Robert O. Cameron: Robert O. Cameron lives in rural Missouri. This review was originally published in White Crane Journal (#48). It is reprinted with permission from www.whitecranejournal.com online.
Subtitled: “Jews, Christians, and Homosexuals from Classical Greece to Late Antiquity,” this little book documents and explains what was likely really going on in the ancient world.
In a way, of course, what the ancients thought is truly irrelvant today. Our world is so unlike theirs, one of them transported by time machine into the year 2001would hardly recognize he was still on earth and that these current day creatures were descendants of his. And yet interest in the ancients has survived, perhaps for that very reason. For one of the big differences is how sexuality and homosexuality are viewed.
That the ancients had different ideas is a reminder that the notions conventional culture takes are time-bound and arbitrary. And that's good news for people dealing with the misunderstandings of modern, Christian-influenced society.
Puterbaugh presents a wealth of quotes and references and does a creditable job of explaining them in context. That homosexuality isn't such a new thing is not surprising. But understanding what that means in context often remains elusive. Things were just so different back then.
Geoff Puterbaugh helps make it all make sense. The book is interesting, informative, and readable. And it's a nice addition to the library of books about the historical bases of gay consciousness.
An Excerpt from the book:
Ancient Greece was the foundation of western civilization. Historical scholarship, with rare unanimity, declares this innovatory role to be a fact: the history of modern man begins in Greece. There, the twin lights of democracy and science first shone.
The earlier, eastern cradles of civilization were theocracies, characterized by the absolute rule of a priest-king and his priesthood. These societies were marked by a dogmatic rigidity….
Against this vast, alien backdrop, the Greeks appear astonishingly modern. They explored the universe with joy and exuberance. An entirely new set of rules for living appeared, and the priestly classes were relegated to a more decorative role. The science of physics was born. Philosophy was born.
The traces lie in our language. Here is a list of Greek words for things very much with us today; the Greeks did not originate all of these, but they brought them to their first maturity: schools, gymnasiums, arithmetic, geometry, history, rhetoric, physics, biology, anatomy, hygiene, therapy, cosmetics, poetry, music, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, theology, agnosticism, skepticism, stoicism, epicureanism, ethics, politics, idealism, ranny, plutocracy, and democracy.
The Greeks made a profound advance in human civilization. Though any criticisms have been made of ancient Greek society, it is not possible find another beginning to the history of western civilization.
One more word belongs on the daunting list above. It was formerly as noble as any of them, but is infamous in modern times: the word, of course, is pederasty.
Pederasty is a Greek word which means “the love of male youths or boys.” The Greeks had no word, and no concept, which corresponds to our “homosexual.” There is, now, no doubt that pederasty was common among the Greeks.
Pederasty was sometimes evidence of the Greek love of pleasure, but its main purpose was education and social integration. The late Dr. Marrou was one of the few modern scholars who had the clarity of vision to recognize that pederasty and paideia were inseparable in Greek culture.
The Greek type of love helped to create the particular kind of moral ideal that underlay the whole system of Hellenic education…The elder's desire to stand out in the eyes of his beloved, to shine, and the younger man's corresponding desire to show himself worthy of his lover, could not but strengthen in both that love of glory which was, moreover, extolled by the whole agonistic outlook… The tradition of antiquity is unanimous in linking the practice of pederasty with valour and courage. (A History of Education in Antiquity)
As we develop a true picture of the role of pederasty in Greek civilization, it may startle us. The erotic love of a mature man for a youth or boy (Marrou places the age of the youth between fifteen and nineteen) was a pillar of Greek education, and, for any society, education is the main building block for all further social development, the means by which its culture is transmitted. It is difficult to step back and realize that what many today call the “abominable crime against nature” was an honorable institution of ancient Greek society. Modern democratic societies have worked their way around to tolerating, more or less, “homosexual relations between consenting adults.” But this is not what the Greeks admired.
The cultural difference is great: while we may admire the achievements the Greeks and even feel indebted to them, there is, in their culture, a large and apparently central area of athletic nudity, pederasty, and celebration of masculine virtues which we simply do not comprehend.
Just how prevalent pederasty really was among the Greeks has long been disputed. Those who would impose our own morality upon the Greeks have, for many years, attempted to confine what they perceive as an abomination within very narrow borders. Thus Arno Karlen claims that only a “tiny literate minority” was involved, a minority even in the Greek upper classes.” Some homosexual apologists would have us believe that all the Greeks were engaged in pederastic love affairs all the time, which is just as untenable.
The tide seems to be in favor of the apologists, however: the modern scrutiny of the Greek record, which takes place without the censorship and bowdlerism so long prevalent in classical studies, only strengthens our impression of how widespread the custom was.
If we had to compare Greek pederasty to some American institution, we would have to choose something like football. Not everyone loves football; we even have stern moralists who think it should be abolished. But it would be folly to assert that football was the pastime of a “tiny literate minority.” Football is part of the American way of life; beloved of some, detested by others, but indisputably there, and, for the average citizen, a source of national pride. To deny the centrality of pederasty in Greek and Hellenic civilization would be just as absurd.
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