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Old 09-23-2010, 07:31 PM
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S&Wshooter S&Wshooter is offline
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I stand corrected. They were Pederasts.
Quote:
Engaged in pederasty (what we would now call pedophilia).
Older men were expected to have erotic loving relationships with boys (and were fined if they didn’t). This was also a mentor relationship.
With the Spartans, it was a “chaste” pederasty – actual coitus was not allowed, but other behavior was.
Even in this, self-control was paramount.
http://www.slideshare.net/dewert/52-athens-and-sparta

Quote:
Sparta, another Dorian polis, is thought to be the first city to practice athletic nudity, and one of the first to formalize pederasty. [Thomas F. Scanlon, "The Dispersion of Pederasty and the Athletic Revolution in Sixth-Century BC Greece," in "Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West," ed. B. C. Verstraete and V. Provencal, Harrington Park Press, 2005, pp.64-70] The Spartans believed that the love of an older, accomplished aristocrat for an adolescent was essential to his formation as a free citizen. The "agoge", the education of the ruling class, was thus founded on pederastic relationships required of each citizen. [Erich Bethe,"Die Dorische Knabenliebe: ihre Ethik und ihre Idee," 1907, 441, 444]

Many ancient writers held that Spartan pederasty was chaste, though still erotic. [Xenophon, "Constitution of the Lacedaemonians," II.13-14] Plutarch also describes the relationships as chaste, and states that it was as unthinkable for a lover to sexually consummate a relationship with his beloved as for a father to do so with his own son. [Cicero, "De Rep.," iv. 4] Aelian goes even farther, stating that if any couple succumbed to temptation and indulged in carnal relations, they would have to redeem the affront to the honor of Sparta by either going into exile or taking their own lives. [Aelian, "Var. Hist.," III.12]

The lover was responsible for the boy's training. Pederasty and military training were intimately connected in Sparta, as in many other cities. The Spartans, claims Athenaeus [Athenaeus of Naucratis, "The Deipnosophists," XIII: Concerning Women] sacrificed to Eros before every battle.
http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/1583741
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