Cultural References
In a funeral speech ascribed to him by Thucydides, Pericles exhorts the Athenians to "gaze day after day on the power of the city and become her erastai", interpreted to mean "that citizen-soldiers should behave towards Athens like boyfriends, erastai: i.e. love the city without calculation, more than life itself."
Athenian pederasty is a major theme in the historical novel The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault.
Read more about this topic: Athenian Pederasty
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the blind belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the cult of individuality, originality and self-expression.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)