fe of Greeks, that the two
problems of paiderastia and the position of women in Greece intersect.

In reviewing the external circumstances which favoured paiderastia, it
may be added, as a minor cause, that the leisure in which the Greeks
lived, supported by a crowd of slaves, and attending chiefly to their
physical and mental culture, rendered them peculiarly liable to
pre-occupations of passion and pleasure-seeking. In the early periods,
when war was incessant, this abundance of spare time bore less corrupt
fruit than during the stagnation into which the Greeks, enslaved by
Macedonia and Rome, declined.

So far, I have been occupied in the present section with the specific
conditions of Greek society which may be regarded as determining the
growth of paiderastia. With respect to the general habit of mind which
caused the Greeks, in contradistinction to the Jews and Christians, to
tolerate this form of feeling, it will be enough here to remark that
Paganism could have nothing logically to say against it. The further
consideration of this matter I shall reserve for the next division of my
essay, contenting myself for the moment with the observation that Greek
religion and the instincts of the Greek race offered no direct obstacle
to the expansion of a habit which was strongly encouraged by the
circumstances I have just enumerated.

XVIII.

Upon a topic of great difficulty, which is, however, inseparable from
the subject-matter of this inquiry, I shall not attempt to do more than
to offer a few suggestions. This is the relation of paiderastia to Greek
art. Whoever may have made a study of antique sculpture will not have
failed to recognise its healthy human tone, its ethical rightness. There
is no partiality for the beauty of the male sex, no endeavour to reserve
for the masculine deities the nobler attributes of man's intellectual
and moral nature, no extravagant attempt to refine upon masculine
qualities by the blending of feminine voluptuousness. Aphrodite and
Artemis hold their place beside Eros and Hermes. Ares is less
distinguished by the genius lavished on him than Athene. Hera takes rank
with Zeus, the Nymphs with the Fauns, the Muses with Apollo. Nor are
even the minor statues, which belong to decorative rather than high art,
noticeable for the attribution of sensual beauties to the form of boys.
This, which is certainly true of the best age, is, with rare exceptions,
true of all the ages of Greek pl