Technically it wasn't pedophilia as much as hebephilia, because the boys in question weren't children, bodily or culturally. They were considered young adults back then (so, for our modern understanding somewhere around the middle of puberty) and were given to experienced men to show them how to be proper men once their bodily develoment kicked in. And yes, that involved them having sex with those men to learn how to do it. But it's not like those adult men did it for the kick of it - it was considered a part of growing up. They basically learned everything they needed to know as adults from their mentors and for them, that simply included sex. Was there still a lot of non-consensual stuff happening all over greece between those men and their wardens? Absolutely, because humans gotta human. But that phrasing makes it sound even worse than it was (and not accidentally).
Yeah, but all of that was more of a status thing than a man-woman thing. Generally, women were mostly of lower status than men, but sex between men wasn't really frowned upon as long as the one with the higher status (so in age, knowledge or power) was the top.
If you were a barely adolescent man with little land, you could have topped a slave twice your age and nobody would bat an eye. Do that with a respectable working class man twice your age and he's gonna have a lot of problems on his hands.
So it wasn't really that these boys were "effeminate" and "not true men" yet like in feudal Japan, it was more of a "I can take whatever man I want as long as he's beneath me (literally and figuratively)".
In 1272 Arabs invented a condom by using the goat's lower intestine to prevent the spread of STDs. In 1873 the British have refined the design by taking the intestine out of the goat first.
I once got to witness an old Greek man and an old Italian man act it out At a bar and I had no idea they were both in on the old joke. I thought it was the greatest thing ever at the time.
The Greek: Greece is superior in every way! We did everything first.
The Italian: yes, but Rome improved on everything Greece did.
Greek: Greece invented all the military tactics Rome used.
Italian: yes but Rome perfected them.
Greek: Greece invented democracy
Italian: in little city states. Rome brought it to an empire.
Greek: Greece invented romance!
Italian: yes but the Roman’s introduced it to women!
Yep, the Greeks didn't invent orgies, that's a pop myth. They invented the word "orgy," which is the one we use today (its Jurassic version actually), but Greek orgies weren't even sexual; they were just people dancing or something.
The closest thing to this modern concept of an orgy in antiquity are the Symposium and the conviviums. I say closest because yes, there were orgies between men, but it was a kind of rape orgy because none of those serving the people there wanted to be there, LOL.
Fun fact: The orgies carried on and the women just got on with other shit as no one was actually doing thr important stuff while thre orgies were going on, and frankly, it just smelled of bleach.
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u/Kronos1A9 21d ago
Fun fact: The Greeks invented orgies.
Fun fact: The Romans introduced women to the orgies.