The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume X Part 10

In the Holy Books of the h.e.l.lenes, Homer and Hesiod, dealing with the heroic ages, there is no trace of pederasty, although, in a long subsequent generation, Lucian suspected Achilles and Patroclus as he did Orestes and Pylades, Theseus and Pirithous.

Homer's praises of beauty are reserved for the feminines, especially his favourite Helen. But the Dorians of Crete seem to have commended the abuse to Athens and Sparta and subsequently imported it into Tarentum, Agrigentum and other colonies. Ephorus in Strabo (x. 4 -- 21) gives a curious account of the violent abduction of beloved boys ({Greek}) by the lover ({Greek}); of the obligations of the ravisher ({Greek}) to the favourite ({Greek})[FN#371] and of the "marriage-ceremonies" which lasted two months. See also Plato, Laws i. c. 8. Servius (Ad aeneid. x.

325) informs us "De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Lacones et in totam Graeciam translatum est." The Cretans and afterwards their apt pupils the Chalcidians held it disreputable for a beautiful boy to lack a lover. Hence Zeus, the national Doric G.o.d of Crete, loved Ganymede;[FN#372] Apollo, another Dorian deity, loved Hyacinth, and Hercules, a Doric hero who grew to be a sun-G.o.d, loved Hylas and a host of others: thus Crete sanctified the practice by the examples of the G.o.ds and demiG.o.ds. But when legislation came, the subject had qualified itself for legal limitation and as such was undertaken by Lycurgus and Solon, according to Xenophon (Lac. ii.

13), who draws a broad distinction between the honest love of boys and dishonest ({Greek}) l.u.s.t. They both approved of pure pederastia, like that of Harmodius and Aristogiton; but forbade it with serviles because degrading to a free man. Hence the love of boys was spoken of like that of women (Plato: Phaedrus; Repub.

vi. c. I9 and Xenophon, Synop. iv. 10), e.g., "There was once a boy, or rather a youth, of exceeding beauty and he had very many lovers"--this is the language of Hafiz and Sa'adi. aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were allowed to introduce it upon the stage, for "many men were as fond of having boys for their favourites as women for their mistresses; and this was a frequent fashion in many well-regulated cities of Greece." Poets like Alcaeus, Anacreon, Agathon and Pindar affected it and Theognis sang of a "beautiful boy in the flower of his youth." The statesmen Aristides and Themistocles quarrelled over Stesileus of Teos; and Pisistratus loved Charmus who first built an altar to Puerile Eros, while Charmus loved Hippias son of Pisistratus.

Demosthenes the Orator took into keeping a youth called Cnosion greatly to the indignation of his wife. Xenophon loved Clinias and Autolycus; Aristotle, Hermeas, Theodectes[FN#373] and others; Empedocles, Pausanias; Epicurus, Pytocles; Aristippus, Eutichydes and Zeno with his Stoics had a philosophic disregard for women, affecting only pederastia. A man in Athenaeus (iv. c. 40) left in his will that certain youths he had loved should fight like gladiators at his funeral; and Charicles in Lucian abuses Callicratidas for his love of "sterile pleasures." Lastly there was the notable affair of Alcibiades and Socrates, the "sanctus paederasta"[FN#374] being violemment soupconne when under the mantle:--non semper sine plaga ab eo surrexit. Athenaeus (v. c.

I3) declares that Plato represents Socrates as absolutely intoxicated with his pa.s.sion for Alcibiades.[FN#375] The Ancients seem to have held the connection impure, or Juvenal would not have written:--

Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos,

followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of "Socratici paedicones." It is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of the master of h.e.l.lenic Sophrosyne, the "Christian before Christianity;" but such a world-wide term as Socratic love can hardly be explained by the lucus-a-non-lucendo theory. We are overapt to apply our nineteenth century prejudices and prepossessions to the morality of the ancient Greeks who would have specimen'd such squeamishness in Attic salt.

The Spartans, according to Agnon the Academic (confirmed by Plato, Plutarch and Cicero), treated boys and girls in the same way before marriage: hence Juvenal (xi. 173) uses ''Lacedaemonius"

for a pathic and other writers apply it to a tribade. After the Peloponnesian War, which ended in B.C. 404, the use became merged in the abuse. Yet some purity must have survived, even amongst the B?otians who produced the famous Narcissus,[FN#376] described by Ovid (Met. iii. 339);--

Multi ilium juvenes, multae cupiere puellae; Nulli ilium juvenes, nullae tetigere puellae:[FN#377]

for Epaminondas, whose name is mentioned with three beloveds, established the Holy Regiment composed of mutual lovers, testifying the majesty of Eros and preferring to a discreditable life a glorious death. Philip's redactions on the fatal field of Chaeroneia form their fittest epitaph. At last the Athenians, according to aeschines, officially punished Sodomy with death; but the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of Karachi; the p.o.r.neia and p.o.r.n.o.boskeia, where slaves and pueri venales "stood," as the term was, near the Pnyx, the city walls and a certain tower, also about Lycabettus (aesch. contra Tim.); and paid a fixed tax to the state. The pleasures of society in civilised Greece seem to have been sought chiefly in the heresies of love--Hetairesis[FN#378] and Sotadism.

It is calculated that the French of the sixteenth century had four hundred names for the parts genital and three hundred for their use in coition. The Greek vocabulary is not less copious, and some of its pederastic terms, of which Meier gives nearly a hundred, and its nomenclature of pathologic love are curious and picturesque enough to merit quotation.

To live the life of Abron (the Argive), i.e. that of a , pathic or pa.s.sive lover.

The Agathonian song.

Aischrourgia = dishonest love, also called Akolasia, Akrasia, Arrenokoitia, etc.

Alcinoan youths, or "non conformists,"

In cute curanda plus aequo operate Juventus.

Alegomenos, the "unspeakable," as the pederast was termed by the Council of Ancyra: also the Agrios, Apolaustus and Akolastos.

Androgyne, of whom Ansonius wrote (Epig. lxviii. 15):--

Ecce ego sum factus femina de puero.

Badas and badizein = clunes torquens: also Batalos= a catamite.

Catapygos, Katapygosyne = puerarius and catadactylium from Dactylion, the ring, used in the sense of Nerissa's, but applied to the corollarium puerile.

Cinaedus (Kinaidos), the active lover ({Greek}) derived either from his kinetics or quasi {Greek} = dog modest. Also Spatalocinaedus (lascivia fluens) = a fair Ganymede.

Chalcidissare (Khalkidizein), from Chalcis in Eub?a, a city famed for love a posteriori; mostly applied to le lechement des testicules by children.

Clazomenae = the b.u.t.tocks, also a sotadic disease, so called from the Ionian city devoted to Aversa Venus; also used of a pathic,

--et tergo femina p.u.b.e vir est.

Embasicoetas, prop. a link-boy at marriages, also a "night-cap"

drunk before bed and lastly an effeminate; one who perambulavit omnium cubilia (Catullus). See Encolpius' pun upon the Embasicete in Satyricon, cap. iv.

Epipedesis, the carnal a.s.sault.

Geiton lit. "neighbour" the beloved of Encolpius, which has produced the Fr. Giton = Bardache, Ital. bardascia from the Arab.

Baradaj, a captive, a slave; the augm. form is Polygeiton.

Hippias (tyranny of) when the patient (woman or boy) mounts the agent. Aristoph. Vesp. 502. So also Kelitizein = peccare superne or equum agitare supernum of Horace.

Mokhtheria, depravity with boys.

Paidika, whence paedicare (act.) and paedicari (pa.s.s.): so in the Latin poet:--

PEnelopes primam DIdonis prima sequatur, Et primam CAni, syllaba prima REmi.

Pathikos, Pathicus, a pa.s.sive, like Malakos (malacus, mollis, facilis), Malchio, Trimalchio (Petronius), Malta, Maltha and in Hor. (Sat. ii. 25)

Malthinus tunicis demissis ambulat.

Praxis = the malpractice.

Pygisma = b.u.t.tockry, because most actives end within the nates, being too much excited for further intromission.

Ph?nicissare ({Greek})= cunnilingere in tempore menstruum, quia hoc vitium in Ph?nicia generate solebat (Thes. Erot. Ling.

Latinae); also irrumer en miel.

Phicidissare, denotat actum per canes commissum quando lambunt cunnos vel testiculos (Suetonius): also applied to pollution of childhood.

Samorium flores (Erasmus, Prov. xxiii ) alluding to the androgynic prost.i.tutions of Samos.

Siphnia.s.sare ({Greek}, from Siphnos, hod. Sifanto Island) = digito podicem fodere ad pruriginem restinguendam, says Erasmus (see Mirabeau's Erotika Biblion, Anoscopie).

Thrypsis = the rubbing.

Pederastia had in Greece, I have shown, its n.o.ble and ideal side: Rome, however, borrowed her malpractices, like her religion and polity, from those ultra-material Etruscans and debauched with a brazen face. Even under the Republic Plautus (Casin. ii. 21) makes one of his characters exclaim, in the utmost sang-froid, "Ultro te, amator, apage te a dorso meo!" With increased luxury the evil grew and Livy notices (x.x.xix. 13), at the Baccha.n.a.lia, plura virorum inter sese quam f?minarum stupra. There were individual protests; for instance, S. Q. Fabius Maximus Servilia.n.u.s (Consul U.C. 612) punished his son for dubia cast.i.tas; and a private soldier, C. Plotius, killed his military Tribune, Q. Luscius, for unchaste proposals. The Lex Scantinia (Scatinia?), popularly derived from Scantinius the Tribune and of doubtful date (B.C. 226?), attempted to abate the scandal by fine and the Lex Julia by death; but they were trifling obstacles to the flood of infamy which surged in with the Empire. No cla.s.s seems then to have disdained these "sterile pleasures:" l'on n'attachoit point alors a cette espece d'amour une note d'infamie, comme en pas de chretiente, says Bayle under "Anacreon." The great Caesar, the Cinaedus calvus of Catullus, was the husband of all the wives and the wife of all the husbands in Rome (Suetonius, cap. Iii.); and his soldiers sang in his praise, Gallias Caesar, subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem (Suet. cies. xlix.); whence his sobriquet "Fornix Birthynicus." Of Augustus the people chaunted

Videsne ut Cinaedus...o...b..m digito temperet?

Tiberius, with his pisciculi and greges exoletorum, invented the Symplegma or nexus of Sellarii, agentes et patientes, in which the spinthriae (lit. women's bracelets) were connected in a chain by the bond of flesh[FN#379] (Seneca Quaest. Nat.). Of this refinement which in the earlier part of the nineteenth century was renewed by sundry Englishmen at Naples, Ausonius wrote (Epig.

cxix. I),

Tres uno in lecto: stuprum duo perpetiuntur;

And Martial had said (xii. 43)

Quo symplegmate quinque copulentur; Qua plures teneantur a catena; etc.