Preface : p. v PREFACE. THE following treatise on Greek Love was written in the year 1873, when my mind was occupied with my "Studies of Greek Poets". I printed ten copies of it privately in 1883. It was only when I read the Terminal Essay appended by Sir Richard Burton to his translation of the "Arabi...
Iv. The Heroic Ideal Of Masculine Love : IV. Thus the tale of Achilles and Patroclus sanctioned among the Greeks a form of masculine love, which, though afterwards connected with paiderastia properly so called, we are justified in describing as heroic, and in regarding as one of the highest products of their emotional life. It will be...
Untitled : A PROBLEM IN GREEK ETHICS BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS [1901] This book is a ground-breaking study of the Greek institution of "paiderastia". This was a custom by which adolescent men made alliances with older men of a romantic and sexual nature. The young men in question were the same age...
Xiv. Distinctions Drawn : XIV. We have seen in the foregoing section that paiderastia at Athens was closely associated with liberty, manly sports, severe studies, enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, self-control, and deeds of daring, by those who cared for those things. It has also been made abundantly manifest that no serious...
Xx. Greek Love Did Not Exist At Rome Christianity : XX. Greece merged in Rome; but, though the Romans aped the arts and manners of the Greeks., they never truly caught the Hellenic spirit. Even Virgil only trod the court of the Gentiles of Greek culture. It was not, therefore, possible that any social custom so peculiar as paiderastia should...
Iii. The Romance Of Achilles And Patroclus : p. 3 III. The ideal of character in Homer was what the Greeks called heroic; what we should call chivalrous. Young men studied the "Iliad" as our ancestors studied the Arthurian romances, finding there a pattern of conduct raised almost too high above the realities of common life for imitati...
I. Introduction. Method Of Treating The Subject : p. 1 A PROBLEM IN GREEK ETHICS. I. FOR the student of sexual inversion, ancient Greece offers a wide field for observation and reflection. Its importance has hitherto been underrated by medical and legal writers on the subject, who do not seem to be aware that here alone in history have we...
Xviii. Relation Of Paiderastia To The Fine Arts : XVIII. Upon a topic of great difficulty, which is, however, inseparable from the subject-matter of this inquiry, I shall not attempt to do more than to offer a few suggestions. This is the relation of paiderastia to Greek art. Whoever may have made a study of antique sculpture will not have failed...
Xix. Homosexuality Among Greek Women : XIX. Sexual inversion among Greek women offers more difficulties than we met with in the study of paiderastia. This is due, not to the absence of the phenomenon, but to the fact that feminine homosexual passions were never worked into the social system, never became educational and military agents...
Vii. The Intensity Of Paiderastia As An Emoti : VII. Before reviewing the authors who deal with this subject in detail, or discussing the customs of the several Greek states, it will be well to illustrate in general the nature of this love, and to collect the principal legends and historic tales which set it forth. Greek love was, in its orig...
Xv. Platonic Doctrine On Greek Love : XV. The sources from which our information has hitherto been drawn--speeches, poems, biographies, and the dramatic parts of dialogues--yield more real knowledge about the facts of Athenian paiderastia than can be found in the speculations of philosophers. In Aristotle, for instance, paiderastia is...
Xvii. The Deep Root Struck : XVII. The transmutation of Hellas proper into part of the Roman Empire, and the intrusion of Stoicism and Christianity into the sphere of Hellenic thought and feeling, mark the end of the Greek age. It still remains, however, to consider the relation of this passion to the character of the race...
Ii. Homer Had No Knowledge Of Paiderasti : II. The first fact which the student has to notice is that in the Homeric poems a modern reader finds no trace of this passion. It is true that Achilles, the hero of the "Iliad", is distinguished by his friendship for Patroclus no less emphatically than Odysseus, the hero of the "Odyssey", by...
X. Dorian Customs Sparta And Crete The Sacred : X. A considerable majority of the legends which have been related in the preceding section are Dorian, and the Dorians gave the earliest and most marked encouragement to Greek love. Nowhere else, indeed, except among the Dorians, who were an essentially military race, living like an army...
Vi. Discrimination Of Two Loves, Heroic And Vulgar : VI. Resuming the results of the last four sections, we find two separate forms of masculine passion clearly marked in early Hellas--a noble and a base, a spiritual and a sensual. To the distinction between them the Greek conscience was acutely sensitive; and this distinction, in theory at least...
V. Vulgar Paiderastia How Introduced : V. Homer, then, knew nothing of paiderastia, though the "Iliad" contained the first and noblest legend of heroic friendship. Very early, however, in Greek history boy-love, as a form of sensual passion, became a national institution. This is proved abundantly by mythological traditions of gre...
Ix. Semi Legendary Tales Of Love Harmodius : IX. Passing from myth to semi-legendary history, we find frequent mention made of lovers in connection with the great achievements of the earliest age of Hellas. What Pausanias and Phdrus are reported to have said in the "Symposium" of Plato, is fully borne out by the records of the numerous...
Xiii. Recapitulation Of Points The Palaestra : XIII. Before proceeding to collect some notes upon the state of paiderastia at Athens, I will recapitulate the points which I have already attempted to establish. In the first place, paiderastia was unknown to Homer. 4 Secondly, soon after the heroic age, two forms of paiderastia appeared...
Xvi. Greek Liberty And Greek Love Extinguished : XVI. Philip of Macedon, when he pronounced the panegyric of the Sacred Band at Chronea, uttered the funeral oration of Greek love in its nobler forms. With the decay of military spirit and the loss of freedom, there was no sphere left for that type of p. 56 comradeship which I attempted to describe...
Title Page : p. ii One Hundred Copies only of this Book have been printed (for Private Circulation), and the type has been distributed. NO............. p. iii A PROBLEM IN GREEK ETHICS BEING AN INQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENON OF SEXUAL INVERSION ADDRESSED ESPECIALLY TO MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS AND JURISTS BY JOHN...
Xi. Paiderastia In Poetry Of The Lyric Age : XI. Before proceeding to discuss the conditions under which paiderastia existed in Athens, it may be well to pause and to consider the tone adopted with regard to it by some of the earlier Greek poets. Much that is interesting on the subject of the true Hellenic Ers can be gathered from Theognis...
Xii. Paiderastia Upon The Attic Stage : XII. The treatment of paiderastia upon the Attic stage requires separate considerations. Nothing proves the popular acceptance and national approval of Greek love more forcibly to modern minds than the fact that tragedians like schylus and Sophocles made it the subject of their dram...
Viii. Myths Of Paiderastia : VIII. Among the myths to which Greek lovers referred with pride, besides that of Achilles, were the legends of Theseus and Peirithous, of Orestes and Pylades, of Talos and Rhadamanthus, of Damon and Pythias. Nearly all the Greek gods, except, I think, oddly enough, Ares, were famous for their love...