Part I: The Dangerous Meirakiskós

THE DANGEROUS MEIRAKISKÓS Disdainful Eromenoi Andrew Calimach Scenario Types of Pederastic Myth Series 1st of 4 installments This is the first of four articles intended to illustrate what I see as a natural ordering of pederastic Greek mythology. Taken together, the myths of love between gods or heroes and boys appear to constitute a body of moral parables that vividly convey object lessons on navigating the intricate paths of love relationships between men and teenage boys. These love affairs, much as any relationship between a compassionate adult and a child must inevitably be, were a meld of affection and education. Yes, they were exceptional in that the Greeks integrated eros into the mix. Or perhaps they were exceptional in that the integration of desire was overt and conscious, rather than covert or unconscious. These relationships confronted various obstacles, as all relationships must. The pederastic myths as a group identify and highlight those obstacles that were specific to love between a man and a boy, and raise them to the level of caricature, presumably as an antidote to the disease. Thus the myths appear as a vehicle for conveying that insight, and as a body of teachings on how to avoid those known and predictable obstacles that might block the path to a successful love affair between a man and a boy. Success, we are told, consisted in each partner making the other better, the man striving to be admirable, and the boy striving to emulate him, their passion ripening into a lifelong mutual devotion. Devotion, for example, is the standard which Xenophon uses, when judging the outcome of the love affair that sprang up between Pleisthenes, one of the Greek soldiers, and the son of the Armenian chieftain who ran away leaving his son behind. But that is another story. The myths can be grouped into four scenario types. The ones that conform most closely to modern perspectives are those myths in which the man is abusive, raping or killing the boy. Everyone dies in those stories. Then there are the myths where the boy is the one who is abusive, using his beauty as a weapon against the man who, from excess of love, is a pliant victim. Here too everyone dies, most of the time. Then there are those tales where the man is imprudent and fails to put limits on the boy. Here the boys always die. Finally, there are the myths where nothing goes wrong. Well, maybe the wife gets jealous and kicks the boy out of Olympus, but that is a happy ending compared with all the previous disasters. 1 In this article I will take up the myths of the “ill-mannered and disdainful”1 eromenoi. There are only two real myths that are complete enough to recount, the myth of Leucocomas, and that of Narkissos. And there is also a third story, one that hovers between myth and reality. That story comes to us from Pausanias the Geographer: Before the entrance to the Academy is an altar to Love, with an inscription that Charmus was the first Athenian to dedicate an altar to that god. The altar within the city called the altar of Anteros (Love Avenged) they say was dedicated by resident aliens, because the Athenian Meles, spurning the love of Timagoras, a resident alien, bade him ascend to the highest point of the rock and cast himself down. Now Timagoras took no account of his life, and was ready to gratify the youth in any of his requests, so he went and cast himself down. When Meles saw that Timagoras was dead, he suffered such pangs of remorse that he threw himself from the same rock and so died. From this time the resident aliens worshiped as Anteros the avenging spirit of Timagoras.2 The Suda lexicon has something to add to this story. It tells how the boy, filled with remorse, took in his arms two birds, love presents that Timagoras had given him. Then Meles ran along the same path his lover had taken, and threw himself off the rock. Afterwards, the Athenians, moved by the tragic love story, erected upon the rock a statue of a beautiful naked boy with two birds in his arms, poised on the point of throwing himself off the cliff.3 Is this a myth? Or is it a historic event? It is so fantastic and romantic and dramatic that seemingly it could only be a literary invention sprung from the mythographic tradition. However, about one hundred years ago, the historian Charles T. Seltman, on the advice of the archeologist Arthur Bernard Cook, who pointed out that a historical Timagoras was living in Athens in the period likely to have originated the tale and seems to be the same person, builds a persuasive case that the lovers may very well have been real people, and that this is a true story.4 It is thus that Plutarch characterizes the flaws of Leucocomas. Dialogues on Love, 766 Pausanias. Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. 3 Eros: In Early Attic Legend and Art Author(s): C. T. Seltman Source: The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 26 (1923/1924 - 1924/1925), pp. 88-105 Published by: British School at Athens Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30096551 4 Ibid, Passim 1 2 According to Seltman, a certain resident alien potter, by the name of Timagoras, dedicated a hydria, now in the Louvre,5 to the good-looking young apprentice of another fellow potter. That boy’s name was Andokides, and the vase inscription announces that ΑΝΔΟΚΙΔΕΣ ΚΑΛΟΣ ΔΟΚΕΙ ΤΙΜΑΓΟΡΑΙ . “Andokides is handsome deems Timagoras.” That hydria is dated by Beazley 575 to 525BC.6 The master of that Andokides was the potter Exekias, and we know the floruit of Exekias. It was the late 6th century, between 550 and 520 BC. Thus Timagoras must have been his contemporary. That narrows the time range by half to 550 to 525. We also have a number of vases made by Andokides. His earliest, one that looks like the work of a careful beginner, dates to 540 BC.7 Apparently Timagoras first eyed Andokides as eromenos, and then, some time around 540 to 525, he had Meles. The love affair with Andokides might not have been too complicated. Andokides was a working lad, a commoner, maybe a metic like Timagoras himself, and probably glad of the attention of an accomplished and prosperous tradesman like Timagoras. Meles, however, was the son of an Athenian aristocrat. Did Timagoras overreach? Apparently the story of their love is more complex than Pausanias would have it. It is not true, as first meets the eye, that Meles simply spurned the love of Timagoras and told him to go jump off a cliff to get rid of him. Meles actually had previously accepted a love gift that Timagoras had given him, a gift that was so important to Meles as to take with him to his death: the birds mentioned in the Suda, a brace of fighting cocks in all likelihood, since these were a traditional pederastic gift, one often depicted in courtship scenes on vases. Clearly this was not a mere spurning of an importuning suitor, this must have been a relationship of some duration. Was there a falling out between the two, or was the challenge to jump off the cliff a dare to an erastes to make him prove his worth, a dare that went horribly wrong? Then what was it that drove the boy to kill himself? Did he do it because of a broken heart? He did feel remorse, and he did go to his death holding to his breast Timagoras’s love gift. Or did he do it out of shame, to salvage his own honor? Or did his father command him to jump, to salvage the family honor, and to return the two fighting cocks he owed Timagoras? 5 Louvre, F38 Beazley entry: https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/recordDetails.asp?id=0EC2EAD5-EBE3-410B-90ED-F22F16A7 6098&noResults=&recordCount=&databaseID=&search= 7 Mary B. Moore, Andokides and a Curious Attic Black-Figured Amphora, Metropolitan Museum Journal Vol. 36 (2001), pp. 15-41 6 How old could Meles have been? The original sources have nothing to say on this subject. Perhaps that is so because to the Greeks it might have been obvious. To us it is less so, because we no longer have any familiarity with such relationships. All we have to go on is knowledge of other similar stories from Greek antiquity, and of human nature. In particular we have the myth of Leuko-komas (Bright Hair) and Eu-xynthetus (Well-Knit).8 This myth recounts the story of an eromenos who goads his erastes into ever more dangerous exploits, and who pays with his life for his arrogance. It is a dynamic that replicates to a large extent the drama of Meles and Timagoras, though this erastes survives. Meles lived and died perhaps around 530 BC. The story of Leucocomas enters history about two hundred years later, around 330 BC. It likewise appears in Athens, in the cultural environment of the Lyceum, alluded to by Aristotle in his Eudemian Ethics. By that time the myth was necessarily well known, at least among educated people, in order for such a cursory allusion to be meaningful to the hearers of Aristotle’s lecture. It may well have been one of the foundation parables of pederastic love, considering that it was still well known in Plutarch’s time, almost five centuries later. In contrast to the Meles anecdote, in this instance we have a very good idea of how old the Greeks made Leucocomas out to be. In Ancient Greece an adolescent boy of the proper age to make a good eromenos was called a meirakion, and was held to be between his fourteenth and his twenty-first year of age.9 In modern Western terms that would make him between thirteen and twenty, since we measure age in completed years, whereas the Greeks measured age inclusively. Psychologically speaking, that is an enormous span. It includes a spectrum of maturity ranging all the way from late childhood to early adulthood. One would expect that this range was somehow subdivided. Indeed, Leucocomas was said to be a particular kind of meirakion, as we find out from the Oxyrhynchus papyrus fragment of Parthenius. He was a meirakiskós, a term that is the diminutive of meirakion. Leucocomas was a diminutive meirakion. He was imagined by the Greeks of the Classical age as a little thirteen or fourteen year old boy, in the earliest stages of his eligibility as eromenos. 8 The restored myth can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/9299999/The_Greek_Myth_of_Muscleman_and_Blondie_Euxynthetus_an d_Leucocomas_updated_2_2022_ 9 Law, Society and Homosexuality in Classical Athens, Clifford Hindley, Past & Present No. 133 (Nov., 1991), pp. 167-183; Also T. K. Hubbard in his review of Davidson: “Hippocrates (ap. Philo, Opif. Mundi 36.105) and Aristophanes of Byzantium (frr. 42-54 Slater) both say that the term covered the entire 14 to 21 year age range.” Published by H-Histsex (February 2009) Of course Leucocomas is not a real person, he is an archetype. He represents one aspect of what Greek men observed in very young boys who were in love relationships with men, namely that they could be very dangerous when courted unwisely. It should not surprise us. We have the same collective opinion of young teenagers today. It seems to be their timeless nature. Impulsive, lacking judgment, irresponsible. That is why we do not give them driver’s licenses. And indeed that is the advice that speaks to us through these stories. It is as if the Ancient Greeks were warning each other, “Look out! Do not fall too hard for the beauty of these boys, and above all, do not give them too much power! They do not know what they are doing. They will destroy you, and they will destroy themselves too.” There is a parallel message in these moral parables for the boys as well: not to be proud, not to be cruel, not to be thoughtless, as young boys can all too often be. We do not give such boys the keys to the family car, yet Greek fathers seem to have given their young sons sharpened steel swords. Why should anyone be surprised when deadly mayhem followed? It is comforting in a way to see that the Greeks had the same parenting problems that we have. As for the age of Meles, perhaps we would not be amiss in drawing the conclusion that Meles too was a meirakiskós, one who loved his pet fighting cocks very much, and who overstepped the bounds with his lover Timagoras, probably not meaning to do so and not realizing the consequences of his words. And he was a meirakiskós who paid the ultimate price for his lack of prudence, and his lack of sophrosyne. Did art then replicate life? Could the author of the myth of Leucocomas and Euxynthetus, despite the action being located in Crete, have been inspired by the tragedy of Meles and Timagoras? This sort of jousting between men and boys must have taken place a great deal in Ancient Greece, else we would not have three similar stories of love affairs gone wrong in this particular fashion. Yes, three. There is at least one more story in this vein, where a young eromenos dares his erastes to do something dangerous, and one or both lose their lives. In this case, the dare is far more brazen than was the case with Meles, or with Leucocomas. This eromenos actually hands his lover a weapon to kill himself, and his lover submits to the boy’s command. This, of course, is the story of Narkissos and Ameinías.10 This myth comes much later then the other two stories. It first appears around 50 BC, almost three hundred years after the appearance of the story of Leucocomas. So as not to repeat what can be read in the story, it is worth noting here just that the eromenos is a tad older than the previous two boys seem to be. He is actually said (by Ovid) to be in his sixteenth year, thus fifteen years old by our counting. So it may not be fair or accurate to consider him a meirakiskós. He may qualify as a full-fledged meirakion. Or he may not. After all, boys do not all mature at the same rate, and it is crystal clear that Narkissos is emotionally embryonic and socially immature. Upon that fatal flaw pivots the entire myth. Furthermore, he shares an essential characteristic with Meles and with Leucocomas: Narkissos too is dangerous: he destroys his erastes as well as himself. If we can talk about a typology of Greek pederastic mythology, so that we divide the stories into multiple categories, one, for example, being myths featuring hybristic erastai like Laius, Archias, and Achilles; and another featuring hybristic eromenoi, then all these three eromenoi can be classed as belonging to the latter category. All three threaten or bring down death and destruction upon the heads of their lovers, and upon themselves. And all three do so through arrogance and thoughtlessness. It is not a far leap to assert that since the stories in this group all have similar structure, they must all have had the same pedagogic function: as moral parables to teach Greek boys and young men, generation after generation of eromenoi and erastai, how to behave with each other, and of course what to avoid, when falling in love with each other. That seems to have been one of the ways that the Greeks sought to protect their offspring from danger in pederastic love affairs. The fact that one of the three myths was inspired by a real incident could not have mattered much to the Greeks. To them, mythical personages were just as real as the mortals, if not more so. 10 The story can be found here, https://www.academia.edu/71673338/THE_MYTH_OF_NARKISSOS_AND_AMEIN%C3%8DAS_Feb_ 21_2022_ . The Greeks also took an alternative approach in their quest for moderation and for successful outcomes in such relationships. They advised young men to simply avoid relationships with very young boys. In a speech from Plato’s Symposium, the personage coincidentally also named Pausanias (though he has nothing to do with the geographer by the same name, who left us the story of Meles and who lived more than five hundred years after Plato wrote his dialogues) has a piece of sound advice about how to resolve the problem of the dangerous meirakiskós. He simply advocates for men to love older youths instead, and postulates an ideal law to that effect: "There ought to be a law forbidding love of young boys, to avoid expending a great deal of trouble on an uncertain venture."11 Pausanias recommends that men love only boys who are old enough to be on the point of growing a beard. It is a counsel that presumably many Greek men must have gladly followed. Not everyone enjoys the company of a very young adolescent, whether by day or by night. To bring Pausanias’s advice into the present, if I think back to my own adolescence and that of my young friends more than half a century ago, that more mature age Pausanias recommends would be that time when we all started to have to shave off the fuzz that sprouted on our cheeks. That would make us, if I am not mistaken . . . . . about fourteen going on fifteen. Wait a second! What exactly is this solution that Pausanias is recommending?! © 2022, Andrew Calimach. All rights reserved. 11 Plato, Symposium, 181d.