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.
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![give way to Athens, adding, yafxrjTeov fxkv aira(Ti, 7raiSepao-Teiv Se fAovois <f)i\o(r6<f>ois, Marriage is open to all men, but the love of boys to philosophers only. This verdict is referred to Theomnestus, a Don Juan of both sexes. He replies that both boys and women are good for pleasure ; the philoso- phical arguments of Callicratides are cant. This brief abstract of Lucian's dialogue on love indicates the cynicism with which its author viewed the subject, using the whole literature and all the experience of the Greeks to support a thesis of pure hedonism. The sybarites of Cairo or Constantinople at the present moment might employ the same arguments, except that they would omit the philosophic cant of Callicratides. There is nothing in extant Greek literature of a date anterior to the Christian era which is foul in the same sense as that in which the works of Roman poets (Catullus and Martial), Italian poets (Beccatelli and Baffo), and French poets (Scarron and Voltaire) are foul. Only purblind students will be unable to perceive the difference between the obscenity of the Latin races and that of Aristophanes. The difference, indeed, is wide and radical, and strongly marked. It is the difference between a race naturally gifted with a delicate, aesthetic sense of beauty, and one in whom that sense was always subject to the perturbation of gross instincts. But with the first century of the new age a change came over even the imagination of the Greeks. Though they never lost their distinction of style, that precious gift of lightness and good taste conferred upon them with their language, they borrowed something of their conquerors' vein. This makes itself felt in the Anthology. Straton and Rufinus suffered the contamination of the Roman genius, stronger in political organisation than that of Hellas, but coarser and less spiritually tempered in morals and in art. Straton was a native of Sardis, who flourished in the second century. He compiled a book of paiderastic poems, consisting in a great measure of his own and Meleager's compositions, which now forms the twelfth section of the Palatine Anthology. This book he dedicated, not to the Muse, but to Zeus ; for Zeus was the boy-lover among deities i1 he bade it carry forth his 1 Movaa 7raiSiK]7, i.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2041996x_0255.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
