Those who have made any study of the social life of early Greece, will hardly need to be reminded how important a part this relationship between older and younger men played there. In some states, such as Megara, it was specially patronised by the government. Among the Cretans, and to a certain extent also among the Lacedaemonians,[136] it formed the basis of the military organisation.[137] At Thespiae, the festival of the Erotidia was consecrated to this form of love.[138] At Elis there was a periodical beauty-competition among the youths, the prizes consisting of arms and armour.[139] A somewhat similar contest took place every spring at the tomb of the hero Diocles at Megara.[140] Nor was this all. In many states this relationship came to be looked upon as well-nigh an emblem of constitutional liberty;[141] so much so, that the tyrants used to regard it as a standing menace to themselves, and actually took steps to suppress it.[142] Thus Polycrates destroyed the gymnasium[143] at Samos ὥσπερ ἀντιτείχισμα τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἀκροπόλει, and others are said to have behaved in a similar way.[144]
But while the social importance of this relationship cannot be questioned, its character is equally unmistakable. In principle, and also in practice, it was pure. Its first and most striking feature, a feature specially emphasised by almost every ancient writer who alludes at all to the subject, is its perfect purity. The very idea of sensuality in connection with it is almost invariably vigorously repudiated,[145] and the author of the “Erotic Oration” of Demosthenes is but expressing the universal convictions of his predecessors when he says, δίκαιος ἐραστὴς οὔτ’ ἂν ποιήσειεν οὐδὲν αἰσχρὸν οὔτ’ ἀξιώσειεν.[146]
How entirely this was the case will be still more apparent when we come to examine the writers who dealt with the subject. Here it may suffice to remark that, apart from that main sewer, the Old Attic Comedy, there are, in all the Greek poetry extant down to the end of the fifth century, but a couple, or at most three, passages in which sensuality is so much as suggested in this connection.[147]
To trace the growth and development of this form of love—for love it was in the most modern sense of the word—would be extremely interesting; but it would be a long and difficult undertaking, which cannot be attempted here. The main outlines of its history are, however, sufficiently clear. Originating in the companionship of the battle-field, where the younger and weaker combatants would naturally look to their elders for help and support, it introduced itself also, as we have seen, into those peaceful exercises which serve to train the soldier; and hence, as soon as we find civilised communities, we find both the army and the gymnasium organised with reference to it. When a somewhat more settled condition of affairs had succeeded to the constant warfare of earlier times, we find it losing to some extent its distinctively military character, though this never entirely disappears, as is clear from the institution by Epaminondas of that “Sacred Band” of which we have had occasion to speak already. And so, in peace and war alike, it continues throughout classical times a dominating element in Greek society. Its highest development was due, of course, to Socrates and his followers; but from the end of the fifth century onwards it was beginning to lose its hold upon the Greek mind. The improved position of women, and that improved way of regarding them which was gradually springing up about this time, could not fail to affect it prejudicially, while other equally potent causes were at work to bring about its overthrow; indeed, it is not long before we find writers speaking in open disparagement of it.[148] And in all probability this contempt for the “hypocrisy of the philosophers” was now, to a great extent, justified; for there is little reason to suppose that at this period that high standard of moral purity, with which this form of love had been originally associated, was any longer a prominent feature of it. The Macedonians, in destroying the old Greek states, were destroying at once the home of its birth and the cause of its existence. It is small wonder that it failed, like so many other of the old Greek institutions, to adapt itself to its new surroundings, and that it could not survive the downfall of those virtues of patriotism and independence of which it was at once the outcome and the emblem.
But the fragrance of its early purity and beauty was never quite lost, as long as the classical world remained. In well-nigh all the poetry dealing with it there is a tone of dignity and chivalry to which the poetry addressed to women never, perhaps, wholly attained. The charming grace of the 12th Idyll of Theocritus is unsurpassed in any of his other works; the passionate despair of the 23rd is unequalled. The contrast in tone between the 12th and the 5th books of the Anthology is one of the most remarkable features of that remarkable collection of poems.[149] Even Catullus, when striving to give expression to a love purer and more intense than any Roman had ever known, still feels the spell of early Greece upon him.
“tunc te dilexi, non tantum ut vulgus amicam,
sed pater ut natos diligit et generos,”
he exclaims. “I loved you, not as a man loves a woman, but as a man loves a youth!”[150]
We have hitherto been speaking chiefly of the social aspect of this form of love; we can now proceed to examine somewhat more in detail its influence upon literature. And here two striking facts will at once present themselves to us, the exact converse of those which met us when examining the early literary treatment of woman-love. From the earliest period onwards we shall find the love of man for man taking a prominent place in poetry, while at the same time this love as there depicted is remarkable for its chivalrous and unsensual character. In other words, while the love of man to woman was among the early Greeks a love of the senses, the love of man to man was a love of the soul.
Of the Iliad we have spoken already, and we need not speak further, for though, as we have already pointed out, the relations between various of the Greek heroes there described are strong presumptive evidence of a state of affairs parallel to that which we know to have existed in historical times,[151] it is in the nature of an epic to be unable to supply proof of so positive a kind as is to be found in lyric poetry, which is generally, anyhow in early times, the expression of the writer’s actual feelings with reference to actual surrounding circumstances.