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

it rises in the morning,
is like you, boy, when you are near me. When your dark eye turns upon
me, it drives my reason from my head."
It should be added that Prof. Weigand, who knew the Albanians well,
assured Bethe (Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1907, p. 475) that
the relations described by Hahn are really sexual, although tempered by

idealism. A German scholar who travelled in Albania some years ago,
also, assured Näcke (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 Æolians 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 Æschylus 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