A considerable majority of the legends which have been related in the
preceding section are Dorian, and the Dorians gave the earliest and most
marked encouragement to Greek love. Nowhere else, indeed, except among
the Dorians, who were an essentially military race, living like an army
of occupation in the countries they had seized, herding together in
barracks and at public messes, and submitting to martial drill and
discipline, do we meet with paiderastia developed as an institution. In
Crete and Lacedæmon it became a potent instrument of education. What I
have to say, in the first instance, on this matter is derived almost
entirely from C. O. Müllers's _Dorians_,[33] to which work I refer my
readers for the authorities cited in illustration of each detail. Plato
says that the law of Lycurgus in respect to love was _Poikiles_,[34] by
which he means that it allowed the custom under certain restrictions. It
would appear that the lover was called Inspirer, at Sparta, while the
youth he loved was named Hearer. These local phrases sufficiently
indicate the relation which subsisted between the pair. The lover
taught, the hearer learned; and so from man to man was handed down the
tradition of heroism, the peculiar tone and temper of the state to
which, in particular among the Greeks, the Dorians clung with obstinate
pertinacity. Xenophon distinctly states that love was maintained among
the Spartans with a view to education; and when we consider the customs
of the state, by which boys were separated early from their homes and
the influences of the family were almost wholly wanting, it is not
difficult to understand the importance of the paiderastic institution.
The Lacedæmonian lover might represent his friend in the Assembly. He
was answerable for his good conduct, and stood before him as a pattern
of manliness, courage, and prudence. Of the nature of his teaching we
may form some notion from the precepts addressed by the Megarian
Theognis to the youth Kurnus. In battle the lovers fought side by side;
and it is worthy of notice that before entering into an engagement the
Spartans sacrificed to Erôs. It was reckoned a disgrace if a youth found
no man to be his lover. Consequently we find that the most illustrious
Spartans are mentioned by their biographers in connection with their
comrades. Agesilaus heard Lysander; Archidamus, his son, loved
Cleonymus; Cleomenes III, was the hearer of Xenares and the inspirer of
Panteus. The affection of Pausanias, on the other hand, for the boy
Argilus, who betrayed him according to the account of Thucydides,[35]
must not be reckoned among these nobler loves. In order to regulate the
moral conduct of both parties, Lycurgus made it felony, punishable with
death or exile, for the lover to desire the person of a boy in lust;
and, on the other hand, it was accounted exceedingly disgraceful for the
younger to meet the advances of the elder with a view to gain. Honest
affection and manly self-respect were exacted on both sides; the bond of
union implied no more of sensuality than subsists between a father and a
son, a brother and a brother. At the same time great license of
intercourse was permitted. Cicero, writing long after the great age of
Greece, but relying probably upon sources to which we have no access,
asserts that, "Lacedæmoni ipsi cum omnia concedunt in amore juvenum
_præter stuprum_ tenui sane muro dissæpiunt id quod excipiunt:
_complexus enim concubitusque permittunt_."[36] The Lacedæmonians, while
they permit all things except outrage in the love of youths, certainly
distinguish the forbidden by a thin wall of partition from the
sanctioned, for they allow embraces and a common couch to lovers."
In Crete the paiderastic institutions were even more elaborate than at
Sparta. The lover was called _Philetor_, and the beloved one _Kleinos_.
When a man wished to attach to himself a youth in the recognised bonds
of friendship, he took him away from his home, with a pretence of force,
but not without the connivance, in most cases, of his friends.[37] For
two months the pair lived together among the hills, hunting and fishing.
Then the _Philetor_ gave gifts to the youth, and suffered him to return
to his relatives. If the _Kleinos_ (illustrious or laudable) had
received insult or ill-treatment during the probationary weeks, he now
could get redress at law. If he was satisfied with the conduct of his
would-be comrade, he changed his title from _Kleinos_ to _Parastates_
(comrade and bystander in the ranks of battle and life), returned to
the _Philetor_, and lived thenceforward in close bonds of public
intimacy with him.
* * * * *
The primitive simplicity and regularity of these customs make it appear
strange to modern minds; nor is it easy to understand how they should
ever have been wholly free from blame. Yet we must remember the
influences which prevalent opinion and ancient tradition both contribute
toward preserving a delicate sense of honour under circumstances of
apparent difficulty. The careful reading of one _Life_ by Plutarch,
that, for instance, of Cleomenes or that of Agis, will have more effect
in presenting the realities of Dorian existence to our imagination than
any amount of speculative disquisition. Moreover, a Dorian was exposed
to almost absolute publicity. He had no chance of hiding from his
fellow-citizens the secrets of his private life. It was not, therefore,
till the social and political complexion of the whole nation became
corrupt that the institutions just described encouraged profligacy.[38]
That the Spartans and the Cretans degenerated from their primitive ideal
is manifest from the severe critiques of the philosophers. Plato, while
passing a deliberate censure on the Cretans for the introduction of
paiderastia into Greece,[39] remarks that _syssitia_, or meals in
common, and _gymnasia_ are favourable to the perversion of the passions.
Aristotle, in a similar argument,[40] points out that the Dorian habits
had a direct tendency to check the population by encouraging the love of
boys and by separating women from the society of men. An obscure passage
quoted from Hagnon by Athenæus might also be cited to prove that the
Greeks at large had formed no high opinion of Spartan manners.[41] But
the most convincing testimony is to be found in the Greek language: "to
do like the Laconians, to have connection in Laconian way, to do like
the Cretans," tell their own tale, especially when we compare these
phrases with, "to do like the Corinthians, the Lesbians, the Siphnians,
the Phoenicians, and other verbs formed to indicate the vices localised
in separate districts.
* * * * *
Up to this point I have been content to follow the notices of Dorian
institutions which are scattered up and down the later Greek authors,
and which have been collected by C. O. Müller. I have not attempted to
draw definite conclusions, or to speculate upon the influence which the
Dorian section of the Hellenic family may have exercised in developing
paiderastia. To do so now will be legitimate, always remembering that
what we actually know about the Dorians is confined to the historic
period, and that the tradition respecting their early customs is derived
from second-hand authorities.
* * * * *
It has frequently occurred to my mind that the mixed type of paiderastia
which I have named Greek Love took its origin in Doris. Homer, who knew
nothing about the passion as it afterwards existed, drew a striking
picture of masculine affection in Achilles. And Homer, I may add, was
not a native of northern Greece. Whoever he was, or whoever they were,
the poet, or the poets, we call Homer, belonged to the south-east of the
Ægean. Homer, then, may have been ignorant of paiderastia. Yet
friendship occupies the first place in his hero's heart, while only the
second is reserved for sexual emotion. Now Achilles came from Phthia,
itself a portion of that mountain region to which Doris belonged.[42] Is
it unnatural to conjecture that the Dorians in their migration to
Lacedæmon and Crete, the recognised headquarters of the custom, carried
a tradition of heroic paiderastia along with them? Is it unreasonable to
surmise that here, if anywhere in Hellas, the custom existed from
prehistoric times? If so, the circumstances of their invasion would have
fostered the transformation of this tradition into a tribal institution.
They went forth, a band of warriors and pirates, to cross the sea in
boats, and to fight their way along the hills and plains of Southern
Greece. The dominions they had conquered with their swords they occupied
like soldiers. The camp became their country, and for a long period of
time they literally lived upon the bivouac. Instead of a city-state,
with is manifold complexities of social life, they were reduced to the
narrow limits and the simple conditions of a roving horde. Without
sufficiency of women, without the sanctities of established domestic
life, inspired by the memory of Achilles, and venerating their ancestor
Herakles, the Dorian warriors had special opportunity for elevating
comradeship to the rank of an enthusiasm. The incidents of emigration
into a distant country--perils of the sea, passages of rivers and
mountains, assaults of fortresses and cities, landings on a hostile
shore, night-vigils by the side of blazing beacons, foragings for food,
picquet services in the front of watchful foes--involved adventures
capable of shedding the lustre of romance on friendship. These
circumstances, by bringing the virtues of sympathy with the weak,
tenderness for the beautiful, protection for the young, together with
corresponding qualities of gratitude, self-devotion and admiring
attachment, into play, may have tended to cement unions between man and
man no less firm than that of marriage. On such connections a wise
captain would have relied for giving strength to his battalion, and for
keeping alive the flame of enterprise and daring. Fighting and foraging
in company, sharing the same wayside board and heath-strewn bed,
rallying to the comrade's voice in onset, relying on the comrade's
shield when fallen, these men learned the meanings of the words
_Philetor_ and _Parastates_. To be loved was honourable, for it implied
being worthy to be died for. To love was glorious, since it pledged the
lover to self-sacrifice in case of need. In these conditions the
paiderastic passion may have well combined manly virtue with carnal
appetite, adding such romantic sentiment as some stern men reserve
within their hearts for women.[43] A motto might be chosen for a lover
of this early Dorian type from the Æolic poem ascribed to Theocritus:
"And made me tender from the iron man I used to be."
* * * * *
In course of time, when the Dorians had settled down upon their
conquered territories, and when the passions which had shown their more
heroic aspect during a period of warfare came, in a period of idleness,
to call for methods of restraint, then the discrimination between
honourable and base forms of love, to which Plato pointed as a feature
of the Dorian institutions, took place. It is also more than merely
probable that in Crete where these institutions were the most precisely
regulated, the Dorian immigrants came into contact with Phoenician vices,
the repression of which required the adoption of a strict code.[44] In
this way paiderastia, considered as a mixed custom, partly martial,
partly luxurious, recognised by public opinion and controlled by law,
obtained among the Dorian Tribes, and spread from them throughout the
states of Hellas. Relics of numerous semi-savage habits--thefts of food,
ravishment as a prelude to marriage, and so forth--indicate in like
manner the survival among the Dorians of primitive tribal institutions.
It will be seen that the conclusion to which I have been drawn by the
foregoing consideration is that the mixed form of paiderastia, called by
me in this essay "Greek love," owed its peculiar quality, what Plato
called its intricacy of "laws and customs," to two diverse strains of
circumstances harmonised in the Greek temperament. Its military and
enthusiastic elements were derived from the primitive conditions of the
Dorians during their immigration into Southern Greece. Its refinements
of sensuality and sanctified impurity are referable to contact with
Phoenician civilisation. The specific form it assumed among the Dorians
of the historic period, equally removed from military freedom and from
Oriental luxury, can be ascribed to the operation of that organising,
moulding and assimilating spirit which we recognise as Hellenic.
The position thus stated is, unfortunately, speculative rather than
demonstrable; and in order to establish the reasonableness of the
speculation, it would be natural at this point to introduce some account
of paiderastia as it exists in various savage tribes, if their customs
could be seen to illustrate the Doric phase of Greek love. This,
however, is not the case. Study of Mr. Herbert Spencer's Tables, and of
Bastian's _Der Mensch in der Geschichte_ (vol. iii. pp. 304-323),
together with the facts collected by travellers among the North American
Indians, and the mass of curious information supplied by Rosenbaum in
his _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume_, makes it clear to my mind
that the unisexual vices of barbarians follow, not the type of Greek
paiderastia, but that of the Scythian disease of effeminacy, described
by Herodotus and Hippocrates as something essentially foreign and
non-Hellenic. In all these cases, whether we regard the Scythian
impotent effeminates, the North American Bardashes, the Tsecats of
Madagascar, the Cordaches of the Canadian Indians and similar classes
among Californian Indians, natives of Venezuela, and so forth--the
characteristic point is that effeminate males renounce their sex, assume
female clothes, and live either in promiscuous concubinage with the men
of the tribe or else in marriage with chosen persons. This abandonment
of the masculine attributes and habits, this assumption of feminine
duties and costume, would have been abhorrent to the Doric custom.
Precisely similar effeminacies were recognised as pathological by
Herodotus, to whom Greek paiderastia was familiar. The distinctive
feature of Dorian comradeship was that it remained on both sides
masculine, tolerating no sort of softness. For similar reasons, what we
know about the prevalence of sodomy among the primitive peoples of
Mexico, Peru and Yucatan, and almost all half-savage nations,[45]
throws little light upon the subject of the present inquiry. Nor do we
gain anything of importance from the semi-religious practices of
Japanese Bonzes or Egyptian priests. Such facts, taken in connection
with abundant modern experience of what are called unnatural vices, only
prove the universality of unisexual indulgence in all parts of the world
and under all conditions of society. Considerable psychological interest
attaches to the study of these sexual aberrations. It is also true that
we detect in them the germ or raw material of a custom which the Dorians
moralised or developed after a specific fashion; but nowhere do we find
an analogue to their peculiar institutions. It was just that effort to
moralise and adapt to social use a practice which has elsewhere been
excluded in the course of civil growth, or has been allowed to linger
half-acknowledged as a remnant of more primitive conditions, or has
re-appeared in the corruption of society; it was just this effort to
elevate paiderastia according to the æsthetic standard of Greek ethics
which constituted its distinctive quality in Hellas. We are obliged, in
fact, to separate this, the true Hellenic manifestation of the
paiderastic passion, from the effeminacies, brutalities, and gross
sensualities which can be noticed alike in imperfectly civilised and in
luxuriously corrupt communities.
* * * * *
Before leaving this part of the subject, I must repeat that what I have
suggested regarding the intervention of the Dorians in creating the type
of Greek love is a pure speculation. If it has any value, that is due to
the fixed and regulated forms which paiderastic institutions displayed
at a very early date in Crete and Sparta, and also to the remnants of
savage customs embedded in them. It depends to a certain extent also
upon the absence of paiderastia in Homer. But on this point something
still remains to be said. Our Attic authorities certainly regarded the
Homeric poems as canonical books, decisive for the culture of the first
stage of Hellenic history. Yet it is clear that Homer refined Greek
mythology, while many of the cruder elements of that mythology survived
from pre-Homeric times in local cults and popular religious observances.
We know, moreover, that a body of non-Homeric writings, commonly called
the cyclic poems, existed by the side of Homer, some of the material of
which is preserved to us by dramatists, lyrists, historians, antiquaries
and anecdotists. It is not impossible that this so-called cyclical
literature contained paiderastic elements, which were eliminated, like
the grosser forms of myth, in the Homeric poems.[46] If this be
conceded, we might be led to conjecture that paiderastia was a remnant
of ancient savage habits, ignored by Homer, but preserved by tradition
in the race. Given the habit, the Greeks were certainly capable of
carrying it on without shame. We ought to resist the temptation to seek
a high and noble origin for all Greek institutions. But there remains
the fact that, however they acquired the habit, whether from North
Dorian customs antecedent to Homer, or from conditions of experience
subsequent to the Homeric age, the Greeks gave it a dignity and an
emotional superiority which is absent in the annals of barbarian
institutions. Instead of abandoning it as part of the obsolete lumber of
their prehistoric origins, they chose to elaborate it into the region of
romance and ideality. And this they did in spite of Homer's ignorance of
the passion or of his deliberate reticence. Whatever view, therefore, we
may take about Homer's silence, and about the possibility of paiderastia
occurring in the lost poems of the cyclic type, or lastly, about its
probable survival in the people from an age of savagery, we are bound to
regard its systematical development among the Dorians as a fact of
paramount significance.
In that passage of the _Symposium_[47] where Plato notices the Spartan
law of love as _Poikilos_, he speaks with disapprobation of the
Boeotians, who were not restrained by custom and opinion within the same
strict limits. Yet it should here be noted that the military aspect of
Greek love in the historic period was nowhere more distinguished than at
Thebes. Epaminondas was a notable boy-lover; and the names of his
beloved Asopichus and Cephisodorus are mentioned by Plutarch.[48] They
died, and were buried with him at Mantinea. The paiderastic legend of
Herakles and Iolaus was localised in Boeotia; and the lovers, Diocles and
Philolaus, who gave laws to Thebes, directly encouraged those masculine
attachments, which had their origin in the Palæstra.[49] The practical
outcome of these national institutions in the chief town of Boeotia was
the formation of the so-called Sacred Band, or Band of Lovers, upon whom
Pelopidas relied in his most perilous operations. Plutarch relates that
they were enrolled, in the first instance, by Gorgidas, the rank and
file of the regiment being composed of young men bound together by
affection. Report goes that they were never beaten till the battle of
Chæronea. At the end of that day, fatal to the liberties of Hellas,
Philip of Macedon went forth to view the slain; and when he "came to
that place where the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead
together, he wondered, and understanding that it was the band of lovers,
he shed tears, and said, 'Perish any man who suspects that these men
either did or suffered anything that was base.'"[50] As at all the other
turning points of Greek history, so at this, too, there is something
dramatic and eventful. Thebes was the last strong-hold of Greek freedom;
the Sacred Band contained the pith and flower of her army; these lovers
had fallen to a man, like the Spartans of Leonidas at Thermopylæ,
pierced by the lances of the Macedonian phalanx; then, when the day was
over and the dead were silent, Philip, the victor in that fight, shed
tears when he beheld their serried ranks, pronouncing himself therewith
the fittest epitaph which could have been inscribed upon their stelë by
a Hellene.
* * * * *
At Chæronea, Greek liberty, Greek heroism, and Greek love, properly
so-called, expired. It is not unworthy of notice that the son of the
conqueror, young Alexander, endeavoured to revive the tradition of
Achilleian friendship. This lad, born in the decay of Greek liberty,
took conscious pleasure in enacting the part of a Homeric hero, on the
altered stage of Hellas and of Asia, with somewhat tawdry histrionic
pomp.[51] Homer was his invariable companion upon his marches; in the
Troad he paid special honour to the tomb of Achilles, running naked
races round the barrow in honour of the hero, and expressing the envy
which he felt for one who had so true a friend and so renowned a poet to
record his deeds. The historians of his life relate that, while he was
indifferent to women,[52] he was madly given to the love of males. This
the story of his sorrow for Hephaistion sufficiently confirms. A kind of
spiritual atavism moved the Macedonian conqueror to assume on the vast
Bactrian plain the outward trappings of Achilles Agonistes.[53]
Returning from this digression upon Alexander's almost hysterical
archaism, it should next be noticed that Plato includes the people of
Elis in the censure which he passes upon the Boeotians. He accused the
Eleans of adopting customs which permitted youths to gratify their
lovers without further distinction of age, or quality, or opportunity.
In like manner, Maximus Tyrius distinguishes between the customs of
Crete and Elis: "While I find the laws of the Cretans excellent, I must
condemn those of Elis for their license."[54] Elis,[55] like Megara,
instituted a contest for beauty among youths; and it is significant that
the Megarians were not uncommonly accused of _Hybris_, or wanton lust,
by Greek writers. Both the Eleans and the Megarians may therefore
reasonably be considered to have exceeded the Greek standard of taste in
the amount of sensual indulgence which they openly acknowledged. In
Ionia, and other regions of Hellas exposed to Oriental influences, Plato
says that paiderastia was accounted a disgrace.[56] At the same time he
couples with paiderastia, in this place, both addiction to gymnastic
exercise and to philosophical studies, pointing out that despotism was
always hostile to high thoughts and haughty customs. The meaning of the
passage, therefore, seems to be that the true type of Greek love had no
chance of unfolding itself freely on the shores of Asia Minor. Of
paiderastic _Malakia_, or effeminacy, there is here no question, else
Plato would probably have made Pausanias use other language.