Upon a topic of great difficulty, which is, however, inseparable from
the subject-matter of this inquiry, I shall not attempt to do more than
to offer a few suggestions. This is the relation of paiderastia to Greek
art. Whoever may have made a study of antique sculpture will not have
failed to recognise its healthy human tone, its ethical rightness. There
is no partiality for the beauty of the male sex, no endeavour to reserve
for the masculine deities the nobler attributes of man's intellectual
and moral nature, no extravagant attempt to refine upon masculine
qualities by the blending of feminine voluptuousness. Aphrodite and
Artemis hold their place beside Erôs and Hermes. Ares is less
distinguished by the genius lavished on him than Athene. Hera takes rank
with Zeus, the Nymphs with the Fauns, the Muses with Apollo. Nor are
even the minor statues, which belong to decorative rather than high art,
noticeable for the attribution of sensual beauties to the form of boys.
This, which is certainly true of the best age, is, with rare exceptions,
true of all the ages of Greek plastic art. No prurient effeminacy
degraded, deformed, or unduly confounded, the types of sex idealised in
sculpture.
The first reflection which must occur to even prejudiced observers, is
that paiderastia did not corrupt the Greek imagination to any serious
extent. The license of Paganism found appropriate expression in female
forms, but hardly touched the male; nor would it, I think, be possible
to demonstrate that obscene works of painting or of sculpture were
provided for paiderastic sensualists similar to those pornographic
objects which fill the reserved cabinet of the Neapolitan Museum. Thus,
the testimony of Greek art might be used to confirm the asseveration of
Greek literature, that among free men, at least, and gentle, this
passion tended even to purify feelings which, in their lust for women,
verged on profligacy. For one androgynous statue of Hermaphroditus or
Dionysus there are at least a score of luxurious Aphrodites and
voluptuous Bacchantes. Erôs himself, unless he is portrayed according to
the Roman type of Cupid, as a mischievous urchin, is a youth whose
modesty is no less noticeable than his beauty. His features are not
unfrequently shadowed with melancholy, as appears in the so-called
Genius of the Vatican, and in many statues which might pass for genii of
silence or of sleep as well as love. It would be difficult to adduce a
single wanton Erôs, a single image of this god provocative of sensual
desires. There is not one before which we could say--The sculptor of
that statue had sold his soul to paiderastic lust. Yet Erôs, it may be
remembered, was the special patron of paiderastia.
Greek art, like Greek mythology, embodied a finely graduated
half-unconscious analysis of human nature. The mystery of procreation
was indicated by phalli on the Hermæ. Unbridled appetite found
incarnation in Priapus, who, moreover, was never a Greek god, but a
Lampsacene adopted from the Asian coast by the Romans. The natural
desires were symbolised in Aphrodite Praxis, Kallipugos, or Pandemos.
The higher sexual enthusiasm assumed celestial form in Aphrodite
Ouranios. Love itself appeared personified in the graceful Erôs of
Praxiteles; and how sublimely Pheidias presented this god to the eyes of
his worshippers can now only be guessed at from a mutilated fragment
among the Elgin marbles. The wild and native instincts, wandering,
untutored and untamed, which still connect man with the life of woods
and beasts and April hours, received half-human shape in Pan and
Silenus, the Satyrs and the Fauns. In this department of semi-bestial
instincts we find one solitary instance bearing upon paiderastia. The
group of a Satyr tempting a youth at Naples stands alone among numerous
similar compositions which have female or hermaphroditic figures, and
which symbolise the violent and comprehensive lust of brutal appetite.
Further distinctions between the several degrees of love were drawn by
the Greek artists. Himeros, the desire that strikes the spirit through
the eyes, and Pothos, the longing of souls in separation from the object
of their passion, were carved together with Erôs by Scopas for
Aphrodite's temple at Megara. Throughout the whole of this series there
is no form set aside for paiderastia, as might have been expected if the
fancy of the Greeks had idealised a sensual Asiatic passion. Statues of
Ganymede carried to heaven by the eagle are, indeed, common enough in
Græco-Roman plastic art; yet, even here, there is nothing which
indicates the preference for a specifically voluptuous type of male
beauty.
It should be noticed that the mythology of the Greeks was determined
before paiderastia laid hold upon the race. Homer and Hesiod, says
Herodotus, made the Hellenic theogony, and Homer and Hesiod knew only of
the passions and emotions which are common to all healthy semi-civilised
humanity. The artists, therefore, found in myths and poems
subject-matter which imperatively demanded a no less careful study of
the female than of the male form; nor were beautiful women wanting.
Great cities placed their maidens at the disposition of sculptors and
painters for the modelling of Aphrodite. The girls of Sparta in their
dances suggested groups of Artemis and Oreads. The Hetairai of Corinth
presented every detail of feminine perfection freely to the gaze. Eyes
accustomed to the "dazzling vision" of a naked athlete were no less
sensitive to the virginal veiled grace of the Athenian Canephoroi. The
temples of the female deities had their staffs of priestesses, and the
oracles their inspired prophetesses. Remembering these facts,
remembering also what we read about Æolian ladies who gained fame by
poetry, there is every reason to understand how sculptors found it easy
to idealise the female form. Nor need we imagine, because Greek
literature abounds in references to paiderastia, and because this
passion played an important part in Greek history, that therefore the
majority of the race were not susceptible in a far higher degree to
female charms. On the contrary, our best authorities speak of boy-love
as a characteristic which distinguished warriors, gymnasts, poets, and
philosophers from the common multitude. As far as regards artists, the
anecdotes which are preserved about them turn chiefly upon their
preference for women. For one tale concerning the Pantarkes of Pheidias,
we have a score relating to the Campaspe of Apelles and the Phryne of
Praxiteles.
It may be judged superfluous to have proved that the female form was
idealised in sculpture by the Hellenes at least as nobly as the male;
nor need we seek elaborate reasons why paiderastia left no perceptible
stain upon the art of a race distinguished before all things by the
reserve of good taste. At the same time, there can be no reasonable
doubt that the artistic temperament of the Greeks had something to do
with its wide diffusion and many sided development. Sensitive to every
form of loveliness, and unrestrained by moral or religious prohibition,
they could not fail to be enthusiastic for that corporeal beauty, unlike
all other beauties of the human form, which marks male adolescence no
less triumphantly than does the male soprano voice upon the point of
breaking. The power of this corporeal loveliness to sway their
imagination by its unique æthetic charm is abundantly illustrated in the
passages which I have quoted above from the _Charmides_ of Plato and
Xenophon's _Symposium_. An expressive Greek phrase, "Youths in their
prime of adolescence, but not distinguished by a special beauty,"
recognises the persuasive influence, separate from that of true beauty,
which belongs to a certain period of masculine growth. The very
evanescence of this "bloom of youth" made it in Greek eyes desirable,
since nothing more clearly characterises the poetic myths which
adumbrate their special sensibility than the pathos of a blossom that
must fade. When distinction of feature and symmetry of form were added
to this charm of youthfulness, the Greeks admitted, as true artists are
obliged to do, that the male body displays harmonies of proportion and
melodies of outline more comprehensive, more indicative of strength
expressed in terms of grace, than that of women.[184] I guard myself
against saying--more seductive to the senses, more soft, more delicate,
more undulating. The superiority of male beauty does not consist in
these attractions, but in the symmetrical development of all the
qualities of the human frame, the complete organisation of the body as
the supreme instrument of vital energy. In the bloom of adolescence the
elements of feminine grace, suggested rather than expressed, are
combined with virility to produce a perfection which is lacking to the
mature and adult excellence of either sex. The Greek lover, if I am
right in the idea which I have formed of him, sought less to stimulate
desire by the contemplation of sensual charms than to attune his spirit
with the spectacle of strength at rest in suavity. He admired the
chastened lines, the figure slight but sinewy, the limbs well-knit and
flexible, the small head set upon broad shoulders, the keen eyes, the
austere reins, and the elastic movement of a youth made vigorous by
exercise. Physical perfection of this kind suggested to his fancy all
that he loved best in moral qualities. Hardihood, self-discipline,
alertness of intelligence, health, temperance, indomitable spirit,
energy, the joy of active life, plain living and high thinking--these
qualities the Greeks idealised, and of these, "the lightning vision of
the darling," was the living incarnation. There is plenty in their
literature to show that paiderastia obtained sanction from the belief
that a soul of this sort would be found within the body of a young man
rather than a woman. I need scarcely add that none but a race of artists
could be lovers of this sort, just as none but a race of poets were
adequate to apprehend the chivalrous enthusiasm for woman as an object
of worship.
The morality of the Greeks, as I have tried elsewhere to prove, was
æsthetic. They regarded humanity as a part of a good and beautiful
universe, nor did they shrink from any of their normal instincts. To
find the law of human energy, the measure of man's natural desires, the
right moment for indulgence and for self-restraint, the balance which
results in health, the proper limit for each several function which
secures the harmony of all, seem to them the aim of ethics. Their
personal code of conduct ended in "modest self-restraint:" not
abstention, but selection and subordination ruled their practice. They
were satisfied with controlling much that more ascetic natures
unconditionally suppress. Consequently, to the Greeks, there was nothing
at first sight criminal in paiderastia. To forbid it as a hateful and
unclean thing did not occur to them. Finding it within their hearts,
they chose to regulate it, rather than to root it out. It was only after
the inconveniences and scandals to which paiderastia gave rise had been
forced upon their notice, that they felt the visitings of conscience and
wavered in their fearless attitude.
In like manner, the religion of the Greeks was æsthetic. They analysed
the world of objects and the soul of man, unconsciously perhaps, but
effectively, and called their generalisations by the names of gods and
goddesses. That these were beautiful and filled with human energy was
enough to arouse in them the sentiments of worship. The notion of a
single Deity who ruled the human race by punishment and favour, hating
certain acts while he tolerated others--in other words, a God who
idealised one part of man's nature to the exclusion of the rest--had
never passed into the sphere of Greek conceptions. When, therefore,
paiderastia became a fact of their consciousness, they reasoned thus: If
man loves boys, God loves boys also. Homer and Hesiod forgot to tell us
about Ganymede and Hyacinth and Hylas. Let these lads be added to the
list of Danaë and Semele and Io. Homer told us that, because Ganymede
was beautiful, Zeus made him the serving-boy of the immortals. We
understand the meaning of that tale. Zeus loved him. The reason why he
did not leave him here on earth like Danaë was that he could not beget
sons upon his body and people the earth with heroes. Do not our wives
stay at home and breed our children? "Our favourite youths" are always
at our side.