A

PROBLEM

IN

GREEK ETHICS

BEING

AN INQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENON OF

_SEXUAL INVERSION_

ADDRESSED ESPECIALLY TO MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS AND JURISTS

BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

_PRIVATELY PRINTED_

FOR

THE AREOPAGITIGA SOCIETY

LONDON

1908

_Privately Printed in Holland for the Society._

PREFACE.

The following treatise on Greek Love was written in the year 1873, when my mind was occupied with my _Studies of Greek Poets_. I printed ten copies of it privately in 1883. It was only when I read the Terminal Essay appended by Sir Richard Burton to his translation of the _Arabian Nights_ in 1886, that I became aware of M. H. E. Meier's article on Paederastie (Ersch and Gruber's _Encyclopaedie_, Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1837). My treatise, therefore, is a wholly independent production. This makes Meier's agreement (in Section 7 of his article) with the theory I have set forth in Section X. regarding the North Hellenic origin of Greek Love, and its Dorian character, the more remarkable. That two students, working separately upon the same mass of material, should have arrived at similar conclusions upon this point strongly confirms the probability of the hypothesis.

J. A. SYMONDS.

CONTENTS.

I. INTRODUCTION: Method of treating the subject.

II. Homer had no knowledge of paiderastia--Achilles--Treatment of Homer by the later Greeks.

III. The Romance of Achilles and Patroclus.

IV. The heroic ideal of masculine love.

V. Vulgar paiderastia--How introduced into Hellas--Crete--Laius--The myth of Ganymede.

VI. Discrimination of two loves, heroic and vulgar. The mixed sort is the paiderastia defined as Greek love in this essay.

VII. The intensity of paiderastia as an emotion, and its quality.

VIII. Myths of paiderastia.

IX. Semi-legendary tales of love--Harmodius and Aristogeiton.

X. Dorian Customs--Sparta and Crete--Conditions of Dorian life--Moral quality of Dorian love--Its final degeneracy--Speculations on the early Dorian _Ethos_--Boeotians' customs--The sacred band--Alexander the Great--Customs of Elis and Megara--_Hybris_--Ionia.

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Problem in Greek Ethics by Symonds
• 2: Unbiased by morality and religion
• 3: What the Greeks called paiderastia
• 4: The love for slain Patroclus broke his mood of sullen anger
• 5: Paiderastia in Hellas assumed Hellenic characteristics
• 6: While heroic comradeship remained an ideal hard to realise
• 7: Though it was not free from sensuality
• 8: Seuthes gave the boy his liberty
• 9: 22 So were Diocles and Philolaus
• 10: The dragon swallowed Cleostratus and killed him
• 11: The Dorians clung with obstinate pertinacity
• 12: To have connection in Laconian way
• 13: May have been ignorant of paiderastia
• 14: Not the type of Greek paiderastia
• 15: To whom Greek paiderastia was familiar
• 16: Pierced by the lances of the Macedonian phalanx
• 17: Plato says that paiderastia was accounted a disgrace
• 18: Whether it be Kurnus or some other
• 19: Cleobulus I watch and worship with my gaze
• 20: Passing from Ibycus and Anacreon
• 21: As the two lines quoted from the Threnos prove
• 22: Paiderastia was unknown to Homer
• 23: Dishonourable to him who follows them dishonourably
• 24: The decided preference of male over female love
• 25: The Dikaios Logos 100 tells that in his days
• 26: Do soldiers fight with quoits in hand
• 27: Lysis himself is standing among the other boys and youths
• 28: Autolycus meanwhile never uttered a word
• 29: He was the patron of paiderastia
• 30: The palaestra was the centre of Athenian profligacy
• 31: Theodotus was living with the plaintiff
• 32: He had Tharypas for his beloved
• 33: Paiderastia is almost conspicuous by its absence
• 34: In the Phaedrus and Symposium
• 35: Keeps strictly within the bounds of paiderastia
• 36: The doctrine of the Symposium is not different
• 37: Petrarch had children by an unknown concubine
• 38: Excluded from Platonic paiderastia
• 39: Charicles undertook the cause of women
• 40: Straton was a native of Sardis
• 41: I suggested in the tenth section that paiderastia
• 42: In dealing with Greek paiderastia
• 43: All that is known about the Spartan marriage customs
• 44: Seems never to have entered the mind of an Athenian
• 45: Was the special patron of paiderastia
• 46: For one tale concerning the Pantarkes of Pheidias
• 47: Youths in their prime of adolescence
• 48: Paiderastia became a fact of their consciousness
• 49: And possibly Philaenis a Lesbian invert
• 50: And Strabo mentions its prevalence among the Cretans x
• 51: Is decisive on the mixed nature of paiderastia
• 52: By his Greek captors to Polycrates
• 53: 97 As Lycon chaperoned Autolycus at the feast of Callias
• 54: 101 Aristophanes returns to this point below
• 55: My quotations are made from Dobson's Oratores Attici
• 56: To use a phrase of the Renaissance