GREEK HOMOSEXUALITY

168 III Special Aspects and Developments
strength. and stability, of the ideal community) and an appeal to
nature which may perhaps exploit a feeling that the processes of the
non-human world manifest obedience to commands issued by the gods.
While prohibiting homosexual relations because they go beyond what
nature shows to be adequate in sexual pleasure, he does not express
an opinion on the naturalness or unnaturalness of the desire to
perform the prohibited acts; it is to be presumed, in accordance with
the sentiment of his time, that he would regard the desire as an
indication that the appetitive element of the soul is insufficiently
disciplined, 24 and would say that such a soul desires homosexual
copulation only as one among many pleasurable sensations.
Condemnation of homosexual acts as contrary to nature was
destined to have a profound effect on the history of morality, but it
should be noted that Plato's most distinguished pupil treated the
question cautiously. In Nicomachean Ethics 1148b 15-9 8 20 Aristotle
distinguishes what is naturally pleasurable (divisible into 'pleasurable
without qualification' and 'pleasurable to some animal species or some
human races, but not to others') from what is pleasurable without
being naturally so. In this latter category he puts (a) things which are
pleasurable because of' deficiencies' or 'impairments' in those who find
them so, (b) things which become pleasurable through habit, and (c)
things which are found pleasurable by bad natures. Corresponding to
each of these three sub-categories is a 'disposition': (a) 'bestial' (i.e.
'sub-human') dispositions, exemplified by a woman who cut open
pregnant women and devoured the foetuses; (b) dispositions which
result from disease, including insanity; (c) dispositions which are
'disease-like or as a result of habituation'. These include pulling out
one's hair, eating earth, and (literally):
moreover, the (sc. disposition?) of sexual intercourse for males; for they
cotne about (i.e. the pleasure in such actions comes about) for some by
nature and for others through habituation, as, for example, for those who
were first outraged (hubrizein) when they were boys. No one could
describe as 'lacking in self-control' those for whom nature is the
cause, 25 any more than (sc. we so describe) women (lit.) because they
do not mount sexually but are mounted. 26
24. On the tripartite soul, ht;re and elsewhere, I have over-simplified somewhat (cf.
Guthrie iv 422-5); the essential point is that to Plato relaxation of the control of
reason within the soul creates a 'power vacuum' into which lust and greed will make
haste to move.
25. The principal question in this portion of the Ethics is the nature of the inability
to refrain from doing what one believes to be wrong.
26. Opuiein means 'marry' in some dialects, but we need a more down-to-earth
translation for it in Attic and Hellenistic Greek, yet not too coarse a word.