Whenever I read the dialogues by Plato am always amazed at how sex with young boys seemed accepted in those times. Symposium is one good dialogue that talks of this detail. Men were not too interested in young girls it seems, just boys and other men. Wives were more for the business end of procreation. Any thoughts?
V
It’s definitely shocking that it was not only accepted, but apparently the norm.
It seemed a normal part of the boys process of growing up to become a man. If I remember correctly, once reaching 18 he is considered a man and finds his own boy. I think actual anal sex was supposedly rare though.
Even Heracles (Hercules), in the story of his twelve labors, went about accomplishing his tasks with the company of a “pederastic” young male. I read in other stories it mentions that the number of his boys were uncountable.
I am guessing the “activities” were more of a means to feel powerful, and dominant, than out of lust for the young male’s body. I suppose it was considered a fair exchange: the older male got to feel dominant and powerful through the relationship, while the young man was educated about the world, and how to become powerful himself.
I suppose whether or not you call them bisexuals/homosexuals depends on how you define a homosexual (based on one’s acts, or one’s actual thoughts/feeling towards the same sex), and I’m not sure about whether we can say they were peodiles either; I am sure different men had different kinds of pleasures and/or disgusts while going through the motions, as I am sure is the case for people we call pedophiles.
Noble/educated men were more interested in love-relations than in sexual relations. A noble older man and a noble younger man (not a boy; these are not children we’re talking about) could have a love relation, which was essentially intellectual; there was no penetration in these relationships - that was something you did with women and slaves (who were not fit to have intellectual relations with). In the Symposium, Alcibiades is presented as the beloved of Socrates, even though the tables are turnt by the latter. Alcibiades was hardly a “boy” (he had already been on that military campaign he talks about).
Actually, they definately were boys.
Certainly younger than 18. Mostly ~12-16, is the estimate by most scholars.
And I’m not too sure how much of a norm it could have been. An aristocratic norm, certainly, but Alexander’s comments about the Sacred Band, “Let no man say these men did something wrong” does strongly imply that there were people who did think that they had done something wrong.
Additionally, the courtship rituals between the Pitchers and the Catchers was rather involved and really is only something that could be afforded by the Schola-class.
Okay, this is personal opinion, so you can nuke me on this, but…
Being a big fan of Plato’s Symposium, I initially thought, “Where boy, read girl.” Love of women’s bodies could lead one to higher forms of beauty and love as Plato says for boys. But – tell me if i’m off – is a non-liberated woman in any state to lead minds from the physical loves to the intellectual loves? I have wondered this for years and would like your opinion.
Plato’s Symposium is not about the love of boys, but about the love of young men. That these young men may have been as young as twelve does not mean that they were less manly than our boys of 18. The Greeks’ love of these “boys” was not pedophilia in the sense we use it today (as “sexual attraction to children”). There is a difference between children and adolescents. Our pedophilia is a sick thing, their pedophilia was not.
Why? Justify that statement.
The Greeks thought of boys as something woman-like.
So the progression was roughly:
Young Girls (which in ancient Greek, like modern German, took the neutral gender).
Then:
Boys and Women
Then:
Men.
Boys were thought of as being very woman-like. That’s one of the reasons why obligate homosexuality was viewed as so strange – because if it happened after 18, then it is very strange. At least, in terms of catching.
So there was also a very strict formula concerning this.
But I don’t see why it is terribly different from modern pedophilia, aside from being a cultural practice as opposed to a cultural deviation.
Because children haven’t yet reached sexual maturity, so it is senseless to feel sexually attracted to them.
Where did you get that idea? Anyway, the difference between boys and women is obviously that boys have potential.
What do you mean by “catching”?
Because back then, children weren’t seen as magically reaching adulthood at a certain age (18 or 21 in most modern Western countries). Modern pedophilia is the romantic love for/sexual attraction to children, i.e., to human beings who have not yet reached sexual maturity (cannot reproduce); back then, pedophilia was the love of mature men (also in the intellectual sense) for adolescent men. It was something natural. Those men did not have a disorder; our pedophiles do. Of course, in classical antiquity there were also pedophiles in our modern sense (Emperor Tiberius comes to mind).
Given that the relationship was always between an older man and a much younger man . . .
I don’t see why it isn’t pedophilia.
Though I do agree about the distinction between adult and child being somewhat less clear, but given that the cutoff between pitching and catching (and which was acceptable) was 18, they clearly did have a notion that divided adolescence from adulthood. Especially since the pitcher was supposed to guide the catcher in terms of what it meant to be a man and to help them develop into maturity.
As for where I get my ideas, mostly from Prof. McInerney at Univ. of Penn. via the Teaching Company. But I’ve read other books on the subject which confirm this. I mean, come on, our word ‘pederastry’ comes from these relationships!
Here, wiki confirms what I’ve been saying:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_ … ent_Greece
I mean, if nothing else, look at the art. The boys never had beards. And shaving is pretty damned hard wth bronze tools!
Not necessarily much younger.
Because “pedophilia” is literally the “love of children”. And even a much younger man need not be a child.
Pitching and catching? What are you talking about! Is this about that stupid metaphor about “getting to first base” and the like? And what is “first base” to you, Xunzian: is it kissing or oral sex?
Where do you get the idea that 18 was the magic line between being an eromenos and an erastes? And do you consider an adolescent to be a child? Isn’t that somewhat humiliating?
Of course, you might say that the adolescent is a child compared to the adult. But that still doesn’t mean that the adult in question was a pedophile in the modern sense for having a love relation with the adolescent.
Yes, and does that mean the same now as it did then? I think not.
Well, I guess pederasty was begun at the youngest age at which a boy (child) reached adolescence (which includes his growing a beard). I see hints of childhood on these pictures, but not actual children. And just look at some of the bodies of these “boys”.
By the way, how old do you think Alcibiades was here - too young to be growing a beard?
18 was the age that was normatively recognized, at least such was suggested by the lectures that I listened to.
And I think that much of this, involve applying modern conceptions of pedophilia (younger than 18) onto the greek culture. While I agree that this is anachronistic . . .
A man of 20 dating a man of 12 would be considered pretty perverted by modern standards, but would have been quite normal by greek ones. Given the investment in courting, and the idea of shaping the young man, such a relationship would have been more encouraged than a 16 year old and a 20 year old. A 16 year old and a 30-odd year old, yeah, that makes sense. Remember, a major purpose of the relationship was to teach these boys how to be men.
And remember, greek men always grew beards until Alexander changed the fashion. So, if you were a man, you had a beard. If you weren’t a boy, you didn’t. While an idealized form of male beauty would be beardless . . . what does that prove, other than that boyish bodies were idealized?
Now, whether this is a bad thing, that is another matter. But to condemn pedophilia in modern times but to consider the pedophilia of greek times to be acceptable is a, err, difficult position, wouldn’t you agree?
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I, for one, think these Greek standards were much more sensible than the modern ones are.
Which is a fine and consistant position to take.
What isn’t consistant is to try and reconsile the Greek model with the modern and have both coming out being compatible.
Cezar,
Plato condemned this style of relationship, especially anal sex. Your point?
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Your response did not at all respond to my post. 
My text may have said “boy” and not “young man”. I suspect the original was “youth” (m.). But you should have known what I was talking about.
For once, I’m disappointied in you.
(EDIT: It has also been my understanding that perhaps the greek men loved male youths because they admired strength and virtue – things of which domestic women may not have been seen as examples. Still not something I endorse – I prefer the company of virtuous women.)
What do you mean by “also”?
Julius Caesar? I thought it were Tiberius and Caligula who loved little boys?
I guess my major problem with it somewhat mirrors Cezar’s, as I feel it sets up an dangerous dynamic in Greek relationships that we see very much played out in how Greeks dealt with women.
While I acknowledge and endorse that any relationship is necessarily hierarchical, I think that establishing a relationship that is so very, very, very unbalanced as the ideal is dangerous. There is no way that a boy could ever hold the upper hand in such a relationship, in almost any way at all.
Then look at the Greek view of women (think Semonides here). I think that one naturally flows from the other.
But the boy (or indeed, youth) did hold the upper hand: he was the beloved, whereas the older man was his lover. However, what you probably mean is shown in Plato’s Symposium, where Alcibiades becomes the lover of Socrates instead of vice versa. We may see here what the youth got out of such a relationship: whereas the older man was the lover of the youth’s physical beauty, the youth was the lover of the older man’s intellectual beauty (“wisdom”).
Women, for these Greeks, neither had physical nor intellectual beauty, as they were only means to the production of physically beautiful males.
That relationship was considered to be odd, you know that right? It was a condemnation.
Also, I think that saying that the boy had the upper hand is naive in the extreme. Putting someone on a pedistal and treating them like a beloved object is one of the most unbalanced forms of relationships.
If you disagree with that, I sincerely recommend that you put down the laptop and head out into the real world for a while and see how these things play out in practice rather than in theory.
