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If you can not read the actual Classical Greek text I suggest you learn the language and stop relying on mistranslated material because you are not getting the full picture but a distored view. While there were Greek and Roman men engaged in relations with both women and boys, exceptions to the rule were known, some avoiding relations with women and others rejecting relations with boys. But they never viewed same sex as being ok, acceptable or correct and yes it could be punishable by death and exile. I read it and understand it fluently as does the author who's piece I posted, so you not "buying" it but relying on bogus mistranslated material for your information is quite comical to say the least particularly given that there is little to no actual Spartan documention to suggest they actually participated in such material. What I find humerious from people who can't read the actual material is their blind faith on relying on someone else translated view on the material. Luckly for me, I do not fall under that category and can rely on what the actual ancient texts in Classical Greek say.

Let me tell you a little story regarding some of these non-Greek supposed psuedo "scholars" on ancient Greece who you and most people like you seem to rely on for most of your "information" and this is from a personal experience mind you. Date was October 14-18, 2002 at the the International Symposium on Ancient Macedonia in Thessaloniki; speakers some supposedly "well known" world "scholars" on Classical Greece come to talk to an auditorium full of scholars and students of the Classics. A Kate Mortensen and her collegues start "teaching" their bogus material to us when they are challenged to point out where in the original ancient Greek untranslated texts does it say what they claimed it said. Needless to say Mortensen and her crew had to admit they could not even read the untranslated texts, never mind tell us where the passages were. This admition left us all dead silent with our mouths hanging wide open and total disbelief. So these were the suppose "historian" who were teaching the world our country's History? How pathetic. Ofcouse they were all hackled straight out the country and the bulk of many jokes for months to come in the news media were of them and they also were the comic relief in every show there is in Greece. What is funny about this whole event is that the main stream English news outlets bring up the point of Mortensen and her crew being "hackled" during this event but fail to point out why they were made fun of. Very telling in my opinon, historians who are supposed to be taken as legit academics who can't even read the work they are suppose to be "experts" in? Yeah, some creditable sources they are. ;p

"I'm not even going to go into the clearly erotic overtones or the celebration of youthful male beauty permeating late period classical Greek art and sculpture--particularly the urns and vases, the 'commercial' art of its day--which was, I suppose, the classical equivalent of a Calvin Klein ad."

Wrong once more given there isn't many such depictions. Here is another food for thought for everyone out there; in K.J Dover's book, the guy who brought us the myth of what some modern academics concideres to be "the know it all" on homosexual relationships in ancient Greece, he shows us a total of 600 vases in which he says shows them depicting some sort of sexual act. Out of the 600 vases a total of about ONLY 15-25 vases can be concidered depicting sexual acts IN GENERAL. The rest 580 show nothing of the sort!! Yet from that minute samples he manages to connect ALL the sexual acts to some ridiculous assumptions of supposed "homosexual" acts, even in cases when its not warranted! This is a perfect example of what I am talking about when I said, "inaccurate interpretations."

We continue further: In Book 3 Socrates tells us the difference between homosexual relations, admiration towards beauty aka Platonic Love. It is in this book where he clearly states that platonic "physci" love and not sexual love is essential between tutor~teacher and pupil.

In Protagora Philebus And Georgias (491e -92a & 494e) we are told about a disagreement Socrates is having with Callicles. Callicles argues that a man should give full reign into his desires without worrying about the consequences and Socrates counters with "[What about] the life of kinaidon, isn't it awful and shameful and wretched? Or will you have the audacity to say that they are happy, if they have enough of the things they need?" to which Callicles exclaims, "Have you no shame!". In other words, why would a wordly man such as Callicles who was just talking about fullfilling ones passions and consequences be damned be shocked that Socrates would bring up male homosexuality during a philosophical discussion and on top of that Socrates describes the life of a kinaidon as "awful", "shameful" and "wretched". Why would Socrates describe such life styles in such a way if ancient Greece was so openly accepted of homosexual/bisexual activities; 'cause they were not.

Further yet we go: homosexual/bisexual artwork which has survived, is not much. Even Dover, the guy who brought us the myth of what some modern academics concideres to be "the know it all" on ancient Greek sexual relationships in ancient Greece, had to admit defeat in finding any such depictions and trust me he looked very long and very hard. Dover who some consider the "authority" of homosexual vase art would have been doing cartwheels if such a vase painting actually existed. The amount of ancient Greek literature which has any homosexual refrence in them is less then 5% and amount of artifact which depict such acts is even less then that figures put it between 1% - 2% and I am being generous with those figures. Here is an example, so far according to archeological records, in Attica alone, that is the region of Greece were Athens is located, there have been over 80,000 vases that have been found. Out of those 80,000 only a handful of them have any depictions of homoerotic on them, on the other hand the number of heterosexual depictions is much higher. It doesn't really tell us much but that is pretty low for a society that was supposedly openly accepted of same sex love. The point is that if it was as popular and widely accepted as some like to theorize more of it would have been found.