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well, alexander was just plain sexual, how about that?
Hellenes, I'm just wondering since you seem to take this very personally, are you Alexander the Great? 
Originally Posted by Snowhobbit:
Hellenes, I'm just wondering since you seem to take this very personally, are you Alexander the Great?
Yesssssssssss.....Hellenes, I'm just wondering since you seem to take this very personally, are you Alexander the Great?
But dont tell anyone......*wears the helmet and spurs the imaginary horse*
Jokes aside Im worried more about the people who will see the movie and think:
"well the greatest general of all time was a fag haha those greeks are sissies admiring him"
and Hollywood wins...
Hellenes
The greatest general of all time wasn't Alexander
it was Genghis Khan.
it was Genghis Khan.
Originally Posted by Navaros:
two things: Bible is spelled with a capital "B".
i won't watch Alexander and i will also caution everyone i know not to watch it to because it promotes immorality and evildoing. i know many others will feel the same way. hopefully enough so that this movie tanks.
Good to see you're such a pillar of morality, Nav. Based on that statement, I would expect you are a very busy man. After all, if you are going to spend so much time and effort campaigning against a movie that shows something as sinful as two men kissing, I shudder to think of all the campaigning you must do to boycott every movie that shows one person killing another. I mean, committing murder is breaking an actual Commandment for God's sake! So it must offend you even more than two men kissing!two things: Bible is spelled with a capital "B".
i won't watch Alexander and i will also caution everyone i know not to watch it to because it promotes immorality and evildoing. i know many others will feel the same way. hopefully enough so that this movie tanks.
Originally Posted by monkian:
The steelworkers of America ?
We work hard, and we play hard
The steelworkers of America ?
We work hard, and we play hard
nice Simpsons reference!!!
Originally Posted by hellenes:
Jokes aside Im worried more about the people who will see the movie and think:
"well the greatest general of all time was a fag haha those greeks are sissies admiring him"
The people who shall think this are not very different from the ones claiming Alexander was really a "mucho" modern greek guy, and refuse to acknowledge the historical background and context of the period he lived in. Hoping to find direct reference to sexual relationship between two men in ancient historical texts (btw this isn't the aim of the writers) most of the time is like closing your eyes before the undeniable fact (beaten to death this one) that morality and sexual customs were very different than today. The "symposium" is also a subject analysed to the extreme and the close relations between ,usually, young men and their mentors are in addition depicted in ancient greek vases extensively. No use in denying that the whole military system of Sparta and Thebes was based on the "friendship/love" between men. Jokes aside Im worried more about the people who will see the movie and think:
"well the greatest general of all time was a fag haha those greeks are sissies admiring him"
A viable question (well, I haven't researched this side of the topic) could be whether the Macedonians followed these social practices of the soutnern territories and to what extent. I think that Arrian's references to Alexander's participation in many "symposiums" shows not a "fanatical" bisexual attitude but rather the entirely different lifestyle of those times. I can provide the passages that more than hint Alexander's "bonding" with Hephaistion. something that surpasses the narrow term "friendship" as we know it today. As i consider Arrion the most accurate writer on the subject (on a prototype basis), 1.12.1, 2.12.6, and most chapters from book 7 (after chapter13) showcase their relation, in a most serious manner that avoids overreactions to it.Better not forget that the writer is a historian who doesn't fear to criticise Alexander, but in this case he avoids referring to the relationship (something probably quite normal at the time) and directs his comment at the somehow extreme character of the macedonian ruler, especially considering Alexander's actions after the death of his friend. Very interesting is the Achilles-Patroclos reference, twice, and Alexander-Hephaistion parallel. Taken that Al. admired Achilles and tried to mimic him at times, a contemporary psychologist could draw many conclusions regarding his manners and character
Therefore, refusing the existence of this intimate relationship is based on other criteria, very far from historical accuracy and the need to preserve it. 25 greek lawyers is a very low number for those that know the harsh reality surrounding them in Greece
poor fellows, they got nothing more serious to do and so they initialise "the great campaign" to save us from the wicked Hollywood which tries to undermine the greek race and all its achievements in order to culturally conquer them later on 
Ofcourse they got nothing against homosexuals and bisexuals ("didides" ), god forbid.I find it odd that everyone says the Greeks practiced homosexuality when we the catholic church gets its ideas on marriage and homosexuality being wrong from the Greeks.
Originally Posted by :
Bruce Thornton, Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality
Homosexuality is no easier for us so called moderns to understand than it was for the Greeks.
Very little if any evidence from ancient Greece survives that shows adult males or females as same-sex couples involved in an ongoing, reciprocal sexual and emotional relationship in which the age difference is no more significant than it is in heteros exual relationships.
Thus the evidence from ancient Greece involves either man-youth homosexuality or the precisely defined passive homosexual of kinaidos, the adult male who perversely enjoys being penetrated by other males and who has sex with women only because of socie tal pressure.
Another major impediment to understanding homosexuality for both ancients and moderns is the confusion of nature and culture in explaining it.
Science says that homosexual men may have part of the anterior hypothalamus two to three times smaller than heterosexual men
Yet we are still not much farther along in discovering the biological roots of homosexuality than Victorian adventurer Richard Francis Burton, who theorized about a "sotadic [homosexual] zone" a geographical band precisely located between 30 and 43 degrees northern latitude in which people are prone to homosexuality
Is homosexuality "natural" for the Greeks?
The Greeks have two concepts of nature:
1. Nature as an order with which man’s laws should be consistent
Many Greek philosophers believed that the cosmos reflected some sort of rational order, thus "natural" would denote behavior consistent with that order.
One could then act "unnaturally" by indulging in behavior that subverted that order and its purpose.
The "rational" and "natural" purpose of sex is Procreation, but then ALL sexual acts, heterosexual and homosexual, that do not lead to procreation would have to be deemed
"unnatural". Plato takes this view in the Laws, and it becomes part of Christian philosophy.
2. A second view of nature was that it was an assemblage of destructive forces overthrowing reason and law. It was savage and monstrous and inhuman
In these terms eros is a natural energy flowing out from humans onto ANY object — same-sex paramour, child, relative or beast. There is no qualitatively distinct category of "homosexual" or "heterosexual" because by definition eros is indiscriminate. Thus a Greek would not categorize as homosexual a man who has penetrated another.
Any limitations of eros arise not from the inherent nature of sexual activity that directs itself toward one object or another, but from the literally unnatural — the codes, laws, customs and institutions of society that define the proper and im proper objects and occasions of sexual activity
Both of these explanations of homosexuality — unnatural perversion of sex, or excessive expression of its essential nature — can be found in ancient Greek literary remains.
If we choose one of the two, we are oversimplifying the complexity of attitudes attested to in the evidence.
If we look at male homosexuality as we understand it today, there are two adult partners.
In Greece, the kinaidos is the passive homosexual whose inability to control his appetite, his itch for sexual pleasure, induces him to forsake his masculinity and submit to anal penetration.
In either concept of nature, the kinaidos is condemned:
The kinaidos become the emblem of unrestrained compulsive sexual appetite, or surrender to the chaos of natural passion that threatens civilized order, a traitor to his sex, a particularly offensive manifestation of eros’s power over the masculine mind that is responsible for creating and maintaining that order in the face of nature’s chaos.
Greek ideas on the origins of homosexuality:
Both myth and history imply a time when homosexuality did not exist, at least in the form of pederasty.
Myth of Chrysippus — in a lost play of Euripides. Chrysippus was kidnapped and raped by Laius, father of Oedipus. Chrysippus then killed himself because of shame. In another version of the myth, Oedipus killed his father Laius him as punishment.
Plato understood the myth to finger Laius as the inventor of homosexuality.
In the Laws the Athenian Stranger says that "following nature" legislators would make the law as it was "before Laius" when sex with men and youths as thought they were women was forbidden on the model of animals, which Plato mistak enly believed restricted sex to procreation.
Thus in this dialogue he sees the state of nature as one in which homosexuality did not exist.
Thus homosexuality is a historical innovation, a result of the depraved human imagination and vulnerability to pleasure
Euripides saw homosexuality as one of the forces overthrowing reason and law. — Laius’ crime initiated a chain reaction of erotic disorder culminating in Oedipus’ incest and parricide, and a blight in Thebes that blasted the newborn life of humans, her ds, and grain alike.
Euripides, then, in contrast to Plato, sees homosexual eros as a constant of human nature
Another origin for homosexuality among the Greeks is located among the Dorians, who were more warlike than the Spartans, and swept through Greece toward the end of the second millennium and ultimately occupied most of the Peloponese and Crete.
Plato’s Athenian Stranger holds the Dorians responsible for "corrupting the pleasures of sex which are according to nature, not just for men but for beasts"
Later in the Laws he again condemns homosexuality on the grounds of not being according to nature because it does not lead to procreation
Aristotle attributes homosexuality to the Dorians . It arose out of the practical need to control population, which accounts as well for the segregation of women
Elsewhere Aristotle says that homosexuals can be born as well as made
They are a deviation from the norm
Some "diseased things" result from nature or habit — pulling out one’s hair, nailbiting, eating coals or earth and sex between males. The last one often results from childhood sexual abuse.
Even pederasty, then, possibly contributes to a morbid condition, even though it is a basis of the educational system..
The most famous and straightforward instance of the ancient Greek belief that homosexuals are born and not made can be found in Aristophanes’ myth of human sexual origins in Plato’s Symposium
We were once perfect and self-sufficient physical beings. We had the circular form "similar in every direction" imagined by early philosophy to be the shape of the god
Now punished for our overweening attempt to make ourselves rulers of everything, we are creatures cut in half, severed from our other part and made, by a turning of our heads, to look always at the cut, jagged from side of ourselves that reminds us of our lack.
Looking at the contingent loss that cuts us off from the wishes of our imagination, itself still apparently intact, we become preoccupied with the project of returning to the wholeness of our former natures.
But to remedy one piece of luck another must happen: we must each find the unique other half from which we were severed.
The one hope of "healing" for our human nature is to unite in love with this other oneself and, indeed to become fused with that one, insofar as this is possible.
Eros is the name of this desire and pursuit of the whole.
The myth in one sense mocks humans (according to Martha Nussbaum).
We think, as humans, that the human shape is something beautiful; the story gets us to consider that, from the point of view of the whole or the god, the circular shape may be formally the most beautiful and adequate
The shape we have ended up with seems like the object of a joke, or a punishment:
Jagged form, equipped with untidy folds of skin around the middle, its head turned towards this imperfection and newly expressing, in its searching gazes, its sense of incompleteness
Its exposed and dangling genital members now no longer efficiently, externally sowing seed into the earth, but instead placed on the side of the "cutting", desiring both reproduction and healing.
As we hear this myth of passionate groping and grasping, we are invited to think how odd, after all, it is that bodies should have these holes and projections in them, odd that the insertion of a projection into an opening should be thought, by ambitio us and intelligent beings, a matter of the deepest concern
From the outside we cannot help but laugh. They want to be gods, and here they are, running around anxiously trying to thrust a piece of themselves inside a hole; or , perhaps more comical still, waiting in the hope that some hole of theirs will have something thrust into it.
The comedy comes in the sudden perception of ourselves from another vantage point, the sudden turning round of our heads and eyes to look at human genitals and faces, our unrounded, desiring and vulnerable parts.
The individual is loved not only as a whole, but also as a unique and irreplaceable whole.
For each person there is exactly one "other half"
There is nothing like a general description of a suitable or ‘fitting’ lover, satisfiable by a number of candidates, that could serve as a sufficient criterion of suitability.
It is mysterious what does make another person the lost half of you, more mysterious still how you come to know that
What makes these creatures fall in love is a sudden swelling up of feelings of kinship and intimacy, the astonishment of finding in a supposed stranger a deep part of your being.
The very need that gives rise to erotic pursuit is an unnatural, contingent lack, at least when viewed from the point of view of human reason.
Here are these ridiculous creatures cut in half, trying to do with these bodies what came easily for them when they had a different bodily nature
The body is a course of limitation and distress. They do not feel one with it, and they wish they had one of a different sort; or, perhaps, none at all.
Eros, so necessary to continued life and to "healing" from distress, comes to the cut-up creature by sheer chance, if at all
His or her other half is somewhere, but it is hard to see what reason and planning can do to make that half turn up
The creatures "search" and "come together", but it is plainly not in their power to ensure the happy reunion
It is difficult to accept that something as essential to our good as love is at the same time so much a matter of chance
Before the invention of sexual intercourse, the two halves embraced unsatisfied, until both died of hunger and other needs
The possibility of intercourse, a new ‘stratagem’ provided by the pitying god, brought the procreation of children and a temporary respite from physical tension
The satisfaction achieved in this way is incomplete. What these lovers really want is not simply a momentary physcial pleasure with its ensuing brief respite from bodily tension.
Their deep need comes from the soul. The soul cannot describe it.
We know that they wish for the impossible: they wish to become one, yet they will always remain two.
It is true that the smith might bring their bodies together, but their desire is for unity of the soul
If they got that fusion, this wholeness would put an end to all movement and all passion
A sphere would not have intercourse with anyone
It would not eat, or doubt, or drink
It would not even move this way or that, because it would have no reason; it would be complete
Eros is the desire to be a being without any contingent occurrent desires. It is a second-order desire that all desires should be cancelled
Thornton, Chap 8 Eros the Pedagogue
Pederasty has its ATHENIAN origins with Solon
Sixth century Athenian Solon was one of the city’s most impt statesman
His reforms broke the political and economic hold the aristocracy had on the people, laying the groundwork for the full blown democracy of the 5c
He wrote poetry in which he justified his reforms and expounded his political phil
Here the distance between ancient Greece and modern America begins to appear immense — can anyone imagine a 20c president or senator defending his political program in highly finished hexameter verse
Stranger still are the verses among Solon’s fragments that tell of loving a "boy in the lovely flower of youth, desiring his thighs and sweet mouth". Now the difference between ourselves and the ancient Greeks becomes nearly incomprehensible
Any public figure who voiced such sentiments would be branded a pervert worthy of opprobrium and ostracism, even if the youth was in his teens, the age of the objects of ancient Gk boy love
Pedophiles, along with rapists, are one of the last minorities it is still respectable to despise and insult
Our cult of sentimental exculpating tolerance has no room for them
Just the allegations of pederasty impel Michael Jackson to spend $15 million killing the investigation of the accusation
The gay establishment welcomes sadomasochists and transsexuals but keeps a careful distance from the North American Man Boy Love Association, whose members fancy themselves the true heirs of Socrates and Plato
What makes it particularly difficult for us to understand this is the distinct aristocratic and militaristic aura that clings to ancient pederasty, given that America has never had an aristocracy and that the advent of a mercenary army means very few o f us experience military life and values anymore
The origins of pederasty were located among the Dorians, the best known of whom, the Spartans were the most militaristic people in the ancient world
Spartans were aristocratic elitists supported by a suppressed majority of serfs who worked the land
Citizens devoted most of their time to military training
All of male Spartan life was structured by a military order in which from an early age boys lived together in barracks under the supervision of an adolescent boy
They were constantly under the surveillance of older men as well, for whom they displayed their talents, whose approval they eagerly sought and disapproval fearfully shunned, and who were responsible for the mettle of their beloved — Plutarch reports t hat a youth who screamed in pain during battle got his admirer punished by the state
The Spartans supposedly sacrificed to Eros before every battle
In this male world of aristocratic martial values, of shared meals and naked exercising, of boys eagerly seeking the approval of older males, pederasty could easily flourish
That is the opinion of the Athenian Stranger in the Laws, who blames homosexuality on the Dorian institutions
A fourth century historian Ephorus records a custom in Crete, settled by the Dorian Greeks, illustrating the extent to which pederasty was ritualized in Dorian culture
An older man would inform the family of a boy he fancied of his intentions. If the family considered the wooer worthy, they pretended to resist, but he would succeed in making off with the boy and hiding out with him for 2 mos Afterward the couple ret urned to the city, the boy receiving presents of armor, an ox, and a cup and considerable prestige at being so chosen
This connection of homosexuality and Spartan militarism was something of a commonplace by the time of Plato
Plato’s Phaedrus in the Symposium claims an army of lovers would be unbeatable, for they would do nothing shameful in the presence of their lovers
The famous Sacred Band of Thebes, 150 pairs of lovers killed to a man by Philip of Macedon at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 were supposedly such an army
Boy love then, was not a private pleasure or relationship but a part of the social structure of the polis, one of its "technologies" for controlling the powerful force of Eros
Eros in ancient Greek thought, some philosophers aside is "polymorphously perverse" — flowing out toward any object
But if these objects are citizen boys or men, the dangers of eros are magnified— the citizen who submits to anal penetration opens his soul up to a compulsive appetite destructive of the social and political order embodied and upheld by male citizens
Thus the very real sexual attraction to boys of those among the ruling elite is even more volatile than heterosexual eros
The citizen wife who is corrupted is not violating her essential feminine nature. She is under the sway of her irrational passions anyway, necessitating the control of marriage and husbands. But the male is supposed to be more rational, more in contr ol of his appetite — that is why he runs the city.
The "technology" of boy love, then, requires a delicate balancing act between acknowledging the power of homosexual eros without corrupting the boy who is its object, turning him into the dreaded kinaidos.
This explains the numerous, almost ritualistic controls surrounding and organizing boy love and the anxious caution with which it is treated in the ancient sources.
Remember that this is not the behavior or proclivities of the "average Greek".
Pederasty in the Greek literary remains (mostly Athenian from the late fifth to fourth centuries) is clearly an aristocratic institution.
The high proletarian "good old boys" and small farmers of Aristophanes certainly see it as the hoity toity pastime of the nobles and those who ape their fashions
Since the majority of the Gk pop in most poleis worked the soil, pederasty was not a well known experience to most Greeks
Boy love is assimilated to the woman in a number of swys, particularly in the high value placed on his lack of facial and body hair and his "smoothness" and "softness".
Girlish behavior was likewise desirable in the boy.
Shyness and blushing were equally charming.
There were other ways in which the man boy relationship was patterned on the male-female relationship. Boys were courted with gifts, like women, except that girls were wooed indirectly, using family males as intermediaries.
Just as numerous laws protected virgins and married women from sexual corruption, similar laws had as their aim the protection of citizen boys whose legal and political status was parallel to that of women, both being subordinated to older male relativ es and both devoid of political rights
Some forbade the teacher or head of the gymnasium from opening their establishments before sunrise or keeping them open after sunset, so that no darkness was available for the corruption of boys
Older boys were forbidden from fraternizing with the younger, and the producer of the choruses of boys, the choregus, had to be over 40 years old, since that was considered the time of life when a man was most "self controlled/chaste
In the Symposium Pausanias remarks on the less formal means fathers use to protect their sons, such as assigning a slave to watch over the boy and keep him away from any pursuers
Just as the young girl and her sexual force were subordinated to her role as wife in the household, so the boy and his sexual power were channeled into teaching him his proper role as "good and beautiful/noble citizen"
Eros was the most important instructor of wisdom and inspirer of virtue
Plato’s Phaedrus explains the psychological mechanism by which the boy learns the proper values. Because the beloved wants to impress his lover, he is ashamed at any behavior not noble or admirable. He would rather die than shame himself before his a dmirer
Phaedrus is here clearly voicing a rationale for boy love that any Athenian aristocrat would approve
Pedagogical function of pederasty also involves the ethical ideal of reciprocity which provides another rational control for pederastic eros
Much of Gk everyday ethics was based on the do ut des I give so that you may give model
Gods were worshiped and given gifts of sacrifice and offerings so that their power would be turned to the mortal’s benefit
The parent child relationships could be structured by this paradigm: parents tend children when they are weak so children will tend them when they are weak
Aristocratic values were particularly reflective or reciprocity based on absolute identity of friends and enemies
"Help friends, hurt enemies" is ubiquitous in Greek literature
You owe help to a philos, a friend/dear one, and the pederastic relationship like marriage was a subspecies of this friendship
The service or benefit or help or other good things the lover gave to the beloved was flattering attention and education in the proper role and behavior expected of a man, particularly an aristocrat
What the beloved gave the lover was exclusive attention and some level of physical gratification
Outrage, Shame and "Just Eros"
We learned that sexual excess, particularly homosexual was defined in terms of "outrage" and "shame"
The seduction of a citizen wife or daughter was a crime of outrage (hubris) that shamed the male responsible for her
Likewise the man who submitted to anal penetration shamed himself because he abandoned his soul to appetite, violating a communal standard of self control
He also allowed himself to be outraged by another, treated as an object for the gratification of another’s appetite and pleasure
Sexual outrage, then, was the abandonment of the soul to one’s own or another’s appetite, a loss of rational control that shamed the victim because he did not uphold his society’s most impt order — the control of passions and appetites by the mind and its social projections, law and custom
This creates an obvious contradiction of pederasty
If the boy is to reciprocate for attention, instruction and gifts, how can he do so?
If he submits to anal penetration, he has allowed himself to be outraged, and has drawn perilously close to the kinaidos
One way is self control — In one of Socrates’ conversations he supposedly said that the boy with a noble soul won’t allow himself to be kissed. But this is an extreme solution
Yet some self control is necessary — the boy who offers his beauty for money is a prostitute, whereas the boy who becomes the friend of a noble/virtuous and good man" is considered self controlled, chaste
Ideal friends according to Socrates are those who honor the same chaste behavior and who are moderate in their appetites, so that "though they delight in the sexual pleasures of blooming youths, they control themselves, so that they don’t cause pa in to those they shouldn’t’
Idealization of self control here — maybe similar to troubadour
We read a lot in the sources about "just" or "chaste" eros, and so we wonder just what they were doing under their cloaks
The most widely accepted view is that the pederastic lover had intercrural intercourse, rubbing his penis between the boy’s thighs while both were standing
This avoided the shame of penetration and avoided the charge of"outrage" while allowing the older active partner to achieve orgasm
In the idealized pederasty of the literary remains, however the answer is clear: physical consummation is taboo
The rational virtue of self control/chastity gives pederasty its power to distance itself from the chaos of eros and its mind obliterating pleasure
As such it functions as another technology , a tool for controlling nature’s force and directing it to ends beneficial for the citizen and state
Heres another good articleBruce Thornton, Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality
Homosexuality is no easier for us so called moderns to understand than it was for the Greeks.
Very little if any evidence from ancient Greece survives that shows adult males or females as same-sex couples involved in an ongoing, reciprocal sexual and emotional relationship in which the age difference is no more significant than it is in heteros exual relationships.
Thus the evidence from ancient Greece involves either man-youth homosexuality or the precisely defined passive homosexual of kinaidos, the adult male who perversely enjoys being penetrated by other males and who has sex with women only because of socie tal pressure.
Another major impediment to understanding homosexuality for both ancients and moderns is the confusion of nature and culture in explaining it.
Science says that homosexual men may have part of the anterior hypothalamus two to three times smaller than heterosexual men
Yet we are still not much farther along in discovering the biological roots of homosexuality than Victorian adventurer Richard Francis Burton, who theorized about a "sotadic [homosexual] zone" a geographical band precisely located between 30 and 43 degrees northern latitude in which people are prone to homosexuality
Is homosexuality "natural" for the Greeks?
The Greeks have two concepts of nature:
1. Nature as an order with which man’s laws should be consistent
Many Greek philosophers believed that the cosmos reflected some sort of rational order, thus "natural" would denote behavior consistent with that order.
One could then act "unnaturally" by indulging in behavior that subverted that order and its purpose.
The "rational" and "natural" purpose of sex is Procreation, but then ALL sexual acts, heterosexual and homosexual, that do not lead to procreation would have to be deemed
"unnatural". Plato takes this view in the Laws, and it becomes part of Christian philosophy.
2. A second view of nature was that it was an assemblage of destructive forces overthrowing reason and law. It was savage and monstrous and inhuman
In these terms eros is a natural energy flowing out from humans onto ANY object — same-sex paramour, child, relative or beast. There is no qualitatively distinct category of "homosexual" or "heterosexual" because by definition eros is indiscriminate. Thus a Greek would not categorize as homosexual a man who has penetrated another.
Any limitations of eros arise not from the inherent nature of sexual activity that directs itself toward one object or another, but from the literally unnatural — the codes, laws, customs and institutions of society that define the proper and im proper objects and occasions of sexual activity
Both of these explanations of homosexuality — unnatural perversion of sex, or excessive expression of its essential nature — can be found in ancient Greek literary remains.
If we choose one of the two, we are oversimplifying the complexity of attitudes attested to in the evidence.
If we look at male homosexuality as we understand it today, there are two adult partners.
In Greece, the kinaidos is the passive homosexual whose inability to control his appetite, his itch for sexual pleasure, induces him to forsake his masculinity and submit to anal penetration.
In either concept of nature, the kinaidos is condemned:
The kinaidos become the emblem of unrestrained compulsive sexual appetite, or surrender to the chaos of natural passion that threatens civilized order, a traitor to his sex, a particularly offensive manifestation of eros’s power over the masculine mind that is responsible for creating and maintaining that order in the face of nature’s chaos.
Greek ideas on the origins of homosexuality:
Both myth and history imply a time when homosexuality did not exist, at least in the form of pederasty.
Myth of Chrysippus — in a lost play of Euripides. Chrysippus was kidnapped and raped by Laius, father of Oedipus. Chrysippus then killed himself because of shame. In another version of the myth, Oedipus killed his father Laius him as punishment.
Plato understood the myth to finger Laius as the inventor of homosexuality.
In the Laws the Athenian Stranger says that "following nature" legislators would make the law as it was "before Laius" when sex with men and youths as thought they were women was forbidden on the model of animals, which Plato mistak enly believed restricted sex to procreation.
Thus in this dialogue he sees the state of nature as one in which homosexuality did not exist.
Thus homosexuality is a historical innovation, a result of the depraved human imagination and vulnerability to pleasure
Euripides saw homosexuality as one of the forces overthrowing reason and law. — Laius’ crime initiated a chain reaction of erotic disorder culminating in Oedipus’ incest and parricide, and a blight in Thebes that blasted the newborn life of humans, her ds, and grain alike.
Euripides, then, in contrast to Plato, sees homosexual eros as a constant of human nature
Another origin for homosexuality among the Greeks is located among the Dorians, who were more warlike than the Spartans, and swept through Greece toward the end of the second millennium and ultimately occupied most of the Peloponese and Crete.
Plato’s Athenian Stranger holds the Dorians responsible for "corrupting the pleasures of sex which are according to nature, not just for men but for beasts"
Later in the Laws he again condemns homosexuality on the grounds of not being according to nature because it does not lead to procreation
Aristotle attributes homosexuality to the Dorians . It arose out of the practical need to control population, which accounts as well for the segregation of women
Elsewhere Aristotle says that homosexuals can be born as well as made
They are a deviation from the norm
Some "diseased things" result from nature or habit — pulling out one’s hair, nailbiting, eating coals or earth and sex between males. The last one often results from childhood sexual abuse.
Even pederasty, then, possibly contributes to a morbid condition, even though it is a basis of the educational system..
The most famous and straightforward instance of the ancient Greek belief that homosexuals are born and not made can be found in Aristophanes’ myth of human sexual origins in Plato’s Symposium
We were once perfect and self-sufficient physical beings. We had the circular form "similar in every direction" imagined by early philosophy to be the shape of the god
Now punished for our overweening attempt to make ourselves rulers of everything, we are creatures cut in half, severed from our other part and made, by a turning of our heads, to look always at the cut, jagged from side of ourselves that reminds us of our lack.
Looking at the contingent loss that cuts us off from the wishes of our imagination, itself still apparently intact, we become preoccupied with the project of returning to the wholeness of our former natures.
But to remedy one piece of luck another must happen: we must each find the unique other half from which we were severed.
The one hope of "healing" for our human nature is to unite in love with this other oneself and, indeed to become fused with that one, insofar as this is possible.
Eros is the name of this desire and pursuit of the whole.
The myth in one sense mocks humans (according to Martha Nussbaum).
We think, as humans, that the human shape is something beautiful; the story gets us to consider that, from the point of view of the whole or the god, the circular shape may be formally the most beautiful and adequate
The shape we have ended up with seems like the object of a joke, or a punishment:
Jagged form, equipped with untidy folds of skin around the middle, its head turned towards this imperfection and newly expressing, in its searching gazes, its sense of incompleteness
Its exposed and dangling genital members now no longer efficiently, externally sowing seed into the earth, but instead placed on the side of the "cutting", desiring both reproduction and healing.
As we hear this myth of passionate groping and grasping, we are invited to think how odd, after all, it is that bodies should have these holes and projections in them, odd that the insertion of a projection into an opening should be thought, by ambitio us and intelligent beings, a matter of the deepest concern
From the outside we cannot help but laugh. They want to be gods, and here they are, running around anxiously trying to thrust a piece of themselves inside a hole; or , perhaps more comical still, waiting in the hope that some hole of theirs will have something thrust into it.
The comedy comes in the sudden perception of ourselves from another vantage point, the sudden turning round of our heads and eyes to look at human genitals and faces, our unrounded, desiring and vulnerable parts.
The individual is loved not only as a whole, but also as a unique and irreplaceable whole.
For each person there is exactly one "other half"
There is nothing like a general description of a suitable or ‘fitting’ lover, satisfiable by a number of candidates, that could serve as a sufficient criterion of suitability.
It is mysterious what does make another person the lost half of you, more mysterious still how you come to know that
What makes these creatures fall in love is a sudden swelling up of feelings of kinship and intimacy, the astonishment of finding in a supposed stranger a deep part of your being.
The very need that gives rise to erotic pursuit is an unnatural, contingent lack, at least when viewed from the point of view of human reason.
Here are these ridiculous creatures cut in half, trying to do with these bodies what came easily for them when they had a different bodily nature
The body is a course of limitation and distress. They do not feel one with it, and they wish they had one of a different sort; or, perhaps, none at all.
Eros, so necessary to continued life and to "healing" from distress, comes to the cut-up creature by sheer chance, if at all
His or her other half is somewhere, but it is hard to see what reason and planning can do to make that half turn up
The creatures "search" and "come together", but it is plainly not in their power to ensure the happy reunion
It is difficult to accept that something as essential to our good as love is at the same time so much a matter of chance
Before the invention of sexual intercourse, the two halves embraced unsatisfied, until both died of hunger and other needs
The possibility of intercourse, a new ‘stratagem’ provided by the pitying god, brought the procreation of children and a temporary respite from physical tension
The satisfaction achieved in this way is incomplete. What these lovers really want is not simply a momentary physcial pleasure with its ensuing brief respite from bodily tension.
Their deep need comes from the soul. The soul cannot describe it.
We know that they wish for the impossible: they wish to become one, yet they will always remain two.
It is true that the smith might bring their bodies together, but their desire is for unity of the soul
If they got that fusion, this wholeness would put an end to all movement and all passion
A sphere would not have intercourse with anyone
It would not eat, or doubt, or drink
It would not even move this way or that, because it would have no reason; it would be complete
Eros is the desire to be a being without any contingent occurrent desires. It is a second-order desire that all desires should be cancelled
Thornton, Chap 8 Eros the Pedagogue
Pederasty has its ATHENIAN origins with Solon
Sixth century Athenian Solon was one of the city’s most impt statesman
His reforms broke the political and economic hold the aristocracy had on the people, laying the groundwork for the full blown democracy of the 5c
He wrote poetry in which he justified his reforms and expounded his political phil
Here the distance between ancient Greece and modern America begins to appear immense — can anyone imagine a 20c president or senator defending his political program in highly finished hexameter verse
Stranger still are the verses among Solon’s fragments that tell of loving a "boy in the lovely flower of youth, desiring his thighs and sweet mouth". Now the difference between ourselves and the ancient Greeks becomes nearly incomprehensible
Any public figure who voiced such sentiments would be branded a pervert worthy of opprobrium and ostracism, even if the youth was in his teens, the age of the objects of ancient Gk boy love
Pedophiles, along with rapists, are one of the last minorities it is still respectable to despise and insult
Our cult of sentimental exculpating tolerance has no room for them
Just the allegations of pederasty impel Michael Jackson to spend $15 million killing the investigation of the accusation
The gay establishment welcomes sadomasochists and transsexuals but keeps a careful distance from the North American Man Boy Love Association, whose members fancy themselves the true heirs of Socrates and Plato
What makes it particularly difficult for us to understand this is the distinct aristocratic and militaristic aura that clings to ancient pederasty, given that America has never had an aristocracy and that the advent of a mercenary army means very few o f us experience military life and values anymore
The origins of pederasty were located among the Dorians, the best known of whom, the Spartans were the most militaristic people in the ancient world
Spartans were aristocratic elitists supported by a suppressed majority of serfs who worked the land
Citizens devoted most of their time to military training
All of male Spartan life was structured by a military order in which from an early age boys lived together in barracks under the supervision of an adolescent boy
They were constantly under the surveillance of older men as well, for whom they displayed their talents, whose approval they eagerly sought and disapproval fearfully shunned, and who were responsible for the mettle of their beloved — Plutarch reports t hat a youth who screamed in pain during battle got his admirer punished by the state
The Spartans supposedly sacrificed to Eros before every battle
In this male world of aristocratic martial values, of shared meals and naked exercising, of boys eagerly seeking the approval of older males, pederasty could easily flourish
That is the opinion of the Athenian Stranger in the Laws, who blames homosexuality on the Dorian institutions
A fourth century historian Ephorus records a custom in Crete, settled by the Dorian Greeks, illustrating the extent to which pederasty was ritualized in Dorian culture
An older man would inform the family of a boy he fancied of his intentions. If the family considered the wooer worthy, they pretended to resist, but he would succeed in making off with the boy and hiding out with him for 2 mos Afterward the couple ret urned to the city, the boy receiving presents of armor, an ox, and a cup and considerable prestige at being so chosen
This connection of homosexuality and Spartan militarism was something of a commonplace by the time of Plato
Plato’s Phaedrus in the Symposium claims an army of lovers would be unbeatable, for they would do nothing shameful in the presence of their lovers
The famous Sacred Band of Thebes, 150 pairs of lovers killed to a man by Philip of Macedon at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 were supposedly such an army
Boy love then, was not a private pleasure or relationship but a part of the social structure of the polis, one of its "technologies" for controlling the powerful force of Eros
Eros in ancient Greek thought, some philosophers aside is "polymorphously perverse" — flowing out toward any object
But if these objects are citizen boys or men, the dangers of eros are magnified— the citizen who submits to anal penetration opens his soul up to a compulsive appetite destructive of the social and political order embodied and upheld by male citizens
Thus the very real sexual attraction to boys of those among the ruling elite is even more volatile than heterosexual eros
The citizen wife who is corrupted is not violating her essential feminine nature. She is under the sway of her irrational passions anyway, necessitating the control of marriage and husbands. But the male is supposed to be more rational, more in contr ol of his appetite — that is why he runs the city.
The "technology" of boy love, then, requires a delicate balancing act between acknowledging the power of homosexual eros without corrupting the boy who is its object, turning him into the dreaded kinaidos.
This explains the numerous, almost ritualistic controls surrounding and organizing boy love and the anxious caution with which it is treated in the ancient sources.
Remember that this is not the behavior or proclivities of the "average Greek".
Pederasty in the Greek literary remains (mostly Athenian from the late fifth to fourth centuries) is clearly an aristocratic institution.
The high proletarian "good old boys" and small farmers of Aristophanes certainly see it as the hoity toity pastime of the nobles and those who ape their fashions
Since the majority of the Gk pop in most poleis worked the soil, pederasty was not a well known experience to most Greeks
Boy love is assimilated to the woman in a number of swys, particularly in the high value placed on his lack of facial and body hair and his "smoothness" and "softness".
Girlish behavior was likewise desirable in the boy.
Shyness and blushing were equally charming.
There were other ways in which the man boy relationship was patterned on the male-female relationship. Boys were courted with gifts, like women, except that girls were wooed indirectly, using family males as intermediaries.
Just as numerous laws protected virgins and married women from sexual corruption, similar laws had as their aim the protection of citizen boys whose legal and political status was parallel to that of women, both being subordinated to older male relativ es and both devoid of political rights
Some forbade the teacher or head of the gymnasium from opening their establishments before sunrise or keeping them open after sunset, so that no darkness was available for the corruption of boys
Older boys were forbidden from fraternizing with the younger, and the producer of the choruses of boys, the choregus, had to be over 40 years old, since that was considered the time of life when a man was most "self controlled/chaste
In the Symposium Pausanias remarks on the less formal means fathers use to protect their sons, such as assigning a slave to watch over the boy and keep him away from any pursuers
Just as the young girl and her sexual force were subordinated to her role as wife in the household, so the boy and his sexual power were channeled into teaching him his proper role as "good and beautiful/noble citizen"
Eros was the most important instructor of wisdom and inspirer of virtue
Plato’s Phaedrus explains the psychological mechanism by which the boy learns the proper values. Because the beloved wants to impress his lover, he is ashamed at any behavior not noble or admirable. He would rather die than shame himself before his a dmirer
Phaedrus is here clearly voicing a rationale for boy love that any Athenian aristocrat would approve
Pedagogical function of pederasty also involves the ethical ideal of reciprocity which provides another rational control for pederastic eros
Much of Gk everyday ethics was based on the do ut des I give so that you may give model
Gods were worshiped and given gifts of sacrifice and offerings so that their power would be turned to the mortal’s benefit
The parent child relationships could be structured by this paradigm: parents tend children when they are weak so children will tend them when they are weak
Aristocratic values were particularly reflective or reciprocity based on absolute identity of friends and enemies
"Help friends, hurt enemies" is ubiquitous in Greek literature
You owe help to a philos, a friend/dear one, and the pederastic relationship like marriage was a subspecies of this friendship
The service or benefit or help or other good things the lover gave to the beloved was flattering attention and education in the proper role and behavior expected of a man, particularly an aristocrat
What the beloved gave the lover was exclusive attention and some level of physical gratification
Outrage, Shame and "Just Eros"
We learned that sexual excess, particularly homosexual was defined in terms of "outrage" and "shame"
The seduction of a citizen wife or daughter was a crime of outrage (hubris) that shamed the male responsible for her
Likewise the man who submitted to anal penetration shamed himself because he abandoned his soul to appetite, violating a communal standard of self control
He also allowed himself to be outraged by another, treated as an object for the gratification of another’s appetite and pleasure
Sexual outrage, then, was the abandonment of the soul to one’s own or another’s appetite, a loss of rational control that shamed the victim because he did not uphold his society’s most impt order — the control of passions and appetites by the mind and its social projections, law and custom
This creates an obvious contradiction of pederasty
If the boy is to reciprocate for attention, instruction and gifts, how can he do so?
If he submits to anal penetration, he has allowed himself to be outraged, and has drawn perilously close to the kinaidos
One way is self control — In one of Socrates’ conversations he supposedly said that the boy with a noble soul won’t allow himself to be kissed. But this is an extreme solution
Yet some self control is necessary — the boy who offers his beauty for money is a prostitute, whereas the boy who becomes the friend of a noble/virtuous and good man" is considered self controlled, chaste
Ideal friends according to Socrates are those who honor the same chaste behavior and who are moderate in their appetites, so that "though they delight in the sexual pleasures of blooming youths, they control themselves, so that they don’t cause pa in to those they shouldn’t’
Idealization of self control here — maybe similar to troubadour
We read a lot in the sources about "just" or "chaste" eros, and so we wonder just what they were doing under their cloaks
The most widely accepted view is that the pederastic lover had intercrural intercourse, rubbing his penis between the boy’s thighs while both were standing
This avoided the shame of penetration and avoided the charge of"outrage" while allowing the older active partner to achieve orgasm
In the idealized pederasty of the literary remains, however the answer is clear: physical consummation is taboo
The rational virtue of self control/chastity gives pederasty its power to distance itself from the chaos of eros and its mind obliterating pleasure
As such it functions as another technology , a tool for controlling nature’s force and directing it to ends beneficial for the citizen and state
Originally Posted by :
In the Laws, Plato applies the idea of a fixed, natural law to sex, and takes a much harsher line than he does in the Symposium or the Phraedrus. In Book One he writes about how opposite-sex sex acts cause pleasure by nature, while same-sex sexuality is “unnatural” (636c). In Book Eight, the Athenian speaker considers how to have legislation banning homosexual acts, masturbation, and illegitimate procreative sex widely accepted. He then states that this law is according to nature (838-839d). Probably the best way of understanding Plato's discussion here is in the context of his overall concerns with the appetitive part of the soul and how best to control it. Plato clearly sees same-sex passions as especially strong, and hence particularly problematic, although in the Symposium that erotic attraction could be the catalyst for a life of philosophy, rather than base sensuality (Cf. Dover, 1989, 153-170; Nussbaum, 1999, esp. chapter 12).
In the Laws, Plato applies the idea of a fixed, natural law to sex, and takes a much harsher line than he does in the Symposium or the Phraedrus. In Book One he writes about how opposite-sex sex acts cause pleasure by nature, while same-sex sexuality is “unnatural” (636c). In Book Eight, the Athenian speaker considers how to have legislation banning homosexual acts, masturbation, and illegitimate procreative sex widely accepted. He then states that this law is according to nature (838-839d). Probably the best way of understanding Plato's discussion here is in the context of his overall concerns with the appetitive part of the soul and how best to control it. Plato clearly sees same-sex passions as especially strong, and hence particularly problematic, although in the Symposium that erotic attraction could be the catalyst for a life of philosophy, rather than base sensuality (Cf. Dover, 1989, 153-170; Nussbaum, 1999, esp. chapter 12).
Sorry Gawain, but this guy's credibility is shattered when he proclaims:
"Another origin for homosexuality among the Greeks is located among the Dorians, who were more warlike than the Spartans, and swept through Greece toward the end of the second millennium and ultimately occupied most of the Peloponese and Crete."
The Dorians were not more warlike than the Spartans, because in fact the Spartans WERE Dorians. This is basic Greek history 101. To be ignorant of this fact does not bode well for the rest of his arguments.
His other arguments also assume Plato as normative, which he clearly was not. Plato advocated dictatorship, the prohibition of music and allowing women to serve as soldiers of his Repbulic. He himself freely admits that he was ridiculed for these ideas, which clearly were not amongst the mainstream of Greek thought. From a historiographical perspective, you clearly can't use the ideas of a man who was executed for 'corrupting the youth' as emblematic of Greek society.
"Another origin for homosexuality among the Greeks is located among the Dorians, who were more warlike than the Spartans, and swept through Greece toward the end of the second millennium and ultimately occupied most of the Peloponese and Crete."
The Dorians were not more warlike than the Spartans, because in fact the Spartans WERE Dorians. This is basic Greek history 101. To be ignorant of this fact does not bode well for the rest of his arguments.
His other arguments also assume Plato as normative, which he clearly was not. Plato advocated dictatorship, the prohibition of music and allowing women to serve as soldiers of his Repbulic. He himself freely admits that he was ridiculed for these ideas, which clearly were not amongst the mainstream of Greek thought. From a historiographical perspective, you clearly can't use the ideas of a man who was executed for 'corrupting the youth' as emblematic of Greek society.
OT - The Greatest general of All time, in my opinion, was Robert E. Lee.
Maybe I'm biased because I am distantly related to him (through marraige)
-Capo
Maybe I'm biased because I am distantly related to him (through marraige)
-Capo
Many historians say that it was possible. No deffinite, but it's certaintly possible, and most historians believe he was bisexaul. Not gay, certaintly, but he did have gay lovers, as did his father, Philip. One of his ex lovers actaully killed him...
... by giving him SYPHILIS!!!!
Actually I think thats how he died.
Actually I think thats how he died.
No, Alexander died from malaria, almost right Capo!
almost right Capo!Originally Posted by :
Sorry Gawain, but this guy's credibility is shattered when he proclaims:
Another origin for homosexuality among the Greeks is located among the Dorians, who were more warlike than the Spartans, and swept through Greece toward the end of the second millennium and ultimately occupied most of the Peloponese and Crete."
The Dorians were not more warlike than the Spartans, because in fact the Spartans WERE Dorians. This is basic Greek history 101. To be ignorant of this fact does not bode well for the rest of his arguments
Sorry Gawain, but this guy's credibility is shattered when he proclaims:
Another origin for homosexuality among the Greeks is located among the Dorians, who were more warlike than the Spartans, and swept through Greece toward the end of the second millennium and ultimately occupied most of the Peloponese and Crete."
The Dorians were not more warlike than the Spartans, because in fact the Spartans WERE Dorians. This is basic Greek history 101. To be ignorant of this fact does not bode well for the rest of his arguments
Originally Posted by :
Taking in consideration that the Minonean and Mycenaean were the first civilizations in the Balkans, and they were of separate creed then the Albanian people, then the only possible civilization that could have existed north of Greece is the Illyrian people. There were none other that existed at that time and considering these Northern people Greek would be irrelevant, since throughout time these northern people have formed what could be considered Albanian Culture.
Most books on this topic place the Dorians as a Greek people, but it is quite impossible for these Greeks to conquer themselves. For that is what the Dorians did, they conquered what was considered at that time Ancient Greece, and how could a Greek people conquer the Greek nation. Also, the Dorians are known for having a different resemblance then the Greeks. They were known to have fairer hair and to be taller.
From this information we can calculate these facts: 1. The Dorians came from the north 2. They are different from the Greeks and 3. They conquered the Greeks in 1100 B.C. These facts, pulled completely out of literature accepted by the world pinpoints the culture and people known as Dorians to be Albanian. Every time that literature considers a people to the north of Greece, they have to be talking about the Albanian people, since no other group of people, like the Slavs, occupied the Balkans until the 7th Century A.D. The realization of this fact opens a gate of acceptance for a very eloquent Albanian history.
Even though Albanians are known to be a very brute, dark, and uncultured people, this is evidence that the Albanian people, at one time, conquered mighty Greece. The Albanian people were and continued to be very skilled worriers and leaders, and this aspect is reflected as early as the Dorians. With every conquer there also comes the heavy and long-lasting integration of culture and cultural diffusion. A mix between the Albanian and Greek so early at time leads to the possibility that the same Albanians that were known as the Dorians have become some part of the majestic Greek empire, if not diffused to become one people with Greeks. There is no record of the conquering Dorians to have left Greece, so accordingly, Albanians have some claim to the well-known achievements of the Greek Empire.
These incredible cultural and historical facts are not always associated with Albania.
Here is a link to the history of Sparta. Originally it was conquered by the Dorians. Now the Spartans we usually speak of didnt come about till 300 or so years after this invasion so you may say the Spartans are decendants of the Dorians as are most of the Greeks if you want to use that argument . That is unless the Spartans conquered themselves. Now this dosent bode well on your knowledge of the issue or could it just be a matter of semantics?Taking in consideration that the Minonean and Mycenaean were the first civilizations in the Balkans, and they were of separate creed then the Albanian people, then the only possible civilization that could have existed north of Greece is the Illyrian people. There were none other that existed at that time and considering these Northern people Greek would be irrelevant, since throughout time these northern people have formed what could be considered Albanian Culture.
Most books on this topic place the Dorians as a Greek people, but it is quite impossible for these Greeks to conquer themselves. For that is what the Dorians did, they conquered what was considered at that time Ancient Greece, and how could a Greek people conquer the Greek nation. Also, the Dorians are known for having a different resemblance then the Greeks. They were known to have fairer hair and to be taller.
From this information we can calculate these facts: 1. The Dorians came from the north 2. They are different from the Greeks and 3. They conquered the Greeks in 1100 B.C. These facts, pulled completely out of literature accepted by the world pinpoints the culture and people known as Dorians to be Albanian. Every time that literature considers a people to the north of Greece, they have to be talking about the Albanian people, since no other group of people, like the Slavs, occupied the Balkans until the 7th Century A.D. The realization of this fact opens a gate of acceptance for a very eloquent Albanian history.
Even though Albanians are known to be a very brute, dark, and uncultured people, this is evidence that the Albanian people, at one time, conquered mighty Greece. The Albanian people were and continued to be very skilled worriers and leaders, and this aspect is reflected as early as the Dorians. With every conquer there also comes the heavy and long-lasting integration of culture and cultural diffusion. A mix between the Albanian and Greek so early at time leads to the possibility that the same Albanians that were known as the Dorians have become some part of the majestic Greek empire, if not diffused to become one people with Greeks. There is no record of the conquering Dorians to have left Greece, so accordingly, Albanians have some claim to the well-known achievements of the Greek Empire.
These incredible cultural and historical facts are not always associated with Albania.
Originally Posted by Snowhobbit:
No, Alexander died from malaria, almost right Capo!
I heard that no one knew how he died.No, Alexander died from malaria,
almost right Capo!I just came to my own conclusion based off of this:
He had 350+ Concubines, from Forign lands
He slowly went insane before he died
Well, that's what I concluded. It makes more sense though, him dying of maleria (did Syphilis even exist back then?)
but there was no sign of syphillis capo
he probably died of West Nile Virus.
he probably died of West Nile Virus.
Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny:
Here is a link to the history of Sparta. Originally it was conquered by the Dorians. Now the Spartans we usually speak of didnt come about till 300 or so years after this invasion so you may say the Spartans are decendants of the Dorians as are most of the Greeks if you want to use that argument . That is unless the Spartans conquered themselves. Now this dosent bode well on your knowledge of the issue or could it just be a matter of semantics?
Gawain, you've misunderstood the argument in the very website you cite. Sparta as a polticial institution arose around 850 CE. This doesn't mean that the Spartans themselves (Lacedaemonians) never existed before 850 CE. It just means the specific political configuration of the Spartan city-state is not attested to in historical documentation before 850 CE. The Spartans (Lakedaemonians) did certainly exist before this, and they certainly were Dorians (whether or not you consider Dorians Greeks or Albanians, as is asserted in the website you cite from this nationalistic crackpot who can't write a grammatically correct sentence). The fact that you've misunderstood the argument, as you suggest, clearly does not bode well for your knowledge of the issue. Time to do a bit more reading-- I would suggest peer-reviewed books rather than nationalistic Albanian websites. H. D. F. Kitto's The Greeks (Penguin, 1991) would probably be a good place to start.Here is a link to the history of Sparta. Originally it was conquered by the Dorians. Now the Spartans we usually speak of didnt come about till 300 or so years after this invasion so you may say the Spartans are decendants of the Dorians as are most of the Greeks if you want to use that argument . That is unless the Spartans conquered themselves. Now this dosent bode well on your knowledge of the issue or could it just be a matter of semantics?
P.S. Not all Greeks are descended for Dorians. The Dorian invaders were particularly important in the Peloponnesus, but Achaeans and others were also important ancestors of the Greeks of the classical age.
Originally Posted by :
Gawain, you've misunderstood the argument in the very website you cite. Sparta as a polticial institution arose around 850 CE. This doesn't mean that the Spartans themselves (Lacedaemonians) never existed before 850 CE. It just means the specific political configuration of the Spartan city-state is not attested to in historical documentation before 850 CE
No you misunderstand. That is exactly my argument. That spartans did exist before the Dorians invaded so they cannot be the same people as the Dorians who invaded them now could they?Gawain, you've misunderstood the argument in the very website you cite. Sparta as a polticial institution arose around 850 CE. This doesn't mean that the Spartans themselves (Lacedaemonians) never existed before 850 CE. It just means the specific political configuration of the Spartan city-state is not attested to in historical documentation before 850 CE
The fact that you've misunderstood the argument, as you suggest, clearly does not bode well for your knowledge of the issue.
Originally Posted by :
I would suggest peer-reviewed books rather than nationalistic Albanian websites.
The site I quoted above has nothing to do with Albania. In every website I check it says Sparta was conquered and colonized by the Dorians. Would you like me to give you links to a few dozen? I guess they all are as Ignorant as the author of my original post. Dam you cannot believe anything you read anymore.I would suggest peer-reviewed books rather than nationalistic Albanian websites.
Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny:
No you misunderstand. That is exactly my argument. That spartans did exist before the Dorians invaded so they cannot be the same people as the Dorians who invaded them now could they?
The site I quoted above has nothing to do with Albania. In every website I check it says Sparta was conquered and colonized by the Dorians. Would you like me to give you links to a few dozen? I guess they all are as Ignorant as the author of my original post. Dam you cannot believe anything you read anymore.
Gawain, Gawain... read CAREFULLY my friend. Do any of the websites talk about Sparta or the Lakedaemonians before the Dorian invasions of the 14th-12th centuries BCE? No. There was an Achaean king in the region before the Dorians but there was no 'Sparta' or 'Spartans' in the recognizable modern usage of the word. We can use the modern word 'Sparta' to describe the area if we like, but this is anachronistic. There were no 'Spartans' in Sparta before the Dorian invasions, for the Spartans themselves were Dorians. The website wants to distinguish between Greeks and Dorians. I don't really agree that you can do that (read the Iliad and Aristotle-- Aristotle notes that the 'Greeks' did not really use the words 'Greece' or 'Greeks' at the time of the Trojan war, that all you had was a collection of Achaeans and others. So there was as yet only a nascent conception of 'Greece' or 'Greeks'). But none of this really matters, because even the rabidly nationalistic Albanian admits that the settlers of Sparta were Dorians; no one seriously doubts this. Whether you call the Dorians Greeks or Albanians or Ojibwa, for that matter, doesn't matter one bit. The fact remains that the only possible ancestors of the Spartans were Dorians. This has been shown time and time again in archaeological finds that show the Dorians used different pottery and weaponry than the other peoples around them. "Doric columns', one of the distinctive architectural monuments of Greek culture, are found in Sparta only after the period of Doric migrations. The distinctive Spartan political system of 'Spartans' and subject helots did not exist until after the Dorians arrived; think about it, this type of social system had to be imposed by a conqueror. So to say that the Dorians were 'more warlike than the Spartans' displays an ignorance of the basic history of Greece.No you misunderstand. That is exactly my argument. That spartans did exist before the Dorians invaded so they cannot be the same people as the Dorians who invaded them now could they?
The site I quoted above has nothing to do with Albania. In every website I check it says Sparta was conquered and colonized by the Dorians. Would you like me to give you links to a few dozen? I guess they all are as Ignorant as the author of my original post. Dam you cannot believe anything you read anymore.
Get it?
You seem to respond well to websites, so here's one that makes the situation crystal clear:
Originally Posted by :
The mainland Achaeans absorbed the civilization of Crete by the late Bronze Age (1500 - 1200 BC). By 1400 BC they became dominant on the mainland, notably in the region around Mycenae. About this same time period the Dorians left their mountainous home in Epirus and pushed their way down to the Peloponnesus and Crete, using improved iron weapons to conquer or expel the previous inhabitants of those regions. The invading Dorians overthrew the Achaean kings and settled, principally, in the southern and eastern part of the peninsula. Sparta and Corinth became the chief Dorian cities. The Trojan War, described by Homer in the Iliad, began about, or shortly after, 1200 BC and was probably one of a series of wars waged during the 13th and 12th centuries BC. It may have been connected with these Dorian invasions, which brought the Iron Age to Greece.
http://www.unrv.com/provinces/achaea.phpThe mainland Achaeans absorbed the civilization of Crete by the late Bronze Age (1500 - 1200 BC). By 1400 BC they became dominant on the mainland, notably in the region around Mycenae. About this same time period the Dorians left their mountainous home in Epirus and pushed their way down to the Peloponnesus and Crete, using improved iron weapons to conquer or expel the previous inhabitants of those regions. The invading Dorians overthrew the Achaean kings and settled, principally, in the southern and eastern part of the peninsula. Sparta and Corinth became the chief Dorian cities. The Trojan War, described by Homer in the Iliad, began about, or shortly after, 1200 BC and was probably one of a series of wars waged during the 13th and 12th centuries BC. It may have been connected with these Dorian invasions, which brought the Iron Age to Greece.
Like I said its a matter of semantics. I claimed the Spartans were the decedants pf the Dorians while you claim they are the Dorians. Did it occur to you that the author was reffering to the area we call Sparta and not the peolpe as it is used in everyother link I mentioned? They all say the Dorians conquered Sparta in 1100-1200 BC. You know like the difference between what we now call Palestinians and what the original meaning was.
Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny:
Like I said its a matter of semantics. I claimed the Spartans were the decedants pf the Dorians while you claim they are the Dorians. Did it occur to you that the author was reffering to the area we call Sparta and not the peolpe as it is used in everyother link I mentioned? They all say the Dorians conquered Sparta in 1100-1200 BC. You know like the difference between what we now call Palestinians and what the original meaning was.
Yes, I think you're getting at it now Gawain. But either way you slice it, the guy's original comment about Dorians and Spartans was ignorant. If we think of the Spartans as Dorians, he's just plain wrong. If we think of the Spartans as descendants of the Dorians, he's misleading. Either way, his comment was ignorant. Like I said its a matter of semantics. I claimed the Spartans were the decedants pf the Dorians while you claim they are the Dorians. Did it occur to you that the author was reffering to the area we call Sparta and not the peolpe as it is used in everyother link I mentioned? They all say the Dorians conquered Sparta in 1100-1200 BC. You know like the difference between what we now call Palestinians and what the original meaning was.
Please also note: if you like to think of the Spartans as 'descendants' of the Dorians, you're going to have to make the argument that a radically new society arose in the Greek Dark Ages (for which there is no documentation and therefore almost no proof. The Spartans still called themselves Dorians in the later period, as the Athenians talked about Achaeans. Homer does this as well. If you called someone a Dorian in the 5th century people would understand what you meant. So the term 'Dorian' was still being used to describe the Spartans. To say that the Spartans are not 'Dorians' would be something to which the Spartans and other peoples of the time would object. Its like saying you, Gawain, are not an American but a descendant of the Americans. It is anachronistic.
Originally Posted by :
Its like saying you, Gawain, are not an American but a descendant of the Americans. It is anachronistic.
No Im a descendant of Germans actually. Its like saying you, Gawain, are not an American but a descendant of the Americans. It is anachronistic.
Haha.
Ok, fair enough. But you get my point, right?
Ok, fair enough. But you get my point, right?
Yes I get your point . I wasnt aware that the Spartans still considered themselves Dorians. So does this make the Ethiopians the true Jews ?
Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny:
Yes I get your point . I wasnt aware that the Spartans still considered themselves Dorians. So does this make the Ethiopians the true Jews ?
To be true jewish is based on race or ethnic group?Yes I get your point . I wasnt aware that the Spartans still considered themselves Dorians. So does this make the Ethiopians the true Jews ?
Well Faisal, you can both be Jewish by race and Jewish by faith.
Same name for the race and religion.
Same name for the race and religion.
Originally Posted by DemonArchangel:
but there was no sign of syphillis capo
he probably died of West Nile Virus.
Well, it was a guess.but there was no sign of syphillis capo
he probably died of West Nile Virus.
Originally Posted by :
he probably died of West Nile Virus.
See he should have stayed east of the nile he probably died of West Nile Virus.
Wwwwwest siiiiide till I die 
Oh dear Alexander the Great liked his men as well as his women.....how very terrible....I mean that really makes him much less of a tactician 
Who gives a damn where the guy liked to stick his meat. Oh dear, theres a film with homosexuality in it, lets all run for our lives, the Apocolypse is here.
As for Navoros, if you think gay sex is so bad and any film that contains it requires banning, go and complain about X-Rated gay films rather than a main stream film that shows a bit of homosexuality, surely thats far more "immoral".
If all your friends are like you I'm glad I'll never find myself in the same room as you lot!
Who gives a damn where the guy liked to stick his meat. Oh dear, theres a film with homosexuality in it, lets all run for our lives, the Apocolypse is here.
As for Navoros, if you think gay sex is so bad and any film that contains it requires banning, go and complain about X-Rated gay films rather than a main stream film that shows a bit of homosexuality, surely thats far more "immoral".
If all your friends are like you I'm glad I'll never find myself in the same room as you lot!
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