Spartan pederasty?

[PMBardunias]

I'd argue the Spartan thingo though: there is ample evidence such relationshipscontinued into adulthood. Agesilaos is one whose "passions" are on his chlamys.

There is no evidence for adult Spartan men engaging in intercourse with each other. The Erastes/eromenos bond remained important later in life, and the fact that it does is evidence that it was far more than sexual bond. One of my favorite instances of twisting evidence to match preconceptions or aggenda is the citing of a tale about a Spartan warrior who died fighting over his Erastes rather than let his body be taken. As if there is no bond between men that is worth dying over unless it involves genital insertion! And then another where Agiselaos' son would not seek preference for a friend with out getting sex in return.

That Agiselaos spends much of his time fighting the urge to play with persian youths is unreliable evidence for what happened at home. We need look no further than the modern example of the rape of Nanking to see how individuals reared in a tightly controlled culture behave when beyond the strictures of that society.

I also enjoy the fact that scholars have taken the fact that anal intercourse was known colloquially ta Athens as "Laconian style" as evidence for homosexuality. Perhaps they are unaware than you can do this with a woman too! In a culture where women marry at a comparatively late age, economic pressures push to small family size, and birth control options are limited, this becomes an important option. It is today for girls in many societies for the same reason. Some also believe that the notion of women/girl relationships at sparta is a misunderstanding and it is in fact men who could enter into an erastes-type relationship with unmarried girls.

We have more evidence for Spartan sexuality from primary sources than we do for the mechanics of hoplite combat, yet so often this is ignored and anectdotes or analogies are strung together in their place. I'll let the ancients speak:

Xenophon is quite clear, though so often dismissed, is clear when he
states (Constitution of the Lakedaimonians.2.1):

[12] I think I ought to say something also about intimacy with boys,
since this matter also has a bearing on education. In other Greek
states, for instance among the Boeotians, man and boy live together,
like married people; elsewhere, among the Eleians, for example,
consent is won by means of favours. Some, on the other hand, entirely
forbid suitors to talk with boys. [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. [14] I am
not surprised, however, that people refuse to believe this. For in
many states the laws are not opposed to the indulgence of these
appetites.

Aristotle specifically addresses the homoeroticism of military
cultures and tells us Sparta is different from those who allow opened
homosexuality (and he is no apologist for Sparta as has been claimed
for Xenophon). http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/aristotle-
sparta.html

"the legislator wanted to make the whole state hardy and temperate,
and he has carried out his intention in the case of the men, but he
has neglected the women, who live in every sort of intemperance and
luxury. The consequence is that in such a state wealth is too highly
valued, especially if the citizens fall under the dominion of their
wives, after the manner of most warlike races, except the Celts and a
few others who openly approve of male loves. The old mythologer would
seem to have been right in uniting Ares and Aphrodite, for all
warlike races are prone to the love either of men or of women. This
was exemplified among the Spartans in the days of their greatness;
many things were managed by their women."

You really have to twist these quotes, or dismiss them, to render the meaning unclear. Saddly, true homosexuals in the modern sense of adult men involved in a romantic relationships were not free at all in ancient Greece to live openly that way. It is a shame that modern groups point to the greater acceptance of the physical use of men as a sexual outlet, but only if you were the "active" role, in the ancient world to bolster support for an emotional connection. Especially since the emotional tie, without sex, was much more accepted then.