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The first recorded appearance of a deep emotional bond between adult men in ancient Greek culture was in the Iliad (800 BC). Homer does not depict the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as sexual. The ancient Athenians emphasised the supposed age difference between the two by portraying Patroclus with a beard in paintings and pottery ...
Kenneth J. Dover's seminal Greek Homosexuality (1978) triggered a number of debates which still continue. 20th-century sociologist Michel Foucault declared that pederasty was "problematized" in Greek culture, that it was "the object of a special—and especially intense—moral preoccupation", which was "subjected to an interplay of positive ...
In particular for men, though they were expected to marry a woman, it was normal to engage in extramarital sexual relations. [14] Homosexual attraction sometimes existed in the form of pederasty, which influenced ancient Greek and especially Spartan military practices. [15]
Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged romantic relationship between an adult male (the erastes) and a younger male (the eromenos), usually in his teens. [4] This age difference between a socially powerful and socially less-powerful partner was characteristic of the Archaic and Classical periods , in both heterosexual and ...
The phrase is a product of the enormous impact of the reception of classical Greek culture on historical attitudes toward sexuality, and its influence on art and various intellectual movements. [2]: xi, 91–92 Following the work of philosopher Michel Foucault, the validity of an ancient Greek model for modern gay culture has been questioned.
Yet the surge of interest in all things ancient Greek is part of a much older phenomenon. Again and again, in troubled times, we in the West have turned to our oldest stories for answers.
In Ancient Sparta, the subordination of private interests and personal happiness to the good of the public was strongly encouraged by the laws of the city.One example of the legal importance of marriage can be found in the laws of Lycurgus of Sparta, which required that criminal proceedings be taken against those who married too late (graphe opsigamiou) [5] or unsuitably (graphe kakogamiou ...
In Classical Athens, there was no exact equivalent of the English term "adultery", but the similar moicheia (Ancient Greek: μοιχεία) was a criminal offence often translated as adultery by scholars. Athenian moicheia was restricted to illicit sex with free women, and so men could legally have extra-marital sex with slaves and prostitutes.