Such unions even received a kind of religions
consecration. It was, moreover, shameful for a noble youth in Crete to
have no lover; it spoke ill for his character. By _paiderastia_ a man
propagated his virtues, as it were, in the youth he loved, implanting them
by the act of intercourse.
In its later Greek phases _paiderastia_ was associated less with war than
with athletics; it was refined and intellectualized by poetry and
philosophy. It cannot be doubted that both AEschylus and Sophocles
cultivated boy-love, while its idealized presentation in the dialogues of
Plato has caused it to be almost identified with his name; thus in the
early _Charmides_ we have an attractive account of the youth who gives his
name to the dialogue and the emotions he excites are described. But even
in the early dialogues Plato only conditionally approved of the sexual
side of _paiderastia_ and he condemned it altogether in the final
_Laws_.[21]
The early stages of Greek _paiderastia_ are very interestingly
studied by Bethe, "Die Dorische Knabenliebe," _Rheinisches Museum
fuer Philologie_, 1907.
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