Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Private Life 171
By contrast, the Greeks exhibited primness in regard to the naked
female body, even when it was fully clothed. For this reason, it was
virtually impossible to praise a woman for her beauty without at the
same time impugning her chastity. Women in Homer are praised
for their ankles, arms, and cheeks but never for their legs, breasts,
or buttocks. For instance, when the Trojan elders catch sight of the
drop-dead gorgeous Helen on the ramparts in The Iliad, they comment
only very vaguely on her beauty. Even Aphrodite, the goddess
of sex and sexual love, is described not as ample bosomed or possessed
of juicy thighs but, very discreetly, as “laughter-loving” and
“golden.” In certain Spartan rituals, however, girls were encouraged
to appear naked before Spartan youths in what appears to
have been a kind of civic-sponsored incentive to marriage.
Homosexuality
The Greeks did not identify themselves as either homosexual or
heterosexual. In other words, they did not perceive sexual orientation
in terms of a life choice. Instead, they regarded homosexuality predominantly
as an episodic phenomenon, a pattern of behavior that
belonged to a particular period of one’s life rather than as a permanent
condition. A number of Greek communities, including those in
Boiotia in central Greece, Elis and Sparta in the Peloponnese, and the
island of Crete, even made pederasty a rite of passage to adulthood.
A homosexual union between males was acceptable only when
asymmetrical, to use the modern jargon; that is to say, when it
involved a younger and an older man and when it had a pedagogical
as well as sexual dimension. Such associations provided
the basis of aristocratic education in the Archaic Period and were
institutionalized by the symposium. In later times, they seem to
have been regarded less favorably. Whereas earlier, black-figure
vases exhibit a preponderance of homosexual lovemaking, the redfigure
vases that had become popular by the end of the sixth century
onward more frequently depict heterosexual activity. Plato’s
Symposion, which elevates homosexual far above heterosexual love,
provides a rather misleading picture of Athenian sexual mores at
the turn of the fourth century b.c.e.
Although homosexual practice within certain limitations was
regarded as normative by the Greeks, homosexual relations were not
expected to replace heterosexual relations. Rather, they were intended
to supplement them. In fact, those who committed themselves exclusively
to homosexual acts were mocked and vilified, as we see from