Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/66

 daily life. As Hellenic society and states declined, the phases of similisexual love altered; its quality abased, becoming vulgarized in tone and idealism. It transferred itself, under such derogatory phases, into the Roman social fabric, though it was not in the least new to Oscan, Etruscan and early Latin civilizations. Even to day, it survives in a particular frankness and purity in a spot near its original Grecian home. A similisexual love between men, that frequently offers much of the heroic and ideal, is found in the wild and reticent clans of the Albanians; honourably recognized by that warlike and imaginative race as a distinct sentimental factor; and there, too, as a sentiment by no means of the "disembodied" type.

Certain students of the similisexual instinct in Hellenic life have claimed that the earliest periods of Greek society, particularly the Heroic and Homeric Epochs recognized only a spiritual, intellectual love between man and man; a sentiment intensely romantic and absorbing, even to excluding love for woman, but without the wish for physical gratification. We are asked to recognize in the bond between, for instance, Achilles and Patroclus only this abstract and ideal love. The notion is incorrect. The mistake originated with the wish of later apologists to gloss over the true elements of such relationship. Especially did such a view become part of the aim of Judaic and Christian ethics to define similisexual love between men as a depraved pagan impulse; not compatible with elevated heathenism, or with finer heroic temperaments. The same insistance on such heroic "friendship" as having no physical undercurrent, has dealt dishonestly with Biblical and other Oriental male affinities; with thousands of modern historic examples. It has been accented by a sort of perverse suppression of biographical details; by following too reticent or too ignorant guides.