Male Fantasies

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By around 500 B.C. the Greeks had developed a strange (for us) model of romantic love. While adult men were expected to take a wife and raise a family, they were also allowed considerable license in fulfilling sexual desires. Poets, philosophers and artists celebrated the passion of an adult male (erastes) for a beardless youth (eromenos). This practice, which for us is morally and legally problematic, is illustrated on drinking vessels and in wall murals, as well as in kouroi statues, which revel in the fresh, muscled beauty of young men.¹

The relations between the mature erastes and the callow eromenos, however, were not just sexual. The Greeks believed that such partnerships fostered ideals of manliness and the perfection of the self (arete). Naked men and 054youths gathered in gymnasiums (from the Greek gymnos, meaning “naked”) to run and wrestle, and the developed erasates acted as coach and trainer for the developing eromenos. Seasoned military warriors were expected to help their young lovers become better soldiers. In Thebes, the erasates customarily supplied his partner with his first suit of armor. According to the Greek biographer Plutarch (46–120 A. D.) the Theban army of the early fourth century B.C. even included a special unit called the “Sacred Band,” which consisted of 150 man-youth couples whose love for each other caused them to fight more fiercely.

Such pairings ended when the youth reached adulthood (signified by his growing a beard). At that point, the elder partner would either take another eromenos or confine his sexual attentions to his wife and professional female entertainers (hetairai), who served in various capacities as musicians, escorts and prostitutes. Homosexual relations between adult men were strongly criticized.

The younger partner, on the other hand, would now become an erasates to a youth of the proper age, and he would now play the “manly” role, as opposed to the passive role he undertook as eromenos. He was now the pursuer and conqueror, while his younger eromenos would offer coy resistance until eventually yielding. The new eromenos would play the passive role until he grew a beard, signifying lost youth, and gained his “manliness” by taking his own eromenos—thus continuing the cycle.

If the gymnasium was the place for games and combat, the symposium was the place for culture and amusement. Men of power and status gathered at these dining-drinking parties, which often lasted long into the night. At a symposium, the erasates could introduce his eromenos to men of influence, thus helping to secure his young lover’s future. Fortunately for us, Greek painters of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. decorated drinking vessels, such as kraters (bowls in which water and wine were mixed) and cups, with scenes of symposia, 055showing us what took place at these sometimes riotous affairs.²

A cup in the Vatican Museum, dating to 500 B.C. and attributed to a vase painter named Douris, shows bearded men reclining on couches at a symposium (above). The men are engaged in various actions: drinking wine, playing a lyre, declaiming poetry. This scene is consistent with events described in various sources—including Plato’s Symposium, which tells of a symposium attended by a group of prominent Athenians (including Socrates, the playwright Aristophanes and the general Alcibiades). Reclining on couches placed around the perimeter of a room, they dine, drink and engage in idle chatter until they become involved in a discussion about the nature of love. (In Plato’s dialogue, the diners get drunk, fall asleep on their couches and stumble home the next morning.)

First and foremost, symposia were designed to satisfy the desires—sensual, intellectual and political—of adult men. The only women depicted at these affairs were hetairai. Numerous vase-paintings (see below) show hetairai playing musical instruments, dancing and reclining with bearded men. One of the painter Douris’s cups in the Vatican Museum shows a robed hetaira playing pipes in the midst of an otherwise exclusively male gathering. Other images are extremely graphic, showing sexual favors granted by hetairai 056to their patrons.

Numerous vessels are decorated with symposium scenes showing an erasates paired with his eromenos. Generally, both man and youth are naked, or only partially clothed. The erasates is always bearded, and often he sits behind his eromenos, whose back is to the elder man. In some scenes, the eromenos plays music for his partner or serves him wine. In others, there are stronger suggestions of sexual play—though not as graphically presented as the relations between patron and hetaira. For example, on a cup in the Louvre, dating to 500 B.C., a lithe eromenos plays a pipe, while a reclining erasates fondles the young man by reaching under his cloak.

These images on cups and kraters are clearly aimed at an adult male audience. It is the bearded men who drink the wine mixed in the kraters and served in the cups; and it is the men who are being entertained by youths and women. Clearly, too, only men—and only well-to-do men—could have afforded elaborate drinking vessels such as these.

Today we would assume that these two kinds of images—men with entertainers/prostitutes and men with youths—were designed to appeal alternately to heterosexual consumers, on the one hand, and homosexual consumers, on the other. But this clear-cut dichotomy does not apply to the ancient world, or at least to the ancient Greek world.

Another genre of scene—what we might call the mixed-symposium—shows the difficulty of applying modern labels to an ancient culture that regarded sexual preferences differently.

On a cup attributed to the Tarquinia Painter, dating between 470 and 460 B.C., an erasates reclines on cushions with his eromenos lounging in front of him. At the same time, both man and youth are paired with 057naked hetairai. Although the erasates/eromenos pairing seems to be the important one, since they are the central figures in the scene, the males seem principally occupied with the females. The hetaira who reclines behind the bearded man is fanning him with an ivy branch; he leans back, massaging his head with his right hand and looking upward, perhaps showing how drunk he is. The hetaira with the youth sits upright, listening intently to him as he gives accent to a phrase with outstretched arms.

On another cup decorated by the Hegesiboulos Painter (above), from about 500 B.C., a bearded man lounges with three youths and two hetairai. The hetairai sit and watch the man as he fondles one naked youth and listens to a harp being played by another.

What are we to make of such imagery? The male viewers of the symposium images would certainly have identified with the reclining man. The bearded man is the one being ministered to; he is apparently the recipient, not the provider, of pleasure. The objects of desire in this sexual situation are the hetairai or the young man—or, more likely, both.^a

This kind of voyeuristic pleasure, which we might call pornography, sheds light on another group of images. In a small number of vase paintings, hetairai are shown reclining together at exclusively female symposia. The most famous of these paintings decorates a 500 B.C. psykter (a rare mushroom-shaped vessel used to cool wine) signed by Euphronios. This vessel, now on display at St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, shows unclad women reclining on couches, drinking wine and playing music. There are no males present. Images like these have sometimes been interpreted as records of actual symposia. However, since no literary references mention symposia for hetairai, the images were more likely designed to titillate, rather than document. Almost certainly, these 058paintings, like the other paintings of hetairai and youths, were meant to appeal to adult men—much as lesbian pornography is today marketed to heterosexual men. The male audience for these images seems to be confirmed by the sixth-century B.C. vase painter Smikros, who has one of the hetairai at his all-female symposium make a toast to Euphronios. The women are alone, but they’re thinking about men.

Even rarer than images of hetairai symposia are representations of symposia for youths. A 480 B.C. cup by the Antiphon Painter, for example, shows six participants at a symposium; of these, five are unbearded youths. Once again we must ask ourselves: Is this a depiction of an actual event, or is it designed to stir wishful thinking? It seems clear that the images were intended to appeal to adult males—who could libidinously identify with the only adult present in the scene, and imagine themselves attending a symposium surrounded by boys.

For adult men, then, homoeroticism in ancient Athens was far more than just one side of a dichotomy of desires. Our ancient sources, such as a speech by the playwright Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium, tell us that some men preferred women, while some preferred youths. Other men clearly relished both, as indicated by the mixed symposia scenes. The Hellenistic poet Meleager wrote, “The goddess Aphrodite ignites the fire that makes one mad for a woman, but Eros himself holds 059the reins of male desire. Which way am I to incline, to the boy or to his mother?” Although we moderns might label men “bisexual” who are sexually attracted to both women and youths, the ancient Greeks made no such distinction. Any man preserved his masculinity and honor if he limited himself to the active, penetrating role in a sexual liaison.

The youths in the mixed-symposia scenes, on the other hand, had a different set of roles—as both lover and beloved, the subject of desire and its object. The men who loved them would simply have regarded them as desirable partners, who, in turn, followed their own desires. Distinctions such as heterosexual/homosexual, heterosexual/ bisexual/homosexual and of course the seven-fold Kinsey scale would have nonplussed the ancient Greeks.

By around 500 B.C. the Greeks had developed a strange (for us) model of romantic love. While adult men were expected to take a wife and raise a family, they were also allowed considerable license in fulfilling sexual desires. Poets, philosophers and artists celebrated the passion of an adult male (erastes) for a beardless youth (eromenos). This practice, which for us is morally and legally problematic, is illustrated on drinking vessels and in wall murals, as well as in kouroi statues, which revel in the fresh, muscled beauty of young men.1 The relations between the mature erastes and the […]