It is possible, of course, to quibble with some details in Patzer's analysis. Against (1), it may be recalled that there is extensive debate among the ancient authors over the proper upper limit on the age of the junior partner (though most agree that the arrival of the beard marks the terminus of his legitimate desirability)8 and that the ready availability of male prostitutes9 and slaves provided Athenian men who were so inclined with an alternate mode of homosexual expression unconstrained by the moral conventions governing their relations with citizen youths. Against (3), it may be objected that the older lover was often a young man between the ages of twenty and thirty who was therefore quite probably unmarried 10 (or married to someone considerably younger than himself) and that Aristophanes's speech in Plato's Symposium (189c-193d), together with a number of other ancient texts, testifies quite explicitly to the strength of individual preferences (even to the point of exclusivity) for a sexual partner of one sex rather than another.11 And against (4), we should bear in mind that avoidance of anal intercourse in paederastic relations is the normative ideal, not the reality.12 Nonetheless,

Patzer's criteria for distinguishing between paederasty and homosexuality are generally sound enough to sustain his central thesis that what the Greeks exhibit is not homosexuality at all but rather paederastic behavior without (categorical and unqualified) homosexual desire. How is such a paradox to be explained?