Pederasty was (and this is incredibly complicated) part of the interzone between childhood and adulthood - you're no longer a kid, and you have all these dangerous but valuable urges, so you get a mentor to help you reach a plateau of adulthood. He also gets, as a sort of fringe benefit, to bugger you senseless. It's the derivation of the fag/fagmaster relatioship in English public shools.

In neither case, incidentally, would this behaviour preclude the participants also having sex with women.

Because there wasn't a social drive towards monogamy? Or because sex with a man wasn't 'real' sex? Or was there some sort of balance, where marriage as an institution encouraged monogamy but the 'patronage' system allowed this specific kind of sex not to break the marriage vows?

I may be wrong, here, but I was under the impression that the Greeks (in their status as founders of the modern world and inventers of all that is right and proper) were as keen on marriage as the next country. They must have had it as an institution, at least.

From what I've read, the Greeks had a rather low view of women--they saw them as unintelligent, shrewish, petty, greedy, and generally a royal pain. Intimate relationships with men (sexual and otherwise) were considered superior to those with women, because men were equals and could discuss philosophy and art and politics and "important" stuff.

However, the Greeks were not stupid, and recognized the necessary role of women in producing future generations. Plus, hey, sometimes a man just wants a nice vagina. So the attitude of the philosophers was, "Well, I suppose marriage (and other heterosexual sex) is okay, if you have to." But within the marriage, men and women led pretty separate lives--women ran the household and had babies and looked pretty, men invented the Republic and hung out with other naked men at the gymnasium.

Keep in mind that this was the situation among the upper classes, who had the leisure to be very silly about sex. The lower classes, being illiterate, left no records of their feelings on the matter, but I imagine that their approach to sexual relationships was much more practical.

Can I say how funny it is that the eros/agape conversation is persisting in its use of Frodo/Sam? Considering that Angus, th original hobbit-hater, is a major paticipant!

Poor Angus, reading with both eyes closed! (Nonetheless it's a very interesting conversation.)

Heh. There's nothing like Googling for information about the history of homosexuality to make everyone else in the family wonder what exactly you're doing.

Anyway, I did find some things. This page covers quite a lot of 'traditional' ideas about sex in Ancient Greece, the kinds of things we've already touched on; while this page puts forward some quite different ideas.

Seems that what's presented by one person as simple straightforward evidence (say vases, or literature), can also be simple straightforward evidence for something quite different, if you chose to argue it that way.

Which doesn't seem to contradict my point that it is about love as madness

No, quite, Gar, I don't disagree with your reading at all...my objection is to people who would treat it ahistorically as the greatest love story of all time, whereas it's actually a pretty twisted love story when you think about it.

Am-Chau, yes, the evidence for all this historical sexual stuff is never straightforward, which is why there are still lots of arguments about it. What does seem clear is that in the context of the history of sexuality, we--late 19th to early 21st century Westerners--are incredibly odd, with our strange ideas about everybody having a "sexual orientation" as some deep-seated part of their psychology, our belief that a person's sexual nature is determined not by what they like to do but by who they like to do it with, our idea of sex as a completely mutual activity between two (or more) equal subjects, and so on. Some of these I wouldn't want to part with of course (especially the last one), but still, we're the exception.

Nice of you to consider my anti-hobbit sensibilities Nutty! But actually I find the Frodo/Sam friendship/relationship/call it what you will quite interesting, and the Frodo/Sam/Gollum scenes were the only ones I really liked in the second film.

Am-Chau, I'm not familiar with the book mentioned in your second link, but it sounds to me like it's essentially arguing against a straw man--nobody believes any more that ancient Greece was a "paradise for homosexuals" in any uncomplicated sense, still less that it was a sexually "liberal" society. If you're really interested in this stuff, I'd recommend that you (or anyone else) have a look at the title essay in David Halperin's book One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. Halperin is a classicist and a historian who has formulated most of the ideas I've been talking about above (with help from others of course, esp. Foucault)...he's also a very readable author and he was one of my PhD examiners!

the evidence for all this historical sexual stuff is never straightforward, which is why there are still lots of arguments about it.

Which keeps it interesting.

we--late 19th to early 21st century Westerners--are incredibly odd, with our strange ideas about everybody having a "sexual orientation" as some deep-seated part of their psychology, our belief that a person's sexual nature is determined not by what they like to do but by who they like to do it with, our idea of sex as a completely mutual activity between two (or more) equal subjects, and so on.

Yes. Where did the idea of "sexual orientation" come from, anyway? It seems like the Greeks didn't have it, and the Romans don't seem to have invented it; but it was around by what... the 18th century? 17th?

actually I find the Frodo/Sam friendship/relationship/call it what you will quite interesting, and the Frodo/Sam/Gollum scenes were the only ones I really liked in the second film.

I liked the whole thing, of course, but those were some of my favourites. Gollum was altogether impressive, and Frodo and Sam were done well.

If you're really interested in this stuff, I'd recommend that you (or anyone else) have a look at the title essay in David Halperin's book One Hundred Years of Homosexuality.

I'll add it to my reading list. Thanks!

Where did the idea of "sexual orientation" come from, anyway? It seems like the Greeks didn't have it, and the Romans don't seem to have invented it; but it was around by what... the 18th century? 17th?

Behold one of the great controversies! People seem to keep moving the date backwards, but last time I checked the predominant view is that some kind of notion of sexual orientation existed in 18th century popular consciousness (it can be seen for example in the existence of "molly houses" with what we would nowadays call an exclusively gay clientele and thus the beginnings of a separate culture; also in some writing of the time, most famously the diaries of a woman called Anne Lister), but it wasn't until the mid-19th century with the invention of "sexology" that it became codified and official-type people (doctors, psychologists etc.) started using it.

There was of course a notion long before this that someone might have a preference for people of the same sex (eg Edward II, James I, various other famous bods) but this wasn't generally seen as exclusive or fixed, something that made them a different kind of person; it was more a quasi-gastronomic matter of taste. (Although of course it was a taste that could get you sent to the gallows if you indulged it...)

IIRC, 'homosexual' -- the term, that is -- was coined in the 1880s.