/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18024412]

How did this flamboyantly gay book about ultra-gayness survive through both the Christian and Islamic middle ages?

[Anonymous No.18024422]

I do know in Europe Priests would use pagan homosexuality as a way to further condemn non Christians

[Anonymous No.18024433]

uneducated fedora thread? have you read the laws? plato outright condemns faggotry. christians are also the only reason you have this shit today

[Anonymous No.18024500]

>>18024433
>Plato writes love poems to handsome young men
>I-It's just the c-christcucks

[Anonymous No.18024510]

>>18024433
He was obviously dealing with some internalized homophobia.

[Anonymous No.18024515]

>>18024500
Technically he didn't write those himself. In Charmides, he was quoting a famous poet named Cydias who is unfortunately now lost to us.

[Anonymous No.18024525]

>>18024412
>How did this flamboyantly gay book about ultra-gayness survive through both the Christian and Islamic middle ages?
They preserved much more explicit stuff than that. Catullus, Petronius, etc.

[Anonymous No.18024569]

>>18024515
It wasn't in any of the dialogues but rather was a fragment attributed to him, along with the letters about Syracuse. I don't pretend to really know, the edition notes I read seemed quite sure of its veracity.

It was quite cute too, something like: the stars in the sky acting as eyes, solely to view your beauty.

[Anonymous No.18024582]

>>18024569
I had read that Plato composed poetry but threw it away after meeting Socrates but didn't know the specifics of that.

[Anonymous No.18024611]

>>18024515
>>18024569
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigrams_(Plato)

[Anonymous No.18024637]

>>18024412
Because it's a based book.

[Anonymous No.18024643]

>>18024412
It only survived in Byzantium, not in the Latin West. The only Plato that survived through the entire Middle Ages was the Timaeus. It wasn't till Pletho that they got the other dialogues back.

[Anonymous No.18024661]

>>18024643
In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer mentions Socrates' wife and Alcibiades' wife which makes me think he was unaware of the more homoerotic stuff associated with those two.

[Anonymous No.18024686]

>>18024661
That's 1392 which is Renaissance times whereas I think the anon you replied to is talking about early Middle Ages. Some Carolingian poets used homoerotic motifs from antiquity in their works too. But they may have been familiar with Greco-Roman poetry and myth but not necessarily philosophy. I'm not sure.

[Anonymous No.18025960]

sneed

[Anonymous No.18026359]

>>18024686
who cares

[Anonymous No.18026385]

>>18024661
Socrates and Alcibiades both had wives. Each had multiple children.

[Anonymous No.18026407]

>>18024412
based translation anon

[Anonymous No.18026973]

I just read this book this morning and I noticed something I found strange. They characterize Love as "he", but regularly clarify that they are speaking of Aphrodite. Pausanias even speaks of the difference of Heavenly Aphrodite and Common Aphrodite, which leads to his points on Heavenly Love and Common Love. I do not recall a single instance of Eros being mentioned. I wasn't sure if it had something to do with the translation. I don't know anything about the Ancient Greek language, so I thought it might have something to do with a lack of gendered pronouns. The translation I read, however, uses "she" several times to speak of characters such as the flute-girl. At one point, Agathon quotes a passage from Homer that speaks of Aphrodite. "Her feet are tender, and she never deigns..." When he continues his speech he goes right back to referring to her as "he".

Can anyone here explain this?

[Anonymous No.18026996]

>This is worse than the time I went to a party with Socrates.

>Hey! I have an idea. Why don't we all take turns giving speeches on what we think Love is?

[Anonymous No.18028432]

>>18024412
Nobody knows.

[Anonymous No.18029126]

>>18024510
How? Isn't homosexual allowed in greece at that time?

[Anonymous No.18029355]

>>18026973
When they talk about 'Love' they are talking about Eros, if I'm not mistaken. That's the word being translated.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » !!bGBGaUpA8kS No.18029394]

>>18029126
There were no christians

[Anonymous No.18029408]

>>18026973
If you can’t tell the difference, you’ve got a screwy translation. A good translation will make clear when they are talking about Aphrodite vs. Eros. The “he” is Eros.

[Anonymous No.18029432]

>>18026973
>he fell for the Hackett meme

[Anonymous No.18029447]

>>18029126
Yes but it would prevent you from partaking in politics, army, and other things. It was not well seen by any means, just legal.

[Anonymous No.18029459]

>>18029447
No it wouldn't.

[Anonymous No.18029487]

>>18029459
Depends on the city, athens was the more allowing one, other enforced some rules.

[Anonymous No.18029501]

>>18026996
Socrates was lucky to have based friends

[Anonymous No.18029853]

>>18029459
>No it wouldn't.
go back

[Anonymous No.18029866]

>>18029853
Will you flee the thread? Or will you respond to this picture?

[Anonymous No.18029972]

>>18029866
>kunaedos
Nice legalism
When used negatively, it could very well refer to both
In fact, the very first use we have of the word, a poem by Archilochus, refers to both very negatively
>Quoting laws is disingenuous
Much less than what this cunt is doing, the part of the dialogue the image derives from isn't talking about an imaginary polity, it's talking about how thing are
Xenophon was not very well travelled contrary to popular belief, he got lost in eastern Anatolia for about a year and that's about it
Plato, who did actually travel a lot, mentions that relations between men an boys are strictly prohibited in Asia Minor which was where a lot of the Greeks of the time actually lived
>Aelian and Athenaeus
Literally gossip writers from hundreds of years later
Diogenes didn't write anything, that was a a later invention
Citing aelian and Athenaeus is like citing Dan Brown for the history of the papal states

[Anonymous No.18029999]

>>18029972
>Much less than what this cunt is doing, the part of the dialogue the image derives from isn't talking about an imaginary polity, it's talking about how thing are
Does Plato actually say that homosexual relations *are* forbidden? Source?
>mentions that relations between men an boys are strictly prohibited in Asia Minor
A speaker in the Symposium says that they're prohibited by the Persians, while talking about how the best city states permit them.
>Literally gossip writers from hundreds of years later
The point is that it wasn't invented by modern historians. Athenaeus also seems to refer to lost texts that he had access to but that we don't. Most of his other comments, when they align with texts that have been preserved, seem accurate. Aelian was also a respected military historian not a gossip writer.

[Anonymous No.18030065]

>>18029999
Socrates in... Protagoras (start a thread in two months when I do the rereading if you want a specific dialogue and part), mentions that Asia minor city states strictly prohibited it, he mentions that it is a fairly recent phenomenon and says the Asia minor cities don't do it because of "interactions with barbarians" whatever that mean
The attitudes of D.Siceliotes (the most powerful men to domineer over Sicily never had anything resembling an eromenos even though it was a favourite of leaders in Athens) also imply that it wasn't exactly popular in Magna Graecia or Sicily
It'd be fair to assume from that point that Plato's hypothesis for the recent advent of paederastia in the heartlands of mainland Greece specifically (especially Thebes, those were rampant faggots) is probably true and that the most backwards part of the Hellenic world Macedon, so backwards that some didn't even think them Greek though the actual conclusions here are mixed both in modern and ancient times, where Alexander was from wouldn't have it either
>Aelian
>Respected military historian
And I'm a purple hippopotamus

[Anonymous No.18030084]

>>18030065
By this point I don't think we have any significant disagreements since you're not denying the practice of pederasty in city states like Athens like the image did. Are you the anon that posted it? It seems strange if so, given the fact your knowledge is better and more nuanced than the picture

[Anonymous No.18030111]

>>18030084
No I'm not him
Any time I see someone cite a source from hundreds of years later, especially in a time when books more often than not ceased to exist in a few years after their original publication, I throw a hissy fit

[Anonymous No.18030118]

>>18029972
>the part of the dialogue the image derives from isn't talking about an imaginary polity, it's talking about how thing are
its clearly an opinion on what type of sex is more natural & not a statement about the content of the laws

[Anonymous No.18030127]

>>18024412
christian priests have a thing for cute young boys too, anon

[Anonymous No.18030132]

>>18030111
This also annoys the ever living fuck out of me. I don't know if it's more annoying when historians or literature specialists do it but both should know better.

[Anonymous No.18030133]

>>18030111
based

[Anonymous No.18030151]

>>18030084
The question isn't if sexual degenerates existed in Ancient Greece, you mong.

The question is if they were lauded by 'pride', like modern ones; and the answer is a resounding NO.

Ancient Greece wasn't very keen on the whole "laws" and "morals" thing, but even so they never fell so low as to condone and normalize homosexuality.

[Anonymous No.18030156]

>ACKCHYUALLY Plato HATED homosexuality
Has no one here read Lysis?

[Anonymous No.18030161]

>>18030151
>Ancient Greece wasn't very keen on the whole "laws" and "morals" thing
What the fuck are you talking about. They were obsessed with law, orderliness, piety and virtue.
>but even so they never fell so low as to condone and normalize homosexuality.
>and the answer is a resounding NO.
But this is demonstrably untrue.

[Anonymous No.18030162]

>>18030156
i haven't. tell me about lysis anon

[Anonymous No.18030178]

>>18030162
It's about an adolescent who loves a boy, and Socrates gives him advice on how to get him. It's a cute little dialogue about love and friendship.

[Anonymous No.18030293]

>>18030178
sounds very cute, i'll read it

[Anonymous No.18030363]

>>18029447
Didn't Sophocles fuck around a bunch and still became Athens' tresurer or something (Okay, it was because of his fame, but still).

[Anonymous No.18030436]

Idk, seems like lit loves readiing Plato anachronistically. Not only was "homosexuality" completely different in Greece when compared to today, but Plato himself was against pederasty that wasn't philosophical. Of course, there is a physical component to love where you want to be near your beloved, and observe him etc., but it wasn't kissing and buttsex (See: Symposium: Alcibiades' speech and Phaedrus).
Love is about your closeness to the Forms, you love someone because they remind you of the life before, you recognize the divine and eternal Forms in observing and talking with them, and ultimately, when philosophizing with them.

[Anonymous No.18030451]

>>18030436
>tfw no bf to recognize the divine an eternal forms in

[Anonymous No.18030458]

>>18030436
>Ywn philosophize with a cute boy

[Anonymous No.18030467]

>>18024661
They were not 'gay' in the modern sense. They had wives and children, but also loved men.

[Anonymous No.18030471]

It's bot ultra gay. He literally falls in line with Catholic Church on homosexuality especially when you consider it together with Leges

[Anonymous No.18030483]

>>18029126
Considered normal for boys. Looked down upon if you carry it on too late in life. Anal sex considered highly shameful.

[Anonymous No.18030537]

>>18030451
>>18030458

You will, it just takes some time and patience to find them. And when you do, it will be unlike anything you've ever felt or seen and it will be hard to name and reconcile your feelings. Is it love, is it friendship? Maybe the closest would be companionship, but it's something deeper, and indeed there isn't a word that describes it well, only perhaps the idea of Love. Yet, it's the purest love you've seen and completely different than any you've felt before. That's what makes it hard to reconcile with your feelings, you will think that you love this person, but you've been loving the wrong way this whole time. It might sound weird, but you will, in a way, transcend the physical love (apart from obviously being near them and talking to them) and won't even wish to return to it, you'll be so overwhelmed by the Beauty inside of them. Read Phaedrus, seriously.

[Carl Gustaf Mannerheim No.18030985]

>>18024412
because its good

[Anonymous No.18031473]

>>18029972
>>18030111
>Literally gossip writers from hundreds of years later
>Any time I see someone cite a source from hundreds of years later, especially in a time when books more often than not ceased to exist in a few years after their original publication, I throw a hissy fit
it's a very stupid hissy fit to throw here because the use of these sources is entirely warranted for the argument he's making. he's not arguing that the historical alexander fucked dudes, but that the idea that he might have is itself ancient and was not invented by oliver stone or whatever the retard on the left side of the picture thinks happened.

also
>Any time I see someone cite a source from hundreds of years later
but this somehow doesn't apply to the retard on the left citing plutarch, arrian, diodorus sicelus and, most hilariously, herodotus? your strictness seems strangely limited to arguments you don't want to be true.

[Anonymous No.18032663]

>>18024412
>flamboyantly gay book about ultra-gayness
So you haven't read it?
What does Socrates do in response to Alcibiades faggy advances?
What does Diotima Praise?
Have you never read a Platonic Dialogue before? All speeches other than Socrates' and Diotima's are wrong, and even Socrates' is flawed.

>All of us are pregnant, Socrates, both in body and in soul, and, as soon as we come to a certain age, we naturally desire to give birth. Now no one can possibly give birth in anything ugly; only in something beautiful. That’s because when a man and a woman come together in order to give birth, this is a godly affair. Pregnancy, reproduction—this is an immortal thing for a mortal animal to do, and it Cannot Occur In Anything That Is Out Of Harmony (bumfucking), but ugliness is out of harmony with all that is godly (bumfucking). Beauty, however, is in harmony with the divine.

Plato criticizes and derails homosexuality in Gorgias, Phaedrus, Republic, and Laws (this is from the top of my head). And he/Diotima (a bigger authority than Socrates) praises male-female coupling in the Symposium.

[Anonymous No.18032681]

>>18030156
I have more than once and please tell me where SOCRATES explicitly endorses homosexuality or does something gay.

[Anonymous No.18032786]

>>18032663
Gorgias
>...the life of a catamite, a frightfully shameful and miserable one?
Phaedrus:
>“When they are in bed, the lover’s undisciplined horse has a word to say to the charioteer—that after all its sufferings it is entitled to a little fun. Meanwhile, the boy’s bad horse has nothing to say, but swelling with desire, confused, it hugs the lover and kisses him in delight at his great good will. And whenever they are lying together it is completely unable, for its own part, to deny the lover any favor he might beg to have. Its yokemate, however, along with its charioteer, resists such requests with modesty and reason. Now if the victory goes to the BETTER elements in both their minds, which lead them to follow the assigned regimen of philosophy, their life here below is one of bliss and shared understanding. They are modest and fully in control of themselves now that they have enslaved the part that brought trouble into the soul and set free the part that gave it virtue.
... later:
>If, on the other hand, they adopt a *lower* way of living, with ambition in place of philosophy, then pretty soon when they are careless because they have been drinking or for some other reason, the pair’s undisciplined horses will catch their souls off guard and together bring them to commit that act which ordinary people would take to be the happiest choice of all; and when they have consummated it once, they go on doing this for the rest of their lives, but sparingly, since they have not approved of what they are doing with their whole minds. So these two also live in mutual friendship (though weaker than that of the philosophical pair), both while they are in love and after they have passed beyond it, because they realize they have exchanged such firm vows that it would be forbidden for them ever to break them and become enemies. In death they are *wingless* when they leave the body, but their wings are bursting to sprout, so the prize they have won from the madness of love is considerable, because those who have begun the sacred journey in lower heaven may not by law be sent into darkness for the journey under the earth; their lives are bright and happy as they travel together, and thanks to their love they will grow wings together when the time comes.
Republic, and also explains all other so-called "gay" dialogues:
>It seems, then, that you’ll lay it down as a law in the city we’re establishing that if a lover can persuade a boy to let him, then he may kiss him, be with him, and touch him, AS A FATHER WOULD A SON, for the sake of what is fine and beautiful, but—turning to the other things—his association with the one he cares about must never seem to go any further than this, otherwise he will be reproached as untrained in music and poetry and lacking in appreciation for what is fine and beautiful.

Laws has already been cited.

[Anonymous No.18032831]

>>18030436
Why do moderns have to eroticize everything?

[Anonymous No.18033749]

>>18032663
>>18032786
all you're demonstrating here is that plato advocates against the wanton bodily consummation of homoerotic desire, while the presence of the infatuation itself is considered normal (being the product of recognizing in the male body the form of beauty), and even sporadic consummation is nothing catastrophic at all for the soul. as your own quote explains: to love a boy and fuck him (!) in moderation is to have a soul "with wings bursting to sprout" and to "win a considerable prize from the madness of love" by ensuring that your soul will "grow wings when the time comes" ie in a future incarnation. i'm not sure if you've read carefully what you've copypasted there but this is plato explicitly stating that even though fucking a boy is a failure, a moderate boy-fucker's soul fares better in the afterlife than that of other men, being "by law" protected from being "sent into darkness", due to having experienced love.

actually, wait, you must have read this carefully, because here

>In death they are *wingless* when they leave the body, but their wings are bursting to sprout

you're placing the emphasis on "wingless" and ignoring "but their wings are bursting to sprout". sorry anon, but it's some real pathetic shit to resort to cheap tricks like that, hoping with your use of emphasis to distract readers from the actual sense of a quote that doesn't happen to say what you wish it said. in this quote he places the soul of a moderate boy-fucker below that of a celibate boy-admirer but well above men who haven't fallen for boys in the first place, and whose souls' wings are still entirely dormant. to call this a simple "criticism of homosexuality" in order to bring plato in line with your politics is to be dishonest and willfully illiterate.

even ignoring for a second all this stuff about the improvement of souls, these dialogues all take for granted that being madly desirous of a male adolescent is a normal, everyday occurrence well known to the writer and his audience. it's the experience that provides the impetus for philosophical inquiry! that alone makes them, to refer to the op, pretty damn gay.

[Anonymous No.18034738]

Good thread bump

[Anonymous No.18035195]

>>18030127
This, I don't understand OP's question. Hell, there's been cases of sex abuse among the Catholic clergy as recently as this century.

[Anonymous No.18035216]

>>18026385
Yes but focusing on that aspect in the way he does is a bit odd. Like he lists famous women and their beloveds and he's got fucking Alcibiades who cheated on her and fucked everything?

[Anonymous No.18035486]

I have tried, but I can't fucking read Plato. All that fucking talking and dialogues annoy the shit out of me but I want to understand Plato. Any recommendations on books that analyze his thoughts?

[Anonymous No.18035756]

>>18035486
horrible idea. the format of delivery is as important for plato as the content, the reader is like an extra participant in the debates. you can read secondary literature to help you, but if you're going to read it INSTEAD of personally engaging with the dialogues then you might as well not bother with plato at all.

[Anonymous No.18035842]

>>18035756
Good point. I have read all of Nietzsche's works and bunch of other philosophy, but I think I just prefer the short essay or aphorism style. Is there one work of Plato that you would recommend to start with, assuming I find appropriate commentary to go with it?

[Anonymous No.18036049]

>>18033749
Based

[Anonymous No.18037745]

>>18024525
God damn, why do they keep preserving their teaching.

[Anonymous No.18038665]

>>18037745
because christian europe was a provincial culture aware of their own inferiority with comparison to the greeks and romans and seeking to adorn and legitimize itself with the surviving scraps of ancient glory. why do you think the pope crowned charlemagne as "imperator romanum" in 800? why not some newly invented christian title,"jesus-defender #1" or something? because even to the christians caesar was a bigger deal than christ.

[Anonymous No.18038728]

always the same
>ancient man
>hate fags
>write about strong male friendships that keep women from ruining things
>modern fags hear about it
>pretend it was gay
>cope

[Anonymous No.18038760]

>>18038728
This is the biggest cope i've seen.

There is overwhelming evidence they were bumming eachother left right and centre. Even the graffiti around ancient athens and rome shows how normal it was to fuck men.

[Anonymous No.18038781]

>>18038760
>2021
>men still call eachother gay as an insult
>draw dicks all over things
>make homoerotic jokes while still hating genuine homos
>ancients did the same as seen in writings
>just enough retards around wishing the world was as pathetic as them that we have to hear about everything being gay

[Anonymous No.18038786]

>>18038728
>the "h-he's just talking about f-friendship, right?" cope
to even post this you had to scroll past platonic quotes where's he's talking explicitly about gay sex and gay desire you illiterate retard

[Anonymous No.18038794]

>>18030151
>Ancient Greece wasn't very keen on the whole "laws" and "morals" thing

[Anonymous No.18038806]

>>18035842
Gorgias has a very nietzschean character, that nietzsche himself liked (callicles, I would recommend that and of course Symposium, which was the fav books of Nietzsche when he was a teenager).

[Anonymous No.18038817]

>>18038728
>>18038781
why do you have to shit up a good thread? you haven't read plato and you never will, and you're burying a real conversation under your greentext nonsense. why do you feel the need to ruin everything with your odious presence?

[Anonymous No.18038838]

>>18038817
stay away from history tranny

[Anonymous No.18038844]

>>18038728

[Anonymous No.18038904]

>>18038838
lol, little snowflake got btfo by facts and logic? keep seething lmao