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Debunking the Myth of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece (NEW)
A review of Adonis Georgiades' book
You've got to give Adonis Georgiades credit. Here he is, just a shade over 30, and he manages one of Hellas' most prestigious publishing houses, hosts a five-day a week TV show, runs a school which specializes in teaching the ancient language of his ancestors, and somehow still manages to find the time to lecture and write books on the subject nearest and dearest to his heart
: the unrivalled and many-faceted glory of ancient Greece
: A renaissance man in every sense of the word.
Naturally, a man like this is going to be more than just a little upset over the distortions and outright fabrications circulating in today's multicultural, postmodern world
. A world where the unsuspecting and historically challenged are subjected to whatever deconstructed version of reality the purveyors of the kind of putrescent pap think most suits their worldview of "diversity" and "cultural equality." To such dissembling dimwits, Plato, Dr. Ruth, and Chief Seattle are intellectually, ethically, and philosophically equal! As a result, the unique contributions made by the Greeks in the millenniums-old struggle to lift mankind out of the slime of ignorance and superstition are trivialized, ignored, or put into an ersatz context which helps to promote the "isms" in fashion at the moment.
Thus, we discover that the Greeks hated and victimized their women, that they imposed their culture upon the poor, suffering peoples they conquered, that they were heartless slave-owners, that they stole their philosophy from the brown-skinned Egyptians, that they appropriated their alphabet from the Semitic Phoenicians, and that some of their most outstanding personalities -- and even some of their gods and goddesses -- were Black! Those of you who have cracked a respectable number of pre-postmodern books, or are frequent visitors to this site, know that such invidious absurdities are untrue, and can easily be proven to be untrue
. The fact remains, however, that such is the blather being hustled these days, and a whole generation of innocent youth is being exposed to this poison
: A poison purposely injected into their minds in order to create the stateless, colorless, genderless, faithless, inarticulate, boob-tube-mesmerized, consumer-drones the proponents of this Zyclon-B-of-the-intellect want to inhabit the "Global Village" they are hell-bent on creating.
Such fuzzy-minded huckstering is especially prominent among the professors in the Humanities departments of the colleges and universities of the Western World. The frenzy-to-conform exhibited by these homunculi -- whose shoes don't touch the floor when they are seated in their academic chairs -- is such that they are willing to sell their souls, betray their racial heritage (those who are White), and pollute the quality of their scholarship by playing an active role in the promulgation of this historical mythmaking. And it is here, in these departments, where the most infuriating lie of all -- that which posits the prevalence of homosexuality in ancient Greece -- was born. This myth, engendered in Academia, and "legitimized" by an alien and hostile element in America -- an element that controls the awesome mind-molding power of the media and Hollywood -- could not help but "have legs." And so it has come to pass that even an Al Sharpton -- a man with the intellect of a retarded Neanderthal -- could publicly refer to the ancient Greeks as "a bunch of fairies" in a speech given before an audience of his mentally challenged acolytes. "Mentally challenged" because instead of hissing and booing at such patronizingly obvious demagoguery, they cheered, clapped, whistled, and hooted with bug-eyed delight at hearing Whitey traduced and ridiculed by one of their own.
This is the myth that Adonis Georgiades so successfully and convincingly demolishes in his book Debunking the Myth of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece.
Georgiades manages, in just over 200 easy-to-read and well-documented pages, to cite a multitude of ancient sources which shed the light of truth upon the question of just how homosexuals and homosexuality were regarded in the Hellas of the 9th to the 4th century B.C. His thesis is simple: "Of course homosexuality existed in Greece, just as it has existed, and will continue to exist, everywhere and at all times in human history. However, while it did exist, it was never legally sanctioned, thought to be a cultural norm, or engaged in without risk of serious punishment, including exile and death." A pitiful creature like Barney Frank, for instance, would have -- upon his particular "proclivity" being discovered -- been executed or sent into exile. After which, his living quarters would have been fumigated and ritually purified by a priest. Unless, of course, he had previously "gone public" with his homosexual lifestyle. In that case, though he would have been permitted to live, he would, under Athenian law (grafí etairísios),
not be permitted to become one of the nine archons, nor to discharge the office of priest, nor to act as an advocate for the state, nor shall he hold any office whatsoever, at homeor abroad, whether filled by lot or by election; he shall not be sent as a herald; he shall not take part in debate, nor be present at the public sacrifices; when the citizens are wearing garlands, he shall wear none; and he shall not enter within the limits of the place that has been purified for the assembling of the people. Anyman who has been convicted of defying these prohibitions pertaining to sexual conduct shall be put to death (Aeschines. "Contra Timarchus," as cited in Georgiades, p. 69).
We learn as well that "Athens had the strictest laws pertaining to homosexuality of any democracy that has ever existed" (62). In non-democratic Sparta, as well as in democratic Crete and the rest of democratic Hellas, there were similar prohibitions with similar punishments as that meted out in Athens, and Georgiades gives us citations galore to prove his main thesis: "At no time, and in no place, was this practice considered normal behavior, or those engaged in it allowed to go unpunished" (passim). In order to remove any doubt whatsoever, he draws on such ancient luminaries as Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Diodorus Seculus, Euripides, Homer, Lysias, Plato, Plutarch and Xenophon, all of whom have left a written record as to what the prevailing norms were concerning this behavior. He also covers Greek vase painting, Mythology and Lesbianism, while not neglecting to reveal the truth about such much-maligned personalities from Hellas' glorious past as Achilles and Patroclus, Alcibiades and Socrates, Alexander the Great and Hephaestion, and the woman that the later Greeks regarded as "the greatest of the lyric poets," Sappho.
Greek vase painting has been a favorite source for the distorters of Greek culture and civilization. Georgiades points out that, of the tens of thousands of vases unearthed so far (the count for just the province of Attica, where Athens is located, is over 80,000), only 30 or so have an overtly homosexual theme; representing, in other words, just .01% of the total (127). When one compares this small percentage to what we see today on TV, in ads, books, magazines, the cinema, etc., one can just imagine what future generations will think of us. There is more, much more, but the purpose of this review is to stimulate the reader to order the book to see for himself just how Georgiades has managed to shed the light of truth on this important aspect of Greek history.
There is one more thing, however, that must be said. Georgiades has -- in a clear and easy-to-comprehend manner -- delineated the difference between what the ancients meant when they used the words "Erastis" and "Eromenos," and the way these words are translated and used in our time. This alone is worth the price of the book. Briefly, to the ancient Greeks, the term Erastis denoted a man who mentored, in a non-physical way, an Eromenos. The Eromenos was in all cases a beardless youth who looked up to and respected his mentor, and who had been commissioned by the boy's parents to take on the vital chore of preparing him to assume the roles of husband, father, soldier, and active citizen in the affairs of his community. Georgiades delves deeply into this relationship, and explains how and why these terms have come today to be confused with the "dominant" and "passive" partners in an homosexual union.
We can only be grateful that there are still young men around like Adonis Georgiades who want only to see that the truth is told about the country they love. This book is highly recommended, and though it has been published only in Greek to date, we sincerely hope to see an English language edition in the near future.
