Aeschines: Against Timarchus [346 BCE]Aeschine's speech Against Timarchus of 346 BCE is one of the most valuable sources we have about Athenian attitudes to homosexuality. Unlike Plato, whose views were highly distinctive and not necessarily shared by his fellow Athenians, Aeschines was appealing directly to the members of an Athenian jury, and so it may be expected that he was appealing to current popular opinion. It is by far the longest text addressing homosexual behavior we have from the Classical Greek world.
The circumstance of the speech are complex. Basically it was an attempt to save the lives of the Athenian envoys to Philip II of Macedon. Demosthenes had lead an attack on them, and, it seems, Timarchus, one of Demosthenes' allies, was to lead the prosecution. The beleaguered envoys, facing death, responded by prosecuting Timarchus, charging that under Athenian law he could hold not public office. The prosecution was successful. Timarchus was excluded from office [Dem. Xix. 284] (until he had the charges reversed three years later) and Demosthenes suffered a major setback in his resistance to Philip II.
For an extended discussion of this text and its implication see Kenneth J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, (London: Duckworth, 1978, or a later edition), Chapter II: "The Prosecution of Timarkhos"
[136] Now as for me,
I neither find fault with love that is honorable, nor do I say that those who surpass in beauty are prostitutes.
I do not deny that I myself have been a lover and am a lover to this day, nor do I deny that the jealousies and quarrels that commonly arise from the practice have happened in my case. As to the poems which they say I have composed, some I acknowledge, but as to others I deny that they are of the character that these people will impute to them, for they will tamper with them.
[137] The distinction which I draw is this:
to be in love with those who are beautiful and chaste is the experience of a kind-hearted and generous soul; but to hire for money and to indulge in licentiousness is the act of a man who is wanton and ill-bred. And whereas it is an honor to be the object of a pure love,
I declare that he who has played the prostitute by inducement of wages is disgraced. How
wide indeed is the distinction between these two acts and how great the difference, I will try to show you in what I shall next say.
[138] your fathers, when they were
laying down laws to regulate the habits of men and those acts that inevitably flow from human nature, forbade slaves to do those things which they thought ought to be done by free men. "A slave," says the law, "shall not take exercise or anoint himself in the wrestling-schools." It did not go on to add, "But the free man shall anoint himself and take exercise;" for when, seeing the good that comes from gymnastics, the lawgivers forbade slaves to take part, they thought that in prohibiting them they were by the same words inviting the free.
[139] again, the same
lawgiver said, "A slave shall not be the lover of a free boy nor follow after him, or else he shall receive fifty blows of the public lash." But the free man was not forbidden to love a boy, and associate with him, and follow after him, nor did the lawgiver think that harm came to the boy thereby, but rather that such a thing was a testimony to his chastity. But, I think, so long as the boy is not his own master and is as yet unable to discern who is a genuine friend, and who is not, the law teaches the lover self-control, and makes him defer the words of friendship till the other is older and has reached years of discretion; but to follow after the boy and to watch over him the lawgiver regarded as the best possible safeguard and protection for chastity.
[140] and so it was that those benefactors of the state,
Harmodius and Aristogeiton, men pre-eminent for their virtues, were so nurtured by that chaste and lawful love--or call it by some other name than love if you like--and so disciplined, that when we hear men praising what they did, we feel that words are inadequate to the eulogy of their deeds.
[141] But since you make mention of
Achilles and Patroclus, and of Homer and the other poets--as though the jury were men innocent of education, while you are people of a superior sort, who feel yourselves quite beyond common folks in learning--that you may know that we too have before now heard and learned a little something, we shall say a word about this also. For since they undertake to cite wise men, and to take refuge in sentiments expressed in poetic measures, look, fellow citizens, into the works of those who are confessedly good and helpful poets, and see how far apart they considered chaste
men, who love their like, and men who are wanton and overcome by forbidden lusts.
...
[155] But not to dwell too long on the poets,
I will recite to you the names of older and well-known men, and of youths and boys, some of whom have had many lovers because of their beauty, and some of whom, still in their prime, have lovers today, but not one of whom ever came under the same accusations as Timarchus. Again, I will tell over to you in contrast men who have prostituted themselves shamefully and notoriously, in order that by calling these to mind you may place Timarchus where he belongs.
...
[163] "Fellow citizens, I hired Timarchus to serve me as a prostitute according to the contract that is deposited with Demosthenes"--there is no reason why that statement might not be made!--"but he fails to carry out his engagement with me." And now, of course, he proceeds to describe this engagement to the jury, telling what it is that a man of that sort is expected to do. Thereupon will not the man be stoned who has hired an Athenian contrary to the laws, and will he not leave the court-room not only sentenced to pay his fine, but also convicted of wanton outrage?
...
168] For, under the impression that he is hurting me with reference to the accounting which I am about to render for my service on the embassy, he says that when the other day he himself was describing the boy Alexander,
telling how at a certain banquet of ours he played the cithara, reciting certain passages in which there were thrusts at another boy, and when he reported to the senate what he himself happened to know about the incident, I got angry at his jests at the expense of the boy, as though I were not merely a member of the embassy, but one of the boy's own family.
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall ... chines.asp 
