A REVIEW OF
DIE DORISCHE KNABENLIEBE: IHRE ETHIK UND IHRE IDEE
BY ERICH BETHE

Die dorische Knabenliebe: Ihre Ethik und ihre Idee by German classical philologist Erich Julius Adolf Bethe (1863-1940) was published in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 62 (1907), pp. 438-74. A rough translation into English as The Doric Boy-Love: Its Ethics and Ideology by Franco Luigi Viero in 2017, is online.

By Hubert Kennedy

Published in the journal Paidika vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1990) no. 2, pp. 60-2, and referring to a reprint issued by Verlag Rosa Winlel in Berlin in 1983 and edited by Wolfram Setz.

The Verlag rosa Winkel first reprinted Bethe’s valuable article as a separate pamphlet in 1983; a debt of gratitude is due for again reprinting it. First published in 1907 in a journal of philology, the Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, it is perhaps most valuable for its elucidation of the various terms associated with the cultivation of boy-love in Greece in the 7th to 5th centuries B.C. While Dr. Wayne Dynes has noted, “Bethe’s attribution of the origin of the Greek institution of paederasty to the Dorian influx has been weakened by recent criticisms by Sir Kenneth Dover,”^[1] it is still an excellent introduction to its subject, and indispensable for those with a scholarly interest.

Bethe himself notes that his was the first serious treatment of the historical problem of Greek boy-love since it was touched upon by F. G. Welcker and C. O. Müler in 1823 and 1844, respectively. (In his preface Wolfram Setz incorrectly states that Bethe meant an 1837 article by M. H. E. Meier.^[2]) Bethe may have been prompted to investigate the topic by related articles which had been appearing in Magnus Hirschfeld’s Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen since 1899; he cites several authors from that journal—which, in a charming slip, he once calls the “Jahrbuch für homosexuelle Zwischenstufen”. Among them is Benedict Friedlander who, in his book Rcnaissance des Eros Uranios (1904), urged a rebirth of the Greek ideal. Bethe does not go this far, but his even-handed treatment was still considered a breach of scholarly propriety in the eyes of his fellow classicists, as Setz points out in his preface.

The first half of the pamphlet covers the by now familiar documentation of the existence and acceptance of the institution of paederasty in various Greek states, though Bethe admits that some of this will be accepted “only by one who has overcome moral prejudices in an historical consideration through scientific work.” Having established that the basic idea of institutionalized paederasty was the transmission of manly virtues, the arete of a man, from one generation to the next, Bethe asks the interesting question, “How did they think it possible that a man could transfer his arete to boys through love?” This leads to a discussion of the seat and substance of the soul, and Bethe concludes that for the Greeks the man’s arete was (contained in) his sperm and that this had to be received through the anus in the act of love. (He expressly rules out transmission through the mouth.)

In an interesting footnote, Bethe speculates on the possibility that the penis was considered the seat of the soul and finds analogous confirmation of this view in the ancient practice of cutting off the penis of one’s enemy after battle. He cites the Biblical report, “Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king’s son-in-law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.” (I Samuel 18:27) A colleague of Bethe had pointed out that although the term used is literally “foreskin”, here it means “foreskinned penis”, as characteristic of the uncircumcised Philistines in contrast to the Israelites. As Bethe notes, “It is clear that foreskins were not cut from the conquered enemies as trophies, but rather the entire penes.”

In his argument by analogy Bethe cites reports of the transmission of manly virtues through sperm among various primitive peoples, in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen and elsewhere. Much of this must have been unconvincing to his fellow classicists, but, as Setz points out in his preface, it has found more acceptance among those whose “view goes beyond the Hellenic horizon.” Setz mentions in particular the recent work of Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg.

There is a charming picture on the cover of the pamphlet, taken from K. J. Dover’s Greek Homosexuality (1978), showing a man fondling a boy’s genitals. Curiously, Bethe makes no mention of the sexual pleasure which boys must have enjoyed in the long age of Greek boy-love, which, however, finally came to an end. Bethe concludes his essay:

The idea from which paederasty had developed as a civil institution among the Dorians could not last in the long run, even in their states which turned away from civilization. It had to collapse with them, and if it survived, it could only be in secluded regions or, deep under the cultured class, among the lower class as a superstition, which, even if it again gained a new form, as among the Barbelognostics, for example, was still acceptable only in the lowest classes. But boy-love remained as a universally practiced pleasure and was considered throughout the whole of antiquity and in the whole wide Hellenic cultural domain precisely as a necessary element of elegant, cultivated Greek life. It was only the Christian church, which has always been especially zealous against this heathen vice—not even excepting the Gnostics—that banned paederasty from Christian society and, since it was unable to do so through spiritual means, brought its criminal punishment into force in the year 342.

^[1] Wayne R. Dynes, Homosexuality: A Research Guide (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), p. 81.

^[2] M. H. E. Meier, “Päderastie”, Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, vol. 9 (1837), pp. 149–89.