From: Nichael Lynn Cramer (nichael@sover.net)
Date: Wed Nov 13 1996 - 22:23:20 EST
At 7:32 PM 11/13/96, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>KULIKOVSKY, Andrew wrote:
>> [...] Apparently the ancient Greeks
>>were also quite favourable toward pedofilia. [...]
>
>The definitive work on the subject is K.A. Dover, _Greek Homosexuality_,
>Oxford UP(?); you'll find there probably more than you care to know. I'm
>inclined to think that broad generalizations about homosexuality among
>ancient Greeks should be avoided--but probably won't.
The full reference is:
K.J. Dover, _Greek Homosexuality_, Harvard University Press, 1989.
Two points on the preceeding discussion (drawn from Dover):
1] "Pedofilia", yes, but in the sense of an adult male with a "youth"; not
in the modern sense of sex with children.
2] Likewise Dover makes a strong case that while "pedofilia" (in the above
sense) may have been relatively common, what we would think of as
"homosexuality" --i.e. sexual relations between adult, co-equal males--
seems to have been rather rare.
Not necessarily explicitly condemned, rather there just seems to be little
to no evidence --literary, artistic, epigraphic, etc-- for its common
practice (in contrast to _much_ evidence for virtually all other imaginable
pairings/groupings).
N
(P.S. I can't resist sharing my favorite quote from Dover's book. In his
discussion of the term <laikazein> Dover points out that we don't really
know for certain what the word means. However, due to a 5c BC graffito
from the Athenian Agora, we do know that "a certain Theodosia does it
well". ;-)
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