identity, are not really easily transferable. The pattern is subject to particular variation
in the customs and legal frameworks of individual poleis.
In Athens, since men did not usually marry till the age of 30 or more, it might
characteristically but not exclusively be between a man in his twenties, the erastes(the
lover) and an adolescent, the eromenos(the beloved). The age at which a boy became
an adult with full civic rights and responsibilities was 18, at which time the youth
would begin his two years of military service. This must have marked a change of
direction in the erotic life of an eromenos.In this relationship the eromenosis passive,
emotionally and sexually. The eromenosis not to yield too willingly and not to be
motivated by financial considerations. In the Platonic ideal of this relationship as set
out in Plato’s dialogues the Symposiumand the Phaedrus,there is a noble educative
element. The older man is to inform the younger with a love of the good, the true and
the beautiful. This is implied near the beginning of the Symposiumin the speech of
Pausanias:
When a lover and his favourite come together... when the lover (erastes) is able
to contribute towards wisdom and excellence, and the beloved (eromenos) is
anxious to improve his education and knowledge in general, then and then only,
when these two principles coincide, and in no other circumstances is it honourable
for a boy to yield to his lover. ... this is the heavenly Love which is associated with
the heavenly goddess, and which is valuable both to states and to individuals
because it entails upon both lover and beloved self discipline for the sake of
excellence.
(Symposium, 184d, 185b)In the dialogue as a whole, as in Plato’s thought generally, there is a subordination of
the physical in favour of the spiritual, and in what the world has come to understand
by the notion of ‘Platonic love’ the physical is entirely sublimated. For present
purposes what these dialogues show in the assumptions underlying them and taken
for granted is that homosexual desire could be seen as natural part of life that could
be harnessed to the public good.
A comic perspective on the more relaxed attitude to pederasty is apparent in
Aristphanes’ Birds, where one of the characters gives an example of the kind of
behaviour he would like to see in an ideal city: ‘Well, a chap comes up to you and
he’s quite purple in the face with fury, and he’s got this very good-looking son, you
see, and he says: “What’s all this I hear about you and my boy? That’s a fine way to
go on, I must say. You meet him coming from the gymnasium, clean and gleaming
after his bath – and you don’t make love to him, you don’t speak to him, you don’t go
near him, you don’t even tickle his balls. And you call yourself a friend of mine”’
(137–142). Such a comic reversal of expectation could never have been made in a
122 THE GREEKS