Posted on 10/14/2009 12:10:19 PM PDT by Starman417
The love of one warrior for another has played an important part of many warrior cultures, sacrificing one life for another and never letting down your fellow warriors has been the foundation of loyalty within armies throughout history. Older men have traditionally had relationships with younger recruits as part of their initiation into a fraternity of warriors. The esprit de corps has to be learned along with the code of martial values, an experienced older warrior is the perfect instructor. In our traditional boot camps, the Drill Instructor taught military discipline and set an example of how a warrior conducts himself.
The ancient Greek Warrior culture was based on this format, it has been described in detail by Homer. The role of a mentor and a youth was seen as a means of educating the youth to assume an adult position in society. The intensity of the youth for his mentor would form greater bonds to the military unit and the mentor’s love for his student exhibited his love for the youth’s beauty and moral innocence.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle wrote of this love between a youth and his mentor, without details of physical love itself. Plato in particular wrote of a chaste passion that transcended physical passion, thus the phrase “Platonic Love” came into being in modern English.
Plutarch wrote of these relationships being chaste, that it was unthinkable for an older man to have sexual union with his young love; if a male couple yielded to sexual temptation and sexual congress occurred, the couple must address the honor of Sparta and either go into exile or commit suicide.
Spartans believed that the love of an accomplished aristocrat for an adolescent boy was essential for the boy to develop as a free citizen and faithful warrior. Plato wrote in his “Laws” that homosexuality was “beyond nature,” yet several contemporaries wrote that the concept of Spartan pederasty was haste but still erotic. This concept for us is hard to understand, but we must remember these are cultural concepts that were a part of life in the dawn of Western Civilization, our culture and concepts of love and friendship are infinitely different.
We in the 21st century must realize that we view these events through a prism that is nearly 2,500 years old and the culture of man has undergone uncountable changes. That this ancient culture can easily be subverted by different influences to present a political view or agenda.
These conflicts began almost immediately, Athens had a great deal of enmity toward the Spartans and wrote of this male love with much derision in that same era. The Comedians of Athens often based their whole routine on a perverted view of the Spartan version of love between males.
Homer’s Illiad doesn’t describe a sexual relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, it describes a “Platonic” love between warriors, but because the pair placed their relationship foremost in regard to their tribe and after Achilles’ dramatic reaction to the death of Patroclus, modern man assumes the relationship to have been homoerotic.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net
every army in the world knows this is a disaster in the making.
“Greek Love” implies homosexuality between the ranks and different ages, I’m sure it would approve of pedophilia. But gays int he military form their own subset and won’t affect the larger group.
Of course, if the military would recruit a lot more babes who are willing to put out, that would be an experiment.
How do they separate the men from the boys in the Greek Army?
With a crowbar.
> Spartans believed that the love of an accomplished aristocrat for an adolescent boy was essential for the boy to develop as a free citizen and faithful warrior. Plato wrote in his “Laws” that homosexuality was “beyond nature,” yet several contemporaries wrote that the concept of Spartan pederasty was haste but still erotic<
also known as the West Hollywood doctrine. Maybe that’s why the Spartans were pissed off, they wanted to vent and erase that disgusting childhood memory by killing their enemies swiftly.
Sacred Band of Thebes
bwahahah! cold water won’t do it, then?
Don’t drop the soap.
But Achilleus slept in the inward corner of the strong-built shelter,
and a woman lay beside him, one he had taken from Lesbos,
Phorbas' daughter, Diomede of the fair coloring.
In the other corner Patroklos went to bed; with him also
was a girl, Iphis the fair-girdled, whom brilliant Achilleus
gave him, when he took sheer Skyros, Enyeus' citadel.
It worked for the nazi’s up to a point.
Uh-huh.
The fact that the concept of Platonic love among men is greeted with skepticism and nervous laughter is a testament to the bastardization of the concept.
Pretty interesting article.
the article is garbage.
The ancients were not “pro homosexual” as portrayed by MODERN so called schollars.
The FIRST mistake is an intentional mistranslation of MENTOR and MENTEE into lover lovee.
They don’t discuss the fact that in ancient athens any man caught with a boy was stoned to death. Any adults caught were exiled for life.
This notion of “greek love” is a fake pushed by the left because it is a way to claim the dead the same way the homosexuals claim george washington and abraham lincoln.
see my post 13
“But gays int he military form their own subset and won’t affect the larger group.”
That depends on what you mean by “affect”. There isn’t exactly an abundance of privacy in military. I can imagine it affecting morale. Then again, it’s not like they’ll be infected by the gay plague.
That wasn’t a particularly salacious excerpt. Or homosexually salacious, rather.
A prominent Protestant minister, now deceased, who was exposed as a pedophile, as having seduced a number of teenaged boys, justified it by citing the example of David and Jonathan--although there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that suggest that David and Jonathan were "lovers" in that sense. People can be very creative in reading what they want to into texts.
As unfortunately the courts do all the time.
“some later Greeks may have tried to see a homosexual relationship between Achilles and Patroklos, but there is nothing to support that in Homer”
Not just later Greeks, but all modern and post-modern critics, really. They just love their hidden meanings, Freudian, Marxist, and otherwise. I, myself, saw nothing overtly sexual in their relationship or Achilles’ admittedly excessive grief. Why does it have to be anything more than a younger-elder comrade thing?
Gonna be a lotta fights in the new military.
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