A Problem in Greek Ethics: Being an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, addressed especially to medical psychologists and juristsSymonds, John Addington
Philosophy
A Problem in Greek Ethics: Being an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, addressed especially to medical psychologists and jurists
Symonds, John Addington
Ethics -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality
It will be seen that the conclusion to which I have been drawn by the
foregoing consideration is that the mixed form of paiderastia, called by
me in this essay "Greek love," owed its peculiar quality, what Plato
called its intricacy of "laws and customs," to two diverse strains of
circumstances harmonised in the Greek temperament. Its military and
enthusiastic elements were derived from the primitive conditions of the
Dorians during their immigration into Southern Greece. Its refinements
of sensuality and sanctified impurity are referable to contact with
Phoenician civilisation. The specific form it assumed among the Dorians
of the historic period, equally removed from military freedom and from
Oriental luxury, can be ascribed to the operation of that organising,
moulding and assimilating spirit which we recognise as Hellenic.
The position thus stated is, unfortunately, speculative rather than
demonstrable; and in order to establish the reasonableness of the
speculation, it would be natural at this point to introduce some account
of paiderastia as it exists in various savage tribes, if their customs
could be seen to illustrate the Doric phase of Greek love. This,
however, is not the case. Study of Mr. Herbert Spencer's Tables, and of
Bastian's _Der Mensch in der Geschichte_ (vol. iii. pp. 304-323),
together with the facts collected by travellers among the North American
Indians, and the mass of curious information supplied by Rosenbaum in
his _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume_, makes it clear to my mind
that the unisexual vices of barbarians follow, not the type of Greek
paiderastia, but that of the Scythian disease of effeminacy, described
by Herodotus and Hippocrates as something essentially foreign and
non-Hellenic. In all these cases, whether we regard the Scythian
impotent effeminates, the North American Bardashes, the Tsecats of
Madagascar, the Cordaches of the Canadian Indians and similar classes
among Californian Indians, natives of Venezuela, and so forth--the
characteristic point is that effeminate males renounce their sex, assume
female clothes, and live either in promiscuous concubinage with the men
of the tribe or else in marriage with chosen persons. This abandonment
of the masculine attributes and habits, this assumption of feminine
duties and costume, would have been abhorrent to the Doric custom.
Precisely similar effeminacies were recognised as pathological by
Herodotus, to whom Greek paiderastia was familiar. The distinctive
feature of Dorian comradeship was that it remained on both sides
masculine, tolerating no sort of softness. For similar reasons, what we
know about the prevalence of sodomy among the primitive peoples of
Mexico, Peru and Yucatan, and almost all half-savage nations,[45]
throws little light upon the subject of the present inquiry. Nor do we
gain anything of importance from the semi-religious practices of
Japanese Bonzes or Egyptian priests. Such facts, taken in connection
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