Page:Homo-sexual Life by William John Fielding (1925).pdf/28



It has been mentioned on another page that the problem of bisexuality, in a more or less general manner, has engaged the attention of observers for ages. The specific phenomenon of homo-sexuality has been even more closely studied, dramatized, romanced about, and even idealized.

No less a luminary and distant character than Plato expressed himself in the following words regarding the subject under discussion (quoted from Plato's Banquet, chapters VIII and IX) "There is no Aphrodites without an Eros. But there are two goddesses. The older Aphrodites came into existence without a mother; being the daughter of Zeus and Diana and is called Pandemos. The Eros of the former must, therefore, be Uranos, that of the latter Pandemos. With the love of Eros Pandemos the ordinary human beings love; Eros Uranos did not choose a female, but a male; this is the love for boys. Whoever is inspired with this love turns to the male sex."

Herodotus, the Greek historian, who seemed possessed of omnipresence, because he appeared to have been everywhere and seen everything in the known world of his time, described definite characteristics indicative of homo-sexuality. Thus, writing of the Scythians, he referred to a "peculiar disease," the symptoms of which