ABSTRACT
In the Loeb Classical Library, which has facing pages of translation, with English on one side and the original language on the other, the situation used to be that where the Greek concerned sexuality, on the right-hand side it would go into Latin rather than into English. The cultural norm dictates that there is something extremely problematic about being the recipient of sexual penetration. All believed that same-sex sexual desire, including a characteristic orientation of that desire, can be an extremely valuable element in human life, expressing goods of love and friendship and powerfully linked to other social and intellectual ends. As Kenneth Dover shows repeatedly throughout his pathbreaking work, Greek Homosexuality, which reprints dozens of vase paintings, this is an extremely important source. Dover writes, “The Greeks regarded the sexual arousal of an older male by the sight of a beautiful younger male as natural and normal”.
