Homosexuality and Pederasty in the Ancient and Pagan Worldview 1/3 - Hellenes and Vedic India

Hellenic World 

The vases

Let us begin our inventory by looking at the ancient objects that have survived until today, here upon the Greek vases, emblematic of this period. In fact, some of these have often been used to counterfeit an anachronistic reading, to stick a "modern" vision and morals on this glorious civilization. First of all, of the 80,000 or so ancient vases found in Greece, only 600 illustrate what could be interpreted as a homosexual scene. Of these, only about thirty have been identified as infallibly representing homosexuality, the rest having only been considered as "implying" homosexuality, the majority of which may moreover have come from the same "artist"...

This is not the end of the story, for it should be pointed out here that among this handful of objects, most of the illustrations they were adorned with represented Satyrs, who were literally perceived as the example not to be followed or as a source of comedy, hence the more modern name of "satire".

Pederasty

Pederasty was a system analogous to the knight-squire structure of the Middle Ages, where a mature man took a young man under his wing on the threshold of adolescence. The role of the mentor was very diverse, he was required to teach his protégé the behaviour he was expected to observe in civilian life, to make him aware of the art of music, the art of combat and war, or to pass on a specific craft to him. This education was to continue until the young man reached the age of eighteen or "managed to grow a beard".

Love

The Greeks had a number of terms to define different kinds of affections. Indeed, the variant used for pederasty meant "love of the mind/soul", as explained in Plato's Symposium. 

This love was considered to be the feeling a father feels for his son, or an older brother feels for his younger brother, but in a higher sense, as the examples cited above only refer to a love due to the sharing of blood, while the mentor loved his pupil from a higher spiritual state. A father possessed a descendant of flesh, while the mentor possessed a descendant of spirit. This is, of course, the illustrated relationship between Achilles and Patrocle in the Iliad, still misunderstood by contemporary individuals, totally alien to war and to whom the lowest impulses serve as their only guide.

In the same book Plato explicitly postulates that the two men became ruined in cases where the relationship degenerated in a libidinous way.

In Athens, proven homosexual acts, be it the possession of a male lover or male prostitution, were punishable by fines, exile or in some cases death. It was even reprehensible to molest male slaves. We find, for example, the case of Aeschines' trial against Timarchus, who was found guilty of illicit relations with men. The essence of the trial refers to Eschine who argued that Timarque (a wealthy and connected politician) was unable to address the assembly on the grounds that he had been a sex prostitute in his youth and was known to have been penetrated by a series of male lovers, thereby depriving him of Athenian citizenship, he said :

We also point out here that the disdain for paedophile rape was so great that in the schools, no one outside the teacher, whether male or female over thirteen years of age, was allowed inside. On the subject of the Greeks' preference for mentoring handsome boys, it should be noted that the Greeks considered people's intrinsic beauty as a sign of an additional potential to achieve a high moral standard. Here we can refer to the many criticisms that Socrates suffered because of his unsightly appearance.

Athens

In order to understand how the ancient Greeks perceived sexuality, it is necessary to investigate history with a healthy and fair mind, something already quite inaccessible to our contemporaries. Most importantly, available historical sources that clearly demonstrate the beliefs of a certain culture should never be underestimated or ignored simply because they are not in line with the foul modern beliefs and practices that not only defile "modern western civilization" but also our ancestors.

Let us return to the theories based solely on a handful of vase painting artifacts among the thousands that have been found over the years. Imagine for a moment that our descendants judge our society based on a newspaper column presenting child transsexuality as the culmination of civilization a thousand years from now. Would this represent today's billions of people? On the other hand, there are available sources - which Dover and Wilde, authors of ancient homosexuality rags, have of course ignored - that give us a clear idea of how the majority of ancient Greeks felt about romance and sex.

The plot of Aristophanes' famous play Lysistrata is just one example amongst many. In this play, Athenian women choose to deprive their husbands of sex in order to force them to stop the war with Sparta. If homosexuality was so widely practiced in Athens, such a strategy would be ineffective because the Athenians could have turned to each other to satisfy their desires. But what happened was that the men quickly gave in and stopped their war because they could not stand the forced abstinence. 

Sparta

It was the turn of the city of Sparta, whose knight-squire/loved-beloved structure was more collective, in the sense that several veteran Spartans trained the future young soldiers (yes, they trained naked, something that shocks no one except the christoïdised spirits who fear the body). Elder Spartans were also considered to be older brothers, as we learn from the mythical legislator Lycurgus. The latter also said that the only correct way to admire these young men was equivalent to the way a sculptor admired his masterpiece. The Spartans were strongly attached to their wives, and apart from their sexual relations with them, they led a chaste and ascetic life, a fact recognised by the latter who had a very high opinion of their husbands. Let Xenophon speak and he recorded the facts of Lycurgus:

Thebes  

We can also consult the question of the Sacred Band of Thebes, sometimes outrageously vilified as being composed of sodomites. Let Plutarch speak:

Plutarch's relationship with this incredible statement must be preceded by the admission that "But some say that this group was made up of lovers and loved ones", which suggests that many others did not agree with this interpretation and that in fact it may have been just a rumour, perhaps conceived by their political enemies, the Athenians, who at that time were themselves governed by a corrupt and fallen elite, riddled with paedophiles and inverts, so that they could hardly imagine another scenario. This interpretation met with the approval of Philip II Antigonus, after the famous battle of Chaeronea. 

In fact, the defeat of the sacred band took place at the battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), the decisive battle in which Philip II of Macedonia, together with his son Alexander, extinguished the Theban hegemony. Alexander was the first to break through the front line of the Band, which until then had been thought invincible. The traditional hoplite infantry did not hold their own against the new Macedonian long-range phalanx: the Theban army and its allies broke and fled, but the Sacred Band, although surrounded and overwhelmed, refused to surrender. It held fast and fell where it was. Plutarch reports that Philip II, on meeting the corpses, "piled on top of each other", understanding who they were, exclaimed, perhaps rejecting the Athenian rumours and condemning this behaviour in general : 

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great is another popular example of reverse slander. Even though available historical sources clearly state that the Macedonian king conquered new and different women every night that Nyx did, he is still considered the most famous gay man of antiquity, simply because some twisted Hollywood screenwriter wanted to imagine him as such. In reality, Alexander the Great most likely slept with more women than Hugh Hefner! But how did we come to these misconceptions about ancient Greek society and homosexuality? Probably pure coincidence... 

If only one thing should be retained here, it is that the Hellenes considered homosexuality as a shameful defect of nature. This is why, in all the Hellenic literature of ancient times, there is not a single description of a homosexual act, in the face of the plethora of heterosexual acts described in detail, Zeus being one of the most important "alpha" heterosexual conquerors male in Mythology.

Finally, Persian and Indian historians also report that what motivated the absolute majority of Alexander the Great's men to want to return home was that they missed their wives. Indeed, Alexander married Roxana in an attempt to encourage them to mingle with the local women, but most of them were not only impervious to homosexuality but had a strong racial awareness, despite the greater ethnic proximity of the Sogdians and Persians to the Hellenes at the time, refusing their king's suggestion in preference to Greek women. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of similar examples that can be used to counter the misrepresentation of homosexuality in ancient Greece.  

Vedic India

Similar prohibitions against homosexual behaviour are present throughout the Indo-European world, from Ancient Greece to Vedic India, showing that the considerations of each of these cultures are part of an ancient relegation of such activities as spiritually impure and criminal.

The Atri Smriti, I, 268 :

The Manusmriti (Law of Manu) of the 2nd century BC records the following elements concerning sexual conduct, taken from Verse 11.174 :

Also from Verse 11.67 : 

The BaudhAyana, 3.7.2 :

The Arthashastra, written by the revered sage Chanakya, also says the following: 

(A sanction refers to the first degree of financial penalties of 48 to 96 panas, a sum of money that was important for everyone except the richest lords or kings and almost ruinous for the lower classes at that time).

And finally in the Dharmasutra of Apastambha, 1.19.15

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