HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT GREECE
Tomb of the Diver symposium Homosexuality in ancient Greek was tolerated and regarded as no big deal. It was different than the modern norm both for its its apparent prevalence and the appreciation of masculinity in the other partner rather than putting the emphasis male femininity. Greek homosexuality was common in the military. Some have argued that homosexuality was more than just fashionable; it may have been the norm for both men and women and heterosexual sex was primarily just to have babies. But not everybody agreed with this even in ancient times. Orpheus was dismembered by the Maenads for advocating homosexual love.
Edward Carpenter wrote: Nothing is more surprising to the modern than to find Plato speaking, page after page, of Love, as the safeguard of states and the tutoress of philosophy, and then to discover that what we call love, i.e., the love between man and woman, is not meant at all-scarcely comes within his consideration-but only the love between men what we should call romantic friendship. His ideal of this latter love is ascetic; it is an absorbing passion, but it is held in strong control. The other love-the love of women-is for him a mere sensuality. In this, to some extent, lies the explanation of his philosophical position. [Source:Edward Carpenter's “Ioläus,”1902]
Sexual contact occurred among males in the bath houses. Gymnasiums, where naked men and boys, exercised and worked out together, were regarded as breeding grounds for homo-erotic impulses. In ancient times men sometimes made a pledge by putting their hands on their testicles as if to say, "If I am lying you can cut off my balls." The practice of making a pledge on the Bible is said to have its roots in this practice. Among the most extreme were members of Magna Mat cults, who dressed in women’s clothes and sometimes castrated themselves.
Some have argued that homosexual marriages of some kind were widely accepted in classical antiquity and that the medieval church continued the pagan practice. There arguments though tend to be weak and based on anecdotal material. There is no proof that such marriages existed in Greek and Roman culture except among the elite in imperial Roman smart set. Other evidence of homosexual marriages come from isolated or marginal regions, such as post-Minoan Crete, Scythia, Albania, and Serbia, all of which had unique and sometimes bizarre local traditions.
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SEX IN ANCIENT GREECE europe.factsanddetails.com ;
SEXUAL PRACTICES IN ANCIENT GREECE europe.factsanddetails.com ;
PROSTITUTES AND COURTESANS IN ANCIENT GREECE europe.factsanddetails.com
Websites on Ancient Greece:
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Lives and Social Culture of Ancient Greece, Maryville University online.maryville.edu ;
BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; ; Gutenberg.org gutenberg.org;
British Museum ancientgreece.co.uk;
Illustrated Greek History, Dr. Janice Siegel, Hampden–Sydney College hsc.edu/drjclassics ; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org/web; Ancient Greek Sites on the Web from Medea showgate.com/medea ; Greek History Course from Reed web.archive.org;
Classics FAQ MIT classics.mit.edu
Mary Renault’s “ The Mask of Apollo” contains descriptions of romantic homosexual affairs.
Homosexuality, Older Men, Young Boys and Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great probably had gay lovers. Although he was married twice some historians claim Alexander was a homosexual who was in love with his childhood friend, closest companion and general — Hephaestion. Another lover was a Persian eunuch named Bagoas. But many say that his truest love was his horse Bucephalas.
Relationships between older men and teenage boys was believed to have been common. Ben Gazur wrote in Listverse: If we were told a prominent figure in society found adolescents almost irresistible, we would be rightly appalled. When Plato tells us that the philosopher Socrates enjoyed hanging around naked youths, sleeping beside them, embracing them, his audience would not have shown the least surprise. In Athens of the fifth century B.C., it was held as entirely natural that men would be attracted to boys. There are certainly plentiful literary and artistic records that show it was a common practice, at least among the upper classes.The older man, the Erastes, was expected to court the boy, the Eramenos, with gifts and other devices. The relationship, once established, was supposed to be beneficial to both. The older man got sex, and the younger was introduced to Athenian society with a powerful protector. Sometimes, this relationship is portrayed as simply a May-December romance, but the boys involved were very young. It was considered shameful for anyone capable of growing a beard to still be an Eramenos. [Source Ben Gazur, Listverse, January 7, 2017]
In “ Clouds” Aristophanes wrote: "How to be modest, sitting so as not to expose his crotch, smoothing out the sand when he arose so that the impress of his buttocks would not be visible, and how to be strong...The emphasis was on beauty...A beautiful boy is a good boy. Education is bound up with male love, an idea that is part of the pro-Spartan ideology of Athens...A youth who is inspired by his love of an older male will attempt to emulate him, the heart of educational experience. The older male in his desire of the beauty of the youth will do whatever he can improve it."
In Aristophanes's “ The Birds” , one older man says to another with disgust: "Well, this is a fine state of affairs, you demanded desperado! You meet my son just as he comes out of the gymnasium, all rise from the bath, and don't kiss him, you don't say a word to him, you don't hug him, you don't feel his balls! And you're supposed to be a friend of ours!"
Homosexuality, Militarism and Sports in Ancient Greece
Homosexuality and athleticism were said to have gone hand in hand in ancient Greece. Ron Grossman wrote in Chicago Tribune, “Far from finding homosexuality and athleticism mutually exclusive, they considered gay sex an excellent training regimen and an inspiration for military valor.” Plato said, “if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made of lovers they would overcome the world.”
Homosexuality appears to have been the norm in ancient Sparta for both men and women with more than a touch of sadomasochism thrown in. The Spartans believed that beating was good for the soul. Heterosexual sex was primarily just to have babies. Young boys were paired with older boys in a relationship that had homosexual overtones. Plutarch wrote: “They were favored with the society of young lovers among the reputable young men...The boy lovers also shared with them in their honor and disgrace.”
When a boy reached 18, they were trained in combat. At twenty they moved into a permanent barrack-style living and eating arrangement with other men. They married at any time, but lived with men. At 30 they were elected to citizenship. Before a Sparta wedding , the bride was usually kidnapped, her hair was cut short and she dressed as a man, and laid down on a pallet on the floor. "Then," Plutarch wrote, "the bride groom...slipped stealthily into the room where his bride lay, loosed her virgin's zone, and bore her in his arms to the marriage-bed. Then after spending a short time with her, he went away composedly to his usual quarters, there to sleep with the other men."||
The Sacred Band was an army unit and warrior caste from Thebes, northwest of Athens. Ranked second in fierceness after the Spartans and celebrated in the song “Boeotia”, the region of Greece from which they were from,, they were often paired with theirs lovers under the assumption they would fight harder for their lover than they would for themselves. It was said they never were defeated in battle until Greece lost its independence to Philip II of Macedonia. But even then Philip was moved by their bravery. Plutarch wrote: “When after the battle, Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the 300 were lying and learned that thus was a band of lovers and beloved, he burst into tears and said, “Perish, miserably they who think that these men died or suffered anything disgraceful.”
Sappho and Lesbians in Ancient Greece
Alma-Tadema's view of a
woman reading poetry Sappho wrote sensuously about love between females. The word "lesbian" comes from her home island of Lesbos. Born in 610 B.C. in Lesbos, off of Asia Minor, she was probably from a noble family and her father was probably a wine merchant. Little is known about her because she didn't write much about herself and few others did.
In Sappho's time, Lesbos was inhabited by the Aeolians, a people known for free thinking and liberal sexual customs. Women had more freedom than they did in other places in the Greek world and Sappho is believed to have received a quality education and moved in intellectual circles.
Sappho formed a society for women in which women were taught arts such as music, poetry and chorus singing for marriage ceremonies. Although the relationship between Sappho and the women in her society is unclear she wrote about love and jealousy she felt for them. In spite of this, she had a child named Kleis and may have been married.
In his book “The First Poets”, Michael Schmidt speculates on where she was born and raised on Lesbos: was it in the western village of Eressus in rough, barren country, or in the cosmopolitan eastern seaport of Mytilene? He subtly evokes her poetic style: ''Sappho's art is to dovetail, smooth and rub down, to avoid the over-emphatic.'' And he aptly compares the relationship between voice and musical accompaniment in Sappho's performance of her poems to the recitative in opera. [Source: Camille Paglia, New York Times, August 28, 2005]
Over the centuries passionate arguments over Sappho's character, public life and sexual orientation have sprung up. Even though there is no direct reference to homosexual or heterosexual sex religious leaders — including Pope Gregory VIII, who called her a "lewd nymphomaniac in 1073 — ordered her books burned.
See Sappho Under GREEK POETRY europe.factsanddetails.com
Greece a Homosexual Paradise?
Paul Halsall wrote in “People with a History: An Online Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans History”: “For modern western gays and lesbians, Ancient Greece has long functioned as sort of homosexual Arcadia. Greek culture was, and is, highly privileged as one of the foundations of Western culture and the culture of sexuality apparent in its literature was quite different from the "repression" experienced by moderns. The sense of possibility the Greek experienced opened up can be seen in a scene in E.M. Forster's “Maurice” where the hero is seen reading Plato's Symposium at Cambridge.
“It would be too simple, however, to see Greek homosexuality as just a more idyllic form than modern versions. As scholars have gone to work on the — plentiful — material several tropes have become common. One set of scholars (slightly old-fashioned now) looks for the "origin" of Greek homosexuality, as if it were a new type of game, and argues that, since the literature depicts homosexual eros among the fifth-century aristocracy, it functioned as sort of fashion among that group. This is rather like arguing that because nineteenth-century English novels depict romance as an activity of the gentry and aristocracy, other classes did not have romantic relationships.
“Another, now more prevalent, group of scholars argue that term "homosexual", referring they say to sexual orientation, is inappropriate to discussions of Greek sexual worlds. Rather they stress the age dissonance in literary homoerotic ideals, and the importance of "active" and "passive" roles. Some stress these themes so intently that it comes as a surprise to discover that we now know the names of quite number of long-term Greek homosexual couples.
“As a result of such scholarly discussions, it is no longer possible to portray Greece as a homosexual paradise. It remains the case that the Greek experience of eros was quite different from experiences in the modern world, and yet continues, because of Greece's persistent influence on modern norms to be of special interest.”
Sources on Homosexuality in Ancient Greece
Paul Halsall wrote in a 1986 graduate school paper titled “Homosexual Eros in Early Greece”: “Homer and Hesiod give some idea of pre-archaic mores concerning erotic desire. From the archaic period itself we have a wealth of erotic poetry - Sappho, the lone female witness, Anacreon, Ibycus and Solon all writing lyric poetry and Theognis, whose elegiac corpus was later conveniently divided into political and pederastic sections. Classical sources include Aristophanes' comedy and some comments from Thucydides and Herodotus. Plato: writes frequently about eros, above all in the Symposium and Phraedrus but just as instructive are comments in other dialogues about Socrates relationships with a number of younger men. The speech of Aischines against Timarchus gives a good example of oratory on homosexual acts from the 4th century.” Another “group of sources are scraps of information we can draw from the vocabulary used about erotic desire, information we have about laws and privileges in certain cities and modern prosopography that can identify phenomena like the homosexualisation of mythical persons which occurred in our period.

“Homer's heroes have strong emotional bonds with each other but erotic desire is directed at women. Achilles' love for Patroclus was seen later as homosexual but despite the effect of Patroclus' death no physical relationship is mentioned. Hesiod is not much concerned with eros at all but he is clearly describing a country life where a man's chief end was to produce sons. There have been attempts to say that homosexuality entered Greek culture with the arrival of the Dorians. The wide acceptance of homosexuality in Dorian cities is cited as the grounds for this. Our earliest evidence of a culture of homosexual eros comes however from Ionian Solon and Aeolian Sappho rather than Dorian Tyrtaeus. It is not then a question of homosexuality coming from anywhere. What we have is a situation where early sources show no emphasis on homosexuality then fairly quickly toward’s the end of the 7th century the appearance of homosexual poems, followed on by vases and more poems in the early 6th century. The geographical extent of the phenomenon makes attempts to ascribe homosexuality to more leisure on behalf of the Athenian aristocracy untenable. Sparta was not at leisure nor many other cities with tyrannies where homosexuality was as acceptable as in Athens.
“More testimony to homosexual Eros effect on culture can be seen in the visual arts, both on vase decorations and in statues. Even when no homosexual encounter is portrayed these works exhibit a strong appreciation of the male body, much more so than the female body which is often draped. It is legitimate to use these works to determine what the canons or beauty were. The archaic ideal was of a tanned muscled youth after the' onset of puberty but before a strong beard had grown. It was a beauty formed by the particular physical education of Greek youth and is sympathetically parodied by Aristophanes as consisting of "a powerful chest, a healthy skin, broad shoulders. a big arse and a small cock". Satyrs it may be noted are depicted as contrary to this in every particular.”
Romantic Friendship Among Ancient Greek Soldiers
Edward Carpenter wrote in “Ioläus”: "Stories of romantic friendship form a staple subject of Greek literature, and were everywhere accepted and prized. Athenaeus wrote: “And the Lacedaemonians [Spartans] offer sacrifices to Love before they go to battle, thinking that safety and victory depend on the friendship of those who stand side by side in the battle array.... And the regiment among the Thebans, which is called the Sacred Band, is wholly composed of mutual lovers, indicating the majesty of the God, as these men prefer a glorious death to a shameful and discreditable life." [Source: Athenaeus, bk. xiii., ch. 12, Edward Carpenter's “Ioläus,”1902]

Modern interpretation of the Sacred Band of Thebes
Ioläus is said to have been the charioteer of Hercules, and his faithful companion. As the comrade of Hercules he was worshipped beside him in Thebes, where the gymnasium was named after him. Plutarch alludes to this friendship again in his treatise on Love: “And as to the loves of Hercules, it is difficult to record them because of their number; but those who think that Ioläus was one of them do to this day worship and honor him, and make their loved ones swear fidelity at his tomb." And in the same treatise: “Consider also how love (Eros) excels in warlike feats, and is by no means idle, as Euripides called him, nor a carpet knight, nor ' sleeping on soft maidens' cheeks.' For a man inspired by Love needs not Ares to help him when he goes out as a warrior against the enemy, but at the bidding of his own god is ' ready ' for his friend ' to go through fire and water and whirlwinds.' And in Sophocles' play, when the sons of Niobe are being shot at and dying, one of them calls out for no helper or assister but his lover. [Plutarch, Eroticus, par. 17]
The Sacred Band of Thebes, or Theban Band, was a battalion composed entirely of friends and lovers; and forms a remarkable example of military comradeship. The references to it in later Greek literature are very numerous, and there seems no reason to doubt the general truth of the traditions concerning its formation and its complete annihilation by Philip of Macedon at the battle of Chaeronea (B.C. 338). Thebes was the last stronghold of Hellenic independence, and with the Theban Band Greek freedom perished. But the mere existence of this phalanx, and the fact of its renown, show to what an extent comradeship was recognized and prized as an institution among these peoples. [Source: Edward Carpenter's “Ioläus,”1902]
See Separate Article: ANCIENT GREEK SOLDIERS europe.factsanddetails.com
Homosexual Life in Athens and Ancient Greece
Paul Halsall wrote in a 1986 graduate school paper titled “Homosexual Eros in Early Greece”: “Origins of cultural homosexuality are better found in the social life of the 7th and 6th centuries rather than in any historical event. Greece was more settled than in the 8th and early 7th centuries. We have evidence of a growing population - the number of graves in Attica increased six-fold - and bigger cities. The position of women was down graded in cities where only men were citizens. In the cities new social settings grew up for men; in gymnasiums men wrestled and ran naked; the symposium or drinking party became a part of city life, and again it was men only. In this situation homosexuality came to the fore. This seems to have been a period of cultural openness and the Greeks had no revealed books to tell them that homosexuality was wrong. It is an oddity of our culture that men often refuse to acknowledge the beauty of another man. The Greeks had no such inhibitions. They were meeting each other daily in male only settings, women were less an less seen as emotional equals and there was no religious prohibition of the bisexuality every human being is physically equipped to express. At the same time there was an artistic flowering in both poetry and visual arts. A cultural nexus of art and homosexual eros was thus established and homosexuality became a continuing part of Greek culture.

male couples
“Athens is always central to our appreciation of Greek history but we can be seriously mistaken if we take homosexuality to be an Athenian habit or try to explain it in purely Athenian terms. Athens became more peaceful in the 7th and 5th centuries but this was not true of the Peloponnese and similarly there may have been democratisation of culture in Athens - but not in Sparta or Macedonia. There is in fact evidence that romantic eros was seen as homosexual all over Greece. Sparta, even with its relatively free women, had homosexual relationships built into the structure of the training all young Spartan men received . In other Dorian areas also homosexuality was widely accepted. Thebes saw in the 4th century the creation of a battalion of homosexual lovers - the Sacred Band. In Crete we have evidence of ritualised abduction of younger by older men.
“Elsewhere Anacreon-'s portrayal of Polycrates' court at Samos, and the history of homosexual lovers of the kings of Macedon confirm the extended appreciation of same sex couplings in Greek society. This being so, it seems to be methodologically unsound to use events in Athenian social history to explain the nature of eros in early Greece even if perforce most of our evidence comes from there. Once established the link between homosexual eros and art gained wide acceptance. This is reflected in the cultural product of the archaic period. For poets eros was a major source of subject and inspiration. Solon may be taken as an example”
Blest is the man who loves and after early play
Whereby his limbs are supple made and strong
Retiring to his house with wine and song
Toys with a fair boy on his breast the livelong day !
“Anacreon, Ibycus, Theognis and Pindar share Solon's tastes. Although poems were dedicated to women what is particular to the archaic period is the valuing of homosexual over heterosexual eros. Plato's speakers in the Symposium hold love between men as higher than any other form as it was lover between equals; men were held to be on a moral and intellectual plane higher than women. One of the most extraordinary features of the period was the homosexualisation of myth. Ganymede was only Zeus' servant in Homer but now became seen as his beloved. The passion of Achilles and Patroclus was similarly cast in sexual terms.
“The acme of homosexual love in Athens came about at the end of the Persistratid tyranny at Athens. It fell for a variety of reasons and there was certainly no immediate switch to democracy but in later Athenian history two lovers, Aristogeiton and Harmodios were given the credit of bringing down the tyrants. Thucydides makes it clear that what happened was that Hipparchus, the brother of the tyrant Hippias, was killed because he made a pass at Harmodios and when rejected proceeded to victimise his family. Thucydides regards all this as slightly sordid, although it has been suggested his motives in rubbishing the tyrannicides was to promote the Alcmeonids as founders of Athenian democracy. Whatever actually happened an extraordinary cult of the two lovers grew up in Athens with their descendants being given state honours such as front seats at the theatre even at the height of radical democracy when such honours were frowned upon. In Athens at least this cult was used repeatedly to give kudos to homosexual couples and what they could achieve for society.
“The theme was exploited philosophically by Plato. In the Symposium he applies the terminology of procreation to homosexual love and says that, while it does not produce children it brings forth beautiful ideas, art and actions which were eternally valuable. Although Plato visualises relationships in lover-beloved terms his philosophy makes it clear that reciprocity was expected between the lovers.
See Aristogeiton and Harmodius, Gay Lovers Who Overthrew the Athenian Tyrrany Under MAJOR FIGURES IN ANCIENT GREEK DEMOCRACY: THEMISTOCLES, DRACO AND THE GAY LOVERS europe.factsanddetails.com
Homosexual Relations in Ancient Greece

Greek poet Anacreon and his lover
Paul Halsall wrote in a 1986 graduate school paper titled “Homosexual Eros in Early Greece”: “Poetry, pottery and philosophy leave no doubt as to the acceptability of homosexual eros. Just how much it was valued is much harder to estimate. For Athens the best evidence comes in Pausanias' speech in Plato's Symposium. Here Pausanias makes it clear that a lover in full flight was approved of by Athenians, who had expectations of how a lover should show his love. These included sleeping in his beloved's doorway all night to prove his love. The other side of the story was that fathers were- not at all keen on their sons being pursued and took steps to preserve their son's chastity . Here we have a case of the male/female double standard being applied to homosexual affairs. The conventional attitude was that it was good to be a lover but not to be passive. A boy only remained respectable if he gave into a lover slowly and even then he could not allow any public compromise of his masculinity. Passivity was seen as essentially unmasculine. This ambivalence continues in Athenian history and the Timarchus prosecuted by Aischines in 348 faced as the major charge an accusation that he had enjoyed passivity and thus put himself in the same position as a prostitute. Away from Athens the matter is not quite so clear. In Sparta boys were encouraged to take lovers, in Crete there was a ritual of abduction and the beloved side of the couples in Thebes' Sacred Band were not castigated as unmasculine. Homosexual eros was valued in art, in philosophy, in heroic couples and as part of a boys education. What did worry Athenians at least was when conventions were not kept to and masculinity was compromised.
“If homosexual relationships were only known as short affairs they are strangely at odds with the elevated nature of eros described by Plato who seems to envisage a lifelong joint search for truth. We should not be misled by statues of old father Zeus abducting young and innocent Ganymede. Although it was accepted that there should be an age difference between lovers this need not be very great. Vase paintings often show youths with boys where the erastes/eromenos distinction is maintained but without much disparity in years. Anal intercourse when shown is almost always between coevals. Aristophanes in the Symposium spins a myth of eros being the result of a single person cut in half trying to find and re-unite with the other half; this more or less implies an expectation that lovers would not be to disparate in age. While not ruling out a decade or so in age difference, we must allow that if a youth was going to form a relationship involving sex with another man he would want and admire somebody in their prime. The realities of the army and gymnasium would ensure a limited age distribution also - the very young nor very old would not be either numerous or admired for their prowess. Homosexual affairs then would take place between men of comparable age and some of them lasted many years - Agathon with his lover in the Symposium, Socrates in his relationship with Alcibiades, who broke all the rules by chasing an older man, and the couples in Thebes' army are all testimony to homosexual 'marriages'. It is however not clear if affairs continued after either party married. Other men were for emotional relationships but alliances and children depended on women. The age of marriage was 30, by convention, and affairs may have reached natural conclusions at that age. We have no evidence either way.
“As well as conventions on age there were accepted practices in sex, exhibited very well on vase paintings. It is I suggest simply unreasonable to believe that 16-20 year olds, as portrayed on vases, had no sexual response and only unwillingly allowed themselves to be penetrated inter-crurally without any pleasure. Here we have a case of conventions far removed from actuality. While keeping in mind that we hear of no relationships without the active-passive roles, it is clear that writers in contrast to painters expected homosexual sex to include anal penetration; Aristophanes uses the epithet "europroktos"(wide-arsed) for men with a lot of experience of being penetrated. Greek convention decried the passive partner in penetrative intercourse and we may assume that both partners took care that their private pleasures were not made public. It is useful to recall that Greek morals were concerned with what was known not what was done and unlike cases such as dishonouring a guest there was no divine sanction against sexual pleasures, which indeed the gods seemed to enjoy in abundance. In short I think Aristophanes' humour is more reliable than vases. Penetration was important to the Greek idea of what sex was which was why their major distinction was between active and passive rather than 'straight' or 'gay'. What went on behind closed doors probably did not accord with convention.”
Ancient Greek Male Couples

Paul Halsall wrote: “There is no doubt that classical Greek literature frequently presents a distinct model of homosexual eros. The proposed relationship is between a an older man (the lover or erastes) and a younger man (the beloved or eromenos). This ideal has much influenced discussion of the subject, and has lead some commentators to limit the connections between ancient Greek homosexually active men and modern "homosexuals": old-style historians emphasized that "homosexuality" was a phenomenon of the upper classes, opposed to democracy, and become less common in the more "heterosexual" Hellenistic period; modern "cultural historians" have argued repeatedly that the "homosexual" (conceived as an individual [or "subject"] defined by his or her sexual orientation) is a modern "social construction".
It is worthwhile retaining such considerations when studying the texts about homosexuality in Ancient Greece: the proposers of these ideas are serious scholars whose views demand respect. Nevertheless, such views can become a rigid orthodoxy. The fact of the matter is that there are all sorts of texts relating to homosexuality surviving from Ancient Greece, and many of these texts reveal that the literary ideal was not indicative of much practice; nor, even, the only ideal of homosexual love.
Here, then are textual references for long-term (in some cases life-long) homosexual relationships in the Greek texts; 1) Orestes and Pylades: Orestes is the hero of the Oresteia cycle. He and Pylades were bywords for faithful and life-long love in Greek culture, see Lucian (2nd C. CE): Amores or Affairs of the Heart, #48. 2) Damon and Pythias: Pythagorean initiates, see Valerius Maximus: De Amicitiae Vinculo. 3) Aristogeiton and Harmodius, credited with overthrowing tyranny in Athens, see Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Book 6. 4) Pausanias and Agathon: Agathon was an Athenian dramatist (c. 450-400 BCE). He was famous as an "effeminate" homosexual. It was in his house that the Dinner Party of Plato's Symposium takes place. see Plato: Symposium 193C, Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae. 5) Philolaus and Diocles -Philolaus was a lawgive at Thebes, Diocles an Olympic Athlete, see Aristotle, Politics 1274A. 6) Epaminondas and Pelopidas: Epaminondas (c.418-362 BCE) led Thebes in its greatest days in the fourth century. At the battle of Mantinea (385 BCE) he saved the life of his life long friend Pelopidas, see Plutarch: Life of Pelopidas. 7) Members of the Sacred Band of Thebes, see Plutarch: Life of Pelopidas. 8) Alexander the Great and Hephasteion, Atheaneus, The Deinosophists Bk 13.
Sodomy in Antiquity
Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton wrote in the notes of “Sportive Epigrams on Priapus”: Paedico means to pedicate, to sodomise, to indulge in unnatural lewdness with a woman often in the sense of to abuse. In Martial’s Epigrams 10, 16 and 31 jesting allusion is made to the injury done to the buttocks of the catamite by the introduction of the 'twelve-inch pole' of Priapus. [Source: “Sportive Epigrams on Priapus” translation by Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton, 1890, sacred-texts.com]
Orpheus is supposed to have introduced the vice of sodomy upon the earth. In Ovid's Metamorphoses: He also was the first adviser of the Thracian people to transfer their love to tender youths ...presumably in consequence of the death of Eurydice, his wife, and his unsuccessful attempt to bring her to earth again from the infernal regions. But he paid dearly for his contempt of women. The Thracian dames whilst celebrating their bacchanal rites tore him to pieces.
François Noël, however, states that Laius, father of Oedipus, was the first to make this vice known on earth. In imitation of Jupiter with Ganymede, he used Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, as a catamite; an example which speedily found many followers. Amongst famous sodomists of antiquity may be mentioned: Jupiter with Ganymede; Phoebus with Hyacinthus; Hercules with Hylas; Orestes with Pylades; Achilles with Patrodes, and also with Bryseis; Theseus with Pirithous; Pisistratus with Charmus; Demosthenes with Cnosion; Gracchus with Cornelia; Pompeius with Julia; Brutus with Portia; the Bithynian king Nicomedes with Caesar,[1] &c., &c. An account of famous sodomists in history is given in the privately printed volumes of 'Pisanus Fraxi', the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877), the Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (1879) and the Catena Librorum Tacendorum (1885)
Institutionalized Pederasty in Ancient Greece?

Harmodius and Aristogeiton
William A. Percy wrote: The ancient Greeks developed a system virtually unique among literate peoples for educating upper-class youth —institutionalized pederasty. There is no evidence for pederasty among the Mycenean Greeks After the collapse of their civilization during the dark age (1200-800 B.C.) and also during the early archaic or renaissance (800-630 B.C.), society was enthusiastically if not exclusively heterosexual, as the Homeric and Hesiodic corpuses reveal. But for about a millennium, starting around 600 B.C., most upper-class Greek males, forbidden or strongly discouraged from marrying in their 20s, took adolescent boys as their beloveds. In his early 20s, a young aristocrat, the lover (erastes), took a boy of 12 the beloved (eromenos), to love and train, before going on at about age 30 to matrimony and fatherhood. Then the boy, now grown and having completed compulsory military training himself, in turn took another boy to love and train. Most passed through these homosexual phases, passive and then active, for nearly 20 years (from puberty at 12-14 to age 30). Whatever the amount and kind of physical homosexual intercourse they experienced, if any (and it seems to have varied), they grew up without any special psychological problems. Greek pederasty was believed by the Greeks to have positive benefits, in that it fostered heroism as well as genius. [Source: William A. Percy, “Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia”, Haeberle, Erwin J., Bullough, Vern L. and Bonnie Bullough, eds., sexarchive.info]
The writer of this article puts forth the following theses about Greek pederastic practices, some of which are more controversial than others: (1) that the Golden Age of Greek civilization was largely due to pederastic pedagogy and its concomitant institutions, gymnasia (for nude athletics) and symposia (elegant dinner and drinking parties); (2) that this system of institutionalized pederasty began in the late seventh century B.C., much later than most have thought; (3) that Cretan lawgivers, or "musicians" (those devoted to the Muses), created the system to control the upper-class population explosion as well as to train and bond warriors, and that it spread rapidly to almost all of the rest of Hellas; (4) that the scantiness of explicit sources, many of which were destroyed by Christian zealots, has helped homophobic historians and classicists to ignore, deny, distort, and condemn Greek pederasty and to exaggerate the criticism of carnal pederasty that a few ancient pagan ascetics, most importantly Plato, made, while downplaying the praise that most others bestowed on it; (5) that homophiles have generally confused Greek pederasty with modern androphilia to justify the latter, while social constructionists now deny that homosexuality (in the sense of more or less exclusive androphilia) even existed in ancient times.
As Friedrich Nietzsche long ago realized, the Greek system of pederastic pedagogy was an indispensable ingredient of the Greeks' unparalleled achievements: "The erotic relations of men with adolescents were, as far as our intelligence can understand, the necessary condition, and the unique one, for all masculine education [in Greece]. Never probably have youths been treated with so much solicitude, affection, and regard to their best qualities as in the sixth and fifth century... since mortals in love give the best of themselves."
Some moderns, following Plato, Xenophon, and Plutarch, have theoretized about the usefulness of homoerotic attraction in teaching and in male bonding. In Eros (1921), the first work on the subject in the pederastic tradition in both theory and practice, the German educator Gustav Adolph Wyneken even advocated the resurrection of Greek pederasty to improve the educational system of his day. His work is an apologia for pederasty that stresses the aspects of mentoring and character formation. The positive but informal (not sanctioned by the authorities) role of pederasty in public schools and universities in England and in their all-male American equivalents, as well as on the Continent, has often been noted.
The sources of Greek pederasty have been much debated, but it seems clear that pederasty was not institutionalized by illiterates, whether primitive Indo-Europeans, wandering Dorian warriors, or garrisons in dark age castles. Various types of situational homosexuality in Hellas doubtless existed in early tunes, but on the basis of the surviving evidence, Greek pederasty derived from the Cretans, desirous of controlling the population explosion, who ordained a set of recognized legal and social norms governing the relationship between erastes and eromenos. Concomitants to institutionalized pederasty were segregation or seclusion of upper-class women, athletic nudity of males, late marriage of males, and men's messes or all-male symposia. Only in Crete were boys abducted by their lovers, and only in Crete and Sparta did "herds" (agelai) of teenage boys live in gangs in the wild. The rigid age-class organization of those militaristic societies was not so strictly followed by the other, more relaxed city-states.
For the complete article from which the material here is derived see “SEXUAL CUSTOMS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS” in the “Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia” sexarchive.info
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2024