ABSTRACT
In Plato's dialogue the Gorgias, Socrates is probing the hedonistic philosophy of Callicles, one of those radical fifth-century Sophists who believed, like Hamlet, that "nothing's good or bad, but thinking makes it so". Callicles asserts that "it is necessary for the man living rightly to allow his desires to be as powerful as possible and not to check them, and when they are as powerful as possible he ought to be able to serve them through his manliness and intelligence". The ambiguity and complexity of Greek attitudes toward homosexuality can be seen first in the various speculations about its origins, which oscillate between the poles of culture and nature. Both myth and history imply a time when homosexuality did not exist, at least not in the most typical and frequently referred-to manifestation of it, pederasty. Ancient Greek has several insulting epithets that derive their force from the disgust felt toward those who allow themselves to be sodomized.
