In the last resort he uses a clinching _argumentum ad\njuvenem_.[103]\n\nWere it not for the beautiful and highly-finished portraits in Plato, to\nwhich I have already alluded, the description of Aristophanes might be\nthought a mere ideal; and, indeed, it is probable that the actual life\nof the average Athenian boy lay mid-way between the courses prescribed\nby the Dikaios and the Adikos Logos.\n\nMeanwhile, since Euripides, together with the whole school of studious\nand philosophic speculators, are aimed at in the speeches of the Adikos\nLogos, it will be fair to adduce a companion picture of the young Greek\neducated on the athletic system, as these men had learned to know him. I\nquote from the _Autolycus_, a satyric drama of Euripides:--\n\n     \"There are a myriad bad things in Hellas, but nothing is worse than\n     the athletes. To begin with, they do not know how to live like\n     gentlemen, nor could they if they did; for how can a man, the slave\n     of his jaws and his belly, increase the fortune left him by his\n     father? Poverty and ill-luck find them equally incompetent. Having\n     acquired no habits of good living, they are badly off when they\n     come to roughing it. In youth they shine like statues stuck about\n     the town, and take their walks abroad; but when old age draws nigh,\n     you find them as threadbare as an old coat. Suppose a man has\n     wrestled well, or runs fast, or has hurled a quoit, or given a\n     black eye in fine style, has he done the State a service by the\n     crowns he won? Do soldiers fight with quoits in hand, or without\n     the press of shields can kicks expel the foeman from the gate?\n     Nobody is fool enough to do these things with steel before his\n     face. Keep, then, your laurels for the wise and good, for him who\n     rules a city well, the just and temperate, who by his speeches\n     wards off ill, allaying wars and civil strife. These are the things\n     for cities, yea, and for all Greece to boast of.\"\n\nLucian represents, of course, a late period of Attic life. But his\npicture of the perfect boy completes, and in some points supplements,\nthat of Aristophanes. Callicratidas, in the _Dialogue on Love_, has\njust drawn an unpleasing picture of a woman, surrounded in a fusty\nboudoir with her rouge-pots and cosmetics, perfumes, paints, combs,\nlooking-glasses, hair-dyes, and curling irons. Then he turns to praise\nboys:[104]\n\n     \"How different is the boy! In the morning, he rises from his chaste\n     couch, washes the sleep from his eyes with cold water, puts on his\n     chlamys,[105] and takes his way to the school of the musician or\n     the gymnast. His tutors and guardians attend him, and his eyes are\n     bent upon the ground. He spends the morning in studying the poets\n     and philosophers, in riding, or in military drill. Then he betakes\n     himself to the wrestling-ground, and hardens his body with noontide\n     heat and sweat and dust. The bath follows and a modest meal. After\n     this he returns for awhile to study the lives of heroes and great\n     men. After a frugal supper sleep at last is shed upon his eyelids.\"\n\nSuch is Lucian's sketch of the day spent by a young Greek at the famous\nUniversity of Athens. Much is, undoubtedly, omitted; but enough is said\nto indicate the simple occupations to which an Athenian youth, capable\nof inspiring an enthusiastic affection, was addicted. Then follows a\nburst of rhetoric, which reveals, when we compare it with the dislike\nexpressed for women, the deeply-seated virile nature of Greek love.\n\n     \"Truly he is worthy to be loved. Who would not love Hermes in the\n     pal\u00e6stra, or Phoebus at the lyre, or Castor on the racing-ground?\n     Who would not wish to sit face to face with such a youth, to hear\n     him talk, to share his toils, to walk with him, to nurse him in\n     sickness, to attend him on the sea, to suffer chains and darkness\n     with him if need be? He who hated him should be my foe, and who so\n     loved him should be loved by me. At his death I would die; one\n     grave should cover us both; one cruel hand cut short our lives!\"\n\nIn the sequel of the dialogue Lucian makes it clear that he intends\nthese raptures of Callicratidas to be taken in great measure for\nromantic boasting. Yet the fact remains that, till the last, Greek\npaiderastia among the better sort of men implied no effeminacy.\nCommunity of interest in sport, in exercise, and in open-air life\nrendered it attractive.[106]\n\n    \"Son of Eudiades, Euphorion,\n    After the boxing-match, in which he beat,\n    With wreaths I crowned, and set fine silk upon,\n    His forehead and soft blossoms honey-sweet;\n    Then thrice I kissed him all beblooded there;\n    His mouth I kissed, his eyes, his every bruise;\n    More fragrant far than frankincense, I swear.\n    Was the fierce chrism that from his brows did ooze.\"\n\n     \"I do not care for curls or tresses\n      Displayed in wily wildernesses;\n      I do not prize the arts that dye\n      A painted cheek with hues that fly:\n      Give me a boy whose face and hand\n      Are rough with dust or circus-sand,\n      Whose ruddy flesh exhales the scent\n      Or health without embellishment:\n      Sweet to my sense is such a youth,\n      Whose charms have all the charm of truth:\n      Leave paints and perfumes, rouge, and curls,\n      To lazy, lewd Corinthian girls.\"\n\nThe pal\u00e6stra was the place at Athens where lovers enjoyed the greatest\nfreedom. In the _Ph\u00e6drus_ Plato observes that the attachment of the\nlover for a boy grew by meetings and personal contact[107] in the\ngymnasiums and other social resorts, and in the _Symposium_ he mentions\ngymnastic exercises, with philosophy, and paiderastia, as the three\npursuits of freemen most obnoxious to despots. \u00c6schines, again\ndescribing the manners of boy-lovers in language familiar to his\naudience, uses these phrases: \"having grown up in gymnasium and games,\"\nand \"the man having been a noisy haunter of gymnasiums, and having been\nthe lover of multitudes.\" Aristophanes, also, in the _Wasps_,[108]\nemploys similar language: \"and not seeking to go revelling around in\nexercising grounds.\" I may compare Lucian, _Amores_, cap. 2, \"you care\nfor gymnasiums and their sleek oiled combatants,\" which is said to a\nnotorious boy-lover. Boys and men met together with considerable liberty\nin the porches, peristyles and other adjuncts to an Attic\nwrestling-ground; and it was here, too, that sophists and philosophers\nestablished themselves, with the certainty of attracting a large and\neager audience for their discussions. It is true that an ancient law\nforbade the presence of adults in the wrestling-grounds of boys; but\nthis law appears to have become almost wholly obsolete in the days of\nPlato. Socrates, for example, in the _Charmides_, goes down immediately\nafter his arrival from the camp at Potid\u00e6a into the pal\u00e6stra of Taureas\nto hear the news of the day, and the very first question which he asks\nhis friends is whether a new beauty has appeared among the youths.[109]\nSo again in the _Lysis_, Hippothales invites Socrates to enter the\nprivate pal\u00e6stra of Miccus, where boys and men were exercising together\non the feast-day of Hermes.[110] \"The building,\" he remarks, \"is a\nnewly-erected pal\u00e6stra, and the entertainment is generally conversation,\nto which you are welcome.\" The scene which immediately follows is well\nknown to Greek students as one of the most beautiful and vivid pictures\nof Athenian life. One group of youths are sacrificing to Hermes; another\nare casting dice in a corner of the dressing-room. Lysis himself is\n\"standing among the other boys and youths, having a crown upon his head,\nlike a fair vision, and not less worthy of praise for his goodness than\nfor his beauty.\" The modesty of Lysis is shown by the shyness which\nprevents him joining Socrates' party until he has obtained the company\nof some of his young friends. Then a circle of boys and men is formed in\na corner of the court, and a conversation upon friendship begins.\nHippothales, the lover of Lysis, keeps at a decorous distance in the\nbackground. Not less graceful as a picture is the opening of the\n_Charmides_. In answer to a question of Socrates, the frequenters of the\npal\u00e6stra tell him to expect the coming of young Charmides. He will then\nsee the most beautiful boy in Athens at the time: \"for those who are\njust entering are the advanced guard of the great beauty of the day, and\nhe is likely to be not far off.\" There is a noise and a bustle at the\ndoor, and while the Socratic party continues talking Charmides enters.\nThe effect produced is overpowering:[111]--\n\n     \"You know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything, and of the\n     beautiful I am simply such a measure as a white line is of chalk;\n     for almost all young persons appear to be beautiful in my eyes. But\n     at that moment when I saw him coming in, I confess that I was quite\n     astonished at his beauty and his stature; all the world seemed to\n     be enamoured of him; amazement and confusion reigned when he\n     entered; and a troop of lovers followed him. That grown-up men like\n     ourselves should have been affected in this way was not surprising,\n     but I observed that there was the same feeling among the boys; all\n     of them, down to the very least child, turned and looked at him, as\n     if he had been a statue.\"\n\nCharmides, like Lysis, is persuaded to sit down by Socrates, who opens a\ndiscussion upon the appropriate question of _Sophrosyne_, or modest\ntemperance and self-restraint.[112]\n\n     \"He came as he was bidden, and sat down between Critias and me.\n     Great amusement was occasioned by everyone pushing with might and\n     main at his neighbour in order to make a place for him next to\n     them, until at the two ends of the row one had to get up, and the\n     other was rolled over sideways. Now I, my friend, was beginning to\n     feel awkward; my former bold belief in my powers of conversing with\n     him had vanished. And when Critias told him that I was the person\n     who had the cure, he looked at me in such an indescribable manner,\n     and was going to ask a question; and then all the people in the\n     pal\u00e6stra crowded about us, and, O rare! I caught a sight of the\n     inwards of his garment, and took the flame. Then I could no longer\n     contain myself. I thought how well Cydias understood the nature of\n     love when, in speaking of a fair youth, he warns someone, 'not to\n     bring the fawn in the sight of the lion to be devoured by him,' for\n     I felt that I had been overcome by a sort of wild-beast appetite.\"\n\nThe whole tenor of the dialogue makes it clear that, in spite of the\nadmiration he excited, the honour paid him by a public character like\nSocrates and the troops of lovers and of friends surrounding him, yet\nCharmides was unspoiled. His docility, modesty, simplicity, and\nhealthiness of soul are at least as remarkable as the beauty for which\nhe was so famous.\n\nA similar impression is produced upon our minds by Autolycus in the\n_Symposium_ of Xenophon.[113] Callias, his acknowledged lover[114] had\ninvited him to a banquet after a victory which he had gained in the\npancration; and many other guests, including the Socratic party, were\nasked to meet him. Autolycus came, attended by his father; and as soon\nas the tables were covered and the seats had been arranged, a kind of\ndivine awe fell upon the company. The grown-up men were dazzled by the\nbeauty and the modest bearing of the boy, just as when a bright light is\nbrought into a darkened room. Everybody gazed at him, and all were\nsilent, sitting in uncomfortable attitudes of expectation and\nastonishment. The dinner party would have passed off very tamely if\nPhillipus, a professional diner-out and jester, had not opportunely made\nhis appearance. Autolycus meanwhile never uttered a word, but lay beside\nhis father like a breathing statue. Later on in the evening he was\nobliged to answer a question. He opened his lips with blushes, and all\nhe said was,[115] \"Not I, by gad.\" Still, even this created a great\nsensation in the company. Everybody, says Xenophon, was charmed to hear\nhis voice, and turned their eyes upon him. It should be remarked that\nthe conversation at this party fell almost entirely upon matters of\nlove. Critobulus, for example, who was very beautiful and rejoiced in\nhaving many lovers, gave a full account of his own feelings for\nCleinias.[116]\n\n     \"You all tell me,\" he argued, \"that I am beautiful, and I cannot\n     but believe you; but if I am, and if you feel what I feel when I\n     look on Cleinias, I think that beauty is better worth having than\n     all Persia. I would choose to be blind to everybody else if I could\n     only see Cleinias, and I hate the night because it robs me of his\n     sight. I would rather be the slave of Cleinias than live without\n     him; I would rather toil and suffer danger for his sake than live\n     alone at ease and in safety. I would go through fire with him, as\n     you would with me. In my soul I carry an image of him better made\n     than any sculptor could fashion.\"\n\nWhat makes this speech the more singular is that Critobulus was a\nnewly-married man.\n\nBut to return from this digression to the pal\u00e6stra. The Greeks were\nconscious that gymnastic exercises tended to encourage and confirm the\nhabit of paiderastia. \"The cities which have most to do with\ngymnastics,\" is the phrase which Plato uses to describe the states where\nGreek love flourished.[117] Herodotus says the barbarians borrowed\ngymnastics together with paiderastia from the Hellenes; and we hear that\nPolycrates of Samos caused the gymnasia to be destroyed when he wished\nto discountenance the love which lent the warmth of personal enthusiasm\nto political associations.[118] It was common to erect statues of love\nin the wrestling-grounds; and there, says Plutarch,[119] the god's wings\ngrew so wide that no man could restrain his flight. Readers of the\nidyllic poets will remember that it was a statue of Love which fell from\nits pedestal in the swimming-bath upon the cruel boy who had insulted\nthe body of his self-slain friend.[120] Charmus, the lover of Hippias,\nerected an image of Er\u00f4s in the academy at Athens which bore this\nepigram:--\n\n     \"Love, god of many evils and various devices, Charmus set up this\n     altar to thee upon the shady boundaries of the gymnasium.\"[121]\n\nEr\u00f4s, in fact, was as much at home in the gymnasia of Athens as\nAphrodite in the temples of Corinth; he was the patron of paiderastia,\nas she of female love. Thus Meleager writes:--\n\n     \"The Cyprian queen, a woman, hurls the fire that maddens men for\n     females; but Er\u00f4s himself sways the love of males for males.\"[122]\n\nPlutarch, again, in the Erotic dialogue, alludes to \"Er\u00f4s, where\nAphrodite is not; Er\u00f4s apart from Aphrodite.\" These facts relating to\nthe gymnasia justified Cicero in saying, \"Mihi quidem h\u00e6c in Gr\u00e6corum\ngymnasiis nata consuetudo videtur; _in quibus isti liberi et concesi\nsunt amores_.\" He adds, with a true Roman's antipathy to Greek \u00e6sthetics\nand their flimsy screen for sensuality, \"Bene ergo Ennius, _flagitii\nprincipium est nudare inter cives corpora_.\"[123] \"To me, indeed, it\nseems that this custom was generated in the gymnasiums of the Greeks,\nfor there those loves are freely indulged and sanctioned. Ennius\ntherefore very properly observed that the beginning of vice is the habit\nof stripping the body among citizens.\"\n\nThe Attic gymnasia and schools were regulated by strict laws. We have\nalready seen that adults were not supposed to enter the pal\u00e6stra; and\nthe penalty for the infringement of this rule by the gymnasiarch was\ndeath. In the same way, schools had to be shut at sunset and not opened\nagain before daybreak; nor was a grown-up man allowed to frequent them.\nThe public chorus teachers of boys were obliged to be above the age of\nforty.[124] Slaves who presumed to make advances to a free boy were\nsubject to the severest penalties; in like manner they were prohibited\nfrom gymnastic exercises. \u00c6schines, from whom we learn these facts,\ndraws the correct conclusion that gymnastics and Greek love were\nintended to be the special privilege of freemen. Still, in spite of all\nrestrictions, the pal\u00e6stra was the centre of Athenian profligacy, the\nplace in which not only honourable attachments were formed, but\ndisgraceful bargains also were concluded;[125] and it is not improbable\nthat men like Taureas and Miccus, who opened such places of amusement as\na private speculation, may have played the part of go-betweens and\npanders. Their walls, and the plane-trees which grew along their open\ncourts, were inscribed by lovers with the names of boys who had\nattracted them. To scrawl up, \"Fair is Dinomeneus, fair is the boy,\" was\na common custom, as we learn from Aristophanes and from this anonymous\nepigram in the _Anthology_:[126]--\n\n     \"I said and once again I said, 'fair, fair'; but still will I go on\n     repeating how fascinating with his eyes is Dositheus. Not upon an\n     oak, nor on a pine-tree, nor yet upon a wall, will I inscribe this\n     word; but love is smouldering in my heart of hearts.\"\n\nAnother attention of the same kind from a lover to a boy was to have a\nvase or drinking-cup of baked clay made, with a portrait of the youth\ndepicted on its surface, attended by winged genii of health and love.\nThe word \"Fair\" was inscribed beneath, and symbols of games were\nadded--a hoop or a fighting-cock.[127] Nor must I here omit the custom\nwhich induced lovers of a literary turn to praise their friends in prose\nor verse. Hippothales, in the _Lysis_ of Plato, is ridiculed by his\nfriends for recording the great deeds of the boy's ancestors, and\ndeafening his ears with odes and sonnets. A diatribe on love, written by\nLysias with a view to winning Ph\u00e6drus, forms the starting-point of the\ndialogue between that youth and Socrates.[128] We have, besides, a\ncurious panegyrical oration (called _Eroticos Logos_), falsely ascribed\nto Demosthenes, in honour of a youth, Epicrates, from which some\ninformation may be gathered concerning the topics usually developed in\nthese compositions.\n\nPresents were of course a common way of trying to win favour. It was\nreckoned shameful for boys to take money from their lovers, but fashion\npermitted them to accept gifts of quails and fighting cocks, pheasants,\nhorses, dogs and clothes.[129] There existed, therefore, at Athens\nfrequent temptations for boys of wanton disposition, or for those who\nneeded money to indulge expensive tastes. The speech of \u00c6schines, from\nwhich I have already frequently quoted, affords a lively picture of the\nGreek rake's progress, in which Timarchus is described as having sold\nhis person in order to gratify his gluttony and lust and love of gaming.\nThe whole of this passage,[130] it may be observed in passing, reads\nlike a description of Florentine manners in a sermon of Savonarola.\n\nThe shops of the barbers, surgeons, perfumers, and flower-sellers had an\nevil notoriety, and lads who frequented these resorts rendered\nthemselves liable to suspicion. Thus \u00c6schines accuses Timarchus of\nhaving exposed himself for hire in a surgeon's shop at the Peir\u00e6us;\nwhile one of Straton's most beautiful epigrams[131] describes an\nassignation which he made with a boy who had attracted his attention in\na garland-weaver's stall. In a fragment from the _Pyraunos_ of Alexis,\na young man declares that he found thirty professors of the \"voluptuous\nlife of pleasure,\" in the Cerameicus during a search of three days;\nwhile Cratinus and Theopompus might be quoted to prove the ill fame of\nthe monument to Cimon and the hill of Lycabettus.[132]\n\nThe last step in the downward descent was when a youth abandoned the\nroof of his parents or guardians and accepted the hospitality of a\nlover.[133] If he did this, he was lost.\n\nIn connection with this portion of the subject, it may be well to state\nthat the Athenian law recognised contracts made between a man and boy,\neven if the latter were of free birth, whereby the one agreed to render\nup his person for a certain period and purpose, and the other to pay a\nfixed sum of money.[134] The phrase \"a boy who has been a prostitute,\"\noccurs quite naturally in Aristophanes;[135] nor was it thought\ndisreputable for men to engage in these _liaisons_. Disgrace only\nattached to the free youth who gained a living by prostitution; and he\nwas liable, as we shall see, at law to loss of civil rights.\n\nPublic brothels for males were kept in Athens, from which the state\nderived a portion of its revenues. It was in one of these bad places\nthat Socrates first saw Ph\u00e6do.[136] This unfortunate youth was a native\nof Elis. Taken prisoner in war, he was sold in the public market to a\nslave-dealer, who then acquired the right by Attic law to prostitute his\nperson and engross his earnings for his own pocket. A friend of\nSocrates, perhaps Cebes, bought him from his master, and he became one\nof the chief members of the Socratic circle. His name is given to the\nPlatonic dialogue on immortality, and he lived to found what is called\nthe Eleo-Socratic School. No reader of Plato forgets how the sage, on\nthe eve of his death, stroked the beautiful long hair of Ph\u00e6do,[137] and\nprophesied that he would soon have to cut it short in mourning for his\nteacher.\n\nAgathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, is said to have spent his youth in\nbrothels of this sort--by inclination, however, if the reports of his\nbiographers be not calumnious.\n\nFrom what has been collected on this topic, it will be understood that\nboys in Athens not unfrequently caused quarrels and street-brawls, and\nthat cases for recovery of damages or breach of contract were brought\nbefore the Attic law-courts. The Peir\u00e6us was especially noted for such\nscenes of violence. The oration of Lysias against Simon is a notable\nexample of the pleadings in a cause of this description.[138] Simon, the\ndefendant, and Lysias, the plaintiff (or some one for whom Lysias had\ncomposed the speech) were both of them attached to Theodotus, a boy from\nPlat\u00e6a. Theodotus was living with the plaintiff; but the defendant\nasserted that the boy had signed an agreement to consort with him for\nthe consideration of three hundred drachm\u00e6, and, relying on this\ncontract, he had attempted more than once to carry off the boy by force.\nViolent altercations, stone-throwings, house-breakings, and encounters\nof various kinds having ensued, the plaintiff brought an action for\nassault and battery against Simon. A modern reader is struck with the\nfact that he is not at all ashamed of his own relation towards\nTheodotus. It may be noted that the details of this action throw light\nupon the historic brawl at Corinth, in which a boy was killed, and which\nled to the foundation of Syracuse by Archias the Bacchiad.[139]\n\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\n\nWe have seen in the foregoing section that paiderastia at Athens was\nclosely associated with liberty, manly sports, severe studies,\nenthusiasm, self-sacrifice, self-control, and deeds of daring, by those\nwho cared for those things. It has also been made abundantly manifest\nthat no serious moral shame attached to persons who used boys like\nwomen, but that effeminate youths of free birth were stigmatised for\ntheir indecent profligacy. It remains still to ascertain the more\ndelicate distinctions which were drawn by Attic law and custom in this\nmatter, though what has been already quoted from Pausanias, in the\n_Symposium_ of Plato, may be taken fairly to express the code of honour\namong gentlemen.\n\nIn the _Plutus_,[140] Aristophanes is careful to divide \"boys with\nlovers,\" into \"the good,\" and \"the strumpets.\" This distinction will\nserve as basis for the following remarks. A very definite line was drawn\nby the Athenians between boys who accepted the addresses of their lovers\nbecause they liked them or because they were ambitious of comradeship\nwith men of spirit, and those who sold their bodies for money. Minute\ninquiry was never instituted into the conduct of the former class; else\nAlcibiades could not have made his famous declaration about\nSocrates,[141] nor would Plato in the _Ph\u00e6drus_ have regarded an\noccasional breach of chastity, under the compulsion of violent passion,\nas a venial error.[142] The latter, on the other hand, besides being\nvisited with universal censure, were disqualified by law from exercising\nthe privileges of the franchise, from undertaking embassies, from\nfrequenting the Agora, and from taking part in public festivals, under\nthe penalty of death. \u00c6schines, from whom we learn the wording of this\nstatute, adds:[143] \"This law he passed with regard to youths who sin\nwith facility and readiness against their own bodies.\" He then proceeds\nto define the true nature of prostitution, prohibited by law to the\ncitizens of Athens. It is this: \"Any one who acts in this way towards a\nsingle man, provided he do it with payment, seems to me to be liable to\nthe reproach in question.\"[144] The whole discussion turns upon the word\n_Misthos_. The orator is cautious to meet the argument that a written\ncontract was necessary in order to construct a case of _Hetaireia_ at\nlaw.[145] In the statute, he observes, there is no mention of \"contract\"\nor \"deed in writing.\" The offence has been sufficiently established\n\"when in any way whatever payment has been made.\"\n\nIn order to illustrate the feeling of the Athenians with regard to\nmaking profit out of paiderastic relations, I may perhaps be permitted\nto interrupt the analysis of \u00c6schines by referring to Xenophon's\ncharacter (_Anab._ si, 6, 21) of the Strategus Menon. The whole tenor of\nhis judgment is extremely unfavourable toward this man, who invariable\npursued selfish and mean aims, debasing virtuous qualities like ambition\nand industry in the mere pursuit of wealth and power. He was, in fact,\ndevoid of chivalrous feeling, good taste, and honour. About his\nbehaviour as a youth, Xenophon writes: \"With Ari\u00e6us, the barbarian,\nbecause this man was partial to handsome youths, he became extremely\nintimate while he was still in the prime of adolescence; moreover, he\nhad Tharypas for his beloved, he being beardless and Tharypas a man\nwith a beard.\" His crime seems to have been that he prostituted himself\nto the barbarian Ari\u00e6us in order to advance his interest, and, probably\nwith the same view, flattered the effeminate vanity of an elder man by\npretending to love him out of the right time or season. Plutarch\n(_Pyrrhus_) mentions this Tharypas as the first to introduce Hellenic\nmanners among the Molossi.\n\nWhen more than one lover was admitted, the guilt was aggravated. \"It\nwill then be manifest that he has not only acted the strumpet, but that\nhe has been a common prostitute. For he who does this indifferently, and\nwith money, and for money, seems to have incurred that designation.\"\nThus the question finally put to the Areopagus, in which court the case\nagainst Timarchus was tried, ran as follows, in the words of\n\u00c6schines:[146] \"To which of these two classes will you reckon\nTimarchus--to those who have had a lover, or to those who have been\nprostitutes?\" In his rhetorical exposition, \u00c6schines defines the true\ncharacter of the virtuous _Eromenos_. Frankly admitting his own\npartiality for beautiful young men, he argues after this fashion:[147]\n\"I do not attach any blame to love. I do not take away the character of\nhandsome lads. I do not deny that I have often loved, and had many\nquarrels and jealousies in this matter. But I establish this as an\nirrefutable fact, that, while the love of beautiful and temperate youths\ndoes honour to humanity and indicates a generous temper, the buying of\nthe person of a free boy for debauchery is a mark of insolence and\nill-breeding. To be loved is an honour: to sell yourself is a disgrace.\"\nHe then appeals to the law which forbade slaves to love, thereby\nimplying that this was the privilege and pride of free men. He alludes\nto the heroic deed of Aristogeiton and to the great example of Achilles.\nFinally, he draws up a list of well-known and respected citizens whose\nloves were notorious, and compares them with a parallel list of persons\ninfamous for their debauchery. What remains in the peroration to this\ninvective traverses the same ground. Some phrases may be quoted which\nillustrate the popular feeling of the Athenians. Timarchus is\nstigmatised[148] as, \"the man and male who, in spite of this, has\ndebauched his body by womanly acts of lust,\" and again as, \"one who\nagainst the law of nature has given himself to lewdness.\" It is obvious\nhere that \u00c6schines, the self-avowed boy-lover, while seeking to crush\nhis opponent by flinging effeminacy and unnatural behaviour in his\nteeth, assumes at the same time that honourable paiderastia implies no\nsuch disgrace. Again, he observes that it is as easy to recognise a\npathic by his impudent behaviour as a gymnast by his muscles. Lastly, he\nbids the judges force intemperate lovers to abstain from free youths,\nand satisfy their lusts upon the persons of foreigners and aliens.[149]\nThe whole matter at this distance of time is obscure, nor can we hope to\napprehend the full force of distinctions drawn by a Greek orator\nappealing to a Greek audience. We may, indeed, fairly presume that, as\nis always the case with popular ethics, considerable confusion existed\nin the minds of the Athenians themselves, and that, even for them, to\nformulate the whole of their social feelings on this topic consistently,\nwould have been impossible. The main point, however, seems to be that at\nAthens it was held honourable to love free boys with decency; that the\nconduct of lovers between themselves, within the limits of recognised\nfriendship, was not challenged; and that no particular shame attached to\nprofligate persons so long as they refrained from tampering with the\nsons of citizens.[150]\n\n\n\n\nXV.\n\n\nThe sources from which our information has hitherto been\ndrawn--speeches, poems, biographies, and the dramatic parts of\ndialogues--yield more real knowledge about the facts of Athenian\npaiderastia than can be found in the speculations of philosophers. In\nAristotle, for instance, paiderastia is almost conspicuous by its\nabsence. It is true that he speculates upon the Cretan customs in the\n_Politics_, mentions the prevalence of boy-love among the Kelts, and\nincidentally notices the legends of Diocles and Cleomachus;[151] but he\nnever discusses the matter as fully as might have been expected from a\nphilosopher whose speculations covered the whole field of Greek\nexperience. The chapters on _Philia_, in the _Ethics_, might indeed have\nbeen written by a modern moralist for modern readers, though it is\npossible that in his treatment of \"friendship with pleasure for its\nobject,\" and \"friendship with advantage for its object,\" Aristotle is\naiming at the vicious sort of paiderastia. As regards his silence in\nthe _Politics_, it is worth noticing that this treatise breaks off at\nthe very point where we should naturally look for a scientific handling\nof the education of the passions; and, therefore, it is possible that we\nmay have lost the weightiest utterance of Greek philosophy upon the\nmatter of our enquiry.\n\nThough Aristotle contains but little to the purpose, the case is\ndifferent with Plato; nor would it be possible to omit a detailed\nexamination of the Platonic doctrine on the topic, or to neglect the\nattempt he made to analyse and purify a passion, capable, according to\nhis earlier philosophical speculations, of supplying the starting-point\nfor spiritual progress.\n\nThe first point to notice in the Platonic treatment of paiderastia is\nthe difference between the ethical opinions expressed in the _Ph\u00e6drus_,\n_Symposium_, _Republic_, _Charmides_, and _Lysis_, on the one hand, and\nthose expounded in the _Laws_ upon the other. The _Laws_, which are\nprobably a genuine work of Plato's old age, condemn that passion which,\nin the _Ph\u00e6drus_ and _Symposium_, he exalted as the greatest boon of\nhuman life and as the groundwork of the philosophical temperament; the\nordinary social manifestations of which he described with sympathy in\nthe _Lysis_ and the _Charmides_; and which he viewed with more than\ntoleration in the _Republic_. It is not my business to offer a solution\nof this contradiction; but I may observe that Socrates, who plays the\npart of protagonist in nearly all the other dialogues of Plato, and who,\nas we shall see, professed a special cult of love, is conspicuous by his\nabsence in the _Laws_. It is, therefore, not improbable that the\nphilosophical idealisation of paiderastia, to which the name of Platonic\nlove is usually given, should rather be described as Socratic. However\nthat may be, I think it will be well to deal first with the doctrine put\ninto the mouth of the Athenian stranger in the _Laws_, and then to pass\non to the consideration of what Socrates is made to say upon the subject\nof Greek love in the earlier dialogues.\n\nThe position assumed by Plato in the _Laws_ (p. 636) is this: Syssitia\nand gymnasia are excellent institutions in their way, but they have a\ntendency to degrade natural love in man below the level of the beasts.\nPleasure is only natural when it arises out of the intercourse between\nmen and women, but the intercourse between men and men, or women and\nwomen, is contrary to nature.[152] The bold attempt at overleaping\nNature's laws was due originally to unbridled lust.\n\nThis position is developed in the eighth book (p. 836), where Plato\ndirects his criticism, not only against what would now be termed the\ncriminal intercourse between persons of the same sex, but also against\nincontinence in general. While framing a law of almost monastic rigour\nfor the regulation of the sexual appetite, he remains an ancient Greek.\nHe does not reach the point of view from which women are regarded as the\nproper objects of both passion and friendship, as the fit companions of\nmen in all relations of life; far less does he revert to his earlier\nspeculations upon the enthusiasm generated by a noble passion. The\nmodern ideal of marriage and the chivalrous conception of womanhood as\nworthy to be worshipped are like unknown to him. Abstinence from the\ndelights of love, continence except for the sole end of procreation, is\nthe rule which he proposes to the world.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere are three distinct things, Plato argues, which, owing to the\ninadequacy of language to represent states of thought, have been\nconfounded.[153] These are friendship, desire, and a third mixed\nspecies. Friendship is further described as the virtuous affection of\nequals in taste, age and station. Desire is always founded on a sense of\ncontrast. While friendship is \"gentle and mutual through life,\" desire\nis \"fierce and wild.\"[154] The true friend seeks to live chastely with\nthe chaste object of his attachment, whose soul he loves. The lustful\nlover longs to enjoy the flower of his youth and cares only for the\nbody. The third sort is mixed of these; and a lover of this composite\nkind is torn asunder by two impulses, \"the one commanding him to enjoy\nthe youth's person, the other forbidding him to do so.\"[155] The\ndescription of the lover of the third species so exactly suits the\npaiderast of nobler quality in Greece, as I conceive him to have\nactually existed, that I shall give a full quotation of this\npassage:[156]--\n\n     \"As to the mixed sort, which is made up of them both, there is,\n     first of all, a difficulty in determining what he who is possessed\n     by this third love desires; moreover, he is drawn different ways,\n     and is in doubt between the two principles, the one exhorting him\n     to enjoy the beauty of the youth, and the other forbidding him; for\n     the one is a lover of the body and hungers after beauty like ripe\n     fruit, and would fain satisfy himself without any regard to the\n     character of the beloved; the other holds the desire of the body to\n     be a secondary matter, and, looking rather than loving with his\n     soul, and desiring the soul of the other in a becoming manner,\n     regards the satisfaction of the bodily love as wantonness; he\n     reverences and respects temperance and courage and magnanimity and\n     wisdom, and wishes to live chastely with the chaste object of his\n     affection.\"\n\nIt is remarkable that Plato, in this analysis of the three sorts of\nlove, keeps strictly within the bounds of paiderastia. He rejects desire\nand the mixed sort of love, reserving friendship (_Philia_) and\nordaining marriage for the satisfaction of the aphrodisiac instinct at a\nfitting age, but more particularly for the procreation of children.\nWantonness of every description is to be made as much a sin as incest,\nboth by law and also by the world's opinion. If Olympian victors, with\nan earthly crown in view, learn to live chastely for the preservation of\ntheir strength while training, shall not men, whose contest is for\nheavenly prizes, keep their bodies undefiled, their spirits holy?\n\nSocrates, the mystagogue of amorous philosophy, is absent, as I have\nobserved, from this discussion of the laws. I turn now to those earlier\ndialogues in which he expounds the doctrine of Platonic, or, as I should\nprefer to call it, Socratic, love. We know from Xenophon, as well as\nPlato, that Socrates named his philosophy the Science of Love. The one\nthing on which I pride myself, he says, is knowledge of all matters that\npertain to love. It furthermore appears that Socrates thought himself in\na peculiar sense predestined to reform and to ennoble paiderastia.\n\"Finding this passion at its height throughout the whole of Hellas, but\nmost especially in Athens, and all places full of evil lovers and of\nyouths seduced, he felt a pity for both parties. Not being a lawgiver\nlike Solon, he could not stop the custom by statute, nor correct it by\nforce, nor again dissuade men from it by his eloquence. He did not,\nhowever, on that account abandon the lovers or the boys to their fate,\nbut tried to suggest a remedy.\" This passage, which I have paraphrased\nfrom Maximus Tyrius,[157] sufficiently expresses the attitude assumed\nby Socrates in the Platonic dialogue. He sympathises with Greek lovers,\nand avows a fervent admiration for beauty in the persons of young men.\nAt the same time, he declares himself upon the side of temperate and\ngenerous affection and strives to utilise the erotic enthusiasm as a\nmotive power in the direction of philosophy. This was really nothing\nmore or less than an attempt to educate the Athenians by appealing to\ntheir own higher instincts. We have seen that paiderastia in the prime\nof Hellenic culture, whatever sensual admixture it might have contained,\nwas a masculine passion. It was closely connected with the love of\npolitical independence, with the contempt for Asiatic luxury, with the\ngymnastic sports, and with the intellectual interests which\ndistinguished Hellenes from barbarians. Partly owing to the social\nhabits of their cities, and partly to the peculiar notions which they\nentertained regarding the seclusion of free women in the home, all the\nhigher elements of spiritual and mental activity, and the conditions\nunder which a generous passion was conceivable, had become the exclusive\nprivileges of men. It was not that women occupied a semi-servile\nstation, as some students have imagined, or that within the sphere of\nthe household they were not the respected and trusted helpmates of men.\nBut circumstances rendered it impossible for them to excite romantic and\nenthusiastic passion. The exaltation of the emotions was reserved for\nthe male sex.\n\nSocrates, therefore, sought to direct and moralise a force already\nexisting. In the _Ph\u00e6drus_ he describes the passion of love between man\nand boy as a madness, not different in quality from that which inspires\npoets; and, after painting that fervid picture of the lover, he declares\nthat the true object of a noble life can only be attained by passionate\nfriends, bound together in the chains of close yet temperate\ncomradeship, seeking always to advance in knowledge, self-restraint, and\nintellectual illumination. The doctrine of the _Symposium_ is not\ndifferent, except that Socrates here takes a higher flight. The same\nlove is treated as the method whereby the soul may begin her mystic\njourney to the region of essential beauty, truth, and goodness. It has\nfrequently been remarked that Plato's dialogues have to be read as\npoems, even more than as philosophical treatises; and if this be true at\nall, it is particularly true of both the _Ph\u00e6drus_ and the _Symposium_.\nThe lesson which both essays seem intended to inculcate is this: love,\nlike poetry and prophecy, is a divine gift, which diverts men from the\ncommon current of their lives; but in the right use of this gift lies\nthe secret of all human excellence. The passion which grovels in the\nfilth of sensual grossness may be transformed into a glorious\nenthusiasm, a winged splendour, capable of soaring to the contemplation\nof eternal verities. How strange will it be, when once those heights of\nintellectual intuition have been scaled, to look down again to earth and\nview the _Meirakidia_ in whom the soul first recognised the form of\nbeauty![158] There is a deeply-rooted mysticism, an impenetrable\nsoofyism, in the Socratic doctrine of Er\u00f4s.\n\nIn the _Ph\u00e6drus_, the _Symposium_, the _Charmides_, the _Lysis_, and the\n_Republic_, Plato dramatised the real Socrates, while he gave liberal\nscope to his own personal sympathy for paiderastia.[159] In the _Laws_,\nif we accept this treatise as the work of his old age, he discarded the\nSocratic mask, and wrote a kind of palinode, which indicates more moral\ngrowth than pure disapprobation of the paiderastic passion. I have\nalready tried to show that the point of view in the _Laws_ is still\nGreek: that their author has not passed beyond the sphere of Hellenic\nethics. He has only become more ascetic in his rule of conduct as the\nyears advanced, importing the _rumores senum severiorum_ into his\ndiscourse, and recognising the imperfection of that halting-point\nbetween the two logical extremes of Pagan license and monastic\nasceticism which in the fervour of his greener age he advocated. As a\nyoung man, Plato felt sympathy for love so long as it was paiderastic\nand not spent on women; he even condoned a lapse through warmth of\nfeeling into self-indulgence. As an old man, he denounced carnal\npleasure of all kinds, and sought to limit the amative instincts to the\none sole end of procreation.\n\nIt has so happened that Plato's name is still connected with the ideal\nof passion purged from sensuality. Much might be written about the\nparallel between the _mania_ of the _Ph\u00e6drus_ and the _joy_ of medi\u00e6val\namorists. Nor would it be unprofitable to trace the points of contact\nbetween the love described by Dante in the _Vita Nuova_ and the\npaiderastia exalted to the heavens by Plato.[160] The spiritual passion\nfor Beatrice, which raised the Florentine poet above vile things, and\nled him by the philosophic paths of the _Convito_ to the beatific vision\nof the _Paradiso_, bears no slight resemblance to the _Er\u00f4s_ of the\n_Symposium_. Yet we know that Dante could not have studied Plato's\nworks; and the specific love which Plato praised he sternly stigmatised.\nThe harmony between Greek and medi\u00e6val mysticism in this matter of the\nemotions rests on something permanent in human nature, common alike to\npaiderastia and to chivalrous enthusiasm for woman.\n\nIt would be well worth raising here the question whether there was not\nsomething special both in the Greek consciousness itself, and also in\nthe conditions under which it reached maturity, which justified the\nSocratic attempt to idealise paiderastia. Placed upon the borderland of\nbarbarism, divided from the Asiatic races by an acute but narrow line of\ndemarcation, the Greeks had arrived at the first free notion of the\nspirit in its disentanglement from matter and from symbolism. But this\nnotion of the spirit was still \u00e6sthetic, rather than strictly ethical or\nrigorously scientific. In the Greek gods, intelligence is perfected and\ncharacter is well defined; but these gods are always concrete persons,\nwith corporeal forms adapted to their spiritual essence. The\ninterpenetration of spiritual and corporeal elements in a complete\npersonality, the transfusion of intellectual and emotional faculties\nthroughout a physical organism exactly suited to their adequate\nexpression, marks Greek religion and Greek art. What the Greeks\nworshipped in their ritual, what they represented in their sculpture,\nwas always personality--the spirit and the flesh in amity and mutual\ncorrespondence; the spirit burning through the flesh and moulding it to\nindividual forms; the flesh providing a fit dwelling for the spirit\nwhich controlled and fashioned it. Only philosophers, among the Greeks,\nattempted to abstract the spirit as a self-sufficient, independent,\nconscious entity; and these philosophers were few, and what they wrote\nor spoke had little direct influence upon the people. This being the\nmental attitude of the Greek race, it followed as a necessity that their\nhighest emotional aspirations, their purest personal service, should be\ndevoted to clear and radiant incarnations of the spirit in a living\nperson. They had never been taught to regard the body with a sense of\nshame, but rather to admire it as the temple of the spirit, and to\naccept its needs and instincts with natural acquiescence. Male beauty\ndisengaged for them the passion it inspired from service of domestic,\nsocial, civic duties. The female form aroused desire, but it also\nsuggested maternity and obligations of the household. The male form was\nthe most perfect image of the deity, self-contained, subject to no\nnecessities of impregnation, determined in its action only by the laws\nof its own reason and its own volition.\n\nQuite a different order of ideas governed the ideal adopted by medi\u00e6val\nchivalry. The spirit in its self-sufficingness, detached from the body,\nantagonistic to the body, had been divinised by Christianity. Woman,\nregarded as a virgin and at the same time a mother, the maiden-mother of\nGod made man, had been exalted to the throne of heaven. The worship of\nwoman became, by a natural and logical process, the correlative in\nactual human life for that worship of the incarnate Deity which was the\nessence of religion. A remarkable point in medi\u00e6val love is that the\nsensual appetites were, theoretically at least, excluded from the homage\npaid to woman. It was not the wife or the mistress, but the lady, who\ninspired the knight. Dante had children by Gemma, Petrarch had children\nby an unknown concubine, but it was the sainted Beatrice, it was the\nunattainable Laura, who received the homage of Dante and of Petrarch.\n\nIn like manner, the sensual appetites were, theoretically at least,\nexcluded from Platonic paiderastia. It was the divine in human\nflesh--\"the radiant sight of the beloved,\" to quote from Plato; \"the\nfairest and most intellectual of earthly bodies,\" to borrow a phrase\nfrom Maximus Tyrius--it was this which stimulated the Greek lover, just\nas a similar incarnation of divinity inspired the chivalrous lover. Thus\nwe might argue that the Platonic conception of paiderastia furnishes a\nclose analogue to the chivalrous devotion to women, due regard being\npaid to the differences which existed between the plastic ideal of Greek\nreligion and the romantic ideal of medi\u00e6val Christianity. The one veiled\nsodomy, the other adultery. That in both cases the conception was rarely\nrealised in actual life only completes the parallel.\n\nTo pursue this inquiry further is, however, alien to my task. It is\nenough to have indicated the psychological agreement in respect of\npurified affection which underlay two such apparently antagonistic\nideals of passion. Few modern writers, when they speak with admiration\nor contempt of Platonic love, reflect that in its origin this phrase\ndenoted an absorbing passion for young men. The Platonist, as appears\nfrom numerous passages in the Platonic writings, would have despised the\nPetrarchist as a vulgar woman-lover. The Petrarchist would have loathed\nthe Platonist as a moral Pariah. Yet Platonic love, in both its Attic\nand its medi\u00e6val manifestations, was one and the same thing.\n\nThe philosophical ideal of paiderastia in Greece, which bore the names\nof Socrates and Plato, met with little but contempt. Cicero, in a\npassage which has been echoed by Gibbon, remarked upon, \"the thin device\nof virtue and friendship which amused the philosophers of Athens.\"[161]\nEpicurus criticised the Stoic doctrine of paiderastia by sententiously\nobserving that philosophers only differed from the common race of men in\nso far as they could better cloak their vice with sophistries. This\nsevere remark seems justified by the opinions ascribed to Zeno by\nPlutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and Stob\u00e6us.[162] But it may be doubted\nwhether the real drift of the Stoic theory of love, founded on\n_Adiaphopha_, was understood. Lucian, in the _Amores_,[163] makes\nCharicles, the advocate of love for women, deride the Socratic ideal as\nvain nonsense, while Theomnestus, the man of pleasure, to whom the\ndispute is finally referred, decides that the philosophers are either\nfools or humbugs.[164] Daphn\u00e6us, in the erotic dialogue of Plutarch,\narrives at a similar conclusion; and, in an essay on education, the same\nauthor contends that no prudent father would allow the sages to enter\ninto intimacy with his sons.[165] The discredit incurred by philosophers\nin the later age of Greek culture is confirmed by more than one passage\nin Petronius and Juvenal, while Athen\u00e6us especially inveighs against\nphilosophic lovers as acting against nature.[166] The attempt of the\nPlatonic Socrates to elevate, without altering, the morals of his race\nmay therefore be said fairly to have failed. Like his Republic, his love\nexisted only in heaven.\n\n\n\n\nXVI.\n\n\nPhilip of Macedon, when he pronounced the panegyric of the Sacred Band\nat Ch\u00e6ronea, uttered the funeral oration of Greek love in its nobler\nforms. With the decay of military spirit and the loss of freedom, there\nwas no sphere left for that type of comradeship which I attempted to\ndescribe in Section IV. The philosophical ideal, to which some\ncultivated Attic thinkers had aspired, remained unrealised, except, we\nmay perhaps suppose, in isolated instances. Meanwhile, paiderastia as a\nvice did not diminish. It only grew more wanton and voluptuous. Little,\ntherefore, can be gained by tracing its historical development further,\nalthough it is not without interest to note the mode of feeling and the\nopinion of some later poets and rhetoricians.\n\nThe Idyllists are the only poets, if we except a few epigrammatists of\nthe _Anthology_, who preserve a portion of the old heroic sentiment. No\ntrue student of Greek literature will have felt that he could strictly\ncensure the paiderastic passages of the _Thalysia_, _A\u00eftes_, _Hylas_,\n_Paidika_. They have the ring of genuine and respectable emotion. This\nmay also be said about the two fragments of Bion which begin, _Hespere\ntas eratas_ and _Olbioi oi phileontes_. The _Duser\u00f4s_, ascribed without\ndue warrant to Theocritus, is in many respects a beautiful composition,\nbut it lacks the fresh and manly touches of the master's style, and\nbears the stamp of an unwholesome rhetoric. Why, indeed, should we pity\nthis suicide, and why should the statue of Love have fallen on the\nobject of his admiration? Maximus Tyrius showed more sense when he\ncontemptuously wrote about those men who killed themselves for love of a\nbeautiful lad in Locri:[167] \"And in good sooth they deserved to die.\"\n\nThe dialogue, entitled _Erotes_, attributed to Lucian, deserves a\nparagraph. More than any other composition of the rhetorical age of\nGreek literature, it attempts a comprehensive treatment of erotic\npassion, and sums up the teaching of the doctors and the predilections\nof the vulgar in one treatise.[168] Like many of Lucian's compositions,\nit has what may be termed a retrospective and resumptive value. That is\nto say, it represents less the actual feeling of the author and his age\nthan the result of his reading and reflection brought into harmony with\nhis experience. The scene is laid at Cnidus, in the groves of Aphrodite.\nThe temple and the garden and the statue of Praxiteles are described\nwith a luxury of language which strikes the keynote of the dialogue. We\nhave exchanged the company of Plato, Xenophon, or \u00c6schines for that of a\nJuvenalian _Gr\u00e6culus_, a delicate \u00e6sthetic voluptuary. Every epithet\nsmells of musk, and every phrase is a provocative. The interlocutors\nare Callicratides, the Athenian, and Charicles, the Rhodian.\nCallicratides kept an establishment of _exoleti_; when the down upon\ntheir chins had grown beyond the proper point--\"when the beard is just\nsprouting, when youth is in the prime of charm,\" they were drafted off\nto farms and country villages. Charicles maintained a harem of\ndancing-girls and flute-players. The one was \"madly passionate for\nlads;\" the other no less \"mad for women.\" Charicles undertook the cause\nof women, Callicratides that of boys. Charicles began. The love of women\nis sanctioned by antiquity; it is natural; it endures through life; it\nalone provides pleasure for both sexes. Boys grow bearded, rough, and\npast their prime. Women always excite passion. Then Callicratides takes\nup his parable. Masculine love combines virtue with pleasure. While the\nlove of women is a physical necessity, the love of boys is a product of\nhigh culture and an adjunct of philosophy. Paiderastia may be either\nvulgar or celestial; the second will be sought by men of liberal\neducation and good manners. Then follow contrasted pictures of the lazy\nwoman and the manly youth. The one provokes to sensuality, the other\nexcites noble emulation in the ways of virile living. Lucian, summing up\nthe arguments of the two pleaders, decides that Corinth must give way to\nAthens, adding: \"Marriage is open to all men, but the love of boys to\nphilosophers only.\" This verdict is referred to Theomnestus, a Don Juan\nof both sexes. He replies that both boys and women are good for\npleasure; the philosophical arguments of Callicratides are cant.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis brief abstract of Lucian's dialogue on love indicates the cynicism\nwith which its author viewed the subject, using the whole literature and\nall the experience of the Greeks to support a thesis of pure hedonism.\nThe sybarites of Cairo or Constantinople at the present moment might\nemploy the same arguments, except that they would omit the philosophic\ncant of Callicratides.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is nothing in extant Greek literature, of a date anterior to the\nChristian era, which is foul in the same sense as that in which the\nworks of Roman poets (Catullus and Martial), Italian poets (Beccatelli\nand Baffo), and French poets (Scarron and Voltaire) are foul. Only\npurblind students will be unable to perceive the difference between the\nobscenity of the Latin races and that of Aristophanes. The difference,\nindeed, is wide and radical, and strongly marked. It is the difference\nbetween a race naturally gifted with a delicate, \u00e6sthetic sense of\nbeauty, and one in whom that sense was always subject to the\nperturbation, of gross instincts. But with the first century of the new\nage a change came over even the imagination of the Greeks. Though they\nnever lost their distinction of style, that precious gift of lightness\nand good taste conferred upon them with their language, they borrowed\nsomething of their conquerors' vein. This makes itself felt in the\n_Anthology_. Straton and Rufinus suffered the contamination of the Roman\ngenius, stronger in political organisation than that of Hellas, but\ncoarser and less spiritually tempered in morals and in art. Straton was\na native of Sardis, who flourished in the second century. He compiled a\nbook of paiderastic poems, consisting in a great measure of his own and\nMeleager's compositions, which now forms the twelfth section of the\n_Palatine Anthology_. This book he dedicated, not to the Muse, but to\nZeus; for Zeus was the boy-lover among deities;[169] he bade it carry\nforth his message of fair youths throughout the world;[170] and he\nclaimed a special inspiration from heaven for singing of one sole\nsubject, paiderastia.[171] It may be said with truth that Straton\nunderstood the bent of his own genius. We trace a blunt earnestness of\nintention in his epigrams, a certainty of feeling and directness of\nartistic treatment, which show that he had only one object in view.\nMeleager has far higher qualities as a poet, and his feeling, as well as\nhis style, is more exquisite. But he wavered between the love of boys\nand women, seeking in both the satisfaction of emotional yearnings which\nin the modern world would have marked him as a sentimentalist. The\nso-called _Mousa Paidik\u00e9_, \"Muse of Boyhood,\" is a collection of two\nhundred and fifty-eight short poems, some of them of great artistic\nmerit, in praise of boys and boy-love. The common-places of these\nepigrams are Ganymede and Er\u00f4s;[172] we hear but little of\nAphrodite--her domain is the other section of the _Anthology_, called\nErotika. A very small percentage of these compositions can be described\nas obscene;[173] none are nasty, in the style of Martial or Ausonius;\nsome are exceedingly picturesque;[174] a few are written in a strain of\nlofty or of lovely music;[175] one or two are delicate and subtle in\ntheir humour.[176] The whole collection supplies good means of judging\nhow the Greeks of the decadence felt about this form of love. _Malakia_\nis the real condemnation of this poetry, rather than brutality or\ncoarseness. A favourite topic is the superiority of boys over girls.\nThis sometimes takes a gross form;[177] but once or twice the treatment\nof the subject touches a real psychological distinction, as in the\nfollowing epigram:[178]--\n\n     \"The love of women is not after my heart's desire; but the fires of\n     male desire have placed me under inextinguishable coals of burning.\n     The heat there is mightier; for the more powerful is male than\n     female, the keener is that desire.\"\n\nThese four lines give the key to much of the Greek preference for\npaiderastia. The love of the male, when it has been apprehended and\nentertained, is more exciting, they thought, more absorbent of the whole\nnature, than the love of the female. It is, to use another kind of\nphraseology, more of a mania and more of a disease.\n\nWith the _Anthology_ we might compare the curious _Epistolai Erotikai_\nof Philostratus.[179] They were in all probability rhetorical\ncompositions, not intended for particular persons; yet they indicate the\nkind of wooing to which youths were subjected in later Hellas.[180] The\ndiscrepancy between the triviality of their subject-matter and the\nexquisiteness of their diction is striking. The second of these\nqualities has made them a mine for poets. Ben Jonson, for example,\nborrowed the loveliest of his lyrics from the following _concetto_:--\"I\nsent thee a crown of roses, not so much honouring thee, though this,\ntoo, was my meaning, but wishing to do some kindness to the roses that\nthey might not wither.\" Take, again, the phrase: \"Well, and love himself\nis naked, and the graces and the stars;\" or this, \"O rose, that has a\nvoice to speak with!\"--or this metaphor for the footsteps of the\nbeloved, \"O rhythms of most beloved feet, O kisses pressed upon the\nground!\"\n\nWhile the paiderastia of the Greeks was sinking into grossness,\neffeminacy, and \u00e6sthetic prettiness, the moral instincts of humanity\nbegan to assert themselves in earnest. It became part of the higher\ndoctrine of the Roman Stoics to suppress this form of passion.[181] The\nChristians, from St. Paul onwards, instituted an uncompromising crusade\nagainst it. Theirs was no mere speculative warfare, like that of the\nphilosophers at Athens. They fought with all the forces of their\nmanhood, with the sword of the Lord and with the excommunications of the\nChurch, to suppress what seemed to them an unutterable scandal. Dio\nChrysostom, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Athanasius, are our best\nauthorities for the vices which prevailed in Hellas during the\nEmpire;[182] the Roman law, moreover, proves that the civil governors\naided the Church in its attempt to moralise the people on this point.\n\n\n\n\nXVII.\n\n\nThe transmutation of Hellas proper into part of the Roman Empire, and\nthe intrusion of Stoicism and Christianity into the sphere of Hellenic\nthought and feeling, mark the end of the Greek age. It still remains,\nhowever, to consider the relation of this passion to the character of\nthe race, and to determine its influence.\n\nIn the fifth section of this essay, I asserted that it is now impossible\nto ascertain whether the Greeks derived paiderastia from any of the\nsurrounding nations, and if so, from which. Homer's silence makes it\nprobable that the contact of Hellenic with Phoenician traders in the\npost-heroic period led to the adoption by the Greek race of a custom\nwhich they speedily assimilated and stamped with an Hellenic character.\nAt the same time, I suggested in the tenth section that paiderastia, in\nits more enthusiastic and martial form, may have been developed within\nthe very sanctuary of Greek national existence by the Dorians, matured\nin the course of their migrations, and systematised after their\nsettlement in Crete and Sparta. That the Greeks themselves regarded\nCrete as the classic ground of paiderastia favours either theory, and\nsuggests a fusion of them both; for the geographical position of this\nisland made it the meeting-place of Hellenes with the Asiatic races,\nwhile it was also one of the earliest Dorian acquisitions.\n\nWhen we come to ask why this passion struck roots so deep into the very\nheart and brain of the Greek nation, we must reject the favourite\nhypothesis of climate. Climate is, no doubt, powerful to a great extent\nin determining the complexion of sexual morality; yet, as regards\npaiderastia, we have abundant proof that nations both of North and South\nhave, according to circumstances quite independent of climatic\nconditions, been both equally addicted and equally averse to this\nhabit. The Etruscan,[183] the Chinese, the ancient Keltic tribes, the\nTartar hordes of Timour Khan, the Persians under Moslem rule--races sunk\nin the sloth of populous cities, as well as the nomadic children of the\nAsian steppes, have all acquired a notoriety at least equal to that of\nthe Greeks. The only difference between these people and the Greeks in\nrespect to paiderastia is that everything which the Greek genius touched\nacquired a portion of its distinction, so that what in semi-barbarous\nsociety may be ignored as vice, in Greece demands attention as a phase\nof the spiritual life of a world-historic nation.\n\nLike climate, ethnology must also be eliminated. It is only a\nsuperficial philosophy of history which is satisfied with the\nnomenclature of Semitic, Aryan, and so forth; which imagines that\nsomething is gained for the explanation of a complex psychological\nproblem when hereditary affinities have been demonstrated. The deeps of\nnational personality are far more abysmal than this. Granting that\nclimate and descent are elements of great importance, the religious and\nmoral principles, the \u00e6sthetic apprehensions, and the customs which\ndetermine the character of a race, leave always something still to be\nanalysed. In dealing with Greek paiderastia, we are far more likely to\nreach a probable solution if we confine our attention to the specific\nsocial conditions which fostered the growth of this passion in Greece,\nand to the general habit of mind which permitted its evolution out of\nthe common stuff of humanity, than if we dilate at ease upon the climate\nof the \u00c6gean, or discuss the ethnical complexion of the Hellenic stock.\nIn other words, it was the Pagan view of human life and duty which gave\nscope to paiderastia, while certain special Greek customs aided its\ndevelopment.\n\nThe Greeks themselves, quoted more than once above, have put us on the\nright track in this inquiry. However paiderastia began in Hellas, it was\nencouraged by gymnastics and syssitia. Youths and boys engaged together\nin athletic exercises, training their bodies to the highest point of\nphysical attainment, growing critical about the points and proportions\nof the human form, lived of necessity in an atmosphere of mutual\nattention. Young men could not be insensible to the grace of boys in\nwhom the bloom of beauty was unfolding. Boys could not fail to admire\nthe strength and goodliness of men displayed in the comeliness of\nperfected development. Having exercised together in the\nwrestling-ground, the same young men and boys consorted at the common\ntables. Their talk fell naturally upon feats of strength and training;\nnor was it unnatural, in the absence of a powerful religious\nprohibition, that love should spring from such discourse and\nintercourse.\n\nThe nakedness, which Greek custom permitted in gymnastic games and some\nreligious rites, no doubt contributed to the erotic force of masculine\npassion; and the history of their feeling upon this point deserves\nnotice. Plato, in the _Republic_ (452), observes that \"not long ago the\nGreeks were of the opinion, which is still generally received among the\nbarbarians, that the sight of a naked man was ridiculous and unseemly.\"\nHe goes on to mention the Cretans and the Laced\u00e6monians as the\ninstitutors of naked games. To these conditions may be added dances in\npublic, the ritual of gods like Er\u00f4s, ceremonial processions, and\ncontests for the prize of beauty.\n\nThe famous passage in the first book of Thucydides (cap. vi.)\nillustrates the same point. While describing the primitive culture of\nthe Hellenes, he thinks it worth while to mention that the Spartans, who\nfirst stripped themselves for running and wrestling, abandoned the\ngirdle which it was usual to wear around the loins. He sees in this\nhabit one of the strongest points of distinction between the Greeks and\nbarbarians. Herodotus insists upon the same point (book i. 10), which is\nfurther confirmed by the verse of Ennius: \"Flagitii,\" &c.\n\nThe nakedness which Homer (_Iliad_, xxii. 66) and Tyrt\u00e6us (i. 21)\ndescribes as shameful and unseemly is that of an old man. Both poets\nseem to imply that a young man's naked body is beautiful even in death.\n\nWe have already seen that paiderastia, as it existed in early Hellas,\nwas a martial institution, and that it never wholly lost its virile\ncharacter. This suggests the consideration of another class of\ncircumstances which were in the highest degree conducive to its free\ndevelopment. The Dorians, to begin with, lived like regiments of\nsoldiers in barracks. The duty of training the younger men was thrown\nupon the elder; so that the close relations thus established in a race\nwhich did not positively discountenance the love of male for male rather\ntended actively to encourage it. Nor is it difficult to understand why\nthe romantic emotions in such a society were more naturally aroused by\nmale companions than by women. Matrimony was not a matter of elective\naffinity between two persons seeking to spend their lives agreeably and\nprofitably in common, so much as an institution used by the State for\nraising vigorous recruits for the national army. All that is known about\nthe Spartan marriage customs, taken together with Plato's speculations\nabout a community of wives, proves this conclusively. It followed that\nthe relation of the sexes to each other was both more formal and more\nsimple than it is with us; the natural and the political purposes of\ncohabitation were less veiled by those personal and emotional\nconsiderations which play so large a part in modern life. There was less\nscope for the emergence of passionate enthusiasm between men and women,\nwhile the full conditions of a spiritual attachment, solely determined\nby reciprocal inclination, were only to be found in comradeship. In the\nwrestling-ground, at the common tables, in the ceremonies of religion,\nat the Pan-hellenic games, in the camp, in the hunting-field, on the\nbenches of the council chamber, and beneath the porches of the Agora,\nmen were all in all unto each other. Women meanwhile kept the house at\nhome, gave birth to babies, and reared children till such time as the\nState thought fit to undertake their training. It is, moreover, well\nknown that the age at which boys were separated from their mothers was\ntender. Thenceforth they lived with persons of their own sex; their\nexpanding feelings were confined within the sphere of masculine\nexperience until the age arrived when marriage had to be considered in\nthe light of a duty to the commonwealth. How far this tended to\ninfluence the growth of sentiment, and to determine its quality, may be\nimagined.\n\nIn the foregoing paragraph I have restricted my attention almost wholly\nto the Dorians: but what has just been said about the circumstance of\ntheir social life suggests a further consideration regarding paiderastia\nat large among the Greeks, which takes rank with the weightiest of all.\nThe peculiar status of Greek women is a subject surrounded with\ndifficulty; yet no man can help feeling that the idealisation of\nmasculine love, which formed so prominent a feature of Greek life in the\nhistoric period, was intimately connected with the failure of the race\nto give their proper sphere in society to women. The Greeks themselves\nwere not directly conscious of this fact; nor can I remember any passage\nin which a Greek has suggested that boy-love flourished precisely upon\nthe special ground which had been wrestled from the right domain of file\nother sex. Far in advance of the barbarian tribes around them, they\ncould not well discern the defects of their own civilisation; nor was it\nto be expected that they should have anticipated that exaltation of the\nlove of women into a semi-religious cult which was the later product of\nchivalrous Christianity. We, from the standpoint of a more fully\norganised society, detect their errors, and pronounce that paiderastia\nwas a necessary consequence of their unequal social culture; nor do we\nfail to notice that, just as paiderastia was a post-Homeric intrusion\ninto Greek life, so women, after the age of the Homeric poems, suffered\na corresponding depression in the social scale. In the _Iliad_ and the\n_Odyssey_, and in the tragedies which deal with the heroic age, they\nplay a part of importance for which the actual conditions of historic\nHellas offered no opportunities.\n\nIt was at Athens that the social disadvantages of women told with\ngreatest force; and this perhaps may help to explain the philosophic\nidealisation of boy-love among the Athenians. To talk familiarly with\nfree women on the deepest subjects, to treat them as intellectual\ncompanions, or to choose them as associates in undertakings of political\nmoment, seems never to have entered the mind of an Athenian. Women were\nconspicuous by their absence from all places of resort--from the\npal\u00e6stra, the theatre, the Agora, Pnyx, the law-court, the symposium;\nand it was here, and here alone, that the spiritual energies of the men\nexpanded. Therefore, as the military ardour of the Dorians naturally\nassociated itself with paiderastia, so the characteristic passion of the\nAthenians for culture took the same direction. The result in each case\nwas a highly wrought psychical condition, which, however alien to our\ninstincts, must be regarded as an exaltation of the race above its\ncommon human needs--as a manifestation of fervid, highly-pitched\nemotional enthusiasm.\n\nIt does not follow from the facts which I have just discussed that,\neither at Athens or at Sparta, women were excluded from an important\nposition in the home, or that the family in Greece was not the sphere of\nfemale influence more active than the extant fragments of Greek\nliterature reveal to us. The women of Sophocles and Euripides, and the\nnoble ladies described by Plutarch, warn us to be cautious in our\nconclusions on this topic. The fact, however, remains that in Greece, as\nin medi\u00e6val Europe, the home was not regarded as the proper sphere for\nenthusiastic passion: both paiderastia and chivalry ignored the family,\nwhile the latter even set the matrimonial tie at nought. It is therefore\nprecisely at this point of the family, regarded as a comparatively\nundeveloped factor in the higher spiritual life of Greeks, that the two\nproblems of paiderastia and the position of women in Greece intersect.\n\nIn reviewing the external circumstances which favoured paiderastia, it\nmay be added, as a minor cause, that the leisure in which the Greeks\nlived, supported by a crowd of slaves, and attending chiefly to their\nphysical and mental culture, rendered them peculiarly liable to\npre-occupations of passion and pleasure-seeking. In the early periods,\nwhen war was incessant, this abundance of spare time bore less corrupt\nfruit than during the stagnation into which the Greeks, enslaved by\nMacedonia and Rome, declined.\n\nSo far, I have been occupied in the present section with the specific\nconditions of Greek society which may be regarded as determining the\ngrowth of paiderastia. With respect to the general habit of mind which\ncaused the Greeks, in contradistinction to the Jews and Christians, to\ntolerate this form of feeling, it will be enough here to remark that\nPaganism could have nothing logically to say against it. The further\nconsideration of this matter I shall reserve for the next division of my\nessay, contenting myself for the moment with the observation that Greek\nreligion and the instincts of the Greek race offered no direct obstacle\nto the expansion of a habit which was strongly encouraged by the\ncircumstances I have just enumerated.\n\n\n\n\nXVIII.\n\n\nUpon a topic of great difficulty, which is, however, inseparable from\nthe subject-matter of this inquiry, I shall not attempt to do more than\nto offer a few suggestions. This is the relation of paiderastia to Greek\nart. Whoever may have made a study of antique sculpture will not have\nfailed to recognise its healthy human tone, its ethical rightness. There\nis no partiality for the beauty of the male sex, no endeavour to reserve\nfor the masculine deities the nobler attributes of man's intellectual\nand moral nature, no extravagant attempt to refine upon masculine\nqualities by the blending of feminine voluptuousness. Aphrodite and\nArtemis hold their place beside Er\u00f4s and Hermes. Ares is less\ndistinguished by the genius lavished on him than Athene. Hera takes rank\nwith Zeus, the Nymphs with the Fauns, the Muses with Apollo. Nor are\neven the minor statues, which belong to decorative rather than high art,\nnoticeable for the attribution of sensual beauties to the form of boys.\nThis, which is certainly true of the best age, is, with rare exceptions,\ntrue of all the ages of Greek plastic art. No prurient effeminacy\ndegraded, deformed, or unduly confounded, the types of sex idealised in\nsculpture.\n\nThe first reflection which must occur to even prejudiced observers, is\nthat paiderastia did not corrupt the Greek imagination to any serious\nextent. The license of Paganism found appropriate expression in female\nforms, but hardly touched the male; nor would it, I think, be possible\nto demonstrate that obscene works of painting or of sculpture were\nprovided for paiderastic sensualists similar to those pornographic\nobjects which fill the reserved cabinet of the Neapolitan Museum. Thus,\nthe testimony of Greek art might be used to confirm the asseveration of\nGreek literature, that among free men, at least, and gentle, this\npassion tended even to purify feelings which, in their lust for women,\nverged on profligacy. For one androgynous statue of Hermaphroditus or\nDionysus there are at least a score of luxurious Aphrodites and\nvoluptuous Bacchantes. Er\u00f4s himself, unless he is portrayed according to\nthe Roman type of Cupid, as a mischievous urchin, is a youth whose\nmodesty is no less noticeable than his beauty. His features are not\nunfrequently shadowed with melancholy, as appears in the so-called\nGenius of the Vatican, and in many statues which might pass for genii of\nsilence or of sleep as well as love. It would be difficult to adduce a\nsingle wanton Er\u00f4s, a single image of this god provocative of sensual\ndesires. There is not one before which we could say--The sculptor of\nthat statue had sold his soul to paiderastic lust. Yet Er\u00f4s, it may be\nremembered, was the special patron of paiderastia.\n\nGreek art, like Greek mythology, embodied a finely graduated\nhalf-unconscious analysis of human nature. The mystery of procreation\nwas indicated by phalli on the Herm\u00e6. Unbridled appetite found\nincarnation in Priapus, who, moreover, was never a Greek god, but a\nLampsacene adopted from the Asian coast by the Romans. The natural\ndesires were symbolised in Aphrodite Praxis, Kallipugos, or Pandemos.\nThe higher sexual enthusiasm assumed celestial form in Aphrodite\nOuranios. Love itself appeared personified in the graceful Er\u00f4s of\nPraxiteles; and how sublimely Pheidias presented this god to the eyes of\nhis worshippers can now only be guessed at from a mutilated fragment\namong the Elgin marbles. The wild and native instincts, wandering,\nuntutored and untamed, which still connect man with the life of woods\nand beasts and April hours, received half-human shape in Pan and\nSilenus, the Satyrs and the Fauns. In this department of semi-bestial\ninstincts we find one solitary instance bearing upon paiderastia. The\ngroup of a Satyr tempting a youth at Naples stands alone among numerous\nsimilar compositions which have female or hermaphroditic figures, and\nwhich symbolise the violent and comprehensive lust of brutal appetite.\nFurther distinctions between the several degrees of love were drawn by\nthe Greek artists. Himeros, the desire that strikes the spirit through\nthe eyes, and Pothos, the longing of souls in separation from the object\nof their passion, were carved together with Er\u00f4s by Scopas for\nAphrodite's temple at Megara. Throughout the whole of this series there\nis no form set aside for paiderastia, as might have been expected if the\nfancy of the Greeks had idealised a sensual Asiatic passion. Statues of\nGanymede carried to heaven by the eagle are, indeed, common enough in\nGr\u00e6co-Roman plastic art; yet, even here, there is nothing which\nindicates the preference for a specifically voluptuous type of male\nbeauty.\n\nIt should be noticed that the mythology of the Greeks was determined\nbefore paiderastia laid hold upon the race. Homer and Hesiod, says\nHerodotus, made the Hellenic theogony, and Homer and Hesiod knew only of\nthe passions and emotions which are common to all healthy semi-civilised\nhumanity. The artists, therefore, found in myths and poems\nsubject-matter which imperatively demanded a no less careful study of\nthe female than of the male form; nor were beautiful women wanting.\nGreat cities placed their maidens at the disposition of sculptors and\npainters for the modelling of Aphrodite. The girls of Sparta in their\ndances suggested groups of Artemis and Oreads. The Hetairai of Corinth\npresented every detail of feminine perfection freely to the gaze. Eyes\naccustomed to the \"dazzling vision\" of a naked athlete were no less\nsensitive to the virginal veiled grace of the Athenian Canephoroi. The\ntemples of the female deities had their staffs of priestesses, and the\noracles their inspired prophetesses. Remembering these facts,\nremembering also what we read about \u00c6olian ladies who gained fame by\npoetry, there is every reason to understand how sculptors found it easy\nto idealise the female form. Nor need we imagine, because Greek\nliterature abounds in references to paiderastia, and because this\npassion played an important part in Greek history, that therefore the\nmajority of the race were not susceptible in a far higher degree to\nfemale charms. On the contrary, our best authorities speak of boy-love\nas a characteristic which distinguished warriors, gymnasts, poets, and\nphilosophers from the common multitude. As far as regards artists, the\nanecdotes which are preserved about them turn chiefly upon their\npreference for women. For one tale concerning the Pantarkes of Pheidias,\nwe have a score relating to the Campaspe of Apelles and the Phryne of\nPraxiteles.\n\nIt may be judged superfluous to have proved that the female form was\nidealised in sculpture by the Hellenes at least as nobly as the male;\nnor need we seek elaborate reasons why paiderastia left no perceptible\nstain upon the art of a race distinguished before all things by the\nreserve of good taste. At the same time, there can be no reasonable\ndoubt that the artistic temperament of the Greeks had something to do\nwith its wide diffusion and many sided development. Sensitive to every\nform of loveliness, and unrestrained by moral or religious prohibition,\nthey could not fail to be enthusiastic for that corporeal beauty, unlike\nall other beauties of the human form, which marks male adolescence no\nless triumphantly than does the male soprano voice upon the point of\nbreaking. The power of this corporeal loveliness to sway their\nimagination by its unique \u00e6thetic charm is abundantly illustrated in the\npassages which I have quoted above from the _Charmides_ of Plato and\nXenophon's _Symposium_. An expressive Greek phrase, \"Youths in their\nprime of adolescence, but not distinguished by a special beauty,\"\nrecognises the persuasive influence, separate from that of true beauty,\nwhich belongs to a certain period of masculine growth. The very\nevanescence of this \"bloom of youth\" made it in Greek eyes desirable,\nsince nothing more clearly characterises the poetic myths which\nadumbrate their special sensibility than the pathos of a blossom that\nmust fade. When distinction of feature and symmetry of form were added\nto this charm of youthfulness, the Greeks admitted, as true artists are\nobliged to do, that the male body displays harmonies of proportion and\nmelodies of outline more comprehensive, more indicative of strength\nexpressed in terms of grace, than that of women.[184] I guard myself\nagainst saying--more seductive to the senses, more soft, more delicate,\nmore undulating. The superiority of male beauty does not consist in\nthese attractions, but in the symmetrical development of all the\nqualities of the human frame, the complete organisation of the body as\nthe supreme instrument of vital energy. In the bloom of adolescence the\nelements of feminine grace, suggested rather than expressed, are\ncombined with virility to produce a perfection which is lacking to the\nmature and adult excellence of either sex. The Greek lover, if I am\nright in the idea which I have formed of him, sought less to stimulate\ndesire by the contemplation of sensual charms than to attune his spirit\nwith the spectacle of strength at rest in suavity. He admired the\nchastened lines, the figure slight but sinewy, the limbs well-knit and\nflexible, the small head set upon broad shoulders, the keen eyes, the\naustere reins, and the elastic movement of a youth made vigorous by\nexercise. Physical perfection of this kind suggested to his fancy all\nthat he loved best in moral qualities. Hardihood, self-discipline,\nalertness of intelligence, health, temperance, indomitable spirit,\nenergy, the joy of active life, plain living and high thinking--these\nqualities the Greeks idealised, and of these, \"the lightning vision of\nthe darling,\" was the living incarnation. There is plenty in their\nliterature to show that paiderastia obtained sanction from the belief\nthat a soul of this sort would be found within the body of a young man\nrather than a woman. I need scarcely add that none but a race of artists\ncould be lovers of this sort, just as none but a race of poets were\nadequate to apprehend the chivalrous enthusiasm for woman as an object\nof worship.\n\nThe morality of the Greeks, as I have tried elsewhere to prove, was\n\u00e6sthetic. They regarded humanity as a part of a good and beautiful\nuniverse, nor did they shrink from any of their normal instincts. To\nfind the law of human energy, the measure of man's natural desires, the\nright moment for indulgence and for self-restraint, the balance which\nresults in health, the proper limit for each several function which\nsecures the harmony of all, seem to them the aim of ethics. Their\npersonal code of conduct ended in \"modest self-restraint:\" not\nabstention, but selection and subordination ruled their practice. They\nwere satisfied with controlling much that more ascetic natures\nunconditionally suppress. Consequently, to the Greeks, there was nothing\nat first sight criminal in paiderastia. To forbid it as a hateful and\nunclean thing did not occur to them. Finding it within their hearts,\nthey chose to regulate it, rather than to root it out. It was only after\nthe inconveniences and scandals to which paiderastia gave rise had been\nforced upon their notice, that they felt the visitings of conscience and\nwavered in their fearless attitude.\n\nIn like manner, the religion of the Greeks was \u00e6sthetic. They analysed\nthe world of objects and the soul of man, unconsciously perhaps, but\neffectively, and called their generalisations by the names of gods and\ngoddesses. That these were beautiful and filled with human energy was\nenough to arouse in them the sentiments of worship. The notion of a\nsingle Deity who ruled the human race by punishment and favour, hating\ncertain acts while he tolerated others--in other words, a God who\nidealised one part of man's nature to the exclusion of the rest--had\nnever passed into the sphere of Greek conceptions. When, therefore,\npaiderastia became a fact of their consciousness, they reasoned thus: If\nman loves boys, God loves boys also. Homer and Hesiod forgot to tell us\nabout Ganymede and Hyacinth and Hylas. Let these lads be added to the\nlist of Dana\u00eb and Semele and Io. Homer told us that, because Ganymede\nwas beautiful, Zeus made him the serving-boy of the immortals. We\nunderstand the meaning of that tale. Zeus loved him. The reason why he\ndid not leave him here on earth like Dana\u00eb was that he could not beget\nsons upon his body and people the earth with heroes. Do not our wives\nstay at home and breed our children? \"Our favourite youths\" are always\nat our side.\n\n\n\n\nXIX.\n\n\nSexual inversion among Greek women offers more difficulties than we met\nwith in the study of paiderastia. This is due, not to the absence of the\nphenomenon, but to the fact that feminine homosexual passions were never\nworked into the social system, never became educational and military\nagents. The Greeks accepted the fact that certain females are\ncongenitally indifferent to the male sex, and appetitive of their own\nsex. This appears from the myth of Aristophanes in Plato's _Symposium_,\nwhich expresses in comic form their theory of sexual differentiation.\nThere were originally human beings of three sexes: men, the offspring of\nthe sun; women, the offspring of the earth; hermaphrodites, the\noffspring of the moon. They were round with two faces, four hands, four\nfeet, and two sets of reproductive organs apiece. In the case of the\nthird (hermaphroditic or lunar) sex, one set of reproductive organs was\nmale, the other female. Zeus, on account of the insolence and vigour of\nthese primitive human creatures, sliced them into halves. Since that\ntime, the halves of each sort have always striven to unite with their\ncorresponding halves, and have found some satisfaction in carnal\ncongress--males with males, females with females, and (in the case of\nthe lunar or hermaphroditic creatures) males and females with one\nanother. Philosophically, then, the homosexual passion of female for\nfemale, and of male for male, was placed upon exactly the same footing\nas the heterosexual passion of each sex for its opposite. Greek logic\nadmitted the homosexual female to equal rights with the homosexual male,\nand both to the same natural freedom as heterosexual individuals of\neither species.\n\nAlthough this was the position assumed by philosophers, Lesbian passion,\nas the Greeks called it, never obtained the same social sanction as\nboy-love. It is significant that Greek mythology offers no legends of\nthe goddesses parallel to those which consecrated paiderastia among the\nmale deities. Again, we have no recorded example, so far as I can\nremember, of noble friendships between women rising into political and\nhistorical prominence. There are no female analogies to Harmodius and\nAristogeiton, Cratinus and Aristodemus. It is true that Sappho and the\nLesbian poetesses gave this female passion an eminent place in Greek\nliterature. But the \u00c6olian women did not found a glorious tradition\ncorresponding to that of the Dorian men. If homosexual love between\nfemales assumed the form of an institution at one moment in \u00c6olia, this\nfailed to strike roots deep into the subsoil of the nation. Later\nGreeks, while tolerating, regarded it rather as an eccentricity of\nnature, or a vice, than as an honourable and socially useful emotion.\nThe condition of women in ancient Hellas sufficiently accounts for the\nresult. There was no opportunity in the harem or the zenana of raising\nhomosexual passion to the same moral and spiritual efficiency as it\nobtained in the camp, the pal\u00e6stra, and the schools of the philosophers.\nConsequently, while the Greeks utilised and ennobled boy-love, they left\nLesbian love to follow the same course of degeneracy as it pursues in\nmodern times.\n\nIn order to see how similar the type of Lesbian love in ancient Greece\nwas to the form which it assumed in modern Europe, we have only to\ncompare Lucian's Dialogues with Parisian tales by Catulle Mend\u00e8s or Guy\nde Maupassant. The woman who seduces the girl she loves, is, in the\ngirl's phrase, \"over-masculine,\" \"androgynous.\" The Megilla of Lucian\ninsists upon being called Megillos. The girl is a weaker vessel, pliant,\nsubmissive to the virago's sexual energy, selected from the class of\nmeretricious _ing\u00e9nues_.\n\nThere is an important passage in the _Amores_ of Lucian which proves\nthat the Greeks felt an abhorrence of sexual inversion among women\nsimilar to that which moderns feel for its manifestation among men.\nCharicles, who supports, the cause of normal heterosexual passion,\nargues after this wise:\n\n     \"If you concede homosexual love to males, you must in justice grant\n     the same to females; you will have to sanction carnal intercourse\n     between them; monstrous instruments of lust will have to be\n     permitted, in order that their sexual congress may be carried out;\n     that obscene vocable, tribad, which so rarely offends our ears--I\n     blush to utter it--will become rampant, and Phil\u00e6nis will spread\n     androgynous orgies throughout our harems.\"\n\nWhat these monstrous instruments of lust were may be gathered from the\nsixth mime of Herodas, where one of them is described in detail.\nPhil\u00e6nis may, perhaps, be the poetess of an obscene book on sensual\nrefinements, to which Athan\u00e6us alludes (_Deipnosophist\u00e6_, viii, 335). It\nis also possible that Phil\u00e6nis had become the common designation of a\nLesbian lover, a tribad. In the latter periods of Greek literature, as I\nhave elsewhere shown, certain fixed masks of Attic comedy (corresponding\nto the masks of the Italian _Commedia dell' Arte_) created types of\ncharacter under conventional names--so that, for example, Cerdo became a\ncobbler, Myrtal\u00eb a common whore, and possibly Phil\u00e6nis a Lesbian invert.\n\nThe upshot of this parenthetical investigation is to demonstrate that,\nwhile the love of males for males in Greece obtained moralisation, and\nreached the high position of a recognised social function, the love of\nfemale for female remained undeveloped and unhonoured, on the same level\nas both forms of homosexual passion in the modern European world are.\n\n\n\n\nXX.\n\n\nGreece merged into Rome; but, though the Romans aped the arts and\nmanners of the Greeks, they never truly caught the Hellenic spirit. Even\nVirgil only trod the court of the Gentiles of Greek culture. It was not,\ntherefore, possible that any social custom so peculiar as paiderastia\nshould flourish on Latin soil. Instead of Cleomenes and Epameinondas, we\nfind at Rome, Nero, the bride of Sporus, and Commodus the public\nprostitute. Alcibiades is replaced by the Mark Antony of Cicero's\n_Philippic_. Corydon, with artificial notes, takes up the song of\nAgeanax. The melodies of Meleager are drowned in the harsh discords of\nMartial. Instead of love, lust was the deity of the boy-lover on the\nshores of Tiber.\n\nIn the first century of the Roman Empire, Christianity began its work of\nreformation. When we estimate the effect of Christianity, we must bear\nin mind that the early Christians found Paganism disorganised and\nhumanity rushing to a precipice of ruin. Their first efforts were\ndirected toward checking the sensuality of Corinth, Athens, Rome, the\ncapitals of Syria and Egypt. Christian asceticism, in the corruption of\nthe Pagan systems, led logically to the cloister and the hermitage. The\ncomponent elements of society had been disintegrated by the Greeks in\ntheir decadence, and by the Romans in their insolence of material\nprosperity. To the impassioned followers of Christ, nothing was left but\nseparation from nature, which had become incurable in its monstrosity of\nvices. But the convent was a virtual abandonment of social problems.\n\nFrom this policy of despair, this helplessness to cope with evil, and\nthis hopelessness of good on earth, emerged a new and nobler synthesis,\nthe merit of which belongs in no small measure to the Teutonic converts\nto the Christian faith. The Middle Ages proclaimed, through chivalry,\nthe truth, then for the first time fully apprehended, that woman is the\nmediating and ennobling element in human life. Not in escape into the\ncloister, not in the self-abandonment to vice, but in the fellow-service\nof free men and women must be found the solution of social problems. The\nmythology of Mary gave religious sanction to the chivalrous enthusiasm;\nand a cult of woman sprang into being, to which, although it was\nromantic and visionary, we owe the spiritual basis of our domestic and\ncivil life. The _modus vivendi_ of the modern world was found.\n\n\nFINIS.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] Compare the fine rhetorical passage in Max. Tyr., _Dissert._, xxiv.\n8, ed. Didot, 1842.\n\n[2] i. 135.\n\n[3] Numerous localities, however, claimed this distinction. See Ath.,\nxiii. 601. Chalkis in Euboea, as well as Crete, could show the sacred\nspot where the mystical assumption of Ganymede was reported to have\nhappened.\n\n[4] _Laws_, i. 636. Cp. _Tim\u00e6us_, quoted by Ath., p. 602. Servius, _ad\nAen._ x, 325, says that boy-love spread from Crete to Sparta, and thence\nthrough Hellas, and Strabo mentions its prevalence among the Cretans (x.\n483). Plato (Rep. v. 452) speaks of the Cretans as introducing naked\nathletic sports.\n\n[5] _Laws_, viii. 863.\n\n[6] See Ath., xiii. 602. Plutarch, in the Life of Pelopidas (Clough,\nvol. ii. p. 219), argues against this view.\n\n[7] See Rosenbaum, _Lustseuche im Alterthume_, p. 118.\n\n[8] Max. Tyr., _Dissert._, ix.\n\n[9] See Sismondi, vol. ii. p. 324, Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy_, _Age\nof the Despots_, p. 435; Tardieu, _Attentats aux Moeurs_, _Les Ordures\nde Paris_; Sir R. Burton's _Terminal Essay_ to the \"Arabian Nights;\"\nCarlier, _Les Deux Prostitutions_, etc.\n\n[10] I say almost, because something of the same sort appeared in Persia\nat the time of Saadi.\n\n[11] Plato, in the _Ph\u00e6drus_, the _Symposium_, and the _Laws_, is\ndecisive on the mixed nature of paiderastia.\n\n[12] Theocr., _Paidika_, probably an \u00c6olic poem of much older date.\n\n[13] _Ph\u00e6drus_, p. 252, Jowett's translation.\n\n[14] Page 178, Jowett.\n\n[15] Clough, vol. ii. p. 218.\n\n[16] Book vii. 4, 7.\n\n[17] We may compare a passage from the _Symposium_ ascribed to Xenophon,\nviii. 32.\n\n[18] Page 182, Jowett.\n\n[19] Plutarch, _Eroticus_, cap. xvii. p. 791, 40, Reiske.\n\n[20] Lang's translation, p. 63.\n\n[21] See Athen\u00e6us, xiii. 602, for the details.\n\n[22] See Athen\u00e6us, xiii. 602, who reports an oracle in praise of these\nlovers.\n\n[23] Ar., _Pol._, ii. 9.\n\n[24] See Theocr. _A\u00eftes_ and the _Scholia_.\n\n[25] See Plutarch's _Eroticus_, 760, 42, where the story is reported on\nthe faith of Aristotle.\n\n[26] _Pelopidas_, Clough's trans., vol. ii. 218.\n\n[27] Cap. xvi. p. 760, 21.\n\n[28] Cap. xxiii. p. 768, 53. Compare Max. Tyr., _Dissert._, xxiv. 1. See\ntoo the chapter on Tyrannicide in Ar. Pol., viii. (v.) 10.\n\n[29] Clough's trans., vol. v. p. 118.\n\n[30] _Hellenics_, bk. ix. cap. xxvi.\n\n[31] Suidas, under the heading _Paidika_, tells of two lovers who both\ndied in battle, fighting each to save the other.\n\n[32] See, for example, _\u00c6schines against Timarchus_, 59.\n\n[33] Trans. by Sir G. C. Lewis, vol. ii. pp. 309-313.\n\n[34] _Symp._ 182 A.\n\n[35] i. 132.\n\n[36] _De Rep._, iv. 4.\n\n[37] I need hardly point out the parallel between this custom and the\nmarriage customs of half-civilised communities.\n\n[38] The general opinion of the Greeks with regard to the best type of\nDorian love is well expressed by Maximus Tyrius, _Dissert._, xxvi. 8.\n\"It is esteemed a disgrace to a Cretan youth to have no lover. It is a\ndisgrace for a Cretan youth to tamper with the boy he loves. O custom,\nbeautifully blent of self-restraint and passion! The man of Sparta loves\nthe lad of Laced\u00e6mon, but loves him only as one loves a fair statue; and\nmany love one, and one loves many.\"\n\n[39] _Laws_, i. 636.\n\n[40] _Pol._, ii. 7, 4.\n\n[41] Lib. 13,602, E.\n\n[42] It is not unimportant to note in this connection that paiderastia\nof no ignoble type still prevails among the Albanian mountaineers.\n\n[43] The foregoing attempt to reconstruct a possible environment for the\nDorian form of paiderastia is, of course, wholly imaginative. Yet it\nreceives certain support from what we know about the manners of the\nAlbanian mountaineers and the nomadic Tartar tribes. Aristotle remarks\nupon the paiderastic customs of the Kelts, who in his times were\nimmigrant.\n\n[44] See above, Section V.\n\n[45] It appears from the reports of travellers that this form of passion\nis not common among those African tribes who have not been corrupted by\nMusselmans or Europeans.\n\n[46] It may be plausibly argued that \u00c6schylus drew the subject of his\n_Myrmidones_ from some such non-Homeric epic. See below, Section XII.\n\n[47] 182 A. Cp. _Laws_, i. 636.\n\n[48] _Eroticus_, xvii. p. 761, 34.\n\n[49] See Plutarch, _Pelopidas_, Clough, vol. ii. p. 219.\n\n[50] Clough, as quoted above, p. 219.\n\n[51] The connection of the royal family of Macedon by descent with the\n\u00c6acid\u00e6, and the early settlement of the Dorians in Macedonia, are\nnoticeable.\n\n[52] Cf. Athen\u00e6us, x. 435.\n\n[53] Hadrian in Rome, at a later period, revived the Greek tradition\nwith even more of caricature. His military ardour, patronage of art, and\nlove for Antinous seem to hang together.\n\n[54] _Dissert._, xxvi. 8.\n\n[55] See Athen., xiii., 609, F. The prize was armour and the wreath of\nmyrtle.\n\n[56] _Symp._ 182, B. In the _Laws_, however, he mentions the Barbarians\nas corrupting Greek morality in this respect. We have here a further\nproof that it was the noble type of love which the Barbarians\ndiscouraged. For _Malakia_ they had no dislike.\n\n[57] Bergk., _Poet\u00e6 Lyrica Gr\u00e6ci_, vol. ii. p. 490, line 87 of Theognis.\n\n[58] _Ibid._, line 1,353.\n\n[59] _Ibid._, line 1,369.\n\n[60] _Ibid._, lines 1,259-1,270.\n\n[61] _Ibid._, line 1,267.\n\n[62] _Ibid._, lines 237-254. Translated by me in _Vagabunduli Libellus_,\np. 167.\n\n[63] Bergk., _Poet\u00e6 Lyrici Gr\u00e6ci_, vol. ii. line 1,239.\n\n[64] _Ibid._, line 1,304.\n\n[65] _Ibid._, line 1,327.\n\n[66] _Ibid._, line 1,253.\n\n[67] _Ibid._, line 1,335.\n\n[68] _Eroticus_, cap. v. p. 751, 21. See Bergk., vol. ii. p. 430.\n\n[69] See Cic., _Tusc._, iv. 33\n\n[70] Bergk., vol. iii. p. 1,013.\n\n[71] _Ibid._, p. 1,045.\n\n[72] _Ibid._, pp. 1,109, 1,023; fr. 24, 26.\n\n[73] _Ibid._, p. 1,023; fr. 48.\n\n[74] Maximus Tyrius, _Dissert._, xxvi., says that Smerdies was a\nThracian, given, for his great beauty, by his Greek captors to\nPolycrates.\n\n[75] See what Agathon says in the _Thesmophoriazuse_ of Aristophanes.\n\n[76] xv. 695.\n\n[77] Bergk., vol. iii. p. 1,293.\n\n[78] _Ibid._, vol. i. p. 327.\n\n[79] Athen., xiii. 601 A.\n\n[80] See the fragments of the _Myrmidones_ in the _Poet\u00e6 Scenici Gr\u00e6ci_,\nMy interpretation of them is, of course, conjectural.\n\n[81] Lucian, _Amores_; Plutarch, _Eroticus_; Athen\u00e6us, xiii. 602 E.\n\n[82] Possibly \u00c6schylus drew his fable from a non-Homeric source, but if\nso, it is curious that Plato should only refer to Homer.\n\n[83] _Symph._, 180 A. Xenophon, _Symph._, 8, 31, points out that in\nHomer Achilles avenged the death of Patroclus, not as his lover, but as\nhis comrade in arms.\n\n[84] Cf. Eurid., _Hippol._, l. 525; Plato, _Phoedr._, p. 255; Max. Tyr.,\n_Dissert._, xxv. 2.\n\n[85] See _Poet\u00e6 Scenici_, _Fragments of Sophocles_.\n\n[86] _Eroticus_; p. 790 E.\n\n[87] Ath., p. 602 E.\n\n[88] _Tusc._, iv. 33.\n\n[89] See Athen\u00e6us, xiii. pp. 604, 605, for two very outspoken stories\nabout Sophocles at Chios and apparently at Athens. In 582, e, he\nmentions one of the boys beloved by Sophocles, a certain Demophon.\n\n[90] Plato, _Parm._, 127 A.\n\n[91] Pausanias, v. 11, and see Meier, p. 159, note 93.\n\n[92] This, by the way, is a strong argument against the theory that the\n_Iliad_ was a post-Herodotean poem. A poem in the age of Pisistratus or\nPericles would not have omitted paiderastia from his view of life, and\ncould not have told the myth of Ganymede as Homer tells it. It is\ndoubtful whether he could have preserved the pure outlines of the story\nof Patroclus.\n\n[93] Page 182, Jowett's trans. Mr. Jowett censures this speech as\nsophistic and confused in view. It is precisely on this account that it\nis valuable. The confusion indicates the obscure conscience of the\nAthenians. The sophistry is the result of a half-acknowledged false\nposition.\n\n[94] Page 181, Jowett's trans.\n\n[95] See the curious passages in Plato, _Symp._, p. 192; Plutarch,\n_Erot._, p. 751; and Lucian, _Amores_, c. 38.\n\n[96] Quoted by Athen, xiii. 573 B.\n\n[97] As Lycon chaperoned Autolycus at the feast of Callias.--_Xen.\nSymp._ Boys incurred immediate suspicion if they went out alone to\nparties. See a fragment from the _Sappho_ of Ephippus in Athen., xiii.\np. 572 C.\n\n[98] Line 137. The joke here is that the father in Utopia suggests, of\nhis own accord, what in Athens he carefully guarded against.\n\n[99] Page 222, Jowett's trans.\n\n[100] _Clouds_, 948 and on. I have abridged the original, doing violence\nto one of the most beautiful pieces of Greek poetry.\n\n[101] Aristophanes returns to this point below, line 1,036, where he\nsays that youths chatter all day in the hot baths and leave the\nwrestling-grounds empty.\n\n[102] There was a good reason for shunning each. The Agora was the\nmeeting-place of idle gossips, the centre of chaff and scandal. The\nshops were, as we shall see, the resort of bad characters and panders.\n\n[103] Line 1,071, _et seq._\n\n[104] Caps. 44, 45, 46. The quotation is only an abstract of the\noriginal.\n\n[105] Worn up to the age of about eighteen.\n\n[106] Compare with the passages just quoted two epigrams from the _Mousa\nPaidik\u00e9_ (Greek _Anthology_, sect. 12): No. 123, from a lover to a lad\nwho has conquered in a boxing-match; No. 192, where Straton says he\nprefers the dust and oil of the wrestling-ground to the curls and\nperfumes of a woman's room.\n\n[107] Page 255 B.\n\n[108] 1,025.\n\n[109] _Charmides_, p. 153.\n\n[110] _Lysis_, 206, This seems, however, to imply that on other\noccasions they were separated.\n\n[111] _Charmides_, p. 154, Jowett.\n\n[112] Page 155, Jowett.\n\n[113] Cap. i. 8.\n\n[114] See cap. viii. 7. This is said before the boy, and in his hearing.\n\n[115] Cap. iii. 12.\n\n[116] Cap. iv. 10, _et seq._ The English is an abridgment.\n\n[117] _Laws_, i. 636 C.\n\n[118] Athen., xiii. 602 D.\n\n[119] _Eroticus_.\n\n[120] Line 60, ascribed to Theocritus, but not genuine.\n\n[121] Athen., xiii. 609 D.\n\n[122] _Mousa Paidik\u00e9_, 86.\n\n[123] Compare the _Atys_ of Catullus: \"Ego mulier, ego adolescens, ego\nephebus, ego puer, Ego gymnasi fui flos, ego eram decus olei.\"\n\n[124] See the law on these points in _\u00c6sch. adv. Timarchum_.\n\n[125] Thus Aristophanes, quoted above.\n\n[126] Aristoph., _Ach._, 144, and _Mousa Paidik\u00e9_, 130.\n\n[127] See Sir William Hamilton's _Vases_.\n\n[128] Lysias, according to Suidas, was the author of five erotic\nepistles adressed to young men.\n\n[129] See Aristoph., _Plutus_, 153-159; _Birds_, 704-707. Cp. _Mousa\nPaidik\u00e9_, 44, 239, 237. The boys made extraordinary demands upon their\nlovers' generosity. The curious tale told about Alcibiades points in\nthis direction. In Crete they did the like, but also set their lovers to\nexecute difficult tasks, as Eurystheus imposed the twelve labours on\nHerakles.\n\n[130] Page 29.\n\n[131] _Mousa Paidik\u00e9_, 8: cp. a fragment of Crates, _Poet\u00e6 Comici_,\nDidot, p. 83.\n\n[132] _Comici Gr\u00e6ci_, Didot, pp. 562, 31, 308.\n\n[133] It is curious to compare the passage in the second _Philippic_\nabout the youth of Mark Antony with the story told by Plutarch about\nAlcibiades, who left the custody of his guardians for the house of\nDemocrates.\n\n[134] See both _Lysias against Simon_ and _\u00c6schines against Timarchus_.\n\n[135] _Peace_, line 11; compare the word _Pallakion_ in Plato, _Comici\nGr\u00e6ci_, p. 261.\n\n[136] Diog. Laert., ii. 105.\n\n[137] Plato's _Ph\u00e6do_, p. 89.\n\n[138] _Orat. Attici_, vol. ii. p. 223.\n\n[139] See Herodotus. Max. Tyr. tells the story (_Dissert._, xxiv, 1) in\ndetail. The boy's name was Act\u00e6on, wherefore he may be compared, he\nsays, to that other Act\u00e6on who was torn to death by his own dogs.\n\n[140] 153.\n\n[141] _Symp._, 217.\n\n[142] _Ph\u00e6dr._, 256.\n\n[143] Page 17. My quotations are made from Dobson's _Oratores Attici_,\nvol. xii., and the references are to his pages.\n\n[144] Page 30.\n\n[145] Page 67.\n\n[146] Page 67.\n\n[147] Page 59.\n\n[148] Page 75.\n\n[149] Page 78.\n\n[150] \u00c6chines, p. 27, apologises to Misgolas, who was a man, he says, of\ngood breeding, for being obliged to expose his early connection with\nTimarchus. Misgolas, however, is more than once mentioned by the comic\npoets with contempt as a notorious rake.\n\n[151] See _Pol._, ii. 7, 5; ii. 6, 5; ii. 9, 6.\n\n[152] The advocates of paiderastia in Greece tried to refute the\nargument from animals (_Laws_, p. 636 B; cp. _Daphnis and Chloe_, lib.\n4, what Daphnis says to Gnathon) by the following considerations: Man is\nnot a lion or a bear. Social life among human beings is highly\nartificial; forms of intimacy unknown to the natural state are therefore\nto be regarded, like clothing, cooking of food, houses, machinery, &c.,\nas the invention and privilege of rational beings. See Lucian, _Amores_,\n33, 34, 35, 36, for a full exposition of this argument. See also _Mousa\nPaidik\u00e9_, 245. The curious thing is that many animals are addicted to\nall sorts of so-called unnatural vices.\n\n[153] Maximus Tyrius, who, in the rhetorical analysis of love alluded to\nbefore (p. 172), has closely followed Plato, insists upon the confusion\nintroduced by language. _Dissert._, xxiv. 3. Again, _Dissert._, xxvi. 4;\nand compare _Dissert._, xxv. 4.\n\n[154] This is the development of the argument in the _Ph\u00e6drus_, where\nSocrates, improvising an improvement on the speech of Lysias, compares\nlovers to wolves and boys to lambs. See the passage in Max. Tyr., where\nSocrates is compared to a shepherd, the Athenian lovers to butchers, and\nthe boys to lambs upon the mountains.\n\n[155] This again is the development of the whole eloquent analysis of\nlove, as it attacks the uninitiated and unphilosophic nature, in the\n_Ph\u00e6drus_.\n\n[156] Jowett's trans., p. 837.\n\n[157] _Dissert._, xxv. 1. The same author pertinently remarks that,\nthough the teaching of Socrates on love might well have been considered\nperilous, it, formed no part of the accusations of either Anytus or\nAristophanes. _Dissert._, xxiv., 5-7\n\n[158] This is a remark of Diotima's. Maximus Tyrius (_Dissert._, xxvi.\n8) gives it a very rational interpretation. Nowhere else, he says, but\nin the human form, does the light of the divine beauty shine so clear.\nThis is the word of classic art, the word of the humanities, to use a\nphrase of the Renaissance. It finds an echo in many beautiful sonnets of\nMichelangelo.\n\n[159] See Bergk., vol. ii. pp. 616-629, for a critique of the canon of\nthe highly paiderastic epigrams which bear Plato's name and for their\ntext.\n\n[160] I select the _Vita Nuova_ as the most eminent example of medi\u00e6val\nerotic mysticism.\n\n[161] _Tusc._, iv. 33; _Decline and Fall_, cap. xliv. note 192.\n\n[162] See Meier, cap. 15.\n\n[163] Cap. 23.\n\n[164] Cap. 54.\n\n[165] Page 4.\n\n[166] It is noticeable that in all ages men of learning have been\nobnoxious to paiderastic passions. Dante says (_Inferno_, xv. 106):--\n\n    \"In somma sappi, che tutti fur cherci,\n    E letterati grandi e di gran fama,\n    D'un medesmo poccato al mondo lerci.\"\n\nCompare Ariosto, _Satire_, vii.\n\n[167] _Dissert._, xxvi. 9.\n\n[168] I am aware that the genuineness of the essay has been questioned.\n\n[169] _Mousa Paidik\u00e9_, i.\n\n[170] _Ibid._, 208.\n\n[171] _Ibid._, 258, 2.\n\n[172] _Ibid._, 70, 65, 69, 194, 220, 221, 67, 68, 78, and others.\n\n[173] Perhaps ten are of this sort.\n\n[174] 8, 125, for example.\n\n[175] 132, 256, 221.\n\n[176] 219.\n\n[177] 7.\n\n[178] 17. Compare 86.\n\n[179] Ed. Kayser, pp. 343-366.\n\n[180] It is worth comparing the letters of Philostratus with those of\nAlciphron, a contemporary of Lucian. In the latter there is no hint of\npaiderastia. The life of parasites, grisettes, lorettes, and young men\nabout town at Athens is set forth in imitation probably of the later\ncomedy. Athens is shown to have been a Paris _\u00e0 la Murger_.\n\n[181] See the introduction by Marcus Aurelius to his _Meditations_.\n\n[182] See quotations in Rosenbaum, 119-140.\n\n[183] See Athen., xii. 517, for an account of their grotesque\nsensuality.\n\n[184] The following passage may be extracted from a letter of\nWinckelmann (see Pater's _Studies in the History of the Renaissance_, p.\n162): \"As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived\nunder one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant\nof beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the\nbeauty of men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for\nbeauty in art. To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem\nwanting, because its supreme beauty is rather male than female.\" To this\nI think we ought to add that, while it is true that \"the supreme beauty\nof Greek art is rather male than female,\" this is due not so much to any\npassion of the Greeks for male beauty as to the fact that the male body\nexhibits a higher organisation of the human form than the female.","title":"A Problem in Greek Ethics: Being an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, addressed especially to medical psychologists and jurists","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":32895}