SURELY you are not saying that all those teenage boys laid very still and never once enjoyed ANY of the sex...I would find that very hard to believe in context of the very passionate poems and odes we have from that time...
I can accept that it was not spoken of in polite society but the idea of the younger never once showing sexual interest a little far fetched...
one source I read, and of course I don't remember where....said that ORAL sex was frowned upon..."a man who was known to engage in oral sex was not offered the common cup at a banquet....interesting to note he was invited though" but anal intercourse was considered the 'norm'...
I do agree that for an adult man to want to be the receiver would bring derision...but for the younger? no...
I've just amended my previous post. Though it is quoted directly from The Oxford Companion, on second thought, after I'd posted it, I considered it best to delete it at this point in our discussion.
It's difficult for us to understand the ancient Greek mind, particularly when it comes to their sexual outlook. Suffice to say that what we colloquially refer to as "greek," perhaps wasn't necessarily a
Greek practice.
Here's another quote from The Oxford Companion:
"The asymmetries structuring pederastic relationships reflected the underlying division of sexual labour. Whereas a boy, lacking his lover's erotic motivation, was not expected to play what the Greeks considered an 'active' sexual role - he was not, that is, to seek a sexual climax by inserting his penis into an orifice of his lover's body - a man was expected to do just that either by thrusting his penis
between the boy's thighs (which was considered the most respectful method, because it did not violate the boy's bodily integrity) or by inserting it into his rectum. Respectable erotic relations between men and boys preserved the social fiction, to which some honourable lovers may even have adhered in actual practice, that sexual penetration of the boy took place
only between the legs (the so-called intercrural position),
never in the anus or - what was even worse - in the mouth. It was not a question of what people actually did in bed (the boy was conventionally assumed to be anally receptive to his older lover)
so much as how they behaved when they were out of bed."
I think you were right in your earlier post, Jess. We shouldn't be discussing this so early in the book.
