GREEK LOVE IN ANTIQUITY

"Antiquity" is used here in the special sense of that part of the world directly known to writers in Greek and Latin in the ancient era, ie. Europe, North Africa and the Near East. It includes writings in other languages on this area, but it does not include other parts of the world where records survive of Greek love being practised in the same era, notably China. Also excluded from coverage here is the 5th century AD, despite the fall of the Roman empire in the west in AD 476 being the traditional dividing point between the ancient and mediaeval eras. From the point of view of Greek love, the final and overwhelming triumph of Christianity in the late 4th century had far more impact than the later fall of the city of Rome to barbarians.

The late 2nd century AD The Book of the Laws of Countries gives brief but unique insight into the standing then of Greek love in the east versus the west of the lands under consideration.

Greece

There are several grounds for believing that the institutionalised pederasty of the ancient Greeks originated, like their oldest civilisation, on their largest island. The peculiar customs concerning it there are described in pederasty in ancient Crete. Whether or not through her lawgiver Lykourgos, as was believed, Sparta imported some Cretan customs during the dark age, probably including pederastic ones, while adapting them to her own special ends, the results of which are described in pederasty in ancient Sparta.

With the love of boys already taken for granted as part of men's lives in archaic Greece, if not earlier, it is unsurprising to find it believed also to have had the same role in the lives of the Greek gods. The Metamorphosis of Hyakinthos and The Metamorphosis of Kyparissos are the ancients' varied accounts of two boys loved by a god. The surviving accounts of what some ancients believed was the first instance of mortal pederasty are set out in Laios and Chrysippos.

Two accounts are given of the most celebrated love affair that was Greek in both senses, that of the tyrannicides Harmodios and Aristogeiton in 514 BC.

The following writings from ancient authors have been selected for their charm and their ability to bring to life the ancient practice of Greek love.

The Symposium by Plato is an account of a symposium held in 416 BC, in which the speeches of seven mostly famous Athenians are recounted, six being about Eros and heavily tilted towards eros for boys.

Plato's Phaidros is a dialogue between Sokrates and an Athenian aristocrat about erotic love (assumed as a matter of course to be pederastic), in which comparisons are drawn between the benefits to a boy of mentorship not inspired by eros, of chaste eros and of consummated eros.

On Tyranny and Love is a debate from Xenophon's Hieron between a ruler and a poet as to whether being a ruler was an advantage in love affairs with boys, the eponymous ruler's argument bringing out a characteristic of boy-love that runs through many cultures: the appeal of a kind of love that was to be won through courtship rather than social arrangement.

Sophokles as a boy-lover is three anecdotes from different writers about the well-known Athenian tragedian. Demetrios of Phaleron (ca. 350-280 BC), is likewise three anecdotes, one of which is revealing as to how boys could be only too keen to be taken up by a man of high standing.

Parthenios recounted two boy-love stories in his book, Sufferings in Love, whose title speaks for itself.

The train of events leading to the assassination of Philip II King of the Macedonians in 336 BC illustrate the delicate position of the eromenos, honourable as long as his motives were believed to be, but vulnerable to intolerable insinuation. Both this and the killing of his predecessor Archelaos in 399 BC also show how passionately bitter an eromenos could become when he felt let down. In his Politics, Aristotle cites this and several other examples of revolutions provoked by eromenoi who felt their honour had been impugned.

The intensely close friendship of Alexander the Great with Hephaistion illustrates the emotional power of the bonds often forged through pederasty (as well as why such stories should be read through the primary sources, since friendships of this kind are invariably subject to dishonest gaywashing today).

The life of Agathokles (ca. 361-289 BC), who rose from humble origins to become King of Sicily, illustrates the important role Greek love let loose played in men's varying fortunes.

The incidental references to pederasty in Plutarch's lives of famous Greeks offer telling insights into Greek practices. The richest from a Greek love point of view is his account of a colourful boyhood given in his Alkibiades. His other lives of Athenians, the lawgiver Solon and the rival statesmen Themistokles and Aristeides illustrate just how politically far-reaching could be the effects of passion for a beautiful boy. Those of kings Agesilaos II and Kleomenes III illuminate Spartan pederasty with characterful anecdotes. Plutarch's Pelopidas is the main source for what is known about the Sacred Band, the elite Theban force made up of pederastic couples that proved invincible for a generation until wiped out at the battle of Chaironeia. His Demetrios and Kimon give lively examples of the disaster that could ensue when great men chased unwilling boys. His Sulla hints gently at the disapproval likely to be aroused if a love affair continues into the eromenos's manhood.

Plutarch's Alexander brings to life the attitude to loving boys characteristic of the man widely regarded by the ancients as the greatest who had ever lived, while Arrian and Curtius Rufus furnish further details of his boy-loves. A marked characteristic of Alexander's archaic kingdom of Macedon was a tradition of love affairs between her kings and noble boys who served as their pages. Plutarch's life of Pyrrhos hints at a similar custom in the neighbouring kingdom of Epiros.

Another ancient biographical collection rich in pederastic anecdotes is Diogenes Laertios's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.

Amongst the best histories with Greek love anecdotes are the eye-witness accounts of war in Xenophon's Anabasis and Hellenika.

The Boyish Muse, a compilation of pederastic epigrams, for which Straton of Sardis was the original compiler and most prolific poet, but which includes later poems too, greatly expands and deepens understanding of the ancient practice of pederasty, giving the sometimes-diverging ideas of a large variety of poets over several centuries, sometimes challenging the approved point of view. It is itself only one book in the fifteen of The Greek Anthology and a few pederastic epigrams, some by the same authors, are scattered through its other books. Some of the epigrams used double entendre which can be lost even on those able to read the original Greek: Straton's no. XII 54 is an interesting example of a particularly obscure one whose erotic meaning has been unravelled by a classicist. His no. XII 4 has attracted the most modern attention on account of the rare evidence it provides as to the age of the Greek loved boy. Besides Straton, some other authors of epigrams of Greek love interest in the Greek Anthology were Alkaios, Antipatros of Sidon, Asklepiades, Dioskourides, Kallimachos, Leonidas of Tarentum, Plato the philosopher, Rhianos, Simonides and Statilius Flaccus. Others writing in the imperial Roman era are considered together.

These are articles by modern writers about how Greek love was practised by the Greeks themselves:

A Problem in Greek Ethics, written by John Addington Symonds in 1873, was the first serious study in English of the Greek practice of pederasty.

Pursuit and Flight by Sir Kenneth Dover is a particularly excellent section of the author's ground-breaking and still definitive Greek Homosexuality (1978), in which formidable scholarship, emotional intelligence and helpful analogies with (now only fairly) recent heterosexual customs are combined to produce a lucid and convincing explanation of Athenian ambivalence over when, how easily and why boys might yield to their suitors, and how their fathers were likely to see it.

Did the Greeks pedicate their loved boys? is an essay summarising the reasons adduced for a new myth circulating that ancient Greeks recoiled from pedicating boys and the evidence for regarding them as misunderstandings.

The role of the fighting cock in Greek pederasty is excerpts relevant to pederasty from "The Cultural Poetics of the Greek Cockfight" by Eric Csapo.

The Greek Experiment by Parker Rossman is Parker Rossman's potted summary of Greek practices in his Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys (1978).

The Two Kinds of Love, probably (despite doubts once cast) written by Lucian of Samosata late in the 2nd century AD, is a lengthy debate as to whether love affairs with women or boys were more satisfactory. Echoes of it arguments are to be found in similar but shorter debates in mediaeval Arabic and European literature.

Thrace

The Thracians apparently shared the Greeks' special propensity to love boys since Ovid, writing not long before 8 BC, said their mythological bard Orpheus had set them the example (Metamorphoses X 83-4). The history of ancient Thrace is not known in any detail at all, but Diodoros of Sicily described the mid-2nd century king Diegylis as ravaging boys and women alike (Library of History XXXIII 14 i).

The Near East

Pederasty in ancient Persia brings together all the ancient sources on this subject.

The Histories of Herodotos recount four instances of beautiful Greek boy captives being castrated for sale as eunuchs around the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor, which Plutarch says meant they were wanted for sex there.

According to Jewish belief, shortly before the ancient Israelites conquered Canaan, massacred the inhabitants and renamed it Israel around the 15th century BC, their patriarch Moses gave them their legal code, which he convinced them he had from their god. This included some viciously puritanical sexual provisions, including a death penalty for the "abomination" of "lying down with males" (Leviticus XX 13). As set out in The Levitical Prohibition of Male Homosexual Acts, this set the Jews apart from all other known peoples before late antiquity and is the original inspiration for most of the misery inflicted on participants in Greek love ever since in the many lands culturally influenced by Jewish ideas (though of course the purported rationale for the animosity has been varied to suit prevailing conditions). 

Nothing is known about whether or how this prohibition was observed in its earliest centuries, but Donald Mader's scholarly article on the 11th century BC Israelite heroes David and Jonathan leaves little doubt that their intense love is to be seen as Greek love on similar lines to those depicted between warriors and adolescent boys in traditional masculine societies worldwide.

The Jewish historian Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, written "for the Greek world" in AD 93-4, confirms Moses's sexual prohibitions, but carries on down to near his own time, including a lively account of then-recent kings. The best-known of these, the somewhat hellenised Herod the Great (reigned 37-4 BC), manoevred diplomatically to avoid handing over his beautiful 16-year-old brother-in-law and potential rival to the Roman triumvir Mark Antony, whose erotic imagination had been caught by him, whilst himself having a fondness for beautiful eunuchs and having at least one boy plainly stated to be his paidika (loved boy).

The Entimos Pais of Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 by Donald Mader is a scholarly article showing that the Roman centurion's pais said to have been miraculously cured of mortal illness by Jesus may well have been understood by the latter to have been the centurion's loved boy.

Egypt

There appear to be no surviving records of Greek love being practised in Egypt before the rule of the Ptolemies (323-30 BC). Under these Macedonian Kings, Hellenic culture and a Greek population in the capital, Alexandria, coexisted with the native Egyptian, and there are occasional references to such love. For example, a passage in On the Alexandrine War hints at a little-known pederastic third angle to the famous love affair of the Roman general Julius Caesar and Egyptian Queen Cleopatra provided by her 13-year-old brother.

Under Roman rule, Egyptian slave-boys had a uniquely high reputation for giving sexual pleasure to their masters. For example, the ostentatiously rich freedman, Trimalchio, in Petronius's Satyricon, kept Alexandrian boys. Writing in AD 88 about what sort of boy he would most like to have, the poet Martial, a connoisseur of them, said an Egyptian because "no country knows better how to give naughty ways" (Epigrams IV 42). He went on to say he preferred a fair complexion because its rarity in Egypt added to its allure, which suggests that at least many of the boys under consideration were native Egyptian rather than Greek.

Carthage

With no literature in their own language surviving,  little is known about Greek love amongst the ancient Carthaginians. What two 1st-century-BC Roman historians reported about the liaison of the great Carthaginian general Hamilcar "Barca" with a youth imply that the Carthaginians disapproved of such a liaison, though on what grounds is unknown. To judge from the behaviour of their army that captured the Greek city of Selinous in 409 BC, they shared the usual attraction of ancient men to both women and boys.

Rome

As in most of the pre-modern world, in Rome it was considered a matter of course that men should be attracted to boys as well as women. Until the rise of Christianity, it was also accepted that they should act on both attractions with an important proviso that sharply differentiates Roman pederastic practice from Greek. This was that the sexual integrity of Roman citizens must not be violated, meaning, where males were concerned, that they must never take the passive role.  Though the Scantinian Law which was supposed to enforce this was clearly often broken with impunity, the social disapproval that lay behind it was enough to deprive Roman boys of the greatest benefits Greek boys got from their lovers and thus reinforced itself.  Most Roman pederasty was therefore between men and boy prostitutes, slave-boys or non-citizens.  For the first, it was their raison d'etre, for the second it was an expected obligation, whilst various anecdotes make it clear that in much of the empire the local non-Roman population saw nothing wrong with freeborn boys having older male lovers, and Roman men availed themselves of the opportunities thus offered.

Roman youths could join the army at sixteen and evidently presented a temptation to their superior officers. Presumably some liaisons arose, but the only cases recorded are ones where the youth resisted, and these show thea particularly harsh view taken of officers who tried to take advantage of their position. Thus around 312 BC, Laetorius, a military tribune, killed himself before being condemned to death and after having tried to rape a teenage legionary. The killing of Gaius Lusius, 104 BC, as described by three Roman writers, conveys the sense of outrage thought proper to an attempt to make a freeborn Roman youth accept the passive sexual role, an outrage apparently much more strongly felt in the context of the army, since a passage in Polybios's Histories indicates a young legionary who granted a man sexual favours was also liable to harsh punishment. The explanation would seem to be that the subjection of legionaries to military discipline would have put them in a position similar to slaves if there had not been fiercely enforced rules to protect their dignity.

That ordinary Roman men were just as sexually interested in boys as in females (but not, of course, in other men) is made clear from a number of references to rampaging Roman armies raping both, for examples those that captured Locri in 204 BC (Livy, Books from the Foundation of the City XXIX 8 & 17) and Cremona in AD 69 (Tacitus, Histories III 33), as well as assumptions made that this was bound to happen (Livy, ibid., XXVI 13 xv and Sallust, The War with Catiline 51 ix). References in Cassius Dio's Roman History to 31 BC to the same being inflicted on even nobly-born Roman boys by the armies that took over Rome in 87 and 82 BC, during civil wars, "as if they were captives taken in war", underlines how it could be taken for granted in wars against foreigners.

The same assumption about who was sexually attractive to men was made by the poet Lucretius, explaining sexual excitement in his philosophical treatise On the Nature of Things. A Roman Jury Corrupted by Lust for Boys, 61 BC is an account by three writers of a scandal showing how such lust was widespread enough for manipulation of public affairs.

The age range of loved boys in ancient Rome summarises the evidence on this question.

Drew and Drake, authors of Boys for Sale, a general study of boy prostitution, in the first section of it devoted to "Ancient Times" but actually about Rome only, give a lively account that owes as much to their imaginations as to historical evidence. Similar in tone, but shorter is "Roman Sex Exploitation", Drake's later account written under his real name of Parker Rossman, which he followed with "The Judeo-Christian Reaction".

The impeachment of Scantinius Capitolinus, ca. 226 BC shows the prohibition against seducing freeborn Roman boys in operation even before the introduction of the Scantinian Law.

The disgrace of L. Quinctius Flaminius, 184 BC is an early instance of a powerful Roman coming undone through excessive self-indulgence in lust without regard to public sensitivities.

On the increased interest of young Roman men in pretty boys, 167-161 BC by Polybios and two historians who followed him describes how, following the Roman conquest of Macedon, there was a great increase in extravagance among young Roman nobles, which manifested itself, amongst other things, in a much increased interest in pretty slave-boys, who fetched huge prices.

Seven of the poems of Catullus, written ca. 60-54 BC, are unique in being about love for a freeborn, indeed noble, Roman boy, which was illicit (however common it may have been in practice). Another sheds light on the custom of young Roman men having slave-boy catamites until they got married, openly and perhaps therefore encouraged by their parents.

Conversely, Pseudo-Cicero's Invective Against Sallust, supposedly in 44/3 BC, shows an allegation that a freeborn youth willingly accepted this role used to impugn his character. Of Cicero's Philippics, speeches he really made against his enemy, the triumvir M. Antonius, the second shows exactly the same thing, while the third gives yet further instances of rampaging Roman armies raping boys as well as women.

The Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem about the origins of the Roman people, written 29-19 BC, includes several sympathetic allusions to pederasty including one heroic and nobly-born man/boy couple described in such glowing terms as to leave no doubt that Romans were far more sympathetic to freeborn boys taking the passive role than they were to stupra (outrages) such as adultery. Virgil's contemporary Horace wrote many poems professing love for various women and boys and implying that they were equally desirable.

The historian Plutarch's lives of eminent Romans furnish a host of brief anecdotes that are all the more revealing of pederastic practice for being incidental. His Sertorius shows senior Roman officers in Hispania competing for the love of a local boy. Roman boys' naughty games, ca. 82 BC is an excerpt from his Cato the Younger depicting play taking a sexual turn when an older boy and a pretty young boy were involved. The Praetorian Prefect's boy-wife, AD 68 from his Galba illustrates how brazen powerful Romans could be in indulging their lust for boys. Suetonius's Lives of Illustrious Men is a similar biographical series: Greek love is mentioned in the lives of two eminent poets.

Thoughts on a Bowl from Pompeii shows how essentially fragile judgements about ancient pederasty can be when based on artefacts, depending on  particular photos and viewers.

The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius and the much shorter The Style of Life and Manners of the Emperors are series of biographies of the Roman emperors that include Greek love anecdotes. Eighteen of the first twenty-six emperors are recorded as involved in Greek love affairs, whether as boys, men or both. This does not mean seven of the others were not; simply that it was not thought worth remarking on, a point proven by Suetonius's mention of Claudius liking only females as one of his oddities.  One of these seven others preferred men, two expressed disapproval of pederasty on stoical principles, one died aged nine and three had little if anything recorded of their sexual interests. Wine for Octavian's boy, ca. 41 BC is a brief anecdote about a loved-boy of the future Augustus, also by Plutarch. Domitian and Earinus is the ambiguous story of an emperor and his loved eunuch slave-boy. The much-admired Trajan was the emperor most noted for his special love of boys. Hadrian and Antinous is the story of his great successor and the boy he made a god, as recounted by all the surviving ancient writings. The last of the twenty-six was a boy-emperor whose shocking sexual antics with men were recounted in  "Sardanapallos" by Cassius Dio and Antoninus Heliogabalus by Lampridius. The latter was one of the imperial biographies in the Augustan History, earlier Greek love excerpts from which are given in Verus to Diadumenianus, AD 161-218, and later ones in Alexander Severus to Carinus, AD 222-285. However, by the 3rd century, the position of pederasty in the Roman Empire began to deteriorate, gradually at first, then rapidly with the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century. On the Caesars by Aurelius Victor, besides repeating stories about earlier emperors, is the main source for the emperor Philip "the Arab"'s prohibition of boy prostitution in 248 and, exactly a century later, the emperor Constans incurring disapproval for sex with boys despite the new religion.

General Roman histories are also full of Greek love anecdotes, especially for AD 14-70 the Annals and Histories of Tacitus. Besides his above-mentioned descriptions of the emperors Trajan, Hadrian and "Sardanapallos", Cassius Dio's long Roman History for the periods AD 33-69, 81-98 and 180-211 is also revealing. For the much shorter period he covered, 180-238, Herodian's History of the Empire is the best.

The epigrams of Martial, published between AD 86 and 103 in twelve books (I, II, III, IV,V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII), and of which seventy concern Greek love, together with a few of his poems in his slightly earlier Xenia and Apophoreta, are much the richest sources for the widespread practice of pederasty between relatively wealthy Roman men and their kept boys known as pueri delicati. Both Martial and his contemporary Statius wrote movingly about the death at twelve of one such boy, Glaucias, the beloved of Atedius Melior, what they revealed suggesting it may have been common for wealthy Romans, hoping for love with boys and effectively deprived of the possibility of love affairs with freeborn ones, to raise up promising slave-boys from infancy with a view to romantic idylls. Both also wrote about the Emperor Domitian's beloved eunuch boy, Earinus. Statius also wrote another poem consoling a man over the death of his beloved slave-boy of fourteen, and three others touching on Greek love.

Surely the most amusing anecdote concerning Greek love in antiquity is  The story of the Pergamese boy from Petronius's Satyricon, written in the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero (AD 54-68) and sometimes called the world's first novel. It is probably most important for its tacit admission that, despite the official line that freeborn males should never take the passive role, boys enjoyed doing so and this was understandable. Similar thinking emerges from the account given by Livy, Roman History XXXIX 10-15 of the Bacchanalian scandal of 186 BC.

Also amusing are Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods, four of which concern Ganymede, the boy abducted by the enamoured king of the gods, and his Judgement of the Goddesses touching on the same, while these all also imply a decline in traditional religious beliefs that was to be ominous for Greek love.

Christianity presumably triumphed because it was in keeping with the new spirit of the times, which were anyway more ascetic and unsympathetic to pederasty.  Hence, the last pagan emperor Julian's The Caesars, in which his predecessors are invited to a banquet with the gods and individually judged, is fairly scathing about their Greek loves.

Northern Europe

The ancient people who appear have been most positive of all about Greek love were the Celts. The assembled ancient writings on them, though regrettably few, uniformly report prevalent pederasty, with several saying that men generally preferred boys to women, and that boys accepted men as their lovers without the anxieties about their reputation that bedevilled willing Greek boys, never mind Roman ones.

Pederasty in ancient Germany brings together all the known sources on the subject, showing conclusively that men taking the passive homosexual role were reviled and inconclusively that pederasty may to some degree have been institutionalised.

Ancient Texts

As a resource for scholars, it is intended on this website to give every passage touching on Greek love in as many ancient texts as possible. These can be found through "Ancient Texts" on the menu. It is important to note that a link there invariably leads to the entire Greek love content of the named book irrespective of the title of the article and even if the said article is shared by other writings.

Some of the English translations are from an era when sexually explicit phrases and frank references to homosexuality were often judged unfit for translation. They have been amended here for accuracy where precise understanding of Greek love is at stake, but all such amendments are explained in footnotes. In any case, the original Greek or Latin is provided for scholars who wish to check the accuracy of the translations for themselves.

To increase the usefulness of this endeavour, the ancient texts found to have no Greek love content are listed below:

Arrian: -- Events after Alexander; Indica; Parthica.
Augustan History: -- Aelius to Marcus Aurelius.
Cicero: -- Against Verres, Cato the Elder on Old Age
Euripides: -- Elektra; Hekabe; Herakles; Medea
Exodus
Horace: -- The Art of Poetry; Hymn for a New Age
Kallimachos - Hekale, Minor Epic and Elegiac Poems, Epigrams,, 
Martial: -- The Book on Spectacles.
Plutarch: -- Lives: Aemilius Paulus, Aratos, Artaxerxes, Brutus, Caesar, Camillus, Cicero, Coriolanus, Crassus, Dion, Eumenes, Fabius Maximus, Lysandros, Nikias, Otho, Philopoimen, Phokion, Pompey, Publicola, Romulus, Theseus, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Timoleon.  Moralia:  Advice about Keeping Well, Advice to Bride and Groom, Can Virtue Be Taught?, Concering Talkativeness, Consolation to his Wife, The Dinner of the Seven Wise Men, The E at Delphi, The Greek Questions, How to Profit by One's Enemies, Isis and Osiris, A Letter of Condolence to Apollonios, The Obsolescence of Oracles, On Affection for Offspring, On Brotherly Love, On Chance, On Compliancy, On the Control of Anger, on The Delays of Divine Vengeance, On Envy and Hate, On Exile, On Fate, On the Fortune of the Romans, On Having Many Friends, On Listening to Lectures, On Love of Wealth, On Praising Oneself Inoffensively, On the Sign of Sokrates, On Superstition, On Tranquillity of Mind, On Virtue and Vice, The Oracles at Delphi no longer Given in Verse, Sayings of Spartan Women, Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?, Whether the Affections of the Soul are Worse than Those of the Body, Whether Vice is Sufficient to Cause Unhappiness. Fragments of lost works.
Poseidippos: - Milan papyrus
Sallust: -- Histories, The War with Jugurtha.
Sophokles: -- Antigone, Oidipos at Kolonos, King Oidipos
Tacitus: -- Agricola.

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