Pederastic Mentorship

Now among the Cretans, the epithet κλεινὸς, illustrious, is often given to the objects of one's affection. And it is a matter of great desire among them to carry off beautiful boys; and among them it

Tap to expand

But Hieronymus the Peripatetic says that the ancients were anxious to encourage the practice of having boy-favourites, because the vigorous disposition of youths, and the confidence engendered by thei

Tap to expand

They have a peculiar custom in regard to love affairs, for they win the objects of their love, not by persuasion, but by abduction; the lover tells the friends of the boy three or four days beforehand

Tap to expand

But among the Spartans, as Agnon the Academic philosopher tells us, girls and boys are all treated in the same way before marriage: for the great lawgiver Solon has said— Admiring pretty legs and rosy

Tap to expand

I think I ought to say something also about intimacy with boys, since this matter also has a bearing on education. In other Greek states, for instance among the Boeotians, man and boy live together, l

Tap to expand

The customs instituted by Lycurgus were opposed to all of these. If someone, being himself an honest man, admired a boy’s soul and tried to make of him an ideal friend without reproach and to associat

Tap to expand

First, who could feel dislike for one by whom he knew himself to be regarded as the pattern of nobleness, and, in the next place, saw that he made his favourite’s honour of more account than his own p

Tap to expand

Once more, how will he who traffics in his beauty feel greater affection toward the buyer than he who puts his produce up for sale and disposes of it in the open market? For assuredly he will not be m

Tap to expand

But Hegesander, in his Commentaries, says that all men love seasoned dishes, but not plain meats, or plainly dressed fish. And accordingly, when seasoned dishes are wanting, no one willingly eats eith

Tap to expand

Alexander the king was also very much in the habit of giving in to this fashion. Accordingly, Dicæarchus, in his treatise on the Sacrifice at Troy, says that he was so much under the influence of Bago

Tap to expand

In every respect then the philosophers tell lies; and they are not aware that they commit numbers of anachronisms in the accounts which they give. And even the admirable Xenophon is not free from this

Tap to expand

What on earth has he done to make you think so badly of him? asked Xenophon.What has the man done? He dared to kiss Alcibiades’ son, and the boy is very good-looking and attractive.Oh, if that is the

Tap to expand

On receiving this information, Good Heavens! exclaimed Socrates; what wrong do they imagine your lad has done them that is grave enough to make them wish to kill him? Syr. It is not killing him that t

Tap to expand

Sophocles, too, had a great fancy for hating boy-favourites, equal to the addiction of Euripides for women. And accordingly, Ion the poet, in his book on the Arrival of Illustrious Men in the Island o

Tap to expand

It was on the occasion of the horse-races at the greater Panathenaic games; Callias, Hipponicus’ son, was enamoured, as it happened, of the boy Autolycus, and in honour of his victory in the pancratiu

Tap to expand

And it is a very clever way in which Antiphanes thus jested upon Misgolas, as devoting all his attention to beautiful harp-players and lyre-players; for Aeschines the orator, in his speech against Tim

Tap to expand

Sphodrias had a son Cleonymus, who was at the age just following boyhood and was, besides, the handsomest and most highly regarded of all the youths of his years. And Archidamus, the son of Agesilaus,

Tap to expand

But why in the world, Socrates, Charmides now asked, do you flourish your bogeys so to frighten us, your friends, away from the beauties, when, by Apollo! I have seen you yourself, he continued, when

Tap to expand

For, to my way of thinking, the man whose attention is attracted only by his beloved’s appearance is like one who has rented a farm; his aim is not to increase its value but to gain from it as much of

Tap to expand

In contrast to this, the Lacedaemonians, who hold that if a person so much as feels a carnal concupiscence he will never come to any good end, cause the objects of their love to be so consummately bra

Tap to expand