Cultural Impact of Classical Greek Homoeroticism - English Romanticism

English Romanticism

The concept of Greek love was important to two of the most significant poets of English Romanticism, Byron and Shelley. The Regency in England was an era characterized by hostility and a "frenzy of … persecutions" against homosexuals, the most virulent decades of which coincided with Byron's lifetime. The terms "homosexual" and "gay" were not used during this period, but "Greek love" among Byron's contemporaries became a way to conceptualize homosexuality, otherwise taboo, within the precedents of a highly esteemed classical past. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham, for instance, appealed to social models of classical antiquity, such as the homoerotic bonds of the Theban Band and pederasty, to demonstrate how these relationships did not inherently erode heterosexual marriage or the family structure.

The high regard for classical antiquity in the 18th century caused some adjustment in homophobic attitudes on the Continent, but not in England. In Germany, the prestige of classical philology led eventually to more honest translations and essays that examined the homoeroticism of Greek culture, particularly pederasty, in the context of scholarly inquiry rather than moral condemnation. Religious and nationalist sentiments in England overall remained hostile. An English archbishop, however, penned what may be the most effusive account of Greek pederasty available in English at the time, duly noted by Byron on the "List of Historical Writers Whose Works I Have Perused" that he drew up at age 19.

Plato was little read in Byron's time, in contrast to the later Victorian era when translations of the Symposium and Phaedrus would have been the most likely way for a young student to learn about Greek sexuality. The one English translation of the Symposium, published in two parts in 1761 and 1767, was an ambitious undertaking by the scholar Floyer Sydenham, who nevertheless was at pains to suppress its homoeroticism: Sydenham regularly translated the word eromenos as "mistress," and "boy" often becomes "maiden" or "woman." At the same time, the classical curriculum in English schools passed over works of history and philosophy in favor of Latin and Greek poetry that often dealt with erotic themes. Byron gives a catalogue in his poem Don Juan:

Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,

Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,

Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,

I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example,

Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn

Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample;

But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one

Beginning with Formosum Pastor Corydon.

"That horrid one" by Virgil is Eclogue 2, a bucolic expression of frank homoerotic yearning.

Shelley complained that contemporary reticence about homosexuality kept modern readers without a knowledge of the original languages from understanding a vital part of ancient Greek life. His poetry was influenced by the "androgynous male beauty" represented in Winckelmann's art history. Shelley wrote his Discourse on the Manners of the Antient Greeks Relative to the Subject of Love on the Greek conception of love in 1818 during his first summer in Italy, concurrently with his translation of Plato's Symposium. Shelley was the first major English writer to treat Platonic homosexuality, although neither work was published during his lifetime. His translation of the Symposium did not appear in complete form until 1910. Shelley asserts that Greek love arose from the circumstances of Greek households, in which women were not educated and not treated as equals, and thus not suitable objects of ideal love. Although Shelley recognizes the homosexual nature of the love relationships between males in ancient Greece, he argues that homosexual lovers often engaged in no behaviour of a sexual nature, and that Greek love was based on the intellectual component, in which one seeks a complementary beloved. He maintains that the immorality of the homosexual acts are on par with the immorality of contemporary prostitution, and contrasts the pure version of Greek love with the later licentiousness found in Roman culture. Shelley cites Shakespeare's sonnets as an English expression of the same sentiments, and ultimately argues that they are chaste and platonic in nature.