Part 3
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.
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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.
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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.
XI.
Before proceeding to discuss the conditions under which paiderastia existed in Athens, it may be well to pause and to consider the tone adopted with regard to it by some of the earlier Greek poets. Much that is interesting on the subject of the true Hellenic Erôs can be gathered from Theognis, Solon, Pindar, Æschylus, and Sophocles; while the lyrics of Anacreon, Alcæus, Ibycus, and others of the same period illustrate the wanton and illiberal passion (_Hybris_) which tended to corrode and undermine the nobler feeling.
It is well known that Theognis and his friend Kurnus were members of the aristocracy of Megara. After Megara had thrown off the yoke of Corinth in the early part of the sixth century, the city first submitted to the democratic despotism of Theagenes, and then for many years engaged in civil warfare. The larger number of the elegies of Theognis are specially intended to instruct Kurnus how he ought to act as an illustrious party-leader of the nobles (_Esthloi_) in their contest with the people (_Deiloi_). They consist, therefore, of political and social precepts, and for our present purpose are only important as illustrating the educational authority assumed by a Dorian _Philetor_ over his friend. The personal elegies intermingled with these poems on conduct reveal the very heart of a Greek lover at his early period. Here is one on loyalty:--
"Love me not with words alone, while your mind and thoughts are otherwise, if you really care for me and the heart within you is loyal. But love me with a pure and honest soul, or openly disown and hate me; let the breach between us be avowed. He who hath a single tongue and a double mind is a bad comrade, Kurnus, better as a foe than a friend."[57]
The bitter-sweet of love is well described in the following couplets:--
"Harsh and sweet, alluring and repellent, until it be crowned with completion, is love for young men. If one brings it to perfection, then it is sweet; but if a man pursues and does not love, then it is of all things the most painful."[58]
The same strain is repeated in the lines which begin, "a boy's love is fair to keep, fair to lay aside."[59] As one time Theognis tells his friend that he has the changeable temper of a hawk, the skittishness of a pampered colt.[60] At another he remarks that boys are more constant than women in their affection.[61] His passion rises to its noblest height in a poem which deserves to rank with some of Shakespeare's sonnets, and which, like them, has fulfilled its own promise of immortality.[62] In order to appreciate the value of the fame conferred on Kurnus by Theognis, and celebrated in such lofty strains, we must remember that these elegies were sung at banquets. "The fair young men," of whom the poet speaks, boy-lovers themselves, chaunted the praise of Kurnus to the sound of flutes, while the cups went round or the lyre was passed from hand to hand of merry-making guests. A subject to which Theognis more than once refers is calumny:--
"Often will the folk speak vain things against thee in my ears, and against me in thine. Pay thou no heed to them."[63]
Again, he frequently reminds the boy he loves, whether it be Kurnus or some other, that the bloom of youth is passing, and that this is a reason for showing kindness.[64] This argument is urged with what appears like coarseness in the following couplet:--
"O boy, so long as thy chin remains smooth, never will I cease from fawning, no, not if it is doomed for me to die."[65]
A couplet, which is also attributed to Solon, shows that paiderastia at this time in Greece was associated with manly sports and pleasures:--
"Blest is the man who loves brave steeds of war, Fair boys, and hounds, and stranger guests from far."[66]
Nor must the following be omitted:--
"Blest is the man who loves, and after play, Whereby his limbs are supple made and strong, Retiring to his home, 'twixt sleep and song, Sports with a fair boy on his breast all day."[67]
The following couplet is attributed to him by Plutarch,[68] nor does there seem any reason to doubt its genuineness. The text seems to be corrupt, but the meaning is pretty clear:--
"In the charming season of the flower-time of youth thou shalt love boys, yearning for their thighs and honeyed mouth."
Solon, it may be remembered, thought it wise to regulate the conditions under which the love of free youths might be tolerated.
The general impression produced by a careful reading of Theognis is that he entertained a genuine passion for Kurnus, and that he was anxious to train the young man's mind in what he judged the noblest principles. Love, at the same time, except in its more sensual moments, he describes as bitter-sweet and subject to anxiety. That perturbation of the emotions, which is inseparable from any of the deeper forms of personal attachment, and which the necessary conditions of boy-love exasperated, was irksome to the Greek. It is not a little curious to observe how all the poets of the despotic age resent and fret against the force of their own feeling, differing herein from the singers of chivalry, who idealised the very pains of passion.
Of Ibycus, who was celebrated among the ancients as the lyrist of paiderastia,[69] very little has been preserved to us, but that little is sufficient to indicate the fervid and voluptuous style of his art. His imagery resembles that of Anacreon. The onset of love, for instance, in one fragment is compared to the down-swooping of a Thracian whirlwind; in another the poet trembles at the approach of Erôs like an old racehorse who is dragged forth to prove his speed once more.
Of the genuine Anacreon we possess more numerous and longer fragments, and the names of his favourites, Cleobulus, Smerdies, Leucaspis, are famous. The general tone of his love-poems is relaxed and Oriental, and his language abounds in phrases indicative of sensuality. The following may be selected:--
"Cleobulus I love, for Cleobulus I am mad, Cleobulus I watch and worship with my gaze."[70]
Again:--
"O boy, with the maiden's eyes, I seek and follow thee, but thou heedest not, nor knowest that thou art my soul's charioteer."
In another place he speaks of[71]--
"Love, the virginal, gleaming and radiant with desire."
_Syneban_ (to pass the time of youth with friends) is a word which Anacreon may be said to have made current in Greek. It occurs twice in his fragments,[72] and exactly expresses the luxurious enjoyment of youthful grace and beauty which appear to have been his ideal of love. We are very far here from the Achilleian friendship of the _Iliad_. Yet, occasionally, Anacreon uses images of great force to describe the attack of passion, as when he says that love has smitten him with a huge axe, and plunged him in a wintry torrent.[73]
It must be remembered that both Anacreon and Ibycus were court poets, singing in the palaces of Polycrates and Hippias. The youths they celebrated were probably little better than the _exoleti_ of a Roman Emperor.[74] This cannot be said exactly of Alcæus, whose love for black-eyed Lycus was remembered by Cicero and Horace. So little, however, is left of his erotic poems that no definite opinion can be formed about them. The authority of later Greek authors justifies our placing him upon the list of those who helped to soften and emasculate the character of Greek love by their poems.[75]
Two Athenian drinking-songs preserved by Athenæus,[76] which seem to bear the stamp of the lyric age, may here be quoted. They serve to illustrate the kind of feeling to which expression was given in public by friends and boy-lovers:--
"Would I were a lovely heap of ivory, and that lovely boys carried me into the Dionysian chorus."[77]
This is marked by a very delicate, though naïf, fancy. The next is no less eminent for its sustained, impassioned, simple, rhythmic feeling:--
"Drink with me, be young with me, love with me, wear crowns with me, with me when I am mad be mad, with me when I am temperate be sober."
The greatest poet of the lyric age, the lyrist _par excellence_ Pindar, adds much to our conception of Greek love at this period. Not only is the poem to Theoxenos, whom he loved, and in whose arms he is said to have died in the theatre at Argos, one of the most splendid achievements of his art;[78] but its choice of phrase, and the curious parallel which it draws between the free love of boys and the servile love of women, help us to comprehend the serious intensity of this passion. "The flashing rays of his forehead," and "is storm-tossed with desire," and "the young-limbed bloom of boys," are phrases which it is impossible adequately to translate. So, too, are the images by which the heart of him who does not feel the beauty of Theoxenos is said to have been forged with cold fire out of adamant, while the poet himself is compared to wax wasting under the sun's rays. In Pindar, passing from Ibycus and Anacreon, we ascend at once into a purer and more healthful atmosphere, fraught, indeed, with passion and pregnant with storm, but no longer simply sensual. Taken as a whole, the Odes of Pindar, composed for the most part in the honour of young men and boys, both beautiful and strong, are the work of a great moralist as well as a great artist. He never fails to teach by precept and example; he does not, as Ibycus is reported to have done, adorn his verse with legends of Ganymede and Tithonus, for the sake of insinuating compliments. Yet no one shared in fuller measure the Greek admiration for health and grace and vigour of limb. This is obvious in the many radiant pictures of masculine perfection he has drawn, as well as in the images by which he loves to bring the beauty-bloom of youth to mind. The true Hellenic spirit may be better studied in Pindar than in any other poet of his age; and after we have weighed his high morality, sound counsel, and reverence for all things good, together with the passion he avows, we shall have done something toward comprehending the inner nature of Greek love.
XII.
The treatment of paiderastia upon the Attic stage requires separate considerations. Nothing proves the popular acceptance and national approval of Greek love more forcibly to modern minds than the fact that the tragedians like Æschylus and Sophocles made it the subject of their dramas. From a notice in Athenæus it appears that Stesichorus, who first gave dramatic form to lyric poetry, composed interludes upon paiderastic subjects.[79] But of these it is impossible to speak, since their very titles have been lost. What immediately follows, in the narrative of Athenæus, will serve as text for what I have to say upon this topic. "And Æshylus, that mighty poet, and Sophocles, brought masculine loves into the theatre through their tragedies. Wherefore some are wont to call tragedy a paiderast; and the spectators welcome such." Nothing, unfortunately, remains of the plays which justified this language but a few fragments cited by Aristophanes, Plutarch, Lucian, and Athenæus. To examine these will be the business of this section.
The tragedy of the _Myrmidones_, which formed part of a trilogy by Æschylus upon the legend of Achilles, must have been popular at Athens, for Aristophanes quotes it no less than four times--twice in the _Frogs_, once in the _Birds_, and once in the _Ecclesiazusæ_. We can reconstruct its general plan from the lines which have come down to us on the authority of the writers above mentioned.[80] The play opened with an anapæstic speech of the chorus, composed of the clansmen of Achilles, who upbraided him for staying idle in his tent while the Achaians suffered at the hands of Hector. Achilles replied with the metaphor of the eagle stricken by an arrow winged from one of his own feathers. Then the embassy of Phoenix arrived, and Patroclus was sent forth to battle. Achilles, meanwhile, engaged in a game of dice; and while he was thus employed Antilochus entered with the news of the death of Patroclus. The next fragment brings the whole scene vividly before our eyes.