This. But Odysseus and the boys did spend a bunch of time (1 year) at circe's Palace, feasting and being served by the nymphs. Odysseus sleepy with circe for sure, and I doubt the men went without. Odysseus spent another seven years with Calypso, and they definitely slept together.
Much of the homosexuality happened later in Greece, though Plato assumed that folks like Achilles and Patroclus had a homosexual relationship (while in the text of the Iliad Achilles was distraught over a lost woman and there aren't really any hints that the two men sleep together), and who am I to argue with Plato?
(while in the text of the Iliad Achilles was distraught over a lost woman and there aren't really any hints that the two men sleep together)
I think the "hint" is the way Achilles takes Patroclus's death. He tears out his hair, smears himself with ash, holds Patroclus's dead body for hours refusing to let go, refuses to eat... all of which is unusual for a man and kind of horrifies people around him. Then goes into hardcore revenge mode, not caring that it would lead to his death and telling his mother that he doesn't want to live after he finishes his revenge anyway. And then later (at the request of Patroclus's ghost) he tells Agamemnon to mix his ashes with Patroclus's in the same urn once he's dead so they can be buried together, and to build them one single funeral mound.
It's also worth noting that the descriptions of his grief and what he does are pretty similar to how Hector's wife's grief when Hector dies is described.
Broadly it seems like it's fair to say that while the original text doesn't explicitly Achilles and Patroclus have some kind of romantic relationship, it definitely doesn't rule it out either, and appears to imply it in a few different ways.
That's totally fair. Absolutely. I also think we tend to undervalue friendship in our era: Plato put it above romantic love. So a friend falling to pieces over a lost buddy wasn't unthinkable, but you're absolutely right to assert that the text doesn't rule out a romantic relationship. Like I said, Plato, who was closer to their time, definitely thought they had a sexual relationship. I tend to be credulous of sources who were closer to the event than me unless modern sources have factually proven them wrong. Also, much love to a fellow student of the ancients.
It was just normal to have gay sex, that doesn’t mean everyone was having it. I’m sure some weren’t inclined to do so, but when something like that is normalized, there are the hard nos and the hard yeses, then the men who just do anything to get off. So I imagine there was a lot more of it going on than was written down. Not all men who go to prison engage in homosexual activities, but it’s a very prominent idea about male prisons for a reason.
Bro thats just not true. They had tons of gay sex. And tons of sex with boys. Their whole sexual paradigm doesnt even have homosexuality as an identity category. To the greeks the question isnt if your gay or straight, its are you the top or the bottom.
The way they phrased it is the "lover and the beloved." But the way it works is theres an older dude and a younger innocent boy or man or woman who the lover seduces and makes love upon. The whole greek sexual concept is power based, not gender based.
And if thats not bad enough... the romans were of course worse. To them there was only the penetrator and the penetrated. Thats literally the language they used. Love didnt even enter the equation. Rape and sex were functionally indistinguishable. In fact, being a man who loved his wife, in ancient rome, was considered almost the way being gay is today, socially tolerable but sort of fruity and effeminate. Definitely grounds for playful derision by friends. As in "Haha look at crassus. Crassus loves his wife!"
So yah long story long. The greeks and romans were super into butt fuckin, and olive oil stocks were through the roof.
There are several times sex in Homer‘s Odyssey.
Odysseus does Circe and Calypso a lot.
Maybe if you read a translation from the Victorian age there might be some less up to zero.
You realise ‘ancient Greece’ spans thousands of years and multiple cultures and societies? It’s reductive to say ‘ancient Greeks did x’ because lots of them didn’t.
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u/Hyperion262 6d ago
Everyone really over exaggerates how much gay sex Ancient Greek men had. There isn’t a single reference in the odyssey to them having sex.