In Plato’s Symposium Pausanias makes distinctions between Athenian practice
and that of other states, finding that Athens represents a mean between the two
extremes of the Dorian cities of Sparta, Elis and Boeotia on the one hand where love
between men is accepted entirely without disgrace, and on the other, many parts of
Ionia and other states under Persian rule, where the situation is quite the reverse.
Persian condemnation he puts down to their absolutism, which looks unfavourably
on strong friendships and private attachments.
The truth of this was actually experienced by our tyrants at Athens; it was the love
of Aristogeiton and the strong affection of Harmodius which destroyed their
power.
(Plato, Symposium, 182c)Thucydides tells how most Athenians believed that this famous pair of aristocratic
lovers had expelled the tyrants in 514 by killing Hipparchus, a son of Peisistratus,
though Hippias his elder brother was actually tyrant at the time. (1.20) According to
Thucydides, Harmodius was then ‘the most beautiful young man in the flower of his
youth’ (6, 54). When Hipparchus had tried to seduce him, his lover Aristogeiton,
fearful that he might lose his beloved, plotted the overthrow of the tyranny. The pair,
who lost their lives in the attempt, came to have almost mythical status. Aristotle
records that the polemarchos(the war archon) was responsible for making offerings
for those who died in war and specifically names the two tyrannicides. There was a
statue of them in the agora, the political and civic centre of the polis.An inscription
records their claim to fame. ‘A great light arose for the Athenians, when Aristogeiton
and Harmodios slew Hipparchos; the two of them made their native land equal in
laws’ (IG 1^3 502). The statue is primarily a political symbol but also bears indirect
witness to the honour accorded to love between men at Athens, particularly as it is
apparent from reconstructions of it that they are represented as athletic nudes, one
bearded and the other youthfully beardless, the artistic convention that signifies a
pederastic relation (fig. 34). In addition to this public recognition, they were also
celebrated in drinking songs doubtless performed privately at symposia, a familiar
context for pederastic relations.
At Sparta, pederasty was institutionalised in the agoge,the Spartiate educational
system; older men chose young boys and paired with them until they married at a
later age. In the Dorian city of Thebes in Boeotia, a special military unit called The
Sacred Band was formed in the early part of the fourth century composed of 150
pairs of lovers who fought side by side. They were a formidable force and under
Epaminondas instrumental in the defeat of the Spartans at the battle of Leuctra in
371, until they themselves were wiped out by Philip of Macedon at the battle of
Chaeroneia in 338. Plutarch accounts for their success on the grounds that ‘lovers,
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