How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)

by David Goldman

Greek religion does not propose to overcome death, but only to flee from it for a while—into the arms of perpetual youth. If, as Rose Castorini said in Moonstruck, modern men chase women because they want to live forever, Greek men found that the search for eternity was served better by chasing a youthful version of themselves. The older lover worships his own youthful image in the form of his adolescent beloved. Where the Hebrew religion channeled the sexual impulse into marriage and procreation within a covenantal community, Greek religion linked the martial defense of the polis to the lover’s vicarious return to youth through his erômenos. The separation of sexuality from procreation in Greek culture helps explain the terrible demographic decay that Greece would suffer during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.