THE GREEKS AND GREEK LOVE

THE GREEKS AND GREEK LOVE
A Radical Reappraisal of Homosexuality in Ancient Greece
James Davidson

 

From Sappho to Alexander the Great, Ancient Greek civilization is full of famous same-sex lovers. For all those who came after them, this inescapable feature has caused amusement, puzzlement and concern. Victorians preferred to focus on the intellectual side of Ancient Greek homosexuality, coyly ignoring the sexual aspect. Later scholars sought to redress the balance by stressing the physical nature of ‘Greek Love’.

 

James Davidson asks us to forget everything we thought we knew about the intimate culture of the Ancient Greeks and start again from scratch. The result is an engrossingly rich and diverse picture of Greek love which takes in bizarre Spartan sex-acts, recently discovered paintings and fragments of broken text, and throws new light on Greek civilization as a whole.
634 pages, paperback