A Problem in Greek Ethics Being an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion addressed especi

Capítulo 1

1908

Privately Printed in Holland for the Society.

PREFACE.

The following treatise on Greek Love was written in the year 1873, when

my mind was occupied with my Studies of Greek Poets. I printed ten

copies of it privately in 1883. It was only when I read the Terminal

Essay appended by Sir Richard Burton to his translation of the Arabian

Nights in 1886, that I became aware of M. H. E. Meier's article on

Pæderastie (Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopædie, Leipzig, Brockhaus,

1837). My treatise, therefore, is a wholly independent production. This

makes Meier's agreement (in Section 7 of his article) with the theory I

have set forth in Section X. regarding the North Hellenic origin of

Greek Love, and its Dorian character, the more remarkable. That two

students, working separately upon the same mass of material, should have

arrived at similar conclusions upon this point strongly confirms the

probability of the hypothesis.

J. A. SYMONDS.

CONTENTS.

I. INTRODUCTION: Method of treating the subject.

II. Homer had no knowledge of paiderastia--Achilles--Treatment of Homer

by the later Greeks.

III. The Romance of Achilles and Patroclus.

IV. The heroic ideal of masculine love.

V. Vulgar paiderastia--How introduced into Hellas--Crete--Laius--The

myth of Ganymede.

VI. Discrimination of two loves, heroic and vulgar. The mixed sort is

the paiderastia defined as Greek love in this essay.

VII. The intensity of paiderastia as an emotion, and its quality.

VIII. Myths of paiderastia.

IX. Semi-legendary tales of love--Harmodius and Aristogeiton.

X. Dorian Customs--Sparta and Crete--Conditions of Dorian life--Moral

quality of Dorian love--Its final degeneracy--Speculations on the early

Dorian Ethos--Boeotians' customs--The sacred band--Alexander the

Great--Customs of Elis and Megara--Hybris--Ionia.

XI. Paiderastia in poetry of the lyric age. Theognis and

Kurnus--Solon--Ibycus, the male Sappho--Anacreon and Smerdies--Drinking

songs--Pindar and Theoxenos--Pindar's lofty conception of adolescent

beauty.

XII. Paiderastia upon the Attic stage--Myrmidones of

Æschylus--Achilles' lovers, and Niobe of Sophocles--The Chrysippus

of Euripides--Stories about Sophocles--Illustrious Greek paiderasts.

XIII. Recapitulation of points--Quotation from the speech of Pausanias

on love in Plato's Symposium--Observations on this speech. Position of

women at Athens--Attic notion of marriage as a duty--The institution of

Paidagogoi--Life of a Greek boy--Aristophanes' Clouds--Lucian's

Amores--The Palæstra--The Lysis--The Charmides--Autolicus in

Xenophon's Symposium--Speech of Critobulus on beauty and

love--Importance of gymnasia in relation to paiderastia--Statues of

Erôs--Cicero's opinions--Laws concerning the gymnasia--Graffiti on

walls--Love-poems and panegyrics--Presents to boys--Shops and mauvais

lieux--Paiderastic Hetaireia--Brothels--Phædon and Agathocles.

Street-brawls about boys--Lysias in Simonem.

XIV. Distinctions drawn by Attic law and custom--Chrestoi

Pornoi--Presents and money--Atimia of freemen who had sold their

bodies--The definition of Misthosis--Eromenos, Hetairekos,

Peporneumenos, distinguished--Æschines against Timarchus--General

Conclusion as to Attic feeling about honourable paiderastia.

XV. Platonic doctrine on Greek love--The asceticism of the

Laws--Socrates--His position defined by Maximus Tyrius--His science of

erotics--The theory of the Phædrus: erotic Mania--The mysticism of

the Symposium: love of beauty--Points of contact between Platonic

paiderastia and chivalrous love: Mania and Joie: Dante's Vita

Nuova--Platonist and Petrarchist--Gibbon on the "thin device" of the

Athenian philosophers--Testimony of Lucian, Plutarch, Cicero.

XVI. Greek liberty and Greek love extinguished at Chæronea--The

Idyllists--Lucian's Amores--Greek poets never really gross--Mousa

Paidiké--Philostratus' Epistolai Erotikai--Greek Fathers on

paiderastia.

XVII. The deep root struck by paiderastia in

Greece--Climate--Gymnastics--Syssitia--Military life--Position of Women:

inferior culture; absence from places of resort--Greek leisure.

XVIII. Relation of paiderastia to the fine arts--Greek sculpture wholly

and healthily human--Ideals of female deities--Paiderastia did not

degrade the imagination of the race--Psychological analysis underlying

Greek mythology--The psychology of love--Greek mythology fixed before

Homer--Opportunities enjoyed by artists for studying women--Anecdotes

about artists--The æsthetic temperament of the Greeks, unbiased by

morality and religion, encouraged paiderastia--Hora--Physical and

moral qualities admired by a Greek--Greek ethics were

æsthetic--Sophrosyne--Greek religion was æsthetic--No notion of

Jehovah--Zeus and Ganymede.

XIX. Homosexuality among Greek women--Never attained to the same dignity

as paiderastia.

XX. Greek love did not exist at Rome--Christianity--Chivalry--The modus

vivendi of the modern world.

A PROBLEM IN GREEK ETHICS.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Problem in Greek Ethics

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online

at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,

you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located

before using this eBook.

Title: A Problem in Greek Ethics

Author: John Addington Symonds

Release date: April 17, 2010 [eBook #32022]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This ebook was

produced from scanned images of public domain material at

Google Books.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PROBLEM IN GREEK ETHICS ***

Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This ebook was

produced from scanned images of public domain material at

Google Books.)

A

PROBLEM

IN

GREEK ETHICS

BEING

AN INQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENON OF

SEXUAL INVERSION

ADDRESSED ESPECIALLY TO MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS AND JURISTS

BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

PRIVATELY PRINTED

FOR

THE AREOPAGITIGA SOCIETY

LONDON