Greek love
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Victorian view of interaction between a Greek adolescent and an adult male
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Phidias and the Parthenon marbles
Greek Love is a modern expression intended as a euphemistic reference to male sexual relations as practised in Ancient Greece. The term is thus a synonym for pederasty, though it has also been loosely applied to homosexual behaviour in general.
Institutional Greek pederasty, which sought to formalize the erotic relationship of an adult male (erastes) with an adolescent boy (eromenos), appeared on the Greek mainland, possibly from Crete, as early as the 7th century B.C. Both in Sparta and Athens, the bonding of adult men and pubescent boys was an established cultural and social phenomenon, being associated with educational practice and the instilling of high civic and philosophical ideals. Apart from the literature - the Socratic dialogues of Plato, for example - there is the evidence of Greek vases where the intimate association of men with boys is represented in a range of emotive and expressive guises. The relationships, however, often transcended the physical or erotic, the adult being invested with responsibility for the moral and spiritual welfare of the boy: abuse or exploitation of the younger partner was not tolerated. The spiritual and educational aspects were the focus of what came to be known as 'Platonic love'.
Intergenerational relationships of the kind portrayed by the Greek Love ideal were increasingly disallowed within the Judaeo-Christian traditions of Western society, though there is more tolerance within Asian cultures until recent times. The Pashtun culture of modern-era Afghanistan is sometimes cited as a society where man-boy relationships - in many respects after the pattern of Greek Love - were practised openly in the pre-Taliban days[1].
There are many examples of distinguished literary figures throughout history who have revealed a personal perspective on pederastic love as a natural phenomenon viz: Goethe, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, André Gide, Thomas Mann, Stefan George, and Paul Goodman, to name but a few.
[edit] References
The following publications provide scholarship and reference material:
- A Problem in Greek Ethics by John Addington Symonds
- Greek Love by J. Z. Eglinton (Walter Breen's pseudonym) (Acolyte Press, New York, 1964)
- Sexual Experience between Men and Boys by Parker Rossman (Association Press, New York 1976)
- Greek Homosexuality by K J Dover(Harvard University Press 1978/89)
- Pedagogy and Pederasty in Archaic Greece by William Armstrong Percy III (University of Illinois Press 1996)
- The Greeks and Greek Love by James Davidson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007)
- Bryn Mawr Classical Review: Thomas K. Hubbard, on David M. Halperin's How to Do the History of Homosexuality
