Homer, then, knew nothing of paiderastia, though the _Iliad_ contained
the first and noblest legend of heroic friendship. Very early, however,
in Greek history boy-love, as a form of sensual passion, became a
national institution. This is proved abundantly by mythological
traditions of great antiquity, by legendary tales connected with the
founding of Greek cities, and by the primitive customs of the Dorian
tribes. The question remains how paiderastia originated among the
Greeks, and whether it was introduced or indigenous.
The Greeks themselves speculated on this subject, but they arrived at no
one definite conclusion. Herodotus asserts that the Persians learned the
habit, in its vicious form, from the Greeks;[2] but, even supposing this
assertion to be correct, we are not justified in assuming the same of
all barbarians who were neighbours of the Greeks; since we know from the
Jewish records and from Assyrian inscriptions that the Oriental nations
were addicted to this as well as other species of sensuality. Moreover,
it might with some strain on language be maintained that Herodotus, in
the passage above referred to, did not allude to boy-love in general,
but to the peculiarly Hellenic form of it which I shall afterwards
attempt to characterise.
A prevalent opinion among the Greeks ascribed the origin of paiderastia
to Crete; and it was here that the legend of Zeus and Ganymede was
localised.[3] "The Cretans," says Plato,[4] "are always accused of
having invented the story of Ganymede and Zeus, which is designed to
justify themselves in the enjoyment of such pleasures by the practice of
the god whom they believe to have been their lawgiver."
In another passage,[5] Plato speaks of the custom that prevailed before
the time of Laius--in terms which show his detestation of a vice that
had gone far toward corrupting Greek society. This sentence indicates
the second theory of the later Greeks upon this topic. They thought that
Laius, the father of OEdipus, was the first to practise _Hybris_, or
lawless lust, in this form, by the rape committed on Chrysippus, the son
of Pelops.[6] To this crime of Laius, the Scholiast to the _Seven
against Thebes_ attributes all the evils which afterwards befell the
royal house of Thebes, and Euripides made it the subject of a tragedy.
In another but less prevalent Saga the introduction of paiderastia is
ascribed to Orpheus.
It is clear from these conflicting theories that the Greeks themselves
had no trustworthy tradition on the subject. Nothing, therefore, but
speculative conjecture is left for the modern investigator. If we need
in such a matter to seek further than the primal instincts of human
nature, we may suggest that, like the orgiastic rites of the later
Hellenic cultus, paiderastia in its crudest form was transmitted to the
Greeks from the East. Its prevalence in Crete, which, together with
Cyprus, formed one of the principal links between Phoenicia and Hellas
proper, favours this view. Paiderastia would, on this hypothesis, like
the worship of the Paphian and Corinthian Aphrodite, have to be regarded
as in part an Oriental importation.[7] Yet, if we adopt any such
solution of the problem, we must not forget that in this, as in all
similar cases, whatever the Greeks received from adjacent nations, they
distinguished with the qualities of their own personality. Paiderastia
in Hellas assumed Hellenic characteristics, and cannot be confounded
with any merely Asiatic form of luxury. In the tenth section of this
Essay I shall return to the problem, and advance my own conjecture as to
the part played by the Dorians in the development of paiderastia into a
custom.
It is enough for the present to remark that, however introduced, the
vice of boy-love, as distinguished from heroic friendship, received
religious sanction at an early period. The legend of the rape of
Ganymede was invented, according to the passage recently quoted from
Plato, by the Cretans with the express purpose of investing their
pleasures with a show of piety. This localisation of the religious
sanction of paiderastia in Crete confirms the hypothesis of Oriental
influence; for one of the notable features of Græco Asiatic worship was
the consecration of sensuality in the Phallus cult, the _Hiero douloi_
(temple slaves, or _bayadères_) of Aphrodite, and the eunuchs of the
Phrygian mother. Homer tells the tale of Ganymede with the utmost
simplicity. The boy was so beautiful that Zeus suffered him not to dwell
on earth, but translated him to heaven and appointed him the cupbearer
of the immortals. The sensual desire which made the king of gods and men
prefer Ganymede to Leda, Io, Danaë, and all the maidens whom he loved
and left on earth, is an addition to the Homeric version of the myth. In
course of time the tale of Ganymede, according to the Cretan reading,
became the nucleus around which the paiderastic associations of the
Greek race gathered, just as that of Achilles formed the main point in
their tradition of heroic friendship. To the Romans and the modern
nations the name of Ganymede, debased to Catamitus, supplied a term of
reproach, which sufficiently indicates the nature of the love of which
he became eventually the eponym.