CapĂtulo 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
PĂŚderastie (Ersch and Gruber's EncyclopĂŚdie, 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
Ăschylus--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 PalĂŚstra--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
ErĂ´s--Cicero's opinions--Laws concerning the gymnasia--Graffiti on
walls--Love-poems and panegyrics--Presents to boys--Shops and mauvais
lieux--Paiderastic Hetaireia--Brothels--PhĂŚdon 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--Ăschines 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 PhĂŚdrus: 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 ChĂŚronea--The
Idyllists--Lucian's Amores--Greek poets never really gross--Mousa
PaidikĂŠ--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 ĂŚsthetic temperament of the Greeks, unbiased by
morality and religion, encouraged paiderastia--Hora--Physical and
moral qualities admired by a Greek--Greek ethics were
ĂŚsthetic--Sophrosyne--Greek religion was ĂŚsthetic--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.
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Title: A Problem in Greek Ethics
Author: John Addington Symonds
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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