A friend forwarded your article on male genitalia in Greek art, and it reminded me of a discussion–OK, a near argument–I had with a friend on the sexual habits and rituals of the ancient Greeks. I read somewhere that homosexual acts among ancient Greeks were commonplace, and that one involved a ritual when a boy became a man. Supposedly the boy was anally penetrated by his father (or maybe his grandfather) to symbolize the passing on of the family seed. Can you verify this for me? –David Lyon, Memphis
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Truth is, we don’t really get what was up with the ancient Greeks. Partly that’s a function of mainstream Western society’s centuries-long refusal to face the facts–namely, that sexual relations between members of the same sex, or anyway between males, were common in Greek society in those days. Even now there’s a lot we don’t know and probably won’t ever know. Though we have a seeming abundance of Greek art and literature to sift through, ancient Hellenic culture broadly understood spanned well over 1,000 years. Our knowledge of many periods and subcultures is sparse. Many texts are ambiguous. Pornographic vase paintings, it’s true, don’t leave a lot to the imagination, but much of this stuff was art of a sort and not necessarily representative of how people lived–God knows what archaeologists a couple millennia hence will make of Robert Mapplethorpe and Britney Spears.
None of this could be confidently said of the Greeks. A common practice in ancient times, at least among those men rich enough to have the time for such things, was to chase boys until you were 30 or so, then settle down with a woman and have kids. Dover cites an Athenian jury trial involving an allegation of male prostitution on the part of one Timarchus in which the prosecutor in effect argues: Look, we’ve all had the hots for young studs; I’ve gone after a few myself. But selling yourself to another man–now that’s low. Granted, the prosecutor doesn’t say he’s actually had sex with another man, but we’ve plenty of evidence from other sources seeming to indicate that many prominent Athenians (e.g., the lawgiver Solon) did just that.
