Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 | Page 7

also, assured N?cke (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908, p. 327) that he could fully confirm Hahn's statements, and that, though it was difficult to speak positively, he doubted whether these relationships were purely ideal. While most prevalent among the Moslems, they are also found among the Christians, and receive the blessing of the priest in church. Jealousy is frequently aroused, the same writer remarks, and even murder may be committed on account of a boy.
It may be mentioned here that among the Tschuktsches, Kamschatdals, and allied peoples (according to a Russian anthropological journal quoted in Sexual-Probleme, January, 1913, p. 41) there are homosexual marriages among the men, and occasionally among the women, ritually consecrated and openly recognized.
The Albanians, it is possible, belonged to the same stock which produced the Dorian Greeks, and the most important and the most thoroughly known case of socially recognized homosexuality is that of Greece during its period of highest military as well as ethical and intellectual vigor. In this case, as in those already mentioned, the homosexual tendency was frequently regarded as having beneficial results, which caused it to be condoned, if not, indeed, fostered as a virtue. Plutarch repeated the old Greek statement that the Beotians, the Lacedemonians, and the Cretans were the most warlike stocks because they were the strongest in love; an army composed of loving homosexual couples, it was held, would be invincible. It appears that the Dorians introduced paiderastia, as the Greek form of homosexuality is termed, into Greece; they were the latest invaders, a vigorous mountain race from the northwest (the region including what is now Albania) who spread over the whole land, the islands, and Asia Minor, becoming the ruling race. Homosexuality was, of course, known before they came, but they made it honorable. Homer never mentions it, and it was not known as legitimate to the ?olians or the Ionians. Bethe, who has written a valuable study of Dorian paiderastia, states that the Dorians admitted a kind of homosexual marriage, and even had a kind of boy-marriage by capture, the scattered vestiges of this practice indicating, Bethe believes, that it was a general custom among the Dorians before the invasion of Greece. Such unions even received a kind of religions consecration. It was, moreover, shameful for a noble youth in Crete to have no lover; it spoke ill for his character. By paiderastia a man propagated his virtues, as it were, in the youth he loved, implanting them by the act of intercourse.
In its later Greek phases paiderastia was associated less with war than with athletics; it was refined and intellectualized by poetry and philosophy. It cannot be doubted that both ?schylus and Sophocles cultivated boy-love, while its idealized presentation in the dialogues of Plato has caused it to be almost identified with his name; thus in the early Charmides we have an attractive account of the youth who gives his name to the dialogue and the emotions he excites are described. But even in the early dialogues Plato only conditionally approved of the sexual side of paiderastia and he condemned it altogether in the final Laws.[21]
The early stages of Greek paiderastia are very interestingly studied by Bethe, "Die Dorische Knabenliebe," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1907. J.A. Symonds's essay on the later aspects of paiderastia, especially as reflected in Greek literature, A Problem in Greek Ethics, is contained in the early German edition of the present study, but (though privately printed in 1883 by the author in an edition of twelve copies and since pirated in another private edition) it has not yet been published in English. Paiderastia in Greek poetry has also been studied by Paul Brandt, Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vols. viii and ix (1906 and 1907), and by Otto Knapp (Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, pp. 254-260) who seeks to demonstrate the sensual side of paiderastia. On the other hand, Licht, working on somewhat the same lines as Bethe (Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, August, 1908), deals with the ethical element in paiderastia, points out its beneficial moral influence, and argues that it was largely on this ground that it was counted sacred. Licht has also published a learned study of paiderastia in Attic comedy (Anthropophyteia, vol. vii, 1910), and remarks that "without paiderastia Greek comedy is unthinkable." Paiderastia in the Greek anthology has been fully explored by P. Stephanus (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908, p. 213). Kiefer, who has studied Socrates in relation to homosexuality (O. Kiefer, "Socrates und die Homosexualit?t," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908), concludes that he was bisexual but that his sexual impulses had been sublimated. It may be added that many results of recent investigation concerning paiderastia are summarized by Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualit?t, pp. 747-788, and by Edward Carpenter, Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk, 1914, part ii;