Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Pederasty in ancient Greece" in English language version.
Since foreigners visiting or residing at Athens had no right in any case to hold office or address the assembly, they were free to prostitute themselves as much as they pleased, without incurring any penalty or any disability greater than that which their status as non-citizens already imposed on them. The second implication is that if an Athenian citizen made no secret of his prostitution, declared his unfitness if through someone's inadvertence he was elected to office, and abstained from embarking on any of the procedures forbidden to him by the law, he was safe from prosecution and punishment.
Indeed, Dover, like David Halperin, produces and stresses the evidence that visiting both male and female prostitutes was considered perfectly acceptable for a male citizen, and male prostitution is treated as a perfectly routine matter in texts of many kinds.
Where relations between two male citizens are concerned, we again find no general condemnation, but instead a complex system of caveats or reservations. We must begin by noting that these relations, even when they involve people close to one another in age, always involve an asymmetry of roles: the erastes or 'lover' is the older partner, who actively pursues and courts the younger, drawn by the sight of youthful male beauty. The eraste's is expected to be keenly interested in sexual contact; this interest, and the active, penetrative conduct that follows from it, is taken to be perfectly normal and natural. The younger partner, the eromenos or 'beloved', is likely to be pleased at being the object of admiration and interested in benefits such as friendship, education, and political advancement that a relationship with an erastes may bestow. The relationship may in this sense involve a real reciprocity of benefits and mutual affection based on it. But the cultural norm dictates that the eromenos is not to have a keen sexual interest in being penetrated, nor to develop habits of enjoying that sort of penetration; for that would be, in effect, to be turned into a woman, and one could expect that this would make him unfit to play, later in life, an active manly role. The important point to stress, in any case, is that the shame potentially at issue was not about the fact of same-sex copulation, but about the 'womanish' position of passivity and its potential appearance of being turned into a woman. No such shame, it would seem, attached even potentially to conduct that did not involve anal penetration, thus not to conduct involving intercrural intercourse, apparently the most common mode of male-male copulation
No such shame, it would seem, attached even potentially to conduct that did not involve anal penetration, thus not to conduct involving intercrural intercourse, apparently the most common mode of male–male copulation
We must now also address the issue of mutuality, which Finnis misuses to make the erastes–eromenos relationship look inherently exploitative. It is true that the eromenos is depicted typically as deriving no sexual pleasure from the conduct, although this may well be a cultural norm that conceals a more complicated reality. Dover aptly compares the situation of the eromenos to that of a young woman in Britain in the 1930s (Dover, Greek Homosexuality, supra note 48, at 88). He might have extended the comparison to take in this point: just as a proper Victorian woman was publicly expected not to enjoy sex, but frequently did in private, so too it is possible that the eromenos derived more pleasure than is publicly depicted. In his postscript to the second edition, Dover grants that there is some literary evidence that the erastes stimulated the penis of the eromenos, and that one vase shows an eromenos with an erection. What is more important is that it is perfectly clear that a successful relationship of this sort produced many advantages for the younger man—education, political advancement, friendship and that he frequently felt intense affection for the erastes as a result.
Nor is passionate arousal a mere stage in the soul's progress: it gives rise to an enduring relationship in which physical infatuation is deepened by conversation and the pursuit of shared spiritual goals and in which the 'mad' lover's state gives rise to generous and stable friendship, rather than to the dangers of which 'Lysias' warns. Most remarkable of all, it also gives rise to a reciprocation of sexual desire on the part of the younger man who, taking note of the unparalleled generosity of his lover, finds himself suffused with a stream of desire from 'the source of that stream that Zeus, in love with Ganymede, called "passionate longing".' The younger man conceives a longing and desire for his erastes, 'having a "reciprocal-love" [anteros] that is a replica of the other's love.' But he calls it, and thinks that it is, philia rather than eros. He has desire similar to the other's, albeit weaker, to see, to touch, to kiss, to lie with him. Recall that Greek homosexuality involves reciprocity conventionally of a sort, for the eromenos receives kindliness and education in return for his beauty. Here the language indicates the culturally unusual nature of the proposal, for the young man lacks a word for his own desire. Plato, thus, constructs a more thoroughgoing understanding of reciprocity, extending to the body's longing for beauty. The relationship is envisaged as a long-lasting one, in which the erastes and eromenos 'associate with touching in the gymnasia and in other places of association'. What is at issue is a complicated etymological play on the word himeros, or 'passionate longing'. Himeros has been etymologized as deriving from 'particles' (mere') that 'flow' (rhein) from the beloved to the lover. The dialogue is suffused with this sort of word play, much of it erotic. See id.; cf. Plato, Cratylus 419e (using similarly expressive and erotic language). Such reciprocity was not unknown before this-Socrates describes the experience as one that is likely to follow upon the young man's perception of his lover's generosity-but what is clear is that the cultural vocabulary lacks a description for it.
Indeed, Dover, like David Halperin, produces and stresses the evidence that visiting both male and female prostitutes was considered perfectly acceptable for a male citizen, and male prostitution is treated as a perfectly routine matter in texts of many kinds.
Where relations between two male citizens are concerned, we again find no general condemnation, but instead a complex system of caveats or reservations. We must begin by noting that these relations, even when they involve people close to one another in age, always involve an asymmetry of roles: the erastes or 'lover' is the older partner, who actively pursues and courts the younger, drawn by the sight of youthful male beauty. The eraste's is expected to be keenly interested in sexual contact; this interest, and the active, penetrative conduct that follows from it, is taken to be perfectly normal and natural. The younger partner, the eromenos or 'beloved', is likely to be pleased at being the object of admiration and interested in benefits such as friendship, education, and political advancement that a relationship with an erastes may bestow. The relationship may in this sense involve a real reciprocity of benefits and mutual affection based on it. But the cultural norm dictates that the eromenos is not to have a keen sexual interest in being penetrated, nor to develop habits of enjoying that sort of penetration; for that would be, in effect, to be turned into a woman, and one could expect that this would make him unfit to play, later in life, an active manly role. The important point to stress, in any case, is that the shame potentially at issue was not about the fact of same-sex copulation, but about the 'womanish' position of passivity and its potential appearance of being turned into a woman. No such shame, it would seem, attached even potentially to conduct that did not involve anal penetration, thus not to conduct involving intercrural intercourse, apparently the most common mode of male-male copulation
No such shame, it would seem, attached even potentially to conduct that did not involve anal penetration, thus not to conduct involving intercrural intercourse, apparently the most common mode of male–male copulation
We must now also address the issue of mutuality, which Finnis misuses to make the erastes–eromenos relationship look inherently exploitative. It is true that the eromenos is depicted typically as deriving no sexual pleasure from the conduct, although this may well be a cultural norm that conceals a more complicated reality. Dover aptly compares the situation of the eromenos to that of a young woman in Britain in the 1930s (Dover, Greek Homosexuality, supra note 48, at 88). He might have extended the comparison to take in this point: just as a proper Victorian woman was publicly expected not to enjoy sex, but frequently did in private, so too it is possible that the eromenos derived more pleasure than is publicly depicted. In his postscript to the second edition, Dover grants that there is some literary evidence that the erastes stimulated the penis of the eromenos, and that one vase shows an eromenos with an erection. What is more important is that it is perfectly clear that a successful relationship of this sort produced many advantages for the younger man—education, political advancement, friendship and that he frequently felt intense affection for the erastes as a result.
Nor is passionate arousal a mere stage in the soul's progress: it gives rise to an enduring relationship in which physical infatuation is deepened by conversation and the pursuit of shared spiritual goals and in which the 'mad' lover's state gives rise to generous and stable friendship, rather than to the dangers of which 'Lysias' warns. Most remarkable of all, it also gives rise to a reciprocation of sexual desire on the part of the younger man who, taking note of the unparalleled generosity of his lover, finds himself suffused with a stream of desire from 'the source of that stream that Zeus, in love with Ganymede, called "passionate longing".' The younger man conceives a longing and desire for his erastes, 'having a "reciprocal-love" [anteros] that is a replica of the other's love.' But he calls it, and thinks that it is, philia rather than eros. He has desire similar to the other's, albeit weaker, to see, to touch, to kiss, to lie with him. Recall that Greek homosexuality involves reciprocity conventionally of a sort, for the eromenos receives kindliness and education in return for his beauty. Here the language indicates the culturally unusual nature of the proposal, for the young man lacks a word for his own desire. Plato, thus, constructs a more thoroughgoing understanding of reciprocity, extending to the body's longing for beauty. The relationship is envisaged as a long-lasting one, in which the erastes and eromenos 'associate with touching in the gymnasia and in other places of association'. What is at issue is a complicated etymological play on the word himeros, or 'passionate longing'. Himeros has been etymologized as deriving from 'particles' (mere') that 'flow' (rhein) from the beloved to the lover. The dialogue is suffused with this sort of word play, much of it erotic. See id.; cf. Plato, Cratylus 419e (using similarly expressive and erotic language). Such reciprocity was not unknown before this-Socrates describes the experience as one that is likely to follow upon the young man's perception of his lover's generosity-but what is clear is that the cultural vocabulary lacks a description for it.
