156.Īnother reason for encouraging pederasty so much was the purity of love. However, they most likely stopped when the adolescent became a proper adult because homosexuality among adult men was not as welcome.Ī Man and a Boy Get into Position for Intercrural Copulation. It is unclear how long their cohabitation would last. If the boy was happy with the relationship with his philetor (the term for adult males in pederasty) after spending time away from society they would go back to civilization and live together. There is no real reason for the sex component, but that was a thing.
Such “boot camps” were supposed to teach young boys how to be real men for their families when they come back. In the city-state of Sparta, it was also very common for warriors to take care of the younger soldiers protecting each other on the battlefields ( 2020). They spent a few months there hunting, surviving, and learning the responsibilities a man has in his adult life. Usually, but it was not a requirement, the older man took his kleinos (the term for boys in pederasty) into the wilderness. The first being learning the skills of life. They were usually “between the ages of 15 and 19” (Stone 2017).Īs crazy as it sounds now in the view of the Ancient Greeks there were several benefits to pederasty.
Same-gender sex among adult men and women was not as widespread in Greece as this older men and young boys relationships were.Īs described on History Extra’s website, such relationships were identified as pederasty, “an early form of paedophilia that involved the ritual kidnapping ( harpagmos) of a boy from an elite background by an aristocratic adult male, with the consent of the boy’s father.” It is important to mention that those boys were not children. The reason why we are discussing this group first is that in Ancient Greece that was the most common form of homosexuality. It did not define a type of person.” states the Washington Post website (Stone 2017). “Greek culture acknowledged that same-sex and opposite-sex sexual desires could naturally coexist in varying degrees in the same individual, … To the Greeks, same-sex sex was simply a sexual act. According to, a website about ancient history, “homosexuality in fifth and fourth-century Athens, … was an integral part of social life” ( 2020). For them, love was love regardless of gender.
Here we are going to explore the view of Ancient Greeks on these relationships.įirst, we need to understand that such a concept as homosexuality did not exist in Ancient Greece. In researching this article I found out that homosexual relationships in Ancient Greece could be assigned to three main categories: adult male-young male, adult male-adult male and, female-female. A Man Courts a Youth, Who Holds a Garland.