[39] Polak, ‘Die Prostitution in Persien,’ in Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, xi. 627 sqq. Idem, Persien, i. 237. Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 233 sq. Wilson, Persian Life and Customs, p. 229.
[40] Malcolm, Sketch of the Sikhs, p. 140. Havelock Ellis, op. cit. p. 5, n. 2. Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 236.
[41] Wilson, Abode of Snow, p. 420. Burton, Arabian Nights, x. 236.
[42] Stavorinus, Voyages to the East-Indies, i. 456. Fryer, New Account of East-India, p. 97. Chevers, Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India, p. 705.
[43] Chevers, op. cit. p. 708.
[44] Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 193. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, i. 836. Matignon, ‘Deux mots sur la pédérastie en Chine,’ in Archives d’anthropologie criminelle, xiv. 38 sqq. Karsch, Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Ostasiaten, p. 6 sqq.
[45] Jwaya, ‘Nan sho k,’ in Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, iv. 266, 268, 270. Karsch, op. cit. p. 71 sqq.
No reference is made to pederasty either in the Homeric poems or by Hesiod, but later on we meet with it almost as a national institution in Greece. It was known in Rome and other parts of Italy at an early period;[46] but here also it became much more frequent in the course of time. At the close of the sixth century, Polybius tells us, many Romans paid a talent for the possession of a beautiful youth.[47] During the Empire “il était d’usage, dans les families patriciennes, de donner au jeune homme pubère un esclave du même âge comme compagnon de lit, afin qu’il pût satisfaire … ‘ses premiers élans’ génésiques”;[48] and formal marriages between men were introduced with all the solemnities of ordinary nuptials.[49] Homosexual practices occurred among the Celts,[50] and were by no means unknown to the ancient Scandinavians, who had a whole nomenclature on the subject.[51]
[46] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanæ, vii. 2. Athenæus, Deipnosophistæ, xii. 14, p. 518 (Etruscans). Rein, Criminalrecht der Römer, p. 863.
[47] Polybius, Historiæ, xxxii. 11. 5.