Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. 1, Sexual inversion / by Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds / by Havelock Ellis.
- Havelock Ellis
- Date:
- 1897
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. 1, Sexual inversion / by Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.
203/324 page 183
![convincing testimony is to be found in the Greek language: XaKOiVL&LV, XoLKOOVlKOV TpOTTOV 7T€paLV€LV 3.1ld Kp7]Tit,€LVj tO do like the Laconians, to have connection in Laconian way, to do like the Cretans, tell their own tale, especially when we com- pare these phrases with KopLvOcd^eiv, A.e(r/3ia£av, o-i<£i/ia£eiv, ^oivt^^ctv, to do like the Corinthians, the Lesbians, the Siphnians, the Phoenicians, and other verbs formed to indi- cate the vices localised in separate districts. Up to this point I. have been content to follow the notices of Dorian institutions which are scattered up and down the later Greek authors, and which have been collected by C. O. Miiller. I have not attempted to draw definite conclusions, or to speculate upon the influence which the Dorian section of the Hellenic family may have exercised in developing paiderastia. To do so now will be legitimate, always remem- bering that what we actually know about the Dorians is confined to the historic period, and that the tradition respecting their early customs is derived from second-hand authorities. It has frequently occurred to my mind that the mixed type of paiderastia which I have named Greek Love took its origin in Doris. Homer, who knew nothing about the passion as it afterwards existed, drew a striking picture of masculine affection in Achilles. And Homer, I may add, was not a native of northern Greece. Whoever he was, or whoever they were, the poet, or the poets, we call Homer belonged to the south-east of the v^Egean. Homer, then, may have been ignorant of paiderastia. Yet friendship occupies the first place in his hero's heart, while only the second is reserved for sexual emotion. Now Achilles came from Phthia, itself a portion of that mountain region to which Doris belonged.1 Is it unnatural to conjecture that the Dorians, in their migra- tion to Lacedaemon and Crete, the recognised headquarters of the custom, carried a tradition of heroic paiderastia along with them ? Is it unreasonable to surmise that here, if any- where in Hellas, the custom existed from prehistoric times ? If so, the circumstances of their invasion would have fostered the transformation of this tradition into a tribal institution. 1 It is not unimportant to note in this connection that paiderastia of no ignoble type still prevails among the Albanian mountaineers.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2041996x_0205.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
