Pederasty
...Romans, Thracians, Celts, Plutarch, Melanesian, Koreans, Persians, Islamic, and the Japanese (Percy, 127). The most common understanding is age structured homosexuality.' The word derives from the combination of paides', Greek for "boy", with erasteio, Greek for to long for' (Dover, 492). " The difference between pedophilia and pederasty is that pedophilias exploit a child's immaturity. Pederastic relations can have widely dissimilar manifestations they can be spiritual or materialistic, lawful or transgressive, chaste or sexual, loving or commercial the direction of a person's inner sexual-object orientation is neither described nor contended"(Percy, 12). Therefore the cultures that have practiced pederasty believed it to only be beneficial, seeing no negative effect on the phycological development of their youth.
The first culture to institutionalize pederasty was the Greeks. Ancient Greeks believed that semen was the source of knowledge and that the adult was merely passing wisdom to adolescent. Therefore rarely is there depiction of actual intercourse between a man and a boy (Rocke, 29). Greeks had two types of pederasty, Chaste and sexual, were the difference is weather the adult actually consummates the relationship. It was commonly believed there was no love greater or bond no stronger than the chaste pedestry because of the tremendous will and restraint shown by the adult (Percy 118).
The Spartans were documented as making pedestry a state requirement of all adult men. Aristotle claimed that Spartans encouraged this behavior as a means for control of the population by directing love and sexual desire away from procreative channels (Bleibtre- Ehrenber). Plato however wrote to devalue and finally condemn sexual intercourse with young boys saying "generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to be...
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