ous rites, no doubt contributed to the erotic force of masculine
passion; and the history of their feeling upon this point deserves
notice. Plato, in the _Republic_ (452), observes that "not long ago the
Greeks were of the opinion, which is still generally received among the
barbarians, that the sight of a naked man was ridiculous and unseemly."
He goes on to mention the Cretans and the Lacedaemonians as the
institutors of naked games. To these conditions may be added dances in
public, the ritual of gods like Eros, ceremonial processions, and
contests for the prize of beauty.

The famous passage in the first book of Thucydides (cap. vi.)
illustrates the same point. While describing the primitive culture of
the Hellenes, he thinks it worth while to mention that the Spartans, who
first stripped themselves for running and wrestling, abandoned the
girdle which it was usual to wear around the loins. He sees in this
habit one of the strongest points of distinction between the Greeks and
barbarians. Herodotus insists upon the same point (book i. 10), which is
further confirmed by the verse of Ennius: "Flagitii," &c.

The nakedness which Homer (_Iliad_, xxii. 66) and Tyrtaeus (i. 21)
describes as shameful and unseemly is that of an old man. Both poets
seem to imply that a young man's naked body is beautiful even in death.

We have already seen that paiderastia, as it existed in early Hellas,
was a martial institution, and that it never wholly lost its virile
character. This suggests the consideration of another class of
circumstances which were in the highest degree conducive to its free
development. The Dorians, to begin with, lived like regiments of
soldiers in barracks. The duty of training the younger men was thrown
upon the elder; so that the close relations thus established in a race
which did not positively discountenance the love of male for male rather
tended actively to encourage it. Nor is it difficult to understand why
the romantic emotions in such a society were more naturally aroused by
male companions than by women. Matrimony was not a matter of elective
affinity between two persons seeking to spend their lives agreeably and
profitably in common, so much as an institution used by the State for
raising vigorous recruits for the national army. All that is known about
the Spartan marriage customs, taken together with Plato's speculations
about a community of wives, proves this conclusively. It followed that
the re