/lit/ - Literature

>>19556543
Regarding the Sacred Band:
>Some people say that this band was composed of lovers [erastôn] and beloveds [erōménōn], and tradition records a witty remark of Pammenes to this effect. He said that Homer’s Nestor was not a shrewd tactician when he ordered that the Greeks be drawn up according to tribe and clan, “so that clan might aid clan, and tribe tribe,” and that what he should have done was station lover beside beloved. For when the going gets tough, tribesmen don’t give much thought for their fellow tribesmen, nor clansmen for their fellow clansmen. But a battalion joined together by erotic love [erotikís philíās] cannot be destroyed or broken: its members stand firm beside one another in times of danger, lovers and beloveds alike motivated by a sense of shame in the presence of the other.
—Plutarch, Pelopidas 18.2-4 (tr. Thomas K. Hubbard)
Apart from the fact that it would be hardly be noteworthy for a military division to be made up of men bound by ties of ordinary friendship, the fact Plutarch is describing a unit famed for practicing pederasty is strengthened by his reference to the mythological Laius (who incurred the wrath of the gods by raping a freeborn boy named Chrysippus):
>The Thebans’ practice of intimacy with lovers [erastā́s synítheias], to speak more generally, did not have its origin, as the poets say, in the passion of Laius. Rather, the practice grew out of deliberate policies that the lawgivers adopted in order to temper and soften the Thebans’ fiery and violent nature right from childhood.
—Plutarch, Pelopidas 19.1

It's worth mentioning that BAP's idol, Nietzsche, describes the relationships between men and youths in ancient Athens as erotic ("erotische") in section 259 of Human, All Too Human and singles this erotic dimension out for praise:
>The erotic relation of men to youths was the necessary and sole preparation, to a degree unattainable to our comprehension, of all manly education (pretty much as for a long time all higher education of women was only attainable through love and marriage). All idealism of the strength of the Greek nature threw itself into that relation, and it is probable that never since have young men been treated so attentively, so lovingly, so entirely with a view to their welfare (virtus) as in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.
—Friedrich Nietzche, Human, All Too Human 259

[cont]

>>19347647
Next time we have a fascist revolution can we base it on Greek love?

>The erotic relation of men to youths was the necessary and sole preparation, to a degree unattainable to our comprehension, of all manly education (pretty much as for a long time all higher education of women was only attainable through love and marriage). All idealism of the strength of the Greek nature threw itself into that relation, and it is probable that never since have young men been treated so attentively, so lovingly, so entirely with a view to their welfare (virtus) as in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.
—Friedrich Nietzche, Human, All Too Human

>What does our chatter about the Greeks amount to! What do we understand of their art, the soul of which is passion for naked male beauty!
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, Aphorism 170

>Even the boldest remained still before Holbein's self-portrait in the hall of drawings! And I now struggled futilely in Nietzsche's presence to define the magical attraction of that wonderful portrait. It did not help that I so-to-speak traced line after line of that face. This approach was powerless to describe the expression of fully developed manhood combined with the charm of fresh youth (Holbein's self-portrait, as is known, presents him without a beard). And I failed to capture even the individual traits in their full value. I faltered when I came to the mouth. I could see the lips before me. So fully rounded yet so energetically closed! Not avid, yet as if created for pleasure!
>"A mouth . . .," I stammered bewilderedly.
>"A mouth to kiss!"
>Disconcertedly I looked aside. Truly, it was Nietzsche who had spoken, in an attitude and a tone which seemed to contrast most strangely with the mildly sensual coloration of his words. For leaning far back in his armchair, his head bowed onto his chest and his arms hanging limply on the armrests, he seemed to have spoken out of a dream rather than as a comment on my report.
—Ludwig von Scheffler's recollection of Nietzsche