Essay: Homosexuality in ancient Greece

Homosexuality has become one of the most debated topics in history near the 21st century. It proceeded a large period of hatred and dissociation in the years before, and also has remnants in ancient civilizations. The subject of homosexuality in society today has become increasingly normalized due to recent changes in society and law, and has begun to take on a different meaning: one that leans more towards one’s sexual orientation as their identity. The concept of homosexuality in the ancient greek world did not take this similar meaning however. Through an analysis of scholarly journals of Greek works and commentaries on various well known critical sources, the distinction between the falsely assumed nature of homosexuality in ancient Greece and its actual absence of ‘sexuality’ is made.
With various mediums such as art, literature, and legal texts, we can conclude that sexual experiences between males did occur. This can be seen in Plato’s Symposium, the story of Ganymede, Homer’s Iliad, and even in Against Timarchus, a legal case. These texts have been the sources of extensive commentary on the nature of sexuality, particularly homosexuality, in the Greek world. Because of the subtle and ambiguous displays in these texts and in Greek art, homosexuality has become a highly debated topic for historians and critical readers. As seen in “The Brother of Ganymede,” Thomas Lewis explains that the topic of homosexuality has become obscured in many critical commentaries. He claims that “historians tend to reflect much that is part of their own age when writing about another,” and shows examples of this through the commentary of other well known critics (Lewis 147). In this work, Lewis uncovers the fact that the presence and the nature of homosexuality in ancient Greece has been falsely interpreted and biased in many critical works. These works tend to lean greatly towards the fact that homosexuality was prominent in Greek society, or that homosexuality was viewed as an abomination. Other interpretations and translations of Greek works have neglected sexuality between males altogether. The story of Ganymede in which Ganymede (a beautiful child Trojan prince) gets taken away by Zeus in the form of an eagle provides an example of how homosexuality has been portrayed as wrong or has been neglected altogether by translators. Dr Lemprière’s Bibliotheca Classica of 1788 paints homosexuality in an unnatural light by saying that he was “carried away by an eagle to satisfy the shameful and unnatural desires of Zeus” (Lewis 149). Thomas Bullfinch’s Age of Fable tells the story in a different light from this, by stating that he “carried the youth off from the midst of his playfellows” (Lewis 149). In other works homosexuality has been falsely portrayed as prominent in Greek society. In Wainwright Churchill’s Homosexual Behavior Among Males: A Cross-Cultural and Cross-Species Investigation, he portrays the Iliad as one of the first prominent texts with evidence of homosexuality, where his interpretation is distinctively in favor of it. The false interpretation of homosexuality in Greek works does not stop there, however, as Alfred Kinsey’s report on “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” explains:
The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which [it] is not… taboo… suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any form of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic to species (Lewis 152).
According to Lewis, Kinsey “accepted a tradition of tolerance approval of homosexuality in ancient Greece rather than facts about its occurrence and acceptance” (Lewis 152).
Despite these interpretations, it’s evident that sexual relations existed in ancient Greece. Through works like Dover’s Greek Homosexuality, we are able to draw correct conclusions about the existence of homosexuality in the ancient Greek world like the fact that it was not regarded as corrupt nor prominent. In fact, the term homosexuality did not exist in ancient Greek society not did the concept of sexuality in general. In an essay entitled “The age of love: gender and erotic reciprocity in archaic Greece” by Sandra Boehringer and Stefano Caciagli, they argue that civilizations that existed in ‘Antiquity’ (before the European Middle Ages) did not define themselves in terms of sexuality. These societies that existed “before sexuality” looked at acts of sex and love differently. In societies like ancient Greece, sexual desire was not categorized by the person’s attraction to a specific sex. According to Sandra “the sex of the person desired was not a criterion used to define and categorize a desiring subject” (Sandra 25). Because gender did not really matter to the greeks, there was no subculture of homosexual people that existed. Instead evidence gathered by historians have suggested that sexual relations in nature were defined largely by status. According to Sandra, “A study of the documents clearly show that the primary distinction perceived in Antiquity was not between the sexes, but between those who were free and those we were not, those who could dispose of their own bodies and those whose bodies belonged to a master…” (Sandra 26). This is primarily found in the Greek usage of the words ‘ándres’ and ‘gynaîkes’ which referred to free people and primarily members of the population who were actual citizens. One’s status determined one’s identity. Additional research done by Michel Foucault and later David Halperin reveals that desire towards a specific gender in most prominent Greek works tend to draw on rhetorical contrasts that exclude women’s perspectives and the possibility of homosexual desire. These works also exclude sexual preference as a defining factor in one’s psychological identity or their life in general.
In actuality, the factors that determine a person’s identity in a sexual relationship focuses less (if not at all) on their attraction to a gender than it does to the person’s age. The age difference of lovers in ancient Greece was a major factor in determining what others thought about the relationship. In most cases, the age difference between older males and younger partners, whether male or female, was actually seen as more ethical and was widely celebrated. Sandra explains that “Over and over again, myths retell stories of love and erotic abductions between a powerful god and a young (male) mortal” (Sandra 29). The line between age difference between females and males as the younger partner can become confusing however when the asymmetry between them is examined and related to sexual partners. This is due to the fact that females and males have different defining points in their life at which they reach maturity. Males go from childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, maturity and old age. Females, on the other hand only go through childhood, maiden hood where she goes through a young wife and an adult woman, and old age when they can no longer have children. Although these is no actual legal minimum age that was applied, we can observe the tendencies and customs and existed in that age. Despite the fact that females tended to be given away to their partners in a specific stage, these norms in society did not exactly relate to males. Young males were actually seen as preferred sexual partners and would receive praise and presents once he approved the abduction by his older lover. The relationship was even more favored upon if the lover was active in the education of his younger.
In the case of sexual relationships in ancient Greece less attention was put into who older men were fond of, and more attention was placed on the role that was assumed in the relationship. The role of the lovers involved was important when determining what status the couple would take and the status of the individuals involved. In this sense, the terms Eros, Erastes, and Eromenos were used in ancient Greece to distinguish between the roles. The term eros, which is commonly used in English to describe passionate love, was found to be an ‘ungovernable impulse’ that took over the erastes, who was the person struck by it. The person who was deemed the cause of such an amorous impulse was said to be the Eromenos. Although the context describes homoerotic love, these three terms did not solely apply to males. They applied to females as well because consensual love had no gender. These were not the only terms used to describe lovers however.
In legal terms of status, the ancient Greeks paid more attention to active or passive roles in relationships. There was no holy book that restricted love between any two people, nor was there any law that told people who they could and could not love. There was, however, a law that prevailed in terms of whether you could hold a position of power or leadership as a citizen of Greece. This law can be explained in terms of the word ‘hubris’ which is defined by Britannica as “the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade” (Britannica). In a scholarly journal by Clifford Hindley entitled “Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens,” the law of hubris in regards to homosexuality in Athens is explored through the analysis of ancient Greek works such as Against Timarchus, a speech between two citizens of Athens where one is bringing up charges of hubris against the other. In Hindley’s analysis of this speech, we can infer that while homosexuality was not outright an act of hubris, the act of rear penetration blurred the line between being shameful and loving as they please. The act of penetration in a homoerotic setting was seen as a source of anxiety for ancient Greek males. In James Davidson’s scholarly journal entitled “Dover, Foucault and Greek Homosexuality: Penetration and the Truth of Sex,” the understanding of penetration between the greeks was further explored. This distinction between penetrated and penetrator is primarily seen on the Eurymedon vase, where the active role was portrayed as less abusive than the passive role. The vase itself depicts a Persian man bent over to receive rear penetration from a Greek man and is a product of an Athenian victory over the Persians at the river of Eurymedon in the early 460’s.
Hubris, which can also be interpreted as an act of assault in addition to shame, can be further seen in Athenian law when discussing the act of prostitution which can result in the stripping of Athenian citizenship. This was also seen in Against Timarchus as Aeschines accuses Timarchus of bouncing between multiple homosexual partners and therefore committing hubris upon himself. This same law prevents prostitutes from addressing an assembly by penalty of death as well, which is why the charges being brought up against Timarchus are so grave. The law against prostitution was so important that young males who prostituted themselves could have the penalty transferred to their father, who would also be stripped of his citizenship.
This presented a unique problem for Athenias who seemed to hold a specific type of anxiety towards penetration and its relation to prostitution. The main argument in Against Telemachus is the fact that switching between an object of pleasure and a leader was seen as problematic in society. This is due to the fact that young males were supposed to be trained for manhood and association with the role of an object refutes their chances. In Davidson’s journal he states that “it was this fundamental problem of turning this sexual object, the boy, into a man, a ‘subject in control of his own pleasures,’ a ‘master,’ that made the homosexual relation a preoccupation for the Greeks of greater intensity of the other” (Davidson 17). The problem with this is that it provides a double standard. It is in this reason that homoerotic acts of penetration blurred the lines of hubris and morality in the Greek world.
Works Cited
LEWIS, THOMAS S. W. “The Brothers of Ganymede.” Salmagundi, no. 58/59, 1982, pp. 147–165., www.jstor.org/stable/40547568.
Hubbard, T. K. “Popular Perceptions of Elite Homosexuality in Classical Athens.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, vol. 6, no. 1, 1998, pp. 48–78. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20163707.
Hindley, Clifford. “Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens.” Past & Present, no. 133, 1991, pp. 167–183. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/650770.
Boehringer, Sandra, et al. “The Age of Love: Gender and Erotic Reciprocity in Archaic Greece.” Clio (English Edition), no. 42, 2015, pp. 24–51. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26273656.
Davidson, James. “Dover, Foucault and Greek Homosexuality: Penetration and the Truth of Sex.” Past & Present, no. 170, 2001, pp. 3–51. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3600793.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Hubris.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 May 2017, www.britannica.com/topic/hubris.