Archias & Actaeon Ch 5 - For a Boy's Kiss (original) (raw)

INTRO: This chapter combines, as does the rest of the work, the ancient structure of the tale with new—but culturally authentic—embellishment. For example, we witness the rape of Telephus by Archias, a story element lost to history but dramatically mandated by the eventual assassination of Archias by his own eromenos, documented by Plutarch in the Moralia (773b). I should reiterate that the particular sexual act imposed upon young Telephus by Archias is not only illegitimate, in Greek ethics, because here it is forced, but also by its very nature, as far as later Greek morality holds. (See my article on the mistaken attribution of anal sex to the ancient Greeks, here: https://www.academia.edu/4905297/Pinning\_Anal\_Sex\_on\_the\_Greeks\_A\_Millennial\_Slur ) It is, admittedly, a stretch to retroactively apply that morality to eighth century Corinth, but here poetic license comes in handy. In this chapter too takes place the elimination of Aeschylus, the true erastes of Actaeon according to Tyrius Maximus (Oration 18), an elimination likewise no longer extant in the literature but suggested by the requirements of plot development. Peripherally, a number of elements add “local color.” We deepen our acquaintance with the historical couple of the nomothetes Philolaus and his eromenos Diocles, the champion of the XIIIth Olympic games, in 728 BCE. They are a pederastic couple roughly contemporaneous with Bacchiad Corinth, the moment in time when this tale unfolds. (“Roughly” is the operative word here, since Archias was said to have founded Syracuse in 734 BCE, six years before Diocles won the Olympic crown. So the chronology of the story does not stand up to historical rigor, but works perfectly well for historical fiction.) Cultural elements are recreated, hopefully with some degree of faithfulness. We witness the custom of pederastic courtship, with its typical “up and down gesture” documented by E. P. Warren and Sir John Beazley. It consists of the erastes (here in the sense of “suitor” rather than “lover”) grasping the boy by the chin so as to turn his head to look him in the eye, while with the other hand fondling the boy’s genitals. It must be pointed out here that this gesture, depicted on countless pederastic red-figure vases, is surely meant to serve as a visual recapitulation of the ideal pederastic relationship. It combines the meeting of the hearts, symbolized by the meeting of the eyes, a mutual gaze that refers also to the mutual recognition of beauty of the lover and the beloved, with the manual stimulation of the eromenos by his erastes, a clear allusion to the principal legitimate means by which the two partners enjoyed physical pleasure. We also visit a gymnasium, where, as the name implies, everyone exercises in the nude. The hoop rolling race, and the conceit that the boys jumped through their hoops, are total fabrications, but ones supported by the fact that on red-figure vases boys with hoops are depicted in the precincts of gymnasia, and by the enormous size of some of the hoops, such as this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berlin\_Painter\_Ganymedes\_Louvre\_G175.jpg So, without further ado, please enjoy the latest chapter of this lost, but magical, ancient Greek saga.