Alexis, a young man declares that he found thirty professors of the "voluptuous life of pleasure," in the Cerameicus during a search of three days; while Cratinus and Theopompus might be quoted to prove the ill fame of the monument to Cimon and the hill of Lycabettus.[1]
The last step in the downward descent was when a youth abandoned the roof of his parents or guardians and accepted the hospitality of a lover.[2] If he did this, he was lost.
In connection with this portion of the subject, it may be well to state that the Athenian law recognised contracts made between a man and boy, even if the latter were of free birth, whereby the one agreed to render up his person for a certain period and purpose, and the other to pay a fixed sum of money.[3] The phrase "a boy who has been a prostitute," occurs quite naturally in Aristophanes;[4] nor was it thought disreputable for men to engage in these liaisons. Disgrace only attached to the free youth who gained a living by prostitution; and he was liable, as we shall see, at law to loss of civil rights.
Public brothels for males were kept in Athens, from which the state derived a portion of its revenues. It was in one of these bad places that Socrates first saw Phædo.[5] This unfortunate youth was a native of Elis. Taken prisoner in war, he was sold in the public market to a slave-dealer, who then acquired the right by Attic law to prostitute his person and engross his earnings for his own pocket. A friend of Socrates, perhaps Cebes, bought him from his master, and he became one of the chief members of the Socratic circle. His name is given to the Platonic dialogue on immortality, and he lived to found what is called the Eleo-Socratic School. No reader of Plato forgets how the sage, on the eve of his death, stroked the beautiful long hair of Phædo,[6] and prophesied that he would soon have to cut it short in mourning for his teacher.
Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, is said to have spent his youth in brothels of this sort—by inclination, however, if the reports of his biographers be not calumnious.
- ↑ Comici Græci, Didot, pp. 562, 31, 308.
- ↑ It is curious to compare the passage in the second Philippic about the youth of Mark Antony with the story told by Plutarch about Alcibiades, who left the custody of his guardians for the house of Democrates.
- ↑ See both Lysias against Simon and Æschines against Timarchus.
- ↑ Peace, line 11; compare the word Pallakion in Plato, Comici Græci, p. 261.
- ↑ Diog. Laert., ii. 105.
- ↑ Plato's Phædo, p. 89.
