Before proceeding to collect some notes upon the state of paiderastia at
Athens, I will recapitulate the points which I have already attempted to
establish. In the first place, paiderastia was unknown to Homer.[92]
Secondly, soon after the heroic age, two forms of paiderastia appeared
in Greece--the one chivalrous and martial, which received a formal
organisation in the Dorian states; the other sensual and lustful which,
though localised to some extent at Crete, pervaded the Greek cities
like a vice. Of the distinction between these two loves the Greek
conscience was well aware, though they came in course of time to be
confounded. Thirdly, I traced the character of Greek love, using that
term to indicate masculine affection of a permanent and enthusiastic
temper, without further ethical qualification, in early Greek history
and in the institutions of the Dorians. In the fourth place, I showed
what kind of treatment it received at the hands of the elegiac, lyric,
and tragic poets.
* * * * *
It now remains to draw some picture of the social life of the Athenians
in so far as paiderastia is concerned, and to prove how Plato was
justified in describing Attic customs on this point as qualified by
important restriction and distinction.
* * * * *
I do not know a better way of opening this inquiry, which must by its
nature be fragmentary and disconnected, than by transcribing what Plato
puts into the mouth of Pausanias in the _Symposium_.[93] After observing
that the paiderastic customs of Elis and Boeotia involved no perplexity,
inasmuch as all concessions to the god of love were tolerated, and that
such customs did not exist in any despotic states, he proceeds to
Athens.
"There is yet a more excellent way of legislating about them, which
is our own way; but this, as I was saying, is rather perplexing.
For observe that open loves are held to be more honourable than
secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if
their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially
honourable. Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all
the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing
anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he
fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit of his love, the custom of
mankind allows him to do many strange things, which philosophy
would bitterly censure if they were done from any motive of
interest or wish for office or power. He may pray and entreat, and
supplicate and swear, and be a servant of servants, and lie on a
mat at the door; in any other case friends and enemies would be
equally ready to prevent him, but now there is no friend who will
be ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will charge him
with meanness or flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace
which ennobles them, and custom has decided that they are highly
commendable, and that there is no loss of character in them; and
what is strangest of all, he only may swear or forswear himself
(this is what the world says), and the gods will forgive his
transgression, for there is no such thing as a lover's oath. Such
is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover,
according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world.
From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens to love
and to be loved is held to be a very honourable thing. But when
there is another regime, and parents forbid their sons to talk with
their lovers, and place them under a tutor's care, and their
companions and equals cast in their teeth anything of this sort
which they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the
reprovers, and do not rebuke them; any one who reflects on all this
will, on the contrary, think that we hold these practices to be
most disgraceful. But the truth, as I imagine, and as I said at
first, is, that whether such practices are honourable or whether
they are dishonourable is not a simple question; they are
honourable to him who follows them honourably, dishonourable to him
who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to
the evil, or in an evil manner; but there is honour in yielding to
the good, or in an honourable manner. Evil is the vulgar lover who
loves the body rather than the soul, and who is inconstant because
he is a lover of the inconstant, and, therefore, when the bloom of
youth, which he was desiring, is over, takes wing and flies away,
in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the
noble mind, which is one with the unchanging, is lifelong."
Pausanias then proceeds, at considerable length, to describe how the
customs of Athens required deliberate choice and trial of character as a
condition of honourable love; how it repudiated hasty and ephemeral
attachments, and engagements formed with the object of money-making or
political aggrandisement; how love on both sides was bound to be
disinterested, and what accession both of dignity and beauty the passion
of friends obtained from the pursuit of philosophy, and from the
rendering of mutual services upon the path of virtuous conduct.
This sufficiently indicates, in general terms, the moral atmosphere in
which Greek love flourished at Athens. In an earlier part of his speech
Pausanias, after dwelling upon the distinction between the two kinds of
Aphrodite, heavenly and vulgar, describes the latter in a way which
proves that the love of boys was held to be ethically superior to that
of women.[94]
"The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is
essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the
meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of
youths, and is of the body rather than the soul; the most foolish
beings are the objects of this love, which desires only to gain an
end, but never thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore
does good and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddess who is his
mother is far younger than the other, and she was born of the union
of the male and female, and partakes of both."
Then he turns to the Uranian love.
"The offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother
in whose birth the female has no part. She is from the male only;
this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older,
has nothing of wantonness. Those who are inspired by this love turn
to the male, and delight in him who is the most valiant and
intelligent nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in
the very character of their attachments; for they love not boys,
but intelligent beings whose reason is beginning to be developed,
much about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in
choosing them as their companions they mean to be faithful to them,
and pass their whole life in company with them, not to take them in
their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them,
or run away from one to another of them. But the love of young boys
should be forbidden by law, because their future is uncertain; they
may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much noble
enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the good
are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be
restrained by force, as we restrain or attempt to restrain them
from fixing their affections on women of free birth."
These long quotations from a work accessible to every reader may require
apology. My excuse for giving them must be that they express in pure
Athenian diction a true Athenian view of this matter. The most salient
characteristics of the whole speech are, first, the definition of a code
of honour, distinguishing the nobler from the baser forms of
paiderastia; secondly, the decided preference of male over female love;
thirdly, the belief in the possibility of permanent affection between
paiderastic friends; and, fourthly, the passing allusion to rules of
domestic surveillance under which Athenian boys were placed. To the
first of these points I shall have to return on another occasion. With
regard to the second, it is sufficient for the present purpose to
remember that free Athenian women were comparatively uneducated and
uninteresting, and that the hetairai had proverbially bad manners. While
men transacted business and enjoyed life in public, their wives and
daughters stayed in the seclusion of the household, conversing to a
great extent with slaves, and ignorant of nearly all that happened in
the world around them. They were treated throughout their lives as
minors by the law, nor could they dispose by will of more than the worth
of a bushel of barley. It followed that marriages at Athens were usually
matches of arrangement between the fathers of the bride and the
bridegroom, and that the motives which induced a man to marry were less
the desire for companionship than the natural wish for children and a
sense of duty to the country.[95] Demosthenes, in his speech against
Neæra, declares:[96] "We have courtesans for our pleasures, concubines
for the requirements of the body, and wives for the procreation of
lawful issue." If he had been speaking at a drinking-party, instead of
before a jury, he might have added, "and young men for intellectual
companions."
The fourth point which I have noted above requires more illustration,
since its bearing on the general condition of Athenian society is
important. Owing to the prevalence of paiderastia, a boy was exposed in
Athens to dangers which are comparatively unknown in our great cities,
and which rendered special supervision necessary. It was the custom for
fathers, when they did not themselves accompany their sons,[97] to
commit them to the care of slaves chosen usually among the oldest and
most trustworthy. The duty of the attendant guardian was not to instruct
the boy, but to preserve him from the addresses of importunate lovers or
from such assaults as Peisthetærus in the _Birds_ of Aristophanes
describes.[98] He followed his charge to the school and the gymnasium,
and was responsible for bringing him home at the right hour. Thus at the
end of the _Lysis_ we read:[99]--
"Suddenly we were interrupted by the tutors of Lysis and Menexenus;
who came upon us like an evil apparition with their brothers, and
bade them go home, as it was getting late. At first, we and the
bystanders drove them off; but afterwards, as they would not mind,
and only went on shouting in their barbarous dialect, and got
angry, and kept calling the boys--they appeared to us to have been
drinking rather too much at the Hermæa, which made them difficult
to manage--we fairly gave way and broke up the company."
In this way the daily conduct of Athenian boys of birth and good
condition was subjected to observation; and it is not improbable that
the charm which invested such lads as Plato portrayed in his _Charmides_
and _Lysis_ was partly due to the self-respect and self-restraint
generated by the peculiar conditions under which they passed their life.
Of the way in which a Greek boy spent his day, we gain some notion from
two passages in Aristophanes and Lucian. The Dikaios Logos[100] tells
that--
"in his days, when justice flourished and self-control was held in
honour, a boy's voice was never heard. He walked in order with his
comrades of the same quarter, lightly clad even in winter, down to
the school of the harp-player. There he learned old-fashioned hymns
to the gods, and patriotic songs. While he sat, he took care to
cover his person decently; and when he rose, he never forgot to rub
out the marks which he might have left upon the dust lest any man
should view them after he was gone. At meals he ate what was put
before him, and refrained from idle chattering. Walking through the
streets, he never tried to catch a passer's eye or to attract a
lover. He avoided the shops, the baths,[101] the Agora, the houses
of Hetairai.[102] He reverenced old age and formed within his soul
the image of modesty. In the gymnasium he indulged in fair and
noble exercise, or ran races with his comrades among the
olive-trees of the Academy."
The Adikos Logos replies by pleading that this temperate sort of life is
quite old-fashioned; boys had better learn to use their tongues and
bully. In the last resort he uses a clinching _argumentum ad
juvenem_.[103]
Were it not for the beautiful and highly-finished portraits in Plato, to
which I have already alluded, the description of Aristophanes might be
thought a mere ideal; and, indeed, it is probable that the actual life
of the average Athenian boy lay mid-way between the courses prescribed
by the Dikaios and the Adikos Logos.
Meanwhile, since Euripides, together with the whole school of studious
and philosophic speculators, are aimed at in the speeches of the Adikos
Logos, it will be fair to adduce a companion picture of the young Greek
educated on the athletic system, as these men had learned to know him. I
quote from the _Autolycus_, a satyric drama of Euripides:--
"There are a myriad bad things in Hellas, but nothing is worse than
the athletes. To begin with, they do not know how to live like
gentlemen, nor could they if they did; for how can a man, the slave
of his jaws and his belly, increase the fortune left him by his
father? Poverty and ill-luck find them equally incompetent. Having
acquired no habits of good living, they are badly off when they
come to roughing it. In youth they shine like statues stuck about
the town, and take their walks abroad; but when old age draws nigh,
you find them as threadbare as an old coat. Suppose a man has
wrestled well, or runs fast, or has hurled a quoit, or given a
black eye in fine style, has he done the State a service by the
crowns he won? Do soldiers fight with quoits in hand, or without
the press of shields can kicks expel the foeman from the gate?
Nobody is fool enough to do these things with steel before his
face. Keep, then, your laurels for the wise and good, for him who
rules a city well, the just and temperate, who by his speeches
wards off ill, allaying wars and civil strife. These are the things
for cities, yea, and for all Greece to boast of."
Lucian represents, of course, a late period of Attic life. But his
picture of the perfect boy completes, and in some points supplements,
that of Aristophanes. Callicratidas, in the _Dialogue on Love_, has
just drawn an unpleasing picture of a woman, surrounded in a fusty
boudoir with her rouge-pots and cosmetics, perfumes, paints, combs,
looking-glasses, hair-dyes, and curling irons. Then he turns to praise
boys:[104]
"How different is the boy! In the morning, he rises from his chaste
couch, washes the sleep from his eyes with cold water, puts on his
chlamys,[105] and takes his way to the school of the musician or
the gymnast. His tutors and guardians attend him, and his eyes are
bent upon the ground. He spends the morning in studying the poets
and philosophers, in riding, or in military drill. Then he betakes
himself to the wrestling-ground, and hardens his body with noontide
heat and sweat and dust. The bath follows and a modest meal. After
this he returns for awhile to study the lives of heroes and great
men. After a frugal supper sleep at last is shed upon his eyelids."
Such is Lucian's sketch of the day spent by a young Greek at the famous
University of Athens. Much is, undoubtedly, omitted; but enough is said
to indicate the simple occupations to which an Athenian youth, capable
of inspiring an enthusiastic affection, was addicted. Then follows a
burst of rhetoric, which reveals, when we compare it with the dislike
expressed for women, the deeply-seated virile nature of Greek love.
"Truly he is worthy to be loved. Who would not love Hermes in the
palæstra, or Phoebus at the lyre, or Castor on the racing-ground?
Who would not wish to sit face to face with such a youth, to hear
him talk, to share his toils, to walk with him, to nurse him in
sickness, to attend him on the sea, to suffer chains and darkness
with him if need be? He who hated him should be my foe, and who so
loved him should be loved by me. At his death I would die; one
grave should cover us both; one cruel hand cut short our lives!"
In the sequel of the dialogue Lucian makes it clear that he intends
these raptures of Callicratidas to be taken in great measure for
romantic boasting. Yet the fact remains that, till the last, Greek
paiderastia among the better sort of men implied no effeminacy.
Community of interest in sport, in exercise, and in open-air life
rendered it attractive.[106]
"Son of Eudiades, Euphorion,
After the boxing-match, in which he beat,
With wreaths I crowned, and set fine silk upon,
His forehead and soft blossoms honey-sweet;
Then thrice I kissed him all beblooded there;
His mouth I kissed, his eyes, his every bruise;
More fragrant far than frankincense, I swear.
Was the fierce chrism that from his brows did ooze."
"I do not care for curls or tresses
Displayed in wily wildernesses;
I do not prize the arts that dye
A painted cheek with hues that fly:
Give me a boy whose face and hand
Are rough with dust or circus-sand,
Whose ruddy flesh exhales the scent
Or health without embellishment:
Sweet to my sense is such a youth,
Whose charms have all the charm of truth:
Leave paints and perfumes, rouge, and curls,
To lazy, lewd Corinthian girls."
The palæstra was the place at Athens where lovers enjoyed the greatest
freedom. In the _Phædrus_ Plato observes that the attachment of the
lover for a boy grew by meetings and personal contact[107] in the
gymnasiums and other social resorts, and in the _Symposium_ he mentions
gymnastic exercises, with philosophy, and paiderastia, as the three
pursuits of freemen most obnoxious to despots. Æschines, again
describing the manners of boy-lovers in language familiar to his
audience, uses these phrases: "having grown up in gymnasium and games,"
and "the man having been a noisy haunter of gymnasiums, and having been
the lover of multitudes." Aristophanes, also, in the _Wasps_,[108]
employs similar language: "and not seeking to go revelling around in
exercising grounds." I may compare Lucian, _Amores_, cap. 2, "you care
for gymnasiums and their sleek oiled combatants," which is said to a
notorious boy-lover. Boys and men met together with considerable liberty
in the porches, peristyles and other adjuncts to an Attic
wrestling-ground; and it was here, too, that sophists and philosophers
established themselves, with the certainty of attracting a large and
eager audience for their discussions. It is true that an ancient law
forbade the presence of adults in the wrestling-grounds of boys; but
this law appears to have become almost wholly obsolete in the days of
Plato. Socrates, for example, in the _Charmides_, goes down immediately
after his arrival from the camp at Potidæa into the palæstra of Taureas
to hear the news of the day, and the very first question which he asks
his friends is whether a new beauty has appeared among the youths.[109]
So again in the _Lysis_, Hippothales invites Socrates to enter the
private palæstra of Miccus, where boys and men were exercising together
on the feast-day of Hermes.[110] "The building," he remarks, "is a
newly-erected palæstra, and the entertainment is generally conversation,
to which you are welcome." The scene which immediately follows is well
known to Greek students as one of the most beautiful and vivid pictures
of Athenian life. One group of youths are sacrificing to Hermes; another
are casting dice in a corner of the dressing-room. Lysis himself is
"standing among the other boys and youths, having a crown upon his head,
like a fair vision, and not less worthy of praise for his goodness than
for his beauty." The modesty of Lysis is shown by the shyness which
prevents him joining Socrates' party until he has obtained the company
of some of his young friends. Then a circle of boys and men is formed in
a corner of the court, and a conversation upon friendship begins.
Hippothales, the lover of Lysis, keeps at a decorous distance in the
background. Not less graceful as a picture is the opening of the
_Charmides_. In answer to a question of Socrates, the frequenters of the
palæstra tell him to expect the coming of young Charmides. He will then
see the most beautiful boy in Athens at the time: "for those who are
just entering are the advanced guard of the great beauty of the day, and
he is likely to be not far off." There is a noise and a bustle at the
door, and while the Socratic party continues talking Charmides enters.
The effect produced is overpowering:[111]--
"You know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything, and of the
beautiful I am simply such a measure as a white line is of chalk;
for almost all young persons appear to be beautiful in my eyes. But
at that moment when I saw him coming in, I confess that I was quite
astonished at his beauty and his stature; all the world seemed to
be enamoured of him; amazement and confusion reigned when he
entered; and a troop of lovers followed him. That grown-up men like
ourselves should have been affected in this way was not surprising,
but I observed that there was the same feeling among the boys; all
of them, down to the very least child, turned and looked at him, as
if he had been a statue."
Charmides, like Lysis, is persuaded to sit down by Socrates, who opens a
discussion upon the appropriate question of _Sophrosyne_, or modest
temperance and self-restraint.[112]
"He came as he was bidden, and sat down between Critias and me.
Great amusement was occasioned by everyone pushing with might and
main at his neighbour in order to make a place for him next to
them, until at the two ends of the row one had to get up, and the
other was rolled over sideways. Now I, my friend, was beginning to
feel awkward; my former bold belief in my powers of conversing with
him had vanished. And when Critias told him that I was the person
who had the cure, he looked at me in such an indescribable manner,
and was going to ask a question; and then all the people in the
palæstra crowded about us, and, O rare! I caught a sight of the
inwards of his garment, and took the flame. Then I could no longer
contain myself. I thought how well Cydias understood the nature of
love when, in speaking of a fair youth, he warns someone, 'not to
bring the fawn in the sight of the lion to be devoured by him,' for
I felt that I had been overcome by a sort of wild-beast appetite."
The whole tenor of the dialogue makes it clear that, in spite of the
admiration he excited, the honour paid him by a public character like
Socrates and the troops of lovers and of friends surrounding him, yet
Charmides was unspoiled. His docility, modesty, simplicity, and
healthiness of soul are at least as remarkable as the beauty for which
he was so famous.
A similar impression is produced upon our minds by Autolycus in the
_Symposium_ of Xenophon.[113] Callias, his acknowledged lover[114] had
invited him to a banquet after a victory which he had gained in the
pancration; and many other guests, including the Socratic party, were
asked to meet him. Autolycus came, attended by his father; and as soon
as the tables were covered and the seats had been arranged, a kind of
divine awe fell upon the company. The grown-up men were dazzled by the
beauty and the modest bearing of the boy, just as when a bright light is
brought into a darkened room. Everybody gazed at him, and all were
silent, sitting in uncomfortable attitudes of expectation and
astonishment. The dinner party would have passed off very tamely if
Phillipus, a professional diner-out and jester, had not opportunely made
his appearance. Autolycus meanwhile never uttered a word, but lay beside
his father like a breathing statue. Later on in the evening he was
obliged to answer a question. He opened his lips with blushes, and all
he said was,[115] "Not I, by gad." Still, even this created a great
sensation in the company. Everybody, says Xenophon, was charmed to hear
his voice, and turned their eyes upon him. It should be remarked that
the conversation at this party fell almost entirely upon matters of
love. Critobulus, for example, who was very beautiful and rejoiced in
having many lovers, gave a full account of his own feelings for
Cleinias.[116]
"You all tell me," he argued, "that I am beautiful, and I cannot
but believe you; but if I am, and if you feel what I feel when I
look on Cleinias, I think that beauty is better worth having than
all Persia. I would choose to be blind to everybody else if I could
only see Cleinias, and I hate the night because it robs me of his
sight. I would rather be the slave of Cleinias than live without
him; I would rather toil and suffer danger for his sake than live
alone at ease and in safety. I would go through fire with him, as
you would with me. In my soul I carry an image of him better made
than any sculptor could fashion."
What makes this speech the more singular is that Critobulus was a
newly-married man.
But to return from this digression to the palæstra. The Greeks were
conscious that gymnastic exercises tended to encourage and confirm the
habit of paiderastia. "The cities which have most to do with
gymnastics," is the phrase which Plato uses to describe the states where
Greek love flourished.[117] Herodotus says the barbarians borrowed
gymnastics together with paiderastia from the Hellenes; and we hear that
Polycrates of Samos caused the gymnasia to be destroyed when he wished
to discountenance the love which lent the warmth of personal enthusiasm
to political associations.[118] It was common to erect statues of love
in the wrestling-grounds; and there, says Plutarch,[119] the god's wings
grew so wide that no man could restrain his flight. Readers of the
idyllic poets will remember that it was a statue of Love which fell from
its pedestal in the swimming-bath upon the cruel boy who had insulted
the body of his self-slain friend.[120] Charmus, the lover of Hippias,
erected an image of Erôs in the academy at Athens which bore this
epigram:--
"Love, god of many evils and various devices, Charmus set up this
altar to thee upon the shady boundaries of the gymnasium."[121]
Erôs, in fact, was as much at home in the gymnasia of Athens as
Aphrodite in the temples of Corinth; he was the patron of paiderastia,
as she of female love. Thus Meleager writes:--
"The Cyprian queen, a woman, hurls the fire that maddens men for
females; but Erôs himself sways the love of males for males."[122]
Plutarch, again, in the Erotic dialogue, alludes to "Erôs, where
Aphrodite is not; Erôs apart from Aphrodite." These facts relating to
the gymnasia justified Cicero in saying, "Mihi quidem hæc in Græcorum
gymnasiis nata consuetudo videtur; _in quibus isti liberi et concesi
sunt amores_." He adds, with a true Roman's antipathy to Greek æsthetics
and their flimsy screen for sensuality, "Bene ergo Ennius, _flagitii
principium est nudare inter cives corpora_."[123] "To me, indeed, it
seems that this custom was generated in the gymnasiums of the Greeks,
for there those loves are freely indulged and sanctioned. Ennius
therefore very properly observed that the beginning of vice is the habit
of stripping the body among citizens."
The Attic gymnasia and schools were regulated by strict laws. We have
already seen that adults were not supposed to enter the palæstra; and
the penalty for the infringement of this rule by the gymnasiarch was
death. In the same way, schools had to be shut at sunset and not opened
again before daybreak; nor was a grown-up man allowed to frequent them.
The public chorus teachers of boys were obliged to be above the age of
forty.[124] Slaves who presumed to make advances to a free boy were
subject to the severest penalties; in like manner they were prohibited
from gymnastic exercises. Æschines, from whom we learn these facts,
draws the correct conclusion that gymnastics and Greek love were
intended to be the special privilege of freemen. Still, in spite of all
restrictions, the palæstra was the centre of Athenian profligacy, the
place in which not only honourable attachments were formed, but
disgraceful bargains also were concluded;[125] and it is not improbable
that men like Taureas and Miccus, who opened such places of amusement as
a private speculation, may have played the part of go-betweens and
panders. Their walls, and the plane-trees which grew along their open
courts, were inscribed by lovers with the names of boys who had
attracted them. To scrawl up, "Fair is Dinomeneus, fair is the boy," was
a common custom, as we learn from Aristophanes and from this anonymous
epigram in the _Anthology_:[126]--
"I said and once again I said, 'fair, fair'; but still will I go on
repeating how fascinating with his eyes is Dositheus. Not upon an
oak, nor on a pine-tree, nor yet upon a wall, will I inscribe this
word; but love is smouldering in my heart of hearts."
Another attention of the same kind from a lover to a boy was to have a
vase or drinking-cup of baked clay made, with a portrait of the youth
depicted on its surface, attended by winged genii of health and love.
The word "Fair" was inscribed beneath, and symbols of games were
added--a hoop or a fighting-cock.[127] Nor must I here omit the custom
which induced lovers of a literary turn to praise their friends in prose
or verse. Hippothales, in the _Lysis_ of Plato, is ridiculed by his
friends for recording the great deeds of the boy's ancestors, and
deafening his ears with odes and sonnets. A diatribe on love, written by
Lysias with a view to winning Phædrus, forms the starting-point of the
dialogue between that youth and Socrates.[128] We have, besides, a
curious panegyrical oration (called _Eroticos Logos_), falsely ascribed
to Demosthenes, in honour of a youth, Epicrates, from which some
information may be gathered concerning the topics usually developed in
these compositions.
Presents were of course a common way of trying to win favour. It was
reckoned shameful for boys to take money from their lovers, but fashion
permitted them to accept gifts of quails and fighting cocks, pheasants,
horses, dogs and clothes.[129] There existed, therefore, at Athens
frequent temptations for boys of wanton disposition, or for those who
needed money to indulge expensive tastes. The speech of Æschines, from
which I have already frequently quoted, affords a lively picture of the
Greek rake's progress, in which Timarchus is described as having sold
his person in order to gratify his gluttony and lust and love of gaming.
The whole of this passage,[130] it may be observed in passing, reads
like a description of Florentine manners in a sermon of Savonarola.
The shops of the barbers, surgeons, perfumers, and flower-sellers had an
evil notoriety, and lads who frequented these resorts rendered
themselves liable to suspicion. Thus Æschines accuses Timarchus of
having exposed himself for hire in a surgeon's shop at the Peiræus;
while one of Straton's most beautiful epigrams[131] describes an
assignation which he made with a boy who had attracted his attention in
a garland-weaver's stall. In a fragment from the _Pyraunos_ of Alexis,
a young man declares that he found thirty professors of the "voluptuous
life of pleasure," in the Cerameicus during a search of three days;
while Cratinus and Theopompus might be quoted to prove the ill fame of
the monument to Cimon and the hill of Lycabettus.[132]
The last step in the downward descent was when a youth abandoned the
roof of his parents or guardians and accepted the hospitality of a
lover.[133] If he did this, he was lost.
In connection with this portion of the subject, it may be well to state
that the Athenian law recognised contracts made between a man and boy,
even if the latter were of free birth, whereby the one agreed to render
up his person for a certain period and purpose, and the other to pay a
fixed sum of money.[134] The phrase "a boy who has been a prostitute,"
occurs quite naturally in Aristophanes;[135] nor was it thought
disreputable for men to engage in these _liaisons_. Disgrace only
attached to the free youth who gained a living by prostitution; and he
was liable, as we shall see, at law to loss of civil rights.
Public brothels for males were kept in Athens, from which the state
derived a portion of its revenues. It was in one of these bad places
that Socrates first saw Phædo.[136] This unfortunate youth was a native
of Elis. Taken prisoner in war, he was sold in the public market to a
slave-dealer, who then acquired the right by Attic law to prostitute his
person and engross his earnings for his own pocket. A friend of
Socrates, perhaps Cebes, bought him from his master, and he became one
of the chief members of the Socratic circle. His name is given to the
Platonic dialogue on immortality, and he lived to found what is called
the Eleo-Socratic School. No reader of Plato forgets how the sage, on
the eve of his death, stroked the beautiful long hair of Phædo,[137] and
prophesied that he would soon have to cut it short in mourning for his
teacher.
Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, is said to have spent his youth in
brothels of this sort--by inclination, however, if the reports of his
biographers be not calumnious.
From what has been collected on this topic, it will be understood that
boys in Athens not unfrequently caused quarrels and street-brawls, and
that cases for recovery of damages or breach of contract were brought
before the Attic law-courts. The Peiræus was especially noted for such
scenes of violence. The oration of Lysias against Simon is a notable
example of the pleadings in a cause of this description.[138] Simon, the
defendant, and Lysias, the plaintiff (or some one for whom Lysias had
composed the speech) were both of them attached to Theodotus, a boy from
Platæa. Theodotus was living with the plaintiff; but the defendant
asserted that the boy had signed an agreement to consort with him for
the consideration of three hundred drachmæ, and, relying on this
contract, he had attempted more than once to carry off the boy by force.
Violent altercations, stone-throwings, house-breakings, and encounters
of various kinds having ensued, the plaintiff brought an action for
assault and battery against Simon. A modern reader is struck with the
fact that he is not at all ashamed of his own relation towards
Theodotus. It may be noted that the details of this action throw light
upon the historic brawl at Corinth, in which a boy was killed, and which
led to the foundation of Syracuse by Archias the Bacchiad.[139]