[yarddog]

I was a Classics Major in college. I particularly studied Sparta and Athens. I don't care who wrote some book, Sparta was not known for homosexuality.

Nothing you wrote has anything to do with homosexuality.

[allmendream]

Ummmm. Lets see. From 12 years old they are given to a 22 year old. When they are 22 years old they are given a 12 year old boy to play with. By the time they are 30 their new 18 year old bride had to cut her hair short dress like a boy and lay face down.

Yeah, NOTHING to do with homosexuality.

Gimme a break.

[allmendream]

In a well-known passage in his Life of Lykourgos, Plutarch recounts that when they reached the age of twelve, in other words at the time of their entry into the pedagogical system, the ephebes were associated with lovers chosen from the best of the young men. This custom is confirmed in an anecdote by the same author that tells how the king of Sparta, Agesilas, while an adolescent in an agele, also had a lover, and by Xenophon who ascribes to Lykourgos the rueles for love relationships between adolescents and adults. Even if the latter author sees these relations as purely platonic, Plutarch and Xenophon both speak of Spartan “pederasty” as an institution within the educational system of the agoge, with a specific pedagogical function, for the education, says Xenophon about what he calls “the erotic desires for the boys”.