Contents:
¿SóCRAT ERA GAY?
Homosexualy: sexual attractn to persons of the same sex.
Vlent bate, enthiastic wrgs, shamefaced silence, flights of fantasy: few aspects of ancient society are so hotly ntted as Greek perasty, or - as we shall see below - homosexualy.
¿SóCRAT Y PLATóN ERAN GAYS?
Dover published his fluential book Greek Homosexualy 1978, an avalanche of new studi has appeared.
The synchronistic approach: scholars ncentrate upon homosexualy fifth and fourth-century Athens, where was tegral part of social life. There are many sourc of evince: lyril poetry, vas, statu, myths, philosophil treatis, speech, scriptns, medil texts, tragedi, edi, curs (example), and anecdot which homosexual practic are mentned, ld, ignored, and sometim disuraged.
The often outspoken poems and the philosophy of Plato (427-347) have rulted our exprsn "Greek prcipl" to scribe male homosexualy.
WAS SOCRAT GAY?
Unfortunately, we know hardly anythg about female homosexualy. Therefore, this article, we will have to foc on male homosexualy. Let's start wh the word "homosexual".
In ancient Greece, there never was a word to scribe homosexual practic: they were simply part of aphrodisia, love, which clud men and women alike. Prostutn, which was an important aspect of Athenian life, had ltle to do wh male domance; nor was - and this is important - Greek homosexualy rtricted to perasty between a domant adult and a shy boy. It is now clear that homosexualy was not rtricted to perasty, and that we have to study our evince more refully.
Another objectn to the tradnal renstctn of Athenian homosexualy is that there is simply no evince that the prents shown on vas had any pedagogic or didactic value. It is not te that homosexual love for boys was an aristocratic phenomenon. On the ntrary, there appears to be an crease of perastic and other homosexual reprentatns.