assumes at the same time that honourable paiderastia implies no such disgrace. Again, he observes that it is as easy to recognise a pathic by his impudent behaviour as a gymnast by his muscles. Lastly, he bids the judges force intemperate lovers to abstain from free youths, and satisfy their lusts upon the persons of foreigners and aliens.[1] The whole matter at this distance of time is obscure, nor can we hope to apprehend the full force of distinctions drawn by a Greek orator appealing to a Greek audience. We may, indeed, fairly presume that, as is always the case with popular ethics, considerable confusion existed in the minds of the Athenians themselves, and that, even for them, to formulate the whole of their social feelings on this topic consistently, would have been impossible. The main point, however, seems to be that at Athens it was held honourable to love free boys with decency; that the conduct of lovers between themselves, within the limits of recognised friendship, was not challenged; and that no particular shame attached to profligate persons so long as they refrained from tampering with the sons of citizens.[2]
XV.
The sources from which our information has hitherto been drawn—speeches, poems, biographies, and the dramatic parts of dialogues—yield more real knowledge about the facts of Athenian paiderastia than can be found in the speculations of philosophers. In Aristotle, for instance, paiderastia is almost conspicuous by its absence. It is true that he speculates upon the Cretan customs in the Politics, mentions the prevalence of boy-love among the Kelts, and incidentally notices the legends of Diocles and Cleomachus;[3] but he never discusses the matter as fully as might have been expected from a philosopher whose speculations covered the whole field of Greek experience. The chapters on Philia, in the Ethics, might indeed have been written by a modern moralist for modern readers, though it is possible that in his treatment of "friendship with pleasure for its object," and "friendship with advantage for its object," Aristotle is aiming at the vicious sort of paiderastia. As regards his silence in the
- ↑ Page 78.
- ↑ Æchines, p. 27, apologises to Misgolas, who was a man, he says, of good breeding, for being obliged to expose his early connection with Timarchus. Misgolas, however, is more than once mentioned by the comic poets with contempt as a notorious rake.
- ↑ See Pol., ii. 7, 5; ii. 6, 5; ii. 9, 6.
