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Title: A Problem in Greek Ethics
Being an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion

Author: John Addington Symonds

Release Date: April 17, 2010 [EBook #32022]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A

PROBLEM

IN

GREEK ETHICS

BEING

AN INQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENON OF

_SEXUAL INVERSION_

ADDRESSED ESPECIALLY TO MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGISTS AND JURISTS

BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

_PRIVATELY PRINTED_

FOR

THE AREOPAGITIGA SOCIETY

LONDON

1908

_Privately Printed in Holland for the Society._

PREFACE.

The following treatise on Greek Love was written in the year 1873, when
my mind was occupied with my _Studies of Greek Poets_. I printed ten
copies of it privately in 1883. It was only when I read the Terminal
Essay appended by Sir Richard Burton to his translation of the _Arabian
Nights_ in 1886, that I became aware of M. H. E. Meier's article on
Paederastie (Ersch and Gruber's _Encyclopaedie_, Leipzig, Brockhaus,
1837). My treatise, therefore, is a wholly independent production. This
makes Meier's agreement (in Section 7 of his article) with the theory I
have set forth in Section X. regarding the North Hellenic origin of
Greek Love, and its Dorian character, the more remarkable. That two
students, working separately upon the same mass of material, should have
arrived at similar conclusions upon this point strongly confirms the
probability of the hypothesis.

J. A. SYMONDS.

CONTENTS.

I. INTRODUCTION: Method of treating the subject.

II. Homer had no knowledge of paiderastia--Achilles--Treatment of Homer
by the later Greeks.

III. The Romance of Achilles and Patroclus.

IV. The heroic ideal of masculine love.

V. Vulgar paiderastia--How introduced into Hellas--Crete--Laius--The
myth of Ganymede.

VI. Discrimination of two loves, heroic and v