Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

Matt HOMOSEXUALITY

so that it may be sufficient to give only the most beautiful of them here. This epigram was written by the poet Crinagoras (Anth. Pal., vii, 628) to his boy, whom he named Eros; the boy died early on an island and was buried there, and so the poet wishes that this and the neighbouring islands may henceforth be called the Islands of Love. “ Other islands ere this have rejected their inglorious names and named themselves after men. Be called Erotides (Love islands), ye Oxeiai (sharp islands) ; it is no shame for you to change; for Eros himself gave both his name and his beauty to the boy whom Dies laid here beneath a heap of clods. O earth, crowded with tombs, do thou lie light on the boy, and do thou lie hushed for his sake.”

to. NEGATIVE AND AFFIRMATIVE OPINIONS

In Greek antiquity there were also of course not wanting opinions which, either generally or under definite assumptions, repudiated the idea of the love of boys. Thus the epigram of Meleager (Anth. Pal., v, 208), which contains the thought that “ one who gives this love cannot at the same time also receive it’, is negative. Certainly, Meleager did not always hold the same opinion, since we possess numerous epigrams of his, in which love of youths is extolled.

In the romance of Xenophon of Ephesus (ii, 1) the pair of lovers, Habrocomes and Antheia, fall into the hands of pirates, the leader of whom conceives a violent passion for Habrocomes. But the latter says ‘‘Oh, the unhappy gift of beauty! So long kept I myself chaste, only now to yield in shameful lust to the love of a pirate! What then is left to me to live for, if from a man I must become a harlot 2? But I will not submit to his desires, I would rather be dead and save my chastity ! ”’

The seduction of boys was in any case unreservedly repudiated. Thus it is said in a comedy of Anaxandrides (frag. 33, 12, in Ath., vi, 227b—CAF., I, 147) “and a little boy in the bloom of youth, by what

446