Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/70

 approval of all such sentiments. Agesilaos seems to have transmitted his similisexualism to his son, Archidamos; for we have an account of Archidamos as the lover of a beautiful lad named Kleomenes, the same youth who presently died a glorious death in battle, and upon whose body another young man named Panteus committed suicide in his intense grief and love; an historical incident worthy the pen of a Vergil. Again, in the history of the tyrannical Demetrius comes the story of Damocles "the Beautiful." This boy was famed far and wide for his surpassing loveliness. Demetrius was determined to possess him, and laid all manner of plans to that end. The boy would none of him. One day, the tyrant, inflamed with his lust, surprised the boy alone, in a private bath; for Damocles had avoided all public places of the kind, so hateful to him was the passion of the prince. Finding that this time he was helpless, the lad threw himself into the boiling water, and so perished, rather than allow himself to be enjoyed by a man whom he loathed.

Many more historic passages to the point can be cited from Hellenic authours of history. We shall see later what belles-lettres afford, in the same key.

In short, similisexual love and its intercourse in Hellenic life was, for the most part, put on a footing with heterosexual love, even when it narrowed itself, not to say degenerated, to pederasty as a merely physical rather than spiritual impulse. When pederastic, it was not legislated-against nor frowned-down, except when dangers to the intellectual, moral and physical development of the lad and disturbance in the family were perceived, and properly made a serious consideration. It was satirized as a weakness, reproved as a lapse, by philosophers and poets when it was not excepted-against in any statutory manner.