User:Akhilleus/Sources for homosexuality in ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

David Cohen, "Law, Society, and Homosexuality in classical Athens," Past and Present 117 (Nov 1987), p. 3: "Recent scholarship has succeeded in greatly advancing our understanding of 'Greek homosexuality'. Kenneth Dover and Michel Foucault have argued that the modern dichotomization of sexuality as heterosexuality/homosexuality does not apply to the ancient world, and they have shown how distinctions between active and passive roles in male sexuality defined the contours of the permissible and impermissible in pederastic courtship and other forms of homoerotic behavior. Among the Greeks, we are told, active homosexuality was regarded as perfectly natural (sexual desire was not distinguished according to its object."

David Cohen, Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (Cambridge 1991), p. 21: "To say that homosexuality was tolerated at Athens is just as misleading as to say that it was condemned, for in this area Athenian culture was not only stratified, but also fraught with ambivalence, ambiguity, and conflict. To sidestep the matter by referring to the “dominant morality” only exacerbates the problem."

"What does it mean, “to make a boy a woman”? It is necessary to distinguish two related aspects of this claim. The first concerns the sexual act itself and the way in which the roles of the two participants are seen, while the second involves the larger social context of courtship and the role patterns associated with it. Although it has become quite fashionable to deny that any Greeks thought homoeroticism to be unnatural and that modern categories of homosexual/heterosexuality can be applied to classical Greece, one should not make such universal assertions too facilely. Sexual roles in both of the senses distinguished above were defined in terms of a male/female dichotomy and judged by norms that were felt by some to be at once social and natural. Some scholars conced that Plato may have felt this way, but endeavor to portray his perspective as entirely idiosyncratic, standing in opposition to the entirety of Athenian society. This vision of a monolithic sexual normativity is, however, reductionist and incomplete.

To begin with the first sense of “making a boy a woman,” there is ample evidence to show that the Levitical formulation “to lie with mankind as with womankind” (lev 20:13) represents a way of categorizing homosexual intercourse that was not unknown in Athens. Indeed, Xenophon refers to the hubristic practice of “using men as women,” and Plato argues that the man who adopts the passive role in homosexual intercourse can be rebuked as the impersonator of the female a situation which is “against nature” (Cohen, p. 187)

K.J. Dover, author of Greek Homosexuality, the standard work on the subject

Nick Fisher, Aeschines: Against Timarchos, p. 26-27: "Secondly, accepted Greek cultural values tended consistently to select one type of homosexual relationship as especially common and natural, to such an extent that it could be argued that it was positively encouraged by the laws of Athens: the relationship between an adult male, especially one still young, in his 20s or so (often called the erastes, the lover) and a younger male in his teens (generally known as the eromenos or the paidika, the boyfriend)."

Robert Flaceliere: "It appears extremely likely that homosexuality of any kind was confined to the prosperous and aristocratic levels of ancient society. The masses of peasants and artisans were probably scarcely affected by habits of this kind, which seem to have been associated with a sort of snobbery. The available texts deal mainly with the leisured nobility of Athens. But they may give the impression that pederasty was practiced by the entire nation. The subject, however, of the comedy by Aristophanes entitled Lysistrata suggests that homosexuality was hardly rampant among the people at large. It would be an error to think so. ... There was nothing particularly 'Greek' about homosexual feeling. The nation in antiquity was by no means alone in providing illustrations of inversion (see note below), which has been practiced at almost all times and in almost all countries. ... In the pre-Christian era, the case of Sodom is well known. Nor were the Persians, the Etruscans, the Celts or the Romans ignorant of homosexuality. But its existence among these peoples was kept more or less secret on account of the discredit which attached to it. But in Greece, though pederasty was forbidden by law in most cities, it had become so fashionable (among the artists and aristocrats) that no one troubled to conceal it." (Flaceliere, p. 49-50)

David Halperin, entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary on "homosexuality": "It is not illegitimate to employ modern sexual terms and concepts when interrogating the ancient record, but particular caution must be exercised in order not to import modern, western, sexual categories and ideologies into the interpretation of the ancient evidence. Hence, students of classical antiquity need to be clear about when they intend the term 'homosexual' descriptively--i.e. to denote nothing more than same-sex sexual relations--and when they intend it substantively or normatively--i.e. to denominate a discrete kind of sexual psychology or behaviour, a positive species of sexual being, or a basic compoonent of 'human sexuality'. The application of 'homosexuality' (and 'heterosexuality') in a substantive or normative sense to sexual expression in classical antiquity is not advised."

Halperin has written extensively on Greek homosexuality and related topics, including such works as One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: and Other Essays on Greek Love

T.K.Hubbard's sourcebook Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: a sourcebook of basic documents in translation.

Bruce Thornton, Eros: the Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Westview Press 1997): "Part of the problem is that homosexuality, contemporary as well as ancient, is no easier for us so-called moderns to understand than it was for the Greeks. One of our difficulties when reading about ancient Greece is that the most common manifestation of homosexuality in the evidence concerns pederasty, the quasi-ritualized, transient, physical and emotional relationship between an older male and a youth, an activity we now view as criminal. Very little, if any, evidence from ancient Greece survives that shows adult males (or females) as "couples" involved in an ongoing, reciprocal sexual and emotional relationship in which sex with women (or men) is moot and the age difference is no more significant than it is in heterosexual relationships. Thus the evidence from anicent Greece involves either man-youth homosexuality (the idealized social relationship we will discuss in Chapter 8), or the precisely defined passive homosexual or kinaidos, the adult male who perversely enjoys being penetrated by other males and who has sex with women only because of societal pressure."

Bruce Thornton, Eros: the Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, p. 256: "Recent writing on homosexuality in ancient Greece is overwhelmingly influenced by K.J. Dover's Greek Homosexuality. Though an old-style empirical philologist, Dover excited the 'advocacy' scholars with his thesis that the Greeks were indifferent to same-sex relations, indeed considered them perfectly normal as long as the participants observed certain protocols and conventions..."

Victoria Wohl, Love Among the Ruins: the Erotics of Democracy in Classical Athens (Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 6: "Although homosexual relations between an older man and a younger man had a long tradition in Greece, this myth makes such relations a defining feature of the Athenian character, as Athenian as hating a tyrant...This sort of homosexual relationship was seen as beneficial--even essential--to the polis, constituting a form of social education and guaranteeing cultural continuity."

Victoria Wohl, Love Among the Ruins, p. 12: "Until quite recently, the main focus of scholarship on ancient Greek sexuality has been on normativity, on what I have been calling the dominant fiction of dikaios eros. Dover was the first to explicate these norms systematically, laying out the basic 'rules' of homosexuality in Greece: the ideal of sexual dominance and the stigma against both passivity and excess; the generally positive attitude towards pederasty; the strong distinction between active (penetrating) lover and passive (penetrated) beloved. As as description of 'homosexual behaviour and sentiment' (1978.vii) in Greece, it has been refined and debated but not surpassed, and the terms of the discussion today are still Dover's."

T. K. Hubbard, in his Greek Love Reconsidered states that J. A. Symonds' "A Problem in Greek Ethics" was "the first systematic treatment of Greek homosexuality." (p.3)

Louis Crompton: "there is no dearth of references to homosexuality in the comedies of Aristophanes..." in Homosexuality and Civilization p.53

W. A. Percy III: "Scholarly investigation into the origins of homosexual elements in Greek myth has substantiated Pindar's admission..." Pederasty and Pedagogy in Ancient Greece, (ch.V p.53)

Ancient Rome

Craig Williams, Roman Homosexuality.

Scholars writing about Alexander

Paul Cartledge, History Today, 54.7 (July 2004): "The question of Alexander's sexuality -- his predominant sexual orientation -- has enlivened, or bedevilled, much Alexander scholarship. That he loved at least two men there can be little doubt. The first was the Macedonian noble Hephaestion, another friend from boyhood, whom he looked on -- and may actually have referred to -- as his alter ego. The Persian queen mother, it was said, once mistook the taller Hephaestion for Alexander, who graciously excused her blushes by murmuring that 'he too is Alexander'. Whether Alexander's relationship with the slightly older Hephaestion was ever of the sort that once dared not speak its name is not certain, but it is likely enough that it was. At any rate, Macedonian and Greek mores would have favoured an actively sexual component rather than inhibiting or censoring it. Like hunting, pederasty was thought to foster masculine, especially martial, bravery."

Cartledge doesn't use the word "homosexual" here, but the phrase "that once dared not speak its name" is a clear reference to it. He clearly conceives of the relationship as sexual and pederastic.

Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great, p. 42: "From a man who was to sleep with at least one man, four mistresses, three wives, a eunuch, and, so gossip believed, an Amazon, the comment was honest enough."

Robin Lane Fox, The Search for Alexander, pp. 67-68: "Among the Pages, one name stands out, the Hephaistion with whom later gossip claimed that Alexander had a love affair. No contemporary history states this, but the facts show that the two men's friendship was exceptionally deep and close. Contemporaries called Hephaistion the Patroclus to Alexander's Achilles, the Homeric friendship which men of Alexander's age assumed to have a sexual element. Later, Alexander planned his court marriages so that Hephaistion's children should be his own nephews, a special honor. When Hephaistion died prematurely, Alexander's grief burst all lesser limits. There is much gossip about his mourning, but a hard core attests its scale. There is no doubting Alexander's normal affairs with women at the same time. It is probably mere rumor that he once refused a woman whom his parents had tried to force on him. Most sane young men, anyway, would have followed suit. But an affair with a man of similar age was quite accepted in Greek society. The topic was viewed with a charming inconsistency. Old or excessive homosexuals were disliked, but young men could love and learn from each other without social disapproval. The custom ran deep in Greek culture, fed, perhaps, by the small role which many fathers played in their young sons' lives. Among Macedonian kings, the love of boys was nothing unusual. But only the contemporary pamphleteer Theopompus claimed mischievously that the whole court at Pella was mad for it, beards and all."

John Maxwell O'Brien, Alexander the Great: the Invisible Enemy a Biography, p. 57-58: "Many scholars have assumed that Alexander and his lifelong friend Hephaistion were lovers, at least during their younger years. Alexander was fond of comparing them to Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad, and since it was generally assumed in his own day that this celebrated Homeric relationship was homosexual, Alexander's encouragement of the analogy might very well indicate a similar bond between himself and Hephaistion.

p. 58: "There is evidence of 'institutionalized pederasty' in Macedonian court circles, and so it would have been unlikely for either Olympias or Philip (who seems to have consorted with anything ambulatory) to object too strenuously to a youthful affaire de coeur between Alexander and Hephaistion."

Peter Walcot, "Plato's Mother and Other Terrible Women," Greece & Rome 34.1 (1987), p. 22: "The sharpest of contrasts is offered by Robin Lane Fox, who speaks of Alexander as 'a man who was to sleep with at least one man, four mistresses, three wives, a eunuch, and, so gossip believed, an Amazon', and there is no room for doubt that Alexander did have mistresses such as the Persian aristocrat Barsine captured at Issus, though the great passion of his life was his male companion Hephaestion who was required to play the role of Patroclus to Alexander's Achilles."

non-classical scholars writing about alexander

Robert F. Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon, Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day (apparently just a brief mention on p. 16)

Norman Frank Cantor and Dee Ranieri, Alexander the Great: Journey to the End of the Earth, p. 45.

Paul Russell, The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present, pp. 56-59.

Claude J. Summers, "Homosexuality and Renaissance Literature, or the Anxieties of Anachronism," South Central Review 9.1 (1992) p. 8: "From Greco-Roman history, literature, and myth came potent symbols and archetypes of homosexuality, including figures and pairs such as Ganymede, and Jove, Patroclus and Achilles, Orpheus, Narcissus, Apollo and Hyacinth, Socrates and Alcibiades, Alexander and Hephaestion, Hercules and Hylas, Hadrian and Antinous, Orestes and Pylades, and Damon and Pythias, among others. The classical literature of homosexuality provided Renaissance writers and readers a pantheon of homosexual heroes, a catalogue of images, and a set of references by which homosexual desire could be encoded into their own literature and by which they could interpret their own experience. But this pantheon and this set of references were never entirely secure. Most of the classical literature of homosexuality was repeatedly subject to what Louis Crompton has termed "neo-Tyrianism," that is, the tendency to deny or minimalize the physical side of Greek love--so named after the second-century philosopher Maximus of Tyre, who interpreted the loves of Socrates and Sappho as ideally chaste. The works of Ovid no less than Plato were Christianized. Even the myth of Ganymede, the single most pervasive symbol of homosexuality in the Renaissance, could be interpreted--following Xenophon--as an allegory of spiritual ascent. Neoplatonic philosophers could celebrate passionate love between men, but were careful to insist that it be purely spiritual. And most of the many imitations or adaptations of homoerotic classical literature discreetly de-eroticized or heterosexualized their sources. Representations of homosexuality then as now were subject to containment, suppression, and denial."

Bibliographies

A more extensive bibliography can be found here.