Was it true that Socrates was bisexual? Or was it Aristotle?

>>7835849
The ancient Greeks didn't have a concept of sexuality. But according to Plato's dialogues Socrates was attracted to adolescent boys and he was also married.

>>7835853
So Socrates was a pedophile? I thought he said liked young men, not teenagers.

>>7835866
Often modern translations might give you that impression, Socrates like most Athenian aristocrats preferred boys aged roughly 14-18. Which the Greeks would have classed as young men. Also by the modern definition this is not pedophilia.

>>7835853
>>7835866
Everyone in ancient greece was attracted to adolescent boys.

>>7836073
Not everyone, It was just common and accepted in most of ancient Greece.

>>7836073
Explains why they are so corrupt and in such a shitty state right now

>>7835991
I bet you are involved with pizzagate, pedoscum

>>7836161
Ironically the Greeks were at the height of their power when they idolized teenage boys. They became irrelevant and corrupt when they stopped doing so.

>>7836179
they didn't idolize boys. To be penetrated was the greatest dishonor in ancient greek sexuality, and a negation of masculinity. You can see this in some of the preserved court speeches; a few concerning these boys treat them like property, or similar to how women were treated.

>>7836237
That's not accurate at all. I think you are mixing up ancient Rome and ancient Greece, or you read and misunderstood the case against Timarchus maybe? That's shows Athenians were critical of slutishness and sex without love, not of being penetrated.

>>7835849
Straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender are modern terms and applying them an era as far removed from our own as ancient Greece is silly. The Greeks practiced pederasty, the homosexual love between an older man and a younger one. It's easy to compare this to pedophilia but cultural context matters. The women being married by these older men were equally young, it was just the age pairing that was seen as ideal.

An experienced older man was seen as the capable driving force behind Greek society at the time. They could support a family and educate those below them in status.

>>7836366
No, I am thinking of Against Simon penned by Lysias, concerning the live-in rent boy Theodotus. He signs a contract independently to illicit sexual services, which implies his Athenian citizenship as a Plataean ally after the battle of Marathon. The two involved in the case speak and act as if Theodotus was property, or at least incapable of making his own decisions despite his citizenship status.
The rest of the view I drew from sections on assault and rape in The Law in Classical Athens by MacDowell. While I did not think of it before, one can also glean similar assessments from comedy at the time, namely remarks in Aristophanes.

>>7836547
While it's true that children didn't have full legal rights in Athens and that being a prostitute or a passive partner as an adult was looked down upon it's not the case that being penetrated was always viewed negatively.

You bring up Aristophanes, in the Clouds he chastises his audience (which would have been made up of citizens of all classes) of having too much anal sex. The fact that he felt the need to say this suggests not everyone agreed with him and that passive anal sex was relatively common. Also think of people like Agathon and Pausanias, famous Athenians who openly continued a sexual relationship into adulthood and faced negative consequences beyond being viewed as mildly eccentric. Or the role the Tyranicides or Achilles and Patrocalus had in Athenian popular consciousness. Also we have so far only spoken of Athens, we know form the works of Xenophon that in Boeotia passive anal sex was even less tabboo than it was in Athens and that despite Xenophon claiming Lycurgus disapproved Spartans also regularly engaged in anal sex with boys.

>>7836610
>and faced negative consequences

*faced no negative consequences

>>7836610
Theodotus wasn't a child, he is referred to as a meirakion, in his late teens though as evidence by his aforementioned signing of the sex contract, he was recognized as a man with full legal rights.
Again, Aristophanes doesn't mention those receiving, as penetrating was perfectly normal and associated with masculinity. That is why Spartans, among other reasons, are seen as anal-happy in Lysistrata, always referring to anal sex and even wishing Lysistrata had a brother to fuck.
Being penetrated was something that was not supposed to continue upon reaching adulthood. That is why, although Patroklos is the older of the two, in eroticized in a younger, more feminine role. Achilles comforts Patroklos as he weeps in Book 16, Patroklos is compassionate where Achilles is wrathful, and Achilles ultimately fights to avenge his death. Their relationship is sometimes compared to that of an eromenos and an older male; Greek writers also contested this relationship, so it remains controversial.
It is not anal sex that is seen as bad, it is being penetrated, which was the original claim.

>>7836710
>Being penetrated was something that was not supposed to continue upon reaching adulthood.

I agree with this. My point was that being fucked as a teen isn't shameful, it only is if this continue into adulthood. However there are cases like Agathon and Pasusians that prove that even being fucked as an adult didn't make you an automatic outcast.

>>7836830
Then we are in agreement; there are always exception to the rule.

>>7836710
>>7836844
Yay history!!!
>you guys are cool anons

Take it to /his/
Also be careful about the whole gay roman and greek meme. It's blown way out of proportion first by the Christian class to condemn them and now by the psuedo intellectual class.

>>7837466
The Greeks weren't gay, they didn't even have a concept of sexuality. They did like teenage boys though.

>It's blown way out of proportion first by the Christian class to condemn them and now by the psuedo intellectual class.

The sources are from centuries before Christianity even existed?

>>7837483
Tell me how many sources there are.
Fucking link them. All this shit should be open domain.
It's all memes. There's no evidence for many famous Greeks and Greek figures fucking boys.
Still this thread belongs on /his/.

>>7837532
I wrote my dissertation on Greek homosexuality, I''ll just copy you my bibliography. It's obviously not exhaustive but it's a good starting point.

Primary sources:
Aelian, Varia Historia in An English translation of Claudius Aelianus' Varia historia by Diane Ostrom Johnson. New York, E. Mellen Press 1997

Aeschines, Speeches in Aeschines with an English translation by Charles Darwin Adams, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1919.

Aeschylus, Myrmidons in Aeschylus III: Fragments by Sommerstein, A. Loeb Classical Library no. 505 (Cambridge, MA) Ltd. 2009

Aristophanes, Wasps in The Complete Greek Drama, vol. 2. Eugene O'Neill, Jr. New York. Random House. 1938.

Aristophanes, Clouds in The Comedies of Aristophanes. William James Hickie. London. Bohn. 1853.

Aristotle, Athenian Constitution in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 20, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1952.

Aristotle, Historia Animalium in Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1: Revised Oxford Translation. Edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton University Press, 1984.

Aristotle, Nicomedian Ethics in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.

Aristotle, Politics in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 21, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1944.

Aristotle, Problems in The Works of Aristotle Volume 7, translated by by Ross, W. D. & Smith, J. A. Oxford Clarendon Press: London Ltd. 1908

Homer, The Iliad in The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.

>>7837572

Homer, Odyssey in The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919.

Lysias, Speeches in Lysias with an English translation by W.R.M. Lamb, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1930.

Pindar, Odes in Diane Arnson Svarlien. 1990.

Plato, Charmides in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955.

Plato, Lysis in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955.

Plato, Phaedrus in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.

Plato, Protagoras in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967.

Plato, Symposium in The Symposium of Plato. R. G. Bury. 1909. Cambridge. W. Heffer and Sons.

Plutarch, Life of Lycrugus in Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. 1.

Plutarch, Solon in Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. 1.

Strato of Sardis et al., Boyish Muse in The Greek Anthology with an English Translation by. W. R. Paton. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.

Theognis, poem fragments in Thomas K. Hubbard, A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (London, 2003).
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War in The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910.

Xenophon, Anabasis in Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 3. Carleton L. Brownson. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1922.

>>7837582
Xenophon, Politeia of the Spartans in Public Domain translation http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_xenophon_lacedaemonians.htm
(accessed 17/03/15)

Zeno of Citium, Fragments in Thomas K. Hubbard, A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (London, 2003).

Secondary sources:

Andrew Lear & Eva Cantarella, Images of Greek Pederasty Boy were their Gods (New York, 2008).
Andrew Lear, ‘Ancient Pederasty an Introduction’, cited in A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities (Chichester, 2014) edited by Thomas K Hubbard. P.114
Anton Powell, ‘Dining Groups, Marriage, Homosexuality’ in Michel Whitby, Sparta (Edinburgh, 2002).
B. Datta' & D. Gupta, ‘The Age of Menarche in Ancient India as Compared to the Data from Classical Greece and Rome’ Institute of Indology , University of Tubingen, and Department of Diagnostic Endocrinology, University Children’s Hospital , D-74 Tubingen, FRG.
Bernard Sergent, Homosexuality in Greek Myth (Boston, 1986).
Bruce S. Thornton, The Myth of Greek Sexuality (Boulder, 1997).
Claude Calame, The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 1999).
David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York 1990).
Edward W. Cohen, ‘Sexual abuse and Sexual Rights Slaves Erotic experience at Athens and Rome’ in Thomas K. Hubbard, A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities (Chichester, 2014) .
Edward W. Cohen, ‘Sexual abuse and Sexual Rights Slaves Erotic experience at Athens and Rome’ in Thomas K. Hubbard, A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities (Chichester, 2014).
Eva Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World (Rome, 1994).
H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (New York, 1956).
Hans Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece (London 1931).
J.A. Symonds, A Problem in Greek Ethics (London, 1908).
J.Z. Eglinton, Greek Love (London, 1971).
James Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love (London, 2008).
John Boardmen & Eugenio La Rocca, Eros in Greece (London, 1978).

>>7837588
Karl Otfried Muller, The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race (London 1830).
Kenneth Dover, Greek Homosexuality (Cambridge, 1978).
Marc Kleijweft, Ancient Youth (Amsterdam, 1991).
Mark Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore, 1990).
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure (London, 1984).
Michel Whitby, Sparta (Edinburgh, 2002).
P.H. Whincup et al., ‘Age of menarche in contemporary British teenagers: survey of girls born between 1982 and 1986’, BMJ 2001;322:1095
Paul Cartledge , Spartan Reflections (London, 2001).
Robert Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars (New York, 2005)
Stephen Hodkinson, ‘Social Order and the Conflict of Values in Classical Sparta’ in Michel Whitby, Sparta (Edinburgh, 2002).
Thomas F. Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics (New York, 2002).
Thomas K Hubbard, A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities (Chichester, 2014).
Thomas K. Hubbard, A Sourcebook of Basic Documents (London, 2003).
Thomas K. Hubbard, Greek Love Reconsidered (New York, 2000).
Thomas K. Hubbard, Review of James Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love (London, 2008), H-Net Book Review (http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx;list=H-Histsex;month=0902;week=b;msg=Ug%2BYuljwHAbsmjyw%2BhMXhQ) accessed 03/04/2015
William Armstrong Percy III, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece (Chicago, 1996).

>>7835849
I still can't find all 6 of them without help