His letters to
male friends are full of the most passionate expressions of love. His
violent death also appears to have been due to a love-adventure with a
man. The murderer was a cook, a wholly uncultivated man, a criminal who
had already been condemned to death, and shortly before murdering
Winkelmann for the sake of plunder he was found to be on very intimate
terms with him.[67] It is noteworthy that sexual inversion should so often
be found associated with the study of antiquity. It must not, however, be
too hastily concluded that this is due to suggestion and that to abolish
the study of Greek literature and art would be largely to abolish sexual
inversion. What has really occurred in those recent cases that may be
studied, and therefore without doubt in the older cases, is that the
subject of congenital sexual inversion is attracted to the study of Greek
antiquity because he finds there the explanation and the apotheosis of his
own obscure impulses. Undoubtedly that study tends to develop these
impulses.
While it is peculiarly easy to name men of distinguished ability who,
either certainly or in all probability, have been affected by homosexual
tendencies, they are not isolated manifestations.
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