I recently took a course on ancient Greek philosophy, studying the old greats such as Plato, Herodotus, Lucretius, Aristotle, and more. My only prior experience in the field was when I took an Introduction to Ethics class at my school, and I thought it would be an interesting combination with the ancient Greek I had also recently begun studying.
One out of the many notable works we read was Plato’s Symposium, which detailed the philosopher’s ideology on the nature of love. In it, he discusses the elderly love of young boys and how there was a special sort of relationship between the two ages.
Immediately, I was slightly startled at how unjust this seemed. I tried to regard it as some sort of Platonic love that I didn’t quite understand. I then was quick to realize how different the social conventions could have been for a civilization thousands of years ago.
Pederasty is known as the romantic relationship between an older man (erastes) and a younger male teen (eromenos). It was a paternalistic relationship, as the elder would serve as a sort of guide to the boy’s initiation into adulthood. Homosexuality was indeed acceptable back then; in fact, pederasty was more acceptable than a romantic relationship between men of the same age. Because women were generally viewed as inferior to men, age didn’t matter in heterosexual relationships.