Homosexuality without cant
Sir: I was not unaware of the facts Miss Renault adduces (Letters, 5 July), but her presentation of them only has the effect of misrepre:;:enting my own position. It may clarify matters if I enumerate the points of misunderstanding.
1. I did not say—or infer—that, in the Greek view, a homosexual relationship was to be rated more highly the wider the age-difference, This would have been quite absurd. What I was concerned to point out was that Mr Raven's generalisation about the age-gap was rather too sweeping and that, in this respect, the Greeks stand in marked contrast to the progressive orthodoxy of our time. It was the quality of the relationship that counted—not the ages of the persons involved.
2. Similarly, I certainly did not wish to credit the Greeks with the view that a relationship with a very young boy was to be regarded more highly than one with an adolescent. 1 would agree that, in Athens at any rate, the latter kind of union was what won esteem, for there the communication of ideas counted for far more than in most other city-states. Nevertheless, the adolescent boys concerned appear often to have been not much past puberty. Lysis (in Plato's dialogue of that name) is still a schoolboy and has a slave appointed to look after him, while his lover, Hippothales, is a young adult.
3. There is no question of my wishing to refute what Miss Renault says about the age- composition of the famous Sacred Band of Thebes or to doubt Plato's testimony as to the special relationship between Agathon and Pausanias. Certainly love between adults of roughly the same maturity was common and— if beneficial in its social consequences—highly esteemed: such love did not run counter to paederasty but was, rather, complementary to it. Thus, while (in Plato's Symposium) Phaedrus speaks of the sort of love that will make an army invincible, the other speakers refer principally to love of boys: I would only add that Miss Renault's choice of Agathon to illustrate her point is perhaps unfortunate. If Aristophanes's satirical treatment of him in the Thesmophoriazusae is to be accepted, he shaved and used female toilet accessories in an effort to preserve an appearance of youthfulness, thP*'- incurring the charge of 'effeminacy'—and 'effeminacy' was usually much despised by the Athenians.
It seems to me that Mr Raven is right to point to a pagan tradition of acceptance of homosexuality. What I may term punitive Christianity has always leaned heavily on the Sodom and Gomorrah story and on the Mosaic code which stems from it: and those who wish to claim for homosexuality a place in the sun today are entitled to draw attention to—and inspiration from—the more civilised tradition of the Greeks.
In speaking of the Greek attitude to this question, however, two points especially should, I feel, be borne in mind. The first is that the various city-states were not altogether at one : Athens was by no means as permissive as Elis, C halcis, and Boeotia generally. And even at Athens, opinions varied. How else could there have been clashes of opinion between the various speakers in the Symposium of Plato and that of Xenophon? We cannot, then, return to the Greeks in the hope of finding a cast-iron dogma on the subject; and any new conventions which we adopt as a result of study of Greek practice will have to be of the maximum flexibility.
The second point is that Greek homosexuality (especially in its Athenian form) was profoundly moral. A relationship was judged by the effect it had on those involved. No real distinction was drawn between paederasty and pedagogy, for it was held that only where there was a loving relationship could the values of Greek society be transmitted to the young. All the Platonic dialogues on the subject stress the importance of emulation in the relationship between a boy and a worthy lover. The boy was supposed to acquire physical hardihood, powers of endurance, and frugal habits; and, if he were of the Athenian upper class, an intelligent outlook and cultured interests as well. The lover was, in varying degrees, held responsible for shortcomings and failures in his favourite. I make these remarks to counteract the tendency of Mr Raven's article to stress the element of purely personal taste and satis- faction at the expense of the social. If our society is going to follow the Greek tradition, it will be compelled to question the 'progres- sivist' assumption, according to which homo- sexuality should be placed in a watertight compartment and granted only grudging tolerance.
G. C. S. Hopcuit 99 Clifton Street, Hurst Hill, Staffordshire
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