the Dorian Greeks, and the most important and the most thoroughly known
case of socially recognized homosexuality is that of Greece during its
period of highest military as well as ethical and intellectual vigor. In
this case, as in those already mentioned, the homosexual tendency was
frequently regarded as having beneficial results, which caused it to be
condoned, if not, indeed, fostered as a virtue. Plutarch repeated the old
Greek statement that the Beotians, the Lacedemonians, and the Cretans were
the most warlike stocks because they were the strongest in love; an army
composed of loving homosexual couples, it was held, would be invincible.
It appears that the Dorians introduced _paiderastia_, as the Greek form of
homosexuality is termed, into Greece; they were the latest invaders, a
vigorous mountain race from the northwest (the region including what is
now Albania) who spread over the whole land, the islands, and Asia Minor,
becoming the ruling race. Homosexuality was, of course, known before they
came, but they made it honorable. Homer never mentions it, and it was not
known as legitimate to the Æolians or the Ionians. Bethe, who has written
a valuable study of Dorian _paiderastia_, states that the Dorians admitted
a kind of homosexual marriage, and even had a kind of boy-marriage by
capture, the scattered vestiges of this practice indicating, Bethe
believes, that it was a general custom among the Dorians before the
invasion of Greece. Such unions even received a kind of religions
consecration. It was, moreover, shameful for a noble youth in Crete to
have no lover; it spoke ill for his character. By _paiderastia_ a man
propagated his virtues, as it were, in the youth he loved, implanting them
by the act of intercourse.

In its later Greek phases _paiderastia_ was associated less with war than
with athletics; it was refined and intellectualized by poetry and
philosophy. It cannot be doubted that both Æschylus and Sophocles
cultivated boy-love, while its idealized presentation in the dialogues of