Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/65

 of also as "Greek friendship". This is a misleading term, since similisexualism often was distinguished by Greek psychists and philosophers and legislators from friendships between men and men, or women and women, on lines that have differentiated it in the preceding chapter. We may indeed say that certain of the finest epochs of Grecian military dominancy, and esthetic, sensitiveness were informed saturated, ruled by homosexualism. That a man should be sexually attracted, enthralled, by the corporeal beauty of another male being, as well as won to him by intellectual and moral attractions in the object of his passion, was regarded as wholly natural. The sentiment was outspoken exactly as the heterosexual love was outspoken. Often the freest and happiest mutual course was given it. It was admired, idealized and reverenced. Heroic Greece, warlike Greece, pacific Greece, philosophic Greece, aesthetic and ethic Greece recognized its natural impulses. A man's sexual love for a man or for a youth, at certain periods was accounted purer, more elevating and manly than love for woman. The Greek was a passional woman-lover, frequently. But the sentiment for mistress or betrothed or wife was, over again, ranked as inferior to the heroic and mysterious similisexual flame. This, instead, became a leaven and lever in statecraft. It strengthened the young warrior's spirit in battle, as he fought for, or beside, the "dear companion". It struck down tyrants,. breathed life into art and letters, idealized human nature. It was prehistorically a part of the Olympian system of Hellenic mythology, from Jupiter downward. Especially it gave rise to the Platonic theory of the Two Venuses; Venus Pandemonia inspiring the heart with love for the other sex; the other a Venus Urania, the greater and more elementary Venus, that inspires a man's passion for a man. It endured through many Hellenic periods, though subject to important civil attitudes, including hostile ones. Greece to-day knows it, as does the rest of the modern world, though in its relatively clandestine relation to