Page:Lovers Legends - The Gay Greek Myths.pdf/17

BELOVED CHARIOTEERS teenaged beloveds. $5$ Greek ideals endowed these affairs with clear pedagogic functions: Male love was held to be an apprenticeship for manhood, a way to learn about warriorship, culture, and proper behavior. The relationship was defined by mutual obligations. For instance, the youth typically served as his lover's charioteer, $6$ driving the horses in battle while the older man wielded the weapons. On the other hand, the lover was held responsible for the beloved's behavior — if the younger misbehaved, the elder of the pair was the one punished. The lover also saw to his beloved's education in philosophy and the arts.$7$ As the poet Callimachus wrote in the third century BCE:

You who upon youths cast longing eyes, The sage of Erchius $8$ bids you be lovers of boys. Make love then to the young, the city with upstanding men to fill.$9$

Of course, distinctions were made between what should be done with the sons of citizens and what could be done to slaves. Behind a facade of idealized male love, the sons of conquered foes were routinely enslaved and put to work in all-male brothels, as often as not after being castrated (with untold loss of life), in order to prolong their attractive years. Phaedo, the handsome Elian youth who lent his name to Plato's renowned dialogue, was bought (and freed) at Socrates' behest from just such an establishment. We would not be alone in reproaching some of our ancestors for their excesses: Their own contemporaries dragged them over the coals.$10$

On further inspection, other ironies unfold: Just as we may find some of the Greeks' practices objectionable, they would have thought as much of ours. Theirs was a warrior society in which the cult of masculinity led to the subjugation of women and sexual penetration of the vanquished. For all their adoration of the male form, they heaped contempt upon men who were perceived as effeminate or loved others their own age. This disapproval, however, is proof positive that, righteous fulminations aside, grown men loved each other even then. Indeed, it seems that if a couple carried on their love-making after the beloved matured, allowances were made: "The one who carried the calf can bear up the bull,"$11$ the Greeks used to say, seemingly not without empathy. 3