- 22 Apr 2007 03:25
#1183665
Homo-sexuality was banned in Ancient Greece by Law.
Spartan Laws:
Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians
2.13
[13] The customs instituted by Lycurgus were opposed to all of these. If someone, being himself an honest man, admired a boy's soul and tried to make of him an ideal friend without reproach and to associate with him, he approved, and believed in the excellence of this kind of training. But if it was clear that the attraction lay in the boy's outward beauty, he banned the connexion as an abomination; and thus he caused lovers to abstain from boys no less than parents abstain from sexual intercourse with their children and brothers and sisters with each other.
Xenophon, Symposium (The Banquet)
8.70
But the men of Lacedaemon, holding that "if a man but lay his hand upon the body and for lustful purpose, he shall thereby forfeit claim to what is beautiful and noble"--do, in the spirit of their creed, contrive to mould and fashion their "beloved ones" to such height of virtue,[71] that should these find themselves drawn up with foreigners, albeit no longer side by side with their own lovers,[72] conscience will make desertion of their present friends impossible. Self-respect constrains them: since the goddess whom the men of Lacedaemon worship is not "Shamelessness," but "Reverence.
Plutarch’s Lives Lycurgus
XVII 4
Their lovers and favorers, too, had a share in the young boy’s honor or disgrace; and there goes a story that one of them was fined by the magistrates, because the lad whom he loved cried out effeminately as he was fighting.
Plutarch’s Lives Lycurgus
XIV. 4
Nor was there any thing shameful in this nakedness of the young women; modesty attended them, and all wantonness was excluded. It taught them simplicity and a care for good health, and gave them some taste of higher feelings, admitted as they thus were to the field of noble action and glory. Hence it was natural for them to think and speak as Gorgo, for example, the wife of Leonidas, is said to have done, when some foreign lady, as it would seem, told her that the women of Lacedæmon were the only women of the world who could rule men; “With good reason,†she said, “for we are the only women who bring forth men.â€
Claudius Ailianus 'History' III.12
Spartan 'love' had nothing to do with shamefulness, if there ever was any such a suspicion since they would have brought shame upon Sparta. The result would be the exile of both of the loss of their lives..
Maximus of Tyre "Declamations' 20.e
'Any male Sparta that admires a Lakonian youth, admires him only as we would a very beautiful statue. For bodily pleasures of this type are brought upon them by Hubris and are forbidden..
A few Athenian Laws:
It is forbidden to whoever has given himself as prostitute or a girl or boy to be a council of the state
Aischines Against Timarch 5.2
Whoever Athenian gives his body to be had(sexually) by another man is forbidden to be elected as one of the nine lords and be a priest or lawyer or any place in public office or any other position internal or external by voting or chance and never to be sent as messenger never to speak before the parliament or the forum (Agora) or to enter in public temples or take part in public festivals or wear the festive ring of Demeter and enter the market.
Whoever condemned thus breaks the following prohibitions must be tied <<δησαντων αυτον>> and once the civilians have tied him to be delivered to the eleven to be slain before the day has passed
Aischines Against Timarch 52. 1
Contemporary Historians on the Myth of Homo Sexuality:
Adonis Georgiadis:
We learn as well that "Athens had the strictest laws pertaining to homosexuality of any democracy that has ever existed" (62). In non-democratic Sparta, as well as in democratic Crete and the rest of democratic Hellas, there were similar prohibitions with similar punishments as that meted out in Athens, and Georgiades gives us citations galore to prove his main thesis: "At no time, and in no place, was this practice considered normal behavior, or those engaged in it allowed to go unpunished" (passim). In order to remove any doubt whatsoever, he draws on such ancient luminaries as Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Diodorus Seculus, Euripides, Homer, Lysias, Plato, Plutarch and Xenophon, all of whom have left a written record as to what the prevailing norms were concerning this behavior. He also covers Greek vase painting, Mythology and Lesbianism, while not neglecting to reveal the truth about such much-maligned personalities from Hellas' glorious past as Achilles and Patroclus, Alcibiades and Socrates, Alexander the Great and Hephaestion, and the woman that the later Greeks regarded as "the greatest of the lyric poets," Sappho.
Greek vase painting has been a favorite source for the distorters of Greek culture and civilization. Georgiades points out that, of the tens of thousands of vases unearthed so far (the count for just the province of Attica, where Athens is located, is over 80,000), only 30 or so have an overtly homosexual theme; representing, in other words, just .01% of the total (127). When one compares this small percentage to what we see today on TV, in ads, books, magazines, the cinema, etc., one can just imagine what future generations will think of us. There is more, much more, but the purpose of this review is to stimulate the reader to order the book to see for himself just how Georgiades has managed to shed the light of truth on this important aspect of Greek history.
There is one more thing, however, that must be said. Georgiades has -- in a clear and easy-to-comprehend manner -- delineated the difference between what the ancients meant when they used the words "Erastis" and "Eromenos," and the way these words are translated and used in our time. This alone is worth the price of the book. Briefly, to the ancient Greeks, the term Erastis denoted a man who mentored, in a non-physical way, an Eromenos. The Eromenos was in all cases a beardless youth who looked up to and respected his mentor, and who had been commissioned by the boy's parents to take on the vital chore of preparing him to assume the roles of husband, father, soldier, and active citizen in the affairs of his community. Georgiades delves deeply into this relationship, and explains how and why these terms have come today to be confused with the "dominant" and "passive" partners in an homosexual union.
We can only be grateful that there are still young men around like Adonis Georgiades who want only to see that the truth is told about the country they love. This book is highly recommended, and though it has been published only in Greek to date, we sincerely hope to see an English language edition in the near future.
Adonis Georgiades, Debunking the Myth of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece (OmofilofilÃa StÃn Archéa Ellátha: O Mýthos Katareëi).
W.C. Lacey (1968), a brilliant Cambridge classical scholar wrote, in his comprehensive examination of family life of ancient Greece:
"We are sometimes told that the Greeks were fully bisexual, enjoying both homosexual and heterosexual intercourse, and that romantic love in Greece was associated with attachments to boys and not to girls. Whatever the truth of the latter statement, there can be no doubt that, while the Greeks had a deep admiration for the physical beauty of the young male, in Athens the practice of sodomy was strictly circumscribed by law.
Boys still at school were protected against sexual assaults by a law (said to go as far back as Dracon and Solon), and we hear of strict regulations about schools with this in mind; schoolboys always had a paidagogos escorting them; in art the paidagogos is always depicted as carrying a long and heavy stick; what was this for if not to protect their charges?"[62]
Crete:
Again, in Plato's Laws, in a scene laid in Crete, and on a walk from Cnosus to the grotto of Zeus on Mount Ida on a long midsummer's day, the conversation related here between three old men took place.
Of the three, one is an Athenian (Stranger), one (Clinias) a Cretan, and one (Megillus) a Spartan. The protagonist is the Athenian (Stanger), and nearly all the talking is done by him. ...
"The choice of their nationality, however, is significant, since the main body of the laws framed for the Model City [in their dialogue] is derived from the codes actually in force in Athens, Sparta, and Crete" (p. viii in the introduction. Emphasis added).
The three elderly men are discussing the ways that which is "honorable and shameful" shall be established. And [the ways] those who are "of depraved character, whom we describe as 'self-inferior,'... shall be hemmed in by three kinds of force and compelled to refrain from law-breaking."
Clinias: "What kinds?"
Athenian Stranger:
"That of godly fear, and that of love of honor, and that which is desirous of fair forms of soul, not of fair bodies. The things I now mention are, perhaps, like the visionary ideals in a story; yet in fair truth, if only they were realized, they would prove a great blessing in every State. Possibly, should God so grant, we might forcibly effect one of two things in this matter of sex-relations, -- either that no one should venture to touch any of the noble and freeborn save his own wedded wife, nor sow any unholy and bastard seed in fornication, nor any unnatural and barren seed in sodomy, -- or else we should entirely abolish love for males, and in regard to that for women, if we enact a law that any man who has intercourse with any women save those who have been brought to his house under the sanction of Heaven and holy marriage, whether purchased or otherwise acquired, if detected in such intercourse by any man or woman, shall be disqualified from any civic commendation, as being really an alien, -- probably such a law would be approved as right. So let this law -- Whether we ought to call it one law or two -- be laid down concerning sexual commerce and love affairs in general, as regards right and wrong conduct in our mutual intercourse due to these desires."
Megillus: "For my own part, Stranger, I should warmly welcome this law"
(VIII. 841 c - e).
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Sparta:
Plutarch wrote:
Affectionate regard for boys of good character was permissible, but embracing them was held to be disgraceful, on the ground that the affection was for the body and not for the mind. Any man against whom complaint was made of any disgraceful embracing was deprived of all civic rights for life. (Ancient Customs of the Spartans, 7. 237 - c.)
Macedonia:
About Alexander the Great, Plutarch wrote:
When ... the governor of the coast-lands of Asia Minor wrote to Alexander that there was in Ionia a youth, the like of whom for bloom and beauty did not exist, and inquired in his letter whether he should send the boy on to him, Alexander wrote bitterly in reply, "Vilest of men, what deed of this sort have you ever been privy to in my past that now you would flatter me with the offer of such pleasures?"
(On The Fortune of Alexander, 333 a - b.)
Thebes:
Here in Thebes we find the first seen "strying from normality" is Laios. Laios, known to most because of his son Oidipus. Laios was the first "kunaidos" according to Hellinic mythology/history.
Laios had abducted and raped Chrysippos, for this, Pelops cursed him to be killed by his own son.
So we find that the first ever recorded "pederast" was cursed and due to this curse, his whole family line was wiped out thanks to his "unatural activity".
We find that Oidipus married his mother (without knowing it) she kills herself and he blinds himself never to be heard of again.
The 4 children born by this unwanted marriage are also doomed, the brothers Eteocles and Polynices fall in battle killed by eachother's hand. Antigone is sentenced to death and Ismene asks for the same fate as her sister.
Justice is served for what their sick grandfather (Laios) had done.
When we know of such customs being passed down from generation to generation and plays written pertaining this exact myth. It is hard to believe that they would go against these traditions..
Last edited by noemon on 22 Apr 2007 03:40, edited 1 time in total.
EN EL ED EM ON
...take your common sense with you, and leave your prejudices behind...