Games of Venus: An Anthology of Greek and Roman Erotic Verse from Sappho to Ovid

by Peter Bing

facet of female homosexuality in Greece that distinguishes it from its male counterpart, and from most heterosexual love in the Archaic and Classical periods: namely the expectation that either partner can be the pursuer or the pursued in a relationship, and that desire will be reciprocal. Male homosexuality, as one may observe it e.g. in the elegies of Theognis, adheres to a strict hierarchy in which the older male (the erastes) is always the pursuer, a youth (the eromenos) always the pursued. And while the youth inspires passion in the older male, the reverse is not the case—nor was it considered proper, since for the youth to allow himself to feel such desires was considered womanly.