Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece

William Armstrong Percy III

"A major contribution to the scholarship on Greek homosexuality. Percy's command of the primary sources is exemplary, and his handling of the vast array of scholarship on this subject is well informed and judicious." -- Beert C. Verstraete, Acadia University, Nova Scotia

"The first study in English to give a detailed account of this crucial formative period. Its wealth of new documentation and challenging new hypotheses will inaugurate a significant debate on an important topic." -- Louis Crompton, author of Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in Nineteenth Century England

Combining impeccable scholarship with accessible, straightforward prose, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece argues that institutionalized pederasty began after 650 B.C., far later than previous authors have thought, and was initiated as a means of stemming overpopulation in the upper class.

William A. Percy III maintains that Cretan sages established a system under which a young warrior in his early twenties took a teenager of his own aristocratic background as a beloved until the age of thirty, when service to the state required the older partner to marry. The practice spread with significant variants to other Greek-speaking areas. In some places it emphasized development of the athletic, warrior individual, while in others both intellectual and civic achievement were its goals. In Athens it became a vehicle of cultural transmission, so that the best of each older cohort selected, loved, and trained the best of the younger.

Pederasty was from the beginning both physical and emotional, the highest and most intense type of male bonding. These pederastic bonds, Percy believes, were responsible for the rise of Hellas and the "Greek miracle": in two centuries the population of Attica, a mere 45,000 adult males in six generations, produced an astounding number of great men who laid the enduring foundations of Western thought and civilization.

WILLIAM ARMSTRONG PERCY III, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, is the author of a number of works on medieval history. He also is coeditor of Encyclopedia of Homosexuality and "Homosexuality" in The Handbook of Medieval Sexuality and coauthor of Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence.

Add hardcover to shopping cart, $34.95
(you can always remove it later)