07-13-2008, 04:10 AM
I wouldn't deny that homosexuality existed in Sparta or Athens or anywhere else, but it is worth noting that, for instance, if homosexuality were the "norm" that some modern historians make it (wish it?) then Aristophanes's Lysistrata (Λυσιστράτη) (411 BC) would not have been funny.
Lysistrata is a comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta refuse to have sex with their husbands until they make peace. The play was written in the darkest days of the 30 Year's War and if Greek men, or even men of the Hoplite Class in either state had been "mostly" or even "some" homosexual, the point of the play would vanish--it wouldn't have been funny then.
I'd further argue that Plutarch and Polybius are at the root of a great many tales of pederasty and the like. Look--let's face it, any system that allows the mature (men or women) special powers and privileges over the immature (men or women) usually results in sexual abuse. But... it seems to me that it suited later, mostly Roman, commentators to push the effeminacy of Greece. Most hoplites were farmers and small husbandmen or craftsmen who lived very plain, almost austere lives and didn't have time for orgies of any kind.
That said, I've also read a good deal of Greek poetry, and you can take Sappho (or Alcaeus, for that matter) in a number of different ways--probably just as they were meant to be.
But most of all, I'd recommend that anyone who is interested in this fraught and difficult subject read "Courtesans and Fishcakes," not because the author has all the answers, but because he argues that 5th C. Greeks weren't all wound up by sex--that's our problem, he says, and I think he has a point.
Lysistrata is a comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta refuse to have sex with their husbands until they make peace. The play was written in the darkest days of the 30 Year's War and if Greek men, or even men of the Hoplite Class in either state had been "mostly" or even "some" homosexual, the point of the play would vanish--it wouldn't have been funny then.
I'd further argue that Plutarch and Polybius are at the root of a great many tales of pederasty and the like. Look--let's face it, any system that allows the mature (men or women) special powers and privileges over the immature (men or women) usually results in sexual abuse. But... it seems to me that it suited later, mostly Roman, commentators to push the effeminacy of Greece. Most hoplites were farmers and small husbandmen or craftsmen who lived very plain, almost austere lives and didn't have time for orgies of any kind.
That said, I've also read a good deal of Greek poetry, and you can take Sappho (or Alcaeus, for that matter) in a number of different ways--probably just as they were meant to be.
But most of all, I'd recommend that anyone who is interested in this fraught and difficult subject read "Courtesans and Fishcakes," not because the author has all the answers, but because he argues that 5th C. Greeks weren't all wound up by sex--that's our problem, he says, and I think he has a point.
Qui plus fait, miex vault.
