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The article talks about "homosexual love scenes", but the details point to homosexual pederasty. I wonder if the writers are imposing our modern ideas of egalitarian "love" on something that really was quite different. I also note the words "paedophilia" or "pederasty" were not once used in the entire write-up. Is our modern homophile culture being a tad dishonest?

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It could be the reverse. By reducing those depiction to merely an act of sex which in today's context points to paedophilia we are missing out on an entire layer of complex ancient culture where boys took on older men as mentors and where apparently intimacy between them was a desirable achievement in itself, among other things. The very fact that they were depicted on murals and pottery must mean they were something perhaps to celebrate and to admire.

There is much still to understand of that early period, but to use our own standards and values to judge them would lead only to dead ends. After all, we can't say for sure we are now a more advanced culture than they were. Just look at where we are now. I wouldn't exactly be proud. While I abhor paedophilia, we must be judicious in meting out our condemnation of every sex act that involves a youth and an older male. We must not instantly assume that the older one is taking advantage of the younger. This is central to the novel I am reading at the moment, Glove Puppet, about a teenager who has sex with his adopted dad, causing their fairytale world to collapse.

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The scenes are just of sex, one between a man and a youth, another between a youth and a younger boy. I personally think that to explain fully what was going on would have taken the article far beyond its original focus. Perhaps the article used the term out of convenience?

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You can take a look at the photos. Just make a trip to the National University of Singapore Central Library and look for the March 1999 issue of Art Bulletin. There is a long article on this.

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For your general info, the Romans copied very much the culture of the Greeks, and homosexuality was a celebrated norm to the extent that the aversion and distinction of paedophilia was not apparent. As rightly mentioned it was common for a young boy to be mentored by a much older men, and if any sex occur it only serves to strengthen the bond between the mentor and his young trainee.

Homosexuality was only proscribed as 'criminal' only after the 3rd Century AD, when the Roman Emperor, Constantine was converted to Christianity. And the church seized this opportunity to influence the Roman Emperor to outlaw homosexuality. So the persecution of homosexuality began with the Christian church, and the recent Ex-gay campaign is yet another effort by the church to influence public animosity towards the gay community.

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On the contrary, There is much literature and research done on this subject to show that this is not the case. As to the interpretation of mentoring as "platonic", bear in these are the perceptions of historians etc who are either straight or have been educated to approach it from a straight point of view, even IF the researcher is gay. So, you can always say there are always two sides to a coin. Written opinions are always tempered with a personal point of view. A straight scribe would write of an amorous male couple as decadent, a gay one would write about it as beautiful. It has been shown that both records exist but we have thus far only been exposed to the first while the second has been greatly downplayed.

For example there is (according to Islamic Homosexualities) a startlingly huge amount of poetry and writings from early Islam that is dedicated to love between males. Apparently the Arabs are well aware of this while blissfully ignorant of ramifications that seem significant only to us. The very fact that such a vast amount of love poetry exists is in the least a hint that there was more there than we are led to believe. Scholars etc now claim that all this love expressed between males was purely platonic, but who is to say this as a fact? It will always be open to question. We all know that poetry reveals only hints and links to the writers' intentions. And that is all it takes to open the doors to new ideas, a slight crack in the door.

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Although I am hugely in favour of putting all the problems of the world onto Christianity, I do not agree that 'homosexuality was a celebrated norm'.

First of all, compared to Greeks, it is not without reasons that Romans were called 'decadent'.

As for homosexual acts, they were common (not encouraged) for young men, they were supposed to be 'platonic' (that's where it comes from doesn't it?), but they were however considered more like a weakness for adult men. Mentoring was one thing, but adult men should be with women.

Ah, one more thing about 'paedophilia': what did 'old' mean at that time? what did 'young' mean at that time?

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My understanding of the history is similar to CAV's. The norm, even in the Greek and Roman worlds, was heterosexual marriage, though what emotional content was expected of a heterosexual marriage is difficult to say, certainly there was nothing equivalent to the equality between sexes we take for granted today, and the emotional commitment we celebrate between husband and wife. Women were properties of fathers and then of husbands -- it's hard to imagine that they had a place in their husbands' hearts similar to today.

Still, there great Greek stories celebrating the love between a man and a woman, so heterosexual love was a desired ideal too. I guess it was very complex.

As for homosexuality I think the most we can say is that those societies were a lot more tolerant of adult men preferring to have sex with boys, and perhaps with other men too. Again, one should be careful not to read into homosexual acts the same emotional commitment we celebrate between gay men today. In those times, even between adult men (which might have been frowned on), having sex was one thing, but they were often so widely separated by class, e.g. master and slave, that the notion of an emotional relationship would have been absurd.

My guess would be that 'old' would be anything above 30, and 'young' (for the purposes of paedophilia) always meant prepuberty.

But this raises another question: when was the usual age for puberty? I read somewhere that 200-300 years ago in Europe the average age for female puberty was 15-17. It has since fallen to 12-13 in most countries, but more like 10-11 in the USA. Something to do with better nutrition (a good thing) but also more fat in the diet (a bad thing). So we can't assume that the typical age for male puberty in Ancient Greece and Rome was similar to the present time.

Generally, my point is this: I'd be very careful not to suggest that the Greek and Roman worlds were some kind of a gay utopia. They might have been less uptight than some societies today, but they were far from being a utopia, gay or any other way.

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You're quite right here. Calling it a 'celebrated norm' seems to require an awful amount of pink glass...

*hmm* That's a bit of a loaded statement. It was the Greeks who were viewed by the Romans as being effeminate and too given to pleasure - recall that it was the Greeks who gave the Romans culture/art/philosophy/literature and all other highbrow things. Before the self-initiated influx of Greek culture, the Romans were known for being a hard-nosed, businesslike and generally uncultured race.

When Rome began taking over the remains of Alexander's empire bit by bit, Greek ideas and fashions became the rage all over the Roman republic, and many documents attest to the old Romans complaining that their youth were being corrupted by soft and unmanly Greek practices. Indeed, this tension between the Roman and Greek stereotypes existed throughout the Roman Republic and into the Roman Empire too.

Of course, certain Roman Emperors were debauched beyond what we could possibly achieve, but at the time, it was attributed to Greek influence ;-)

Hmm. I can check that up.

This is quite true. Even in 5th Century BC Athens, the comic playwright Aristophanes constantly makes fun of passive homosexuals - not a single of his plays is without reference to so-and-so, a famous Athenian politician known for.. erm... 'nuff said ;-)

This attitude persisted into the Roman days, when it was considered shameful and unmanly to be the passive partner in anal intercourse. The sexual vocabulary of the Latin language is quite full of very specific terms - there are different words for the passive and active partners in anal/oral/manual intercourse. For example, the man who puts his bits in another man's mouth is an Irrumator, while the other is a Fellator-does the word ring any bells?

The passive terms were often used as an abuse, and one of the poet Catullus' poems begins with a curse: "Pedicabo vos et irrumabo...". Terse and to the point, translating those four words accurately into English is impossible, the closest being "I'll sodomise the lot of you and put my bits into your mouths". Not surprisingly, this line is often bowlderised into "Go to hell, the lot of you", to which it has an equivalent meaning. Oh yes, the word cocksucker was an abuse even in those days ;-)

Hmm. The greek word Pais (from which the pae- root comes) refers to a male before puberty- a boy. After hair began to sprout (to use the common definition of the time), they were Ephebes, or youths. I don't think the term paedophilia can really be defined with any reference to the Classical world, as the terms and idea we use today did not exist then.

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By the way, Alexander was supposed to be gay !

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Homosexuality was a celebrated norm in that it was found in the popular art of its day.

Many of the Greek philosophers like Plato, Socrates, etc all had their young lover boys and declared their love for them in their poems.

In Greek and Roman culture, although heterosexuality was the majority yet they never held in disdain the open expression of homosexual activities. Homosexuality was considered as another form of sexual orientation. Thus Heterosexuality and Homosexuality share a happy co-existence in their society. Concepts of pederasty or paedophilia are more of a modern concept and we used it to read back into ancient cultures.

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One of the difficulties in considering this situation is that Greek society was different from Roman society, and both are different from Singapore society, which is different from UK society, which is....aw, you get the picture.

We err in attaching love/affection to sexuality. The Romans and Greeks (nay, even Western society up to the beginning of this century) had no concept of a linkage between love and sex. Marital sex was for procreation, it was a duty, and the wife was virtually owned by the male. Love and affection had nothing to do with it. They might occasionally be vested in one's marital partner, but everyone was expected to be married at some point.

On the other hand, sex outside of marriage was often out of affection. Married men might have a concubine, a mistress, or a boyfriend. I expect there was a bit of something or other going on in the Temple of Vesta between those famous Virgins.

This is a difficult subject for modern people to take up, because it implies that sex is possible for cultural reasons (i.e., if you're expected to get married, even though you're gay, you're also expected to do your duty and have some children). It's a slippery slope.

There were lots of instances of homosexual sex between equals (i.e., upper social classes) The most important way the ancients looked at these kinds of sex was: who was top and who was bottom. If you took the female role (i.e., receptive), you were inferior to the one who took the "male" role (i.e., penetrative). This is still true in some Asian societies today, I believe.

There was at that time no age of consent, per se. However, homosexuality was often the subject of proscriptive laws in Rome. The reason? The birth rate was going down and the Emperors wanted to "do something about it". The fact that successive Emperors had to continue to proscribe homosexual activity means that the laws were ineffective.

Definitely not a gay utopia. In most cases, in Greece there was only a social stigma attached to being effeminately gay. In Rome, as long as the husband did his duty and produced sons for the Empire, no one cared what he did on his days off.

The idea of a moral argument against homosexuality would be alien to a Greek or a Roman. Their sole argument against was a functional one: who was going to beget the children if the husbands were all off sleeping with each other or with teenagers?

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According to the study Same Sex Unions in Premedieval Europe, it was the norm and that norm was to secure property rights etc via marriage to a woman. That also explained documents of unions between men, these also served to define the rights to property, money and inheritance.

It's complicated but not complex. Just because love of woman was also celebrated does not make it a recommended ideal, nor homosexual. I think there were no strict "ideals" as such. It has also been written that to marry makes economic sense, but go be into battle with your lover as your comrade was good military sense.

I seems it was more than tolerated, it was common practice as mentoring of Alexander, and the younger loves of Plato etc have illustrated. Those drawings are evidence that they, like many other scenes depicted, are common aspects of the culture. And "Same sex union" also gives lots of examples of written contracts of union between men and ceremonial rituals to unite them.

It may not have been utopia but it would be wrong to say we are more advanced now. To use an analogy, thousands of years from now people will probably think there were no gays in Singapore if they studied our current literature. They could probably deduce that it was an abhorrent act that society viewed as disgusting, judging from the translations of old relics like The New Paper.

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This statement cannot stand... as I said earlier, it requires too much pink glass.

*scratch head*

Socrates never wrote a word that survives, and Plato himself hated poets. Although there is much homosexuality discussed and taken for granted in Plato's writings, I don't recall *any* of the philosophers declaring love for anyone. Many in fact, considered sex to be a pointless waste of time, if not downright dangerous to one's well being.

Yes, well, your last sentence has entirely demolished the lines preceding it. This concept of sexuality never existed in Classical times, and to say that "Heterosexuality and Homosexuality share a happy co-existence in their society" not only ignores this fact, it also ignores the fact that Greek and Roman societies (not to mention cultures) were very different.

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Like today, with all the gay books, movies, magazines and porn flicks that are a huge and popular industry worldwide. It's celebrated by millions under the bedsheets every night.

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If you mean Alexander the Great, well think about it this way - he was a stay at home till he got married and once he was married he and his army were off to conquer the world (and they didn't do such a bad job either)- so he was away with the boys for years and years while his wife was home keeping the fire going waiting for him to return.

Sounds like a perfect marriage to me.

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Correct me if I'm wrong. I thought Alexander met and married his wife Roxane on campaign in Baktria (which I think is somewhere in modern Afghanistan). Alexander grew up with Hephaistion; his life-long friend who was also rumoured to be his lover. Alexander died a few months after Hephaistion's death in Babylon; some said he was murdered and others cholera but I prefer heartbreak.

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From ZCJC
14 May 99

I hope it didn't mean that he went for his horse too (LOL).