Η παιδεραστία/ομοφυλοφιλία στην αρχαία Ελλάδα

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2.6: Xenophon, Anabasis 2.6.28

This work describes an expedition of 13,000 Greek mercenaries, in which Xenophon was a commander, assisting the younger Cyrus in a campaign to overthrow his older brother, the Persian king (401-399 BCE). The following extract describes an unprincipled Thessalian officer named Menon.

While still at the peak of youth and beauty, he obtained from Aristippus24 the command of his mercenaries, and he got on very intimate terms with the barbarian Ariaios, because Ariaios enjoyed the company of beautiful youths; he himself, although beardless, had as his boy love Tharupas, whose beard was already grown.


2.7: Xenophon, Anabasis 7.4.7-11

[7] There was a certain Episthenes from Olynthus, a boy-lover, who, seeing a beautiful boy, just at the beginning of adolescence, holding a light Thracian shield and about to be put to death, ran up to Xenophon and appealed to him to come to the rescue of a beautiful boy. [8] So Xenophon went to Seuthes 25 and pleaded with him not to kill the boy; he also told him about Episthenes' ways, how once he had put together a company thinking of nothing but whether they were beautiful, and how, fighting with them, he had shown himself a brave man. [9] But Seuthes replied by asking, "Episthenes, would you be willing to die in place of this boy?" So Episthenes stretched out his neck and said, "Strike, if the boy wishes and will be grateful to me." [10] Seuthes then asked the boy if he should strike Episthenes instead of him. The boy would not allow it but pleaded with him to kill neither of them. Then Episthenes, throwing his arms around the boy, said, "The time has come, Seuthes, for you to fight for the boy with me; for I won't give him up to you." [11] But Seuthes laughed the matter off.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ancienthom ... hp?view=20

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2.16: Ephorus of Cyme, Fr. 149 FGrH

Ephorus was a historian of the mid-fourth century BCE. Here he discusses the Cretan practice of ritualized pederastic abduction.

They have a unique custom with regard to love affairs. For they do not win their boy-friends through persuasion, but through abduction. The lover warns the boy's friends and family three or more days in advance that he is going to carry out the abduction. It is most shameful for them to hide the boy or not allow him to travel the appointed road, as this is viewed as a confession that the boy is unworthy of such a lover. When they meet him, if the abductor is a man equal to or surpassing the social standing, and all else, of the boy, they only fight and pursue him a bit, enough to fulfill what is customary, and after that they turn the boy over and enjoy the occasion. But if the abductor is unworthy, they prevent him from taking the boy. The pursuit ends when the boy is brought to the men's building39 of the one who seized him. They think most desirable not the boy distinguished by beauty, but the one distinguished by bravery and good behavior. After giving him presents, he takes the boy away to any place in the countryside he wishes, and those who were present at the abduction accompany them; after feasting and hunting together for two months — for it is not permitted to keep the boy away any longer than that — they come down to the city. The boy is set free upon receiving as gifts military equipment, an ox, a drinking cup40 — these are the traditional gifts — and many other things, at such expense that his friends also contribute because of the magnitude of his expenses. The boy sacrifices this ox to Zeus and holds a feast for those who came down with him; then he gives his opinion of his time with his lover, whether it has happened to please him or not, for the custom gives him this prerogative, in order that, if violence has been used against him in the course of the abduction, he have the power at this point to avenge himself and escape. For those who are good-looking and from illustrious families it is a disgrace not to get a lover, since it is assumed that they suffer this because of their manner of living. The "sidekicks" — this is their name for those who were abducted — receive special honors in the dances and the most honored places at the races, and they are permitted to outfit themselves differently from the others, in the equipment they have received from their lovers. And not only then, but also when they are grown, they wear an outfit distinct from those of other men, from which each of them will be recognized as kleinos ("famous"). For they call the boy-friend a kleinos, and they call the lover a philêtor ("lover"). These then are their customs regarding love affairs.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ancienthom ... hp?view=28

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2.18: Theopompus, Fr. 225a FGrH

Theopompus was a historian of the fourth century BCE, who wrote a history of contemporary Greece centering around the career of Philip of Macedon.

Indeed, if there was anyone among the Greeks or among the foreigners lewd44 or outrageous in character, all these were gathered at Macedon and were called "companions"45 at the court of Philip. For Philip generally neglected those who were well-behaved in their manners and who were mindful of their personal possessions, but he honored and advanced those men who spent extravagantly on their drinking and dice-games. For that very reason he not only arranged for these men to have these things, but he made them "athletes" of every injustice and abomination. With what shameful or terrible deed were they not associated? From what good or serious deed were they not dissociated? Some would shave themselves and make themselves smooth, although they continued to be men. Others would mount each other although they had beards. They caroused about with two or three companions, and they would furnish the same services to those companions. From which fact one could not rightly take them to be companions, but rather courtesans,46 and one could not call them soldiers, but rather brothel-whores. For being man-slayers by nature, they were man-sluts by habit. To put it simply, so I may cease from expatiating, and above all since so many concerns are inundating me, I consider these friends and so-called companions of Philip to have been such beasts as were neither the Centaurs who inhabited Pelion,47 nor the Laestrygonians who settled on the plain of Leontini, nor any other such creatures.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ancienthom ... hp?view=30

Dafuq Macedonians??

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2.19: Carystius of Pergamum, Fr. 10 FHG

Carystius, a historian writing near the end of the second century BCE, describes events in Athens at the end of the fourth century, after the fall of the democracy to Alexander the Great's successors.

After his brother Himeraeus had been killed by Antipater,49 Demetrius of Phalerum50 went to live with Nicanor;51 he had been accused of offering sacrifice to his brother’s divine manifestation.52 Then he became a friend of Cassander,53 and gained great power. At first his only lunch had been a bowl of vinegar with miscellaneous olives in it, and island cheese. Once he was rich he bought Moschion, the best cook and caterer of his time, and so numerous were the dishes prepared daily for his dinners that Moschion himself, who was given the left-overs, within two years had bought three tenement blocks and was abusing free-born boys and women of noble families. All the boys were jealous of Demetrius’ boy friend Diognis, and so keen were they to meet Demetrius that when he had strolled about The Tripods54 after lunch, all the most beautiful boys gathered there on the following days so as to be seen by him.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ancienthom ... hp?view=31

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2.20: Plutarch , Demetrius24.1-3

Plutarch here describes the Macedonian general Demetrius Poliorcetes, who took up residence in the Parthenon after liberating Athens from his rival Cassander in 304 BCE.

[1] Although it was fitting that he feel shame before Athena, if for no other reason than her being his elder sister (so he liked to hear her called),55 Demetrius stained the Acropolis with so much rape of free-born boys and citizen women that the place seemed pure in comparison when he mingled in wild abandon with whores like Chrysis, Lamia, Demo, and Anticyra.

[2] For the city's sake it is better not to report the other affairs clearly, but it is worthwhile not to pass over the courage and temperance of Democles. For he was still an adolescent boy, and it did not escape Demetrius' notice that his nickname, "Democles the fair," revealed his beauty. He was caught by none of the many men who tried, whether offering gifts or threats, and finally he avoided the gymnasium and wrestling schools altogether. Instead, he made a practice of going into an establishment where he could bathe privately. Demetrius waited for the right moment and entered when he was alone there. [3] When the boy recognized that he was quite alone and under the threat of force, he took the lid off the cauldron of boiling water for the bath and leaped into it, thereby killing himself and suffering an unworthy death, but one that he thought worthy of his fatherland and beauty.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ancienthom ... hp?view=32

Bιαστής αγοριών ο Δημήτριος ο Πολιορκητής

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2.21: Athenaeus 13.601A-B, 601E-605D

Athenaeus, an author of the late second century CE, wrote a lengthy symposiastic work which assembles anecdotes and quotations from a variety of earlier sources. This section is part of a lengthy speech by Myrtilus, discussing famous boy lovers.

[601] Stesichorus,56 another man of strong passions, composed the particular kind of lyrics that were called "boy songs" and "boy love." No one used to despise those who had a passionate nature: love affairs were such an open and everyday matter that the great poet Aeschylus, and Sophocles too, put sexual themes on the stage in their tragedies, Aeschylus showing Achilles’ love for Patroclus, Sophocles love of the boys in Niobe (which is why some people call this play Paiderastria) –- and their audiences enjoyed such themes.57

. . . And many men, overall, prefer love with boys to love with females. In the very cities of Greece that have the best laws by comparison with others, this is the mode of behavior that is fashionable. The Cretans, as I told you, and the Chalcidians of Euboea, are both especially fond of love with boys. Notice that Echemenes in Cretan Studies says that it was not Zeus but Minos who stole Ganymede; while those Chalcidians, for their part, say that it was Zeus, but that Ganymede was stolen from their very own territory, and they can show you the place: they call it "The Stealing," and lots of myrtles grow there. Minos even gave up his enmity with the Athenians (though it had arisen from the death of his own son) once he fell in love with Theseus;58 he gave Theseus his daughter Phaedra to marry, so says Zenis or Zeneus of Chios in his book about Chios.

[602] Hieronymus the Aristotelian says that love with boys was fashionable because several tyrannies had been overturned by young men in their prime, joined together as comrades in mutual sympathy. In his boy-friend’s presence, a lover would go through any suffering rather than have the boy think him a coward. This was demonstrated in practice by the Sacred Band, formed by Epaminondas at Thebes;59 by the Peisistratid assassination, the work of Harmodius and Aristogeiton; and at Acragas in Sicily by the story of Chariton and Melanippus. Melanippus was the boy-friend, so says Heracleides of Pontus 60 in On Love Affairs; the two were discovered to be plotting against Phalaris61 and were tortured to force them to name their accomplices. Not only did they refuse to speak: they made Phalaris so sorry for their sufferings that he released them with fulsome commendation. Apollo was pleased at this and consequently favoured Phalaris by postponing his death, stating this in his response to the persons who asked the Pythian oracle how they were to go about attacking Phalaris. Apollo also pronounced an oracle about Chariton and those who were with him, giving it the form of a pentameter followed by a hexameter (the same pattern that Dionysius of Athens, called "the Bronze," was afterwards to employ in his Elegies). This is the oracle:

Blessed were Chariton and Melanippus:
They showed mortals the way to a friendship that was divine.

The story about Cratinus of Athens is famous, too. He was a beautiful youngster at the time when Epimenides had to purify Athens of some ancient miasma63 and was to do so by means of human blood; whereupon he (Cratinus) volunteered himself on behalf of his homeland, so Neanthes of Cyzicus tells us in On Initiations II. After him his lover Aristodemus also accepted death, and thus the pollution was cleansed. Because of affairs like these, the tyrants, under threat from such conspiracies, made love affairs with boys totally illegal and put a stop to them wherever they were found. Some even burned and demolished the gymnasia, regarding them as siege-works that threatened their own fortresses: Polycrates, tyrant of the Samians, did precisely this.

Among the citizens of Sparta – so says Hagnon the Platonist – it is customary for men to keep company with64 unmarried girls in the same way that they do with boys elsewhere.

Now it was the lawgiver Solon who said:

. . . sighing for thighs and for sweet lips. (O Σόλων με τους ντεμέκ αντι-παιδεραστικούς νόμους ήταν αγοροκυνηγός )

Aeschylus and Sophocles were likewise explicit. In The Myrmidons Aeschylus said:
You abjured the holy sacrament of the thighs!
You spurned a profusion of kisses! 65
Sophocles in Women of Colchis said of Ganymede that he
. . . lit the fire of tyrant Zeus with his thighs.

-- And, yes, I know Polemon the Traveller66 says in Refutations of Neanthes that the story of Cratinus and Aristodemus is all made up. As for you, Cynulcus,67 you may well think these tales are fiction, but you use them as if they were true. Everything that there is in these poems about the love of boys you yourself do quietly at home! -- But the people who first introduced pederasty to Greece were the Cretans, so Timaeus68 tells us. Others say that Laius was the first pederast: he was Pelops’ guest, fell in love with Pelops’ son Chrysippus, [603] kidnapped the boy, put him in his chariot and escaped to Thebes; but Praxilla of Sicyon69 says that Chrysippus’ kidnapper was Zeus.
Among other peoples the Celts, in spite of the fact that their women are very beautiful, prefer boys as sexual partners. There are some of them who will regularly go to bed – on those animal skins of theirs – with a pair of lovers.70 The Persians also have sex with boys, but they learnt it from the Greeks, Herodotus says.71
King Alexander, too, was quite excessively keen on boys: according to Dicaearchus 72 in On the Sacrifice at Troy, he was so taken with the eunuch Bagoas that under the eyes of the whole theater he bent over to give him a kiss, and when the audience shouted and applauded, he very willingly bent over and kissed him again. Charon of Chalcis – so says Carystius in Historical Notes – had a beautiful boy who was devoted to him. Alexander remarked on his beauty during a drinking bout hosted by Craterus. Charon told his boy to give Alexander a kiss. "No!" said the king. "That would pain you more than it would please me." Although he was a passionate man, Alexander was also self-controlled as regards decency and propriety: when he had captured Dareius’ daughters and wife (who was quite admirably beautiful), not only did he not have sex with them, he arranged that they should not even learn that they were captives, giving the order that they should continue to be attended just as if Dareius still ruled. That was why Dareius, when he learned of this, stretched out his hands to the Sun in prayer that either he or Alexander should be king.

Rhadamanthys the Just, says Ibycus, had Talos as his lover.73 Diotimus says in the Heracleia that Heracles had made Eurystheus74 his boy friend and that was why he performed his Labours. There is a myth that Agamemnon had Argynnus as his lover, having seen him swimming in the Cephisus, and then he drowned in it (he bathed in it often, evidently) and Agamemnon buried him and raised a shrine there to Aphrodite Argynnis. Licymnius of Chios says in his Dithyrambs that Argynnus’s lover was Hymenaeus. King Antigonus76 was lover of the citharode Aristocles, on whom Antigonus of Carystus, in the Life of Zeno, writes as follows:
King Antigonus used to go serenading with Zeno. He once emerged from a drinking bout at dawn, hurried to Zeno’s and urged him to join in serenading the citharode Aristocles, whom the king loved passionately.

Sophocles was as much a lover of young boys as Euripides was a lover of women. The poet Ion of Chios77 writes thus in his book Encounters.

The poet Sophocles I met at Chios when, as general, he was bound for Lesbos78: a playful man, when in wine, and clever. Hermesileus, his own friend and the consular representative of Athens, was hosting him, when there beside the fire, ready to pour out his wine, was a boy . . .79 of course, and he said, "Do you want me to like my wine?," and the boy said yes. "Then hand me the cup slowly, and take it from me slowly." The boy was now blushing more and more, and Sophocles said to his neighbor, "Phrynichus put it so beautifully! [604] 'Shines on his crimson cheeks the light of love.'"80 Whereupon the other, an Eretrian schoolmaster or else an Erythraean, replied, "Yes, you are learned in poetry, Sophocles, but all the same Phrynichus was wrong to call a beautiful boy’s cheeks crimson. If the painter smeared this boy’s cheeks with crimson, he would no longer seem beautiful. It’s quite wrong to compare beauty with what is not beautiful." Sophocles laughed at this Eretrian: "Don’t you like that line of Simonides, either, sir? 'From crimson lips the virgin’s voice was raised' – yet the Greeks all think it’s quite right! or the poet who spoke of 'golden-haired Apollo,'81 although if a painter painted Apollo’s hair gold and not black, so much the worse for the painting; or the poet of rosy-fingered82, because if you dip your fingers into rose-coloured paint you have the hands of a crimson-dyer, not those of a beautiful woman." They laughed, and the Eretrian was put out of countenance by this retort; Sophocles took up his conversation with the boy again. He was trying to get a bit of straw out of the wine-cup with his little finger. "Do you see the bit of straw?," asked Sophocles, and the boy said he saw it. "Don’t dip your finger in, then," he said. "Just blow it away instead." Then, as the boy’s face approached the cup, Sophocles brought the cup nearer to his own lips, so that their two heads would be closer; and when they were very close, he put his arm around him and kissed him. There was applause, with laughter and shouts, at how well he had managed the boy, and Sophocles said, "I am practising strategy, gentlemen. Pericles said that I knew how to make poetry, but not how to be a strategist. This stratagem fell out 'just right' for me, didn’t it?"83 His conversation over wine, and his behavior in daily life, were full of such clever turns; in politics, though, he was no more wise and no more effective than any other respectable Athenian.

Hieronymus of Rhodes84, in Historical Notes, says that Sophocles induced a good-looking boy to come outside the city walls to have sex with him:

This boy laid his own cloak on the ground under them, and they wrapped themselves in Sophocles’ cape. After the act the boy snatched Sophocles’ cape and went off leaving Sophocles his own boyish cloak. The incident was widely reported. Euripides heard of it and made a joke out of it, saying that he had had that boy too and it did not cost him anything; Sophocles had let himself go and had paid with ridicule. When Sophocles heard that, he composed an epigram against Euripides in the following sense, alluding to the story of the North Wind and the Sun, and at the same time satirising Euripides’ adulteries: It was the Sun, and not a boy, whose heat stripped me naked;

As for you, Euripides, when you were kissing someone else’s wife
The North Wind screwed you. You are unwise, you who sow
In another’s field, to accuse Eros of being a snatch-thief.

Theopompus in his On the Wealth Pillaged From Delphi says [605] that Asopichus, the boy friend of Epaminondas,85 had the trophy at Leuctra depicted on his shield, that he came through astonishing perils, and that the shield had been laid in the Stoa at Delphi. In the same essay Theopompus says that Phayllus, tyrant of the Phocians, was a woman-lover and Onomarchus 86 a boy-lover: that when the son of Pythodorus of Sicyon, a beautiful boy, came to Delphi to cut off his long hair, 87 Onomarchus had sex with him and gave him four gold strigils,88 which were temple offerings of the people of Sybaris; and that Phayllus gave Deiniades’ flute-girl, Bromias, a silver karkhesion89 belonging to the Phocians and a gold ivy-wreath belonging to the Peparethians. Theopompus says:

This same girl was going to play the flute at the Pythia, but the mob put a stop to it. To Physcidas, son of Lycolas of Tricholeum, a beautiful boy, Onomarchus gave a gold bay wreath, a temple offering of the Ephesians; this same boy, taken to Philip’s court by his father and prostituted there, was sent away without any presents. To Damippus, a beautiful boy, son of Epilycus of Amphipolis, Onomarchus gave a temple offering dedicated by Pleisthenes. To Pharsalia, the Thessalian dancing-girl, Philomelus gave a gold bay wreath, a temple offering of the Lampsacenes. This same girl Pharsalia was killed in Metapontium by the fortune-tellers in the market place, because of a voice that came out of the bronze bay-tree that the Metapontines had set up when Aristeas of Proconnesus visited them and said that he had come from the people beyond the North Wind. As soon as they saw her entering the market place the fortune-tellers became mad, and tore her to pieces. When the reason for this was afterwards investigated, it was determined that her death was due to the wreath, the property of a god.90
And so, you philosophers who disgrace the goddess Aphrodite by using her91 unnaturally, take care that you are not destroyed in the same way. Clearchus92 tells us:

"Boys are beautiful only during the period when they resemble a woman," the courtesan Glycera used to say.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ancienthom ... hp?view=33

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2.27: Selected Inscriptions on Athenian Vases = Athenian Agora 21 C

Many drinking vessels of Athenian manufacture were inscribed with boys' names and the epithet "beautiful" or the generic phrase "the boy is beautiful." Some of the more interesting variants are assembled here, ranging in date from the early seventh century to the late fifth.

[1] (second quarter of 7th century) The boy is abominable. 99

[5] (late 6th century) Titas, the Olympic victor, is anal.100

[7] (late 6th-early 5th century) Menecrates is beautiful and dear to Lysicles.

[8] (early 5th century) Hegestratus had intercourse with me.

[18] (second quarter of 5th century) Sosias is anal. So says the one who wrote this.

[23] (second quarter of 5th century) Sydromachus of the gaping anus submitted. (Πολύ μπροστά ο Συνδρόμαχος )

[26] (third quarter of 5th century) Aristomenes is anal.

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ancienthom ... hp?view=35

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2.22: Selected Graffiti from Thera = IG 12.3.537-550

Some of these inscriptions may be as early as the seventh century BCE. They were found on rocks in the vicinity of a temple of Apollo and gymnasium, which may, however, postdate the graffiti.


[537a] By Delphinius Apollo, here Crimon penetrated the son of Bathycles, brother of . . .

[538b] Here Crimon penetrated Amotion.

[540(I)] Lacydidas is good.

[540(II)] Eumelus is the best dancer.

[540(III)] Crimon first delighted Simias with his lascivious dance.

[542] . . . loves Phanocles.

[543] Barbax both dances well and gave . . .

[546] Telecrates is a good dancer.

[547] Pykimedes is the best of the Scamotidae.93

[549] I, . . ., am beautiful in the eyes of all.

[550] In the presence of Dyman, son of Hermeias, . . . always offered . . .

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ancienthom ... hp?view=34

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Plutarch, Alexander, Chapter 67

67. Accordingly, after refreshing his forces here, he set out and marched for seven days through Carmania in a revelling rout. He himself was conveyed slowly along by eight horses, while he feasted day and night continuously with his companions on a dais built upon a lofty and conspicuous scaffolding of oblong shape; and waggons without number followed, some with purple and embroidered canopies, others protected from the sun by boughs of trees which were kept fresh and green, conveying the rest of his friends and commanders, who were all garlanded and drinking.
[2] Not a shield was to be seen, not a helmet, not a spear, but along the whole march with cups and drinking-horns and flagons the soldiers kept dipping wine from huge casks and mixing-bowls and pledging one another, some as they marched along, others lying down; while pipes and flutes, stringed instruments and song, and revelling cries of women, filled every place with abundant music.
[3] Then, upon this disordered and straggling procession there followed also the sports of bacchanalian license, as though Bacchus himself were present and conducting the revel. 1 Moreover, when he came to the royal palace of Gedrosia, he once more gave his army time for rest and held high festival.
[4] We are told, too, that he was once viewing some contests in singing and dancing, being well heated with wine, and that his favourite, Bagoas, won the prize for song and dance, and then, all in his festal array, passed through the theatre and took his seat by Alexander's side; at sight of which the Macedonians clapped their hands and loudly bade the king kiss the victor, until at last he threw his arms about him and kissed him tenderly.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... 007,047:67

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Plutarch, The Parallel Lives

(Vol. I)

1 1 Didymus the grammarian, in his reply to Asclepiades on Solon's tables of law, mentions a remark of one Philocles, in which it is stated that Solon's father was Euphorion, contrary to the opinion of all others who have written about Solon. For they all unite in saying that he was a son of Execestides, a man of moderate wealth and influence in the city, but a member of its foremost family, being descended from Codrus. 2 Solon's mother, according to Heracleides Ponticus, was a cousin of the mother of Peisistratus. And the two men were at first great friends, largely because of their kinship, 79 and largely because of the youthful beauty of Peisistratus, with whom, as some say, Solon was passionately in love. And this may be the reason why, in later years, when they were at variance about matters of state, their enmity did not bring with it any harsh or savage feelings, but their former amenities lingered in their spirits, and preserved there,

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/r ... olon*.html

Book i Elegies

Plutarch Amatorius

“Protegenes was willing and eager to say still more, but Daphnaeus stopped him, exclaiming ‘I am very glad you mentioned Solon; he shall be our criterion of the “erotic” man’ 43:

- till in the flower of youth he love a lad with the desire of things and sweet lips;

And that surely is why Solon wrote what I have just quoted when he was full of youth and vigour, as Plato says, and when he was old the following lines:

- Dear to me now are the works of the Cyprus-born and of Dionysus and of the Muses, works which make good cheer for man,

as though after the storm and stress of less worthy loves he had found haven for his life in a calm of marriage and philosophy.44”

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... ection%3D2

Ο Σόλων που έγραφε νόμους ντεμέκ γενικά κατά της ομοφυλοφιλίας , και όχι απλά κατά της εκπόρνευσης και των βιασμών, δλδ νόμους ρύθμισης της παιδεραστίας, ήταν παιδέρας.