Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

MaLeE HoMOSEXUALITY

that he would undergo any labour and do everything he ordered. The boy, for a joke, ordered him to bring the bell from a fortified place which was strongly guarded by Archelaus, tyrant of the Heracleotes, thinking that he would never be able to accomplish this task. But Antileon secretly entered the fort, ambushed and slew the keeper of the bell, and afterwards, when he had come to the boy—who kept his promise—they became very intimate, and henceforward loved each other greatly. It chanced, however, that the tyrant himself became enamoured of the lad and when he threatened violence Antileon, being angry, exhorted him not to imperil his life by refusing, since the tyrant had power to carry out his wishes and his threat; but he himself attacked and slew the tyrant when leaving his house, and having done this, he ran away and would have escaped had he not got mixed up with some herds of sheep and been captured. Wherefore, the city having been freed by the death of the tyrant, brazen statues were set up by the people of Heraclea to both Antileon and the boy, and a law was passed that in future no one should drive herds of sheep through the streets ” (FHG, II, 208, 16).

Lastly, appreciating the beauty of boys, it is not to be wondered at that beautiful boys were also employed for paying tribute. As early as Homer, Agamemnon offers to present the insulted Achilles with some youths by way of expiation.

Further, we read in Herodotus (iii, 97) that the Ethiopians every other year were obliged to deliver to the King of the Persians, besides pure gold, 200 chests of ebony and twenty elephants’ tusks, also five boys; every four years the Colchians sent 100 boys and roo girls; and both these instances of tribute actually continued in the time of Herodotus.

These boys served the Persian nobles as pages, cupbearers, and favourites. That even a worse lot threatened such boys, is clear from another passage of Herodotus (iii, 48), in which he relates that

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