by K J Dover
Length of hair, like colour of skin, is culturally determined (‘short’ hair may be short through cutting or through being ‘put up’), and since a very early heterosexual courting scene (CE33*) shows us a youth with short hair putting his hands towards the face and genitals of a woman with long hair, we might be tempted to assume that when the same difference between erastes and eromenos is seen in essentially similar homosexual courting scenes it signifies that the artists (and many erastai) admired a positive feminine feature in eromenoi. It is certainly true that this difference in hair-style occurs in many scenes of homosexual courting or pursuit, e.g. B16*, B53*, B102, B130, B250*, B482, B486*, B502*, and in B267 the youth who is the focus of the picture has long hair and the other youths short hair. In red-figure Ganymede is commonly long-haired (R102, R348*, R829*, R833*; cf. a boy with a hoop, R496), and the same is true of gods, heroes and legendary persons, e.g. Apollo (R383), Eros (R527), Orpheus (R659*), Orestes (R546), Phaon (RL2). There is however a considerable measure of arbitrariness, at all periods, in the painters’ choices of hair-style; the eromenos has short hair in (e.g.) B65*, shorter than his erastes in B170, and in B598* the boy on one side of the vessel has short hair and the boy on the other long; the styles of Theseus and Korone are identical in R55*. One satyr has short hair, another long hair, in R329*. Wavy hair was perhaps thought more attractive than straight, to judge from the contrast in R847, where Zephyros’s hair is straight but that of his eromenos Hyakinthos wavy (there is a similar contrast between Eros wavy and a boy straight in R770). The associations of words for long hair in the classical period are varied. The Spartans, formidable warriors, grew their hair long (cf. e.g. Hdt. i 82.8) and according to Aristotle Rhetoric 1367a 29-31 thought this a mark of a free man, because it is hard to do servile manual jobs when one’s hair keeps getting in the way; Athenian admirers of Sparta, on the other hand, seem (Ar. Birds 1282) to have associated refusal to cut the hair with manly indifference to cleanliness, comfort and adornment (cf. Plu. Lyc. 22.1). It is evident from Ar. Knights 580 (supported by an almost certain emendation in Lys. xvi 18) that long hair characterised young men of the wealthiest class, and in consequence komān, ‘wear the hair long’ is used in comedy in the sense ‘give oneself airs’, ‘think oneself a cut above other people’ (e.g. Ar. Wasps 1317). The association of long hair with homosexuality is, in the strict sense, accidental; it may go with general hairiness, lust and arrogance in the single-minded pursuer of sex-objects, male or female (cf. p. 38), or with comfortable soft living and thus with effeminacy and readiness to play the passive role (cf. p. 74).
Given the relation between the antithesis male/female and the antithesis dark/light, together with the fact that in the Olympia terracotta which represents Zeus carrying off Ganymede the god’s hair and beard are black, while Ganymede’s hair is light brown, one might expect that blond hair would be favoured in women (sometimes it is, e.g. R486) and, if favoured in eromenoi, a sign of the assimilation of eromenoi to women; but here again the element of caprice is large: beside a blond Achilles (R748) and a carroty Ganymede (R348*) we must set a mixture of dark and fair hair in the figures92 of R196*, a pair of Erotes, one blond and one dark-haired, in R705, and a distinction between the infant Herakles and his twin as dark-haired and blond respectively in R351. It appears from an account given by Ion of Chios (F6) of a conversation in which Sophokles participated that the Greeks of the classical period normally thought of Apollo’s hair as black. Conversely, giants and gross or barbarous persons may have fair hair in vase-paintings, e.g. R16, R210.
Hellenistic poetry suggests that after the fourth century there was a certain shift of taste towards feminine characteristics in eromenoi. The adolescent Philinos in Theokritos 7.105, with whom Aratos is despairingly in love, is malthakos, ‘soft’, ‘unmanly’. Rhianos 3.3 commends the “pīōn akmē of flesh’ of a boy. Although pīōn is an imprecise word – it can be applied, for instance, to good land – it means ‘fat’ when applied to people, with a connotation of soft and luxurious living (cf. Ar. Wealth 560, Pl. Rep. 422d, Politicus 309b); akmē is ‘prime’, ‘peak’, so that it would be hard for a Greek to understand Rhianos’s phrase as describing anything but a plump, sleek body rather than the rippling muscles of an athlete. Hapalos, ‘supple’, ‘tender’, ‘soft’ (Asklepiades 20, Meleagros 76), distinguishes adolescence from maturity, not simply female from male; there are other words, e.g. habros (Polystratos 1) and trupheros (Meleagros 61), which convey a suggestion of soft living, delicacy and fastidiousness, and thus indirectly a suggestion of effeminacy, without specifically indicating a female physique.93 Meleagros 98 evinces equal passion for one boy who is leukanthēs, ‘white-flowering’ (anthos, ‘flower’ is a common term for beauty) and for another who is melikhrous, ‘honey-skinned’, and this shows that a fair skin in a young male was not invariably repugnant to Hellenistic taste. This should hardly surprise us – we do not fall in love only with those whose specifications are in the pattern-book, – and a passage of Plato’s Republic, in the earlier part of the fourth century, gives us a glimpse of realities. Socrates chaffs Glaukon, who as an erōtikos should remember (474de) that
when a man is a lover of boys and erōtikos, all those who are at the right age somehow or other get under his skin and turn him on; he thinks they’re all worth looking after and making a fuss of. Isn’t that how you behave to beautiful boys? If he’s got an upturned nose, you’ll call him ‘charming’ and sing his praises; if he’s got a hooked nose, you say he’s ‘aristocratic’ (lit., ‘kingly’), and of course, the one in between has exactly the right proportions. If they’re dark (lit., ‘black’), you say they look manly; if they’re fair (lit., ‘white’), they’re children of the gods.94 And do you think that the word ‘honey-yellow’ is anything but the endearment of an erastes who doesn’t mind a boy’s pallor,95 if he’s the right age?
From the evidence considered in this and the preceding Section it appears that in the visual arts of the late archaic and early classical periods, and also in the majority of literary contexts (at any period) in which homosexual eros is expressed directly or described with approval, unambiguously male bodily features and a specifically masculine life-style constitute a homosexual stimulus. Yet from time to time a gleam of soft white flesh somewhere below the surface indicates that at least by the time we arrive at the second half of the classical period homosexual taste was by no means uniform,96 and that we may have to reckon with a significant difference between what actually happened and an ideal pattern of sentiment and practice which dominated public utterance and literary convention. We shall see some reason to postulate precisely such a difference in the modes of homosexual courtship and copulation (Section 6).
4. Pursuit and flight
In the Symposium Plato portrays a dinner-party in the house of the tragic poet Agathon, at which the guests take turns to make a speech in praise of Eros. The exemplifications used by the speakers are for the most part homosexual (cf. Chapter III D), and in that portion of the work which constitutes an exposition of Plato’s own doctrine of eros the response of a male to the beauty of another male is treated as the starting-point of a co-operative philosophical effort to understand ideal beauty. One of the speakers, a certain Pausanias, describes the attitude of Athenian society in his own day to homosexual relations, rationalises an apparent contradiction within this attitude and expounds a principle designed to reconcile its implicit scheme of values with more general schemes of moral valuation. In 182a-c he draws a regional distinction:
The rule (nomos)97 governing eros is easy to understand in other cities, because it is defined in simple terms, but the rule here and at Sparta is complicated (poikilos).98 In Elis and Boiotia, and wherever men are inarticulate, it has been laid down simply that granting favours to erastai is creditable – in order, I suppose, that they may not have the trouble, unskilled in speaking as they are, of trying to persuade young men by words; but in many parts of Ionia and elsewhere, regions which are under non-Greek rule
,99 the established view is that granting favours to erastai is shameful.
We do not have to take seriously the reason given (from the standpoint of Attic articulateness) for the casualness of homosexual relations in Elis and Boiotia or the reasons which Pausanias goes on to give for disapproval of them in (for example) Ionia, namely the threat posed to tyrants by the love, mutual loyalty and ambition which homosexual relations allegedly engender (inevitably, Pausanias cites [182c] the case of Harmodios and Aristogeiton). The ‘complication’ of the Athenian attitude (on Sparta, cf. Chapter IV A) is expounded in detail in 182d-184c. Pausanias begins by listing the phenomena which would lead an outside observer to suppose that the Athenians had a very high regard for the relations between erastes and eromenos (182d-183c):
Being in love openly is said to be more creditable than being in love secretly, and especially being in love with the noblest and best, even if they are not as good-looking as others. And the encouragement given by everyone to him who is in love is quite extraordinary, not at all as if he were doing something shameful. If he wins (lit., ‘catches’, sc, his eromenos), it is regarded as creditable, and if he does not win, as shameful; our custom grants the erastes, in his efforts to win, the possibility of being commended for doing the most extraordinary things, such that if anyone went so far as to do them in pursuit of any other object but this, or through a desire to attain any other end, he would earn the most severe reproach ... making his requests with supplication and entreaty, and swearing oaths, and sleeping in doorways,100 and being ready to endure a servitude against which any slave would revolt ... When an erastes does all this, people find it attractive ... From this point of view, one would think that being in love and requiting the affection of erastai is held in the highest possible esteem in this city.
Thereupon Pausanias passes to a consideration which, he says, would lead the observer to the opposite conclusion (183cd):
But when fathers put slaves in charge of boys with whom men are in love, and won’t allow them to talk to their erastai, and those are the orders given to the slave in charge, and when the boy’s friends of his own age reproach him if they see anything of the kind going on, and their elders don’t restrain these reproaches or tell them off for saying the wrong thing – looking at all that, anyone would reverse his opinion and think that eros of this kind is regarded here as absolutely shameful.
So far Pausanias has given us a factual description of overtly expressed Athenian attitudes; his description may be true or false, but it is uncontaminated by speculation. That a boy’s family tries to shield him from erastai is taken for granted in Xen. Smp. 8.19, and Pl. Phdr. 255a says that boys discourage one another from listening to erastai. Pl. Lys. 208c, 223a give us an idea of the authority of slaves put in charge of boys. Pausanias goes on (183d-184b), to explain the apparent contradiction in the Athenian rule as the product of a wish to discriminate between good and bad eros. The erastes who is ‘in love with the body rather than the soul’ (183e) loses interest when his eromenos matures, and he breaks his promises of lasting love and gratitude; but the erastes who is in love with the ‘good character’ of the eromenos ‘stays for life’, since character, unlike youthful beauty, is lasting. Thus (183e-184a):
Our rule wishes to test these (sc. good and bad erastai) well and truly, and (sc. wishes eromenoi) to grant favours to the good but keep clear of the bad. Therefore it encourages erastai to pursue, but eromenoi to flee; it organises a contest, and puts erastes and eromenoi to the test to see to which category each belongs.
At this point another item of information about the Athenian attitude is introduced (184ab):
So for this reason it is regarded as disgraceful, first of all, (sc. for an eromenos) to be caught quickly – the idea is that time, which is held to be a good test of most things, should intervene – and secondly, disgraceful to be caught by (sc. the offer of) money or (sc. the exercise of) political influence, whether he (sc. the eromenos) has been intimidated by maltreatment and fails to hold out, or whether, offered advantage in material terms or attainment of political ends,101 he has failed to reject this with contempt.
The circumspect language is precisely that which we have observed and have learned to interpret in contexts of a more down-to-earth nature (pp. 44f.): kharizesthai (182a-c, 183d, 184ab, 184de, 185ab), hupourgein (184d), ‘pursue’ (184a, cf. 182e), ‘flee’ (184a), ‘catch’ (182d, 184a), ‘entreat’ (183a), ‘accomplish’ (183ab, 184b). It would be a mistake to imagine that when Pausanias distinguishes (183e) ‘the man who is in love with the body rather than with the soul’ from ‘the man who is love with the good character (sc. of the eromenos)’ he denies the latter any desire for bodily consummation or any inclination to refuse it if it is eventually offered.
Pausanias himself is represented by Plato (Prt. 315de) as erastes of Agathon when the latter was about eighteen, and as remaining so more than a dozen years later (the dramatic date of Smp. is 416), when Agathon had become an established dramatist (Smp. 193b; cf. Xen. Smp. 8.32); when Agathon emigrated to Macedonia, at some time between 411 and 405, Pausanias seems to have followed him there.102 He therefore has a strong personal reason for treating erastai who turn their eros into an enduring relationship as superior to those whose interest in a given eromenos is more transient, and for treating the endurance itself as a justification of the original homosexual relationship.
It is not necessary to accept as true his explanation of Athenian motives as essentially rational. The situation which he describes – sympathy for the erastes, but at the same time protection of the eromenos and criticism of an eromenos who is ‘quickly caught’ – resembles to a striking degree the situation which can be observed in many societies which are strongly heterosexual in their orientation but at the same time allow women a certain freedom of movement.103
In the first place, we notice that heterosexual relationships in such a society and homosexual relationships in Greek society are regarded as the product not of the reciprocated sentiment of equals but of the pursuit of those of lower status by those of higher status. The virtues admired in an eromenos are the virtues which the ruling element in a society (in the case of Greek society, adult male citizens) approves in the ruled (women and children). Anakreon fr. 360 addresses one of his eromenoi thus:
O boy with the virginal eyes, I seek you, but you do not listen, not knowing that you are the charioteer of my soul!
The ‘virginal eyes’ go with readiness to blush (e.g. Pl. Chrm. 158c), shyness (e.g. Pl. Lys. 207a, 222b) and unobtrusiveness. Kharmides, asked by Socrates to define sōphrosunē (Pl. Chrm. 159b), hesitates becomingly, and in the end says it is ‘doing everything in a quiet and orderly way, including walking and talking in the streets’. Right in Ar. Clouds 963f. puts these virtues at the head of his praise of boys as they were in the good old days:
In the first place, the rule was that no one should hear so much as a murmur from a boy. Secondly, they had to walk in an orderly way through the streets to the music-master’s ...
A boy who speaks seductively to his erastes, ‘acting as his own procurer with his eyes’, or is the first to snatch delicacies at a meal, or ‘giggles or crosses his legs’, is the product of these degenerate days, according to the complaint of Right (979-83). When an eromenos reminds an erastes, by ‘putting on airs’, which of them is the beggar and which the potential giver, it is disconcerting to an erastes, and in Xen. Smp. 8.4 Socrates puts on a delightful act as a conceited and coquettish boy:
‘Are you the only one, Antisthenes, who isn’t in love with anyone?’
‘By God I am!’ said Antisthenes, ‘I’m in love with you!’
Socrates, making fun of him, as if putting on airs, said ‘Now, don’t bother me now! Can’t you see I’m busy?’
Antisthenes replied ‘You – your own pimp! – always behave like that. Sometimes you make your “sign from a god” the excuse and don’t talk to me, and sometimes you’re after something else’.
‘O, I beg you, Anti
sthenes,’ said Socrates, ‘please don’t beat me up! Any other bad temper I put up with from you, and I’ll go on putting up with it, because I’m fond of you. But look, let’s keep our eros quiet, because it isn’t my soul you’re in love with, but my good looks.’
The junior partner in homosexual eros is called pais (or, of course, paidika) even when he has reached adult height and hair has begun to grow on his face, so that he might more appropriately be called neāniskos, meirakion or ephēbos.104 There is a clear distinction between paides and neāniskoi in (e.g.) Pl. Lys. 206de, and in Chrm. 154a Socrates says of Kharmides :
He wasn’t unremarkable even then, when he was still a pais, but by now, I imagine, he must be quite a meirakion.
