Homosexuality Without cant
Sir: In his comments on Mr Simon Raven's admirable 'Homosexuality without cant,' Mr Hopcutt is surely implanting more errors than he removes (Letters, 21 June).
It is, of course, true that Greek paederasts liked boys as young as twelve or, if one can judge by vase-paintings, even younger. But to suggest that the 'love of little boys' deplored by Socrates was a vehicle of higher sentiments
than the love of hetairas would, I think, be very misleading. The extant literature reserves these sentiments entirely for the adolescents or young adult, and expects a communication of ideas. Plato, a highly sophisticated aristocrat who would hardly invent a socially absurd situation, has Pausania' in the Symposium the lover of Agathon when the latter is already master of his own household and a prize- winning dramatist.
While the unfortunate boys of Sparta seem to have been taken over pretty young by the lover-trainers who were punished if they failed to toughen them, far greater prestige attached to the adult amours of Thebes, which were sealed with binding vows at a hero-shrine. The Sacred Band was the most formidable corps d'elite of its day, unbeaten till it met the com- bined assault of Philip and Alexander. This surely proves that its fighting couples, both erastes and eromenos. were men or youths of fully developed strength. -
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