According to the experts on the History Channel on Tuesday night, Allie boy's lover was Hephastian (sp?). Also, when I was in college, we studied Mary Renault's writings. She was considered one of many authorities on ancient Greece. Homosexuality was the norm for males of ancient Greece, especially boys in the bath houses. Women existed to procreate and keep the house while the real pleasure for the boys was in homosexuality.
If you really went to a school where Mary Renault was considered an authority on ancient Greece, you should demand a refund of your tuition.
Somebody was pulling your leg. She was a novelist, a popular novelist (i.e. a writer of potboilers). She had no training in history (she was a nurse) and she lived with another woman and was probably a lesbian, although such things weren't talked about very openly in her day.
Not very good authority.