The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (essential reading TXT) 📖

the taper is purer and more fervent than the Bulbul’s love for the Rose. Amongst the Greeks of the best ages the system of boy-favourites was advocated on considerations of morals and politics. The lover undertook the education of the beloved through precept and example, while the two were conjoined by a tie stricter than the fraternal.

Hieronymus the Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the vigorous disposition of youths and the confidence engendered by their association often led to the overthrow of tyrannies.

Socrates declared that “a most valiant army might be composed of boys and their lovers; for that of all men they would be most ashamed to desert one another.” And even Virgil, despite the foul flavour of Formosum pastor Corydon, could write:—

 

Nisus amore pio pueri.

 

The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically. Hence the male f�minisme whereby the man becomes patiens as well as agens, and the woman a tribade, a votary of mascula Sappho,[FN#364] Queen of Frictrices or Rubbers.[FN#365]

Prof. Mantegazza claims to have discovered the cause of this pathological love, this perversion of the erotic sense, one of the marvellous list of amorous vagaries which deserve, not prosecution but the pitiful care of the physician and the study of the psychologist. According to him the nerves of the rectum and the genitalia, in all cases closely connected, are abnormally so in the pathic, who obtains, by intromission, the venereal orgasm which is usually sought through the sexual organs. So amongst women there are tribads who can procure no pleasure except by foreign objects introduced a posteriori. Hence his threefold distribution of sodomy; (1) Peripheric or anatomical, caused by an unusual distribution of the nerves and their hyper�sthesia; (2) Luxurious, when love a tergo is preferred on account of the narrowness of the passage; and (3) the Psychical.

But this is evidently superficial: the question is what causes this neuropathy, this abnormal distribution and condition of the nerves.[FN#366]

 

As Prince Bismarck finds a moral difference between the male and female races of history, so I suspect a mixed physical temperament effected by the manifold subtle influences massed together in the word climate. Something of the kind is necessary to explain the fact of this pathological love extending over the greater portion of the habitable world, without any apparent connection of race or media, from the polished Greek to the cannibal Tupi of the Brazil. Walt Whitman speaks of the ashen grey faces of onanists: the faded colours, the puffy features and the unwholesome complexion of the professed pederast with his peculiar cachetic expression, indescribable but once seen never forgotten, stamp the breed, and Dr. G. Adolph is justified in declaring “Alle Gewohnneits-paederasten erkennen sich einander schnell, oft met einen Thick.” This has nothing in common with the f�minisme which betrays itself in the pathic by womanly gait, regard and gesture: it is a something sui generic; and the same may be said of the colour and look of the young priest who honestly refrains from women and their substitutes. Dr. Tardieu, in his wellknown work, “�tude Medico-r�gale sur les Attentats aux M�urs,” and Dr. Adolph note a peculiar infundibuliform disposition of the “After” and a smoothness and want of folds even before any abuse has taken place, together with special forms of the male organs in confirmed pederasts. But these observations have been rejected by Caspar, Hoffman, Brouardel and Dr. J. H. Henry Coutagne (Notes sur la Sodomie, Lyon, 1880), and it is a medical question whose discussion would here be out of place.

 

The origin of pederasty is lost in the night of ages; but its historique has been carefully traced by many writers, especially Virey,[FN#367] Rosenbaum[FN#368] and M. H. E. Meier.[FN#369] The ancient Greeks who, like the modern Germans, invented nothing but were great improvers of what other races invented, attributed the formal apostolate of Sotadism to Orpheus, whose stigmata were worn by the Thracian women;

 

—Omnemque refugerat Orpheus F�mineam venerem;—

Ille etiam Thracum populis fuit auctor, amorem In teneres transferre mares: citraque juventam �tatis breve ver, et primos carpere flores.

Ovid Met. x. 79-85.

 

Euripides proposed La�us father of Oedipus as the inaugurator, whereas Tim�us declared that the fashion of making favourites of boys was introduced into Greece from Crete, for Malthusian reasons said Aristotle (Pol. ii. 10), attributing it to Minos.

Herodotus, however, knew far better, having discovered (ii. c.

80) that the Orphic and Bacchic rites were originally Egyptian.

But the Father of History was a traveller and an annalist rather than an arch�ologist and he tripped in the following passage (i.

c. 135), “As soon as they (the Persians) hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own, and hence, among other matters, they have learned from the Hellenes a passion for boys” (“unnatural lust,” says modest Rawlinson). Plutarch (De Malig, Herod.

xiii.)[FN#370] asserts with much more probability that the Persians used eunuch boys according to the Mos Gr�ci�, long before they had seen the Grecian main.

 

In the Holy Books of the Hellenes, 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 �neid. x.

325) informs us “De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Lacones et in totam Gr�ciam 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 god of Crete, loved Ganymede;[FN#372] Apollo, another Dorian deity, loved Hyacinth, and Hercules, a Doric hero who grew to be a sun-god, loved Hylas and a host of others: thus Crete sanctified the practice by the examples of the gods and demigods. 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}) lust. They both approved of pure pederast�a, 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: Ph�drus; 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. �schylus, 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 Alc�us, 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 pederast�a. A man in Athen�us (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 p�derasta”[FN#374] being violemment soup�onn� when under the mantle:—non semper sine plag� ab eo surrexit. Athen�us (v. c.

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

 

Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cin�dos, followed by Firmicus (vii. 14) who speaks of “Socratici p�dicones.” It is the modern fashion to doubt the pederasty of the master of Hellenic Sophrosyne, the “Christian before Christianity;” but such a worldwide 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 ”Laced�monius”

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, mult� cupiere puell�; Nulli ilium juvenes, null� tetigere puell�:[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 �schines, officially punished Sodomy with death; but the threat did not abolish bordels of boys, like those of Kar�chi; the Porneia and Pornoboskeia, where slaves and pueri venales “stood,” as the term was, near the Pnyx, the city walls and a certain tower, also about Lycabettus (�sch. 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 passive lover.

 

The Agathonian song.

 

Aischrourg�a = dishonest love, also called Akolas�a, Akras�a, Arrenokoit�a, etc.

 

Alcinoan youths, or “non conformists,”

 

In cute curand� plus �quo 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 bad�zein = clunes torquens: also B�talos= a catamite.

 

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

 

Cin�dus (K�naidos), the active lover ({Greek}) derived either from his kinetics or quasi {Greek} = dog modest. Also Spatalocin�dus (lascivi� fluens) = a fair Ganymede.

 

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

 

Clazomenae = the buttocks, also a sotadic disease, so called from the Ionian city devoted to Aversa Venus; also used of a pathic, —et tergo femina pube vir est.

 

Embasicoetas, prop.