ABSTRACT
We begin with the texts. We begin, that is to say, with the kind of evidence upon which most efforts to understand pederasty have hitherto been largely based.1 These texts differ greatly, belonging to many different literary genres, from epic poetry to lyric poetry, from history to philosophy, from courtroom oratory to comedy . . . and they come from historical epochs that are widely separated from one another, often by centuries. Even so, they present, as a whole, a largely coherent picture of the pederastic relationship, which we will attempt to synthesize in this chapter.
