Peter Jones, Telegraph (UK), December 27, 2007

James Davidson is an angry man. His wrath is directed at Sir Kenneth 
Dover, greatest of Greek scholars and author in 1978 of the 
ground-breaking Greek Homosexuality. That brilliant book has become the 
orthodoxy on the subject, and it is an orthodoxy to which Davidson, 
Reader in Ancient History at Warwick, takes the most violent exception. 
Sensitive readers should look away now.

Examining all the evidence offered by depictions of same-sex activity on 
Greek pottery and in literature (especially the comic poet Aristophanes 
and the philosopher Plato), Dover concluded that Greek same-sex activity 
was pederastic: that the lover (erastês) was a dominant older male who 
desired anal intercourse with the submissive youthful beloved 
(erômenos), but was thwarted by laws against mixing with minors, while 
penetrating a free man of any age was seriously frowned upon. So the 
best he could hope for was some quick frottage between the boy's thighs. 
And that was about the sum of it.

For Davidson, the idea that the Greek same-sex experience was a series 
of pretty joyless 'genital acts' involving an older male and his younger 
plaything is anathema.

He therefore sets out to show, first, that Dover's analysis of the 
sexual activity was misconceived and, second, provide evidence for a 
reciprocal same-sex disposition in the Greek world.

Davidson strives to undermine Dover by reinterpreting the evidence. He 
concludes that erastai (plural) were simply gawping hordes of fans whose 
behaviour may in fact have been baffling to the youthful erômenoi; that 
depictions of sexual activity on pots are warnings against this sort of 
behaviour. Acclamations on other pots that a certain young man 'is 
beautiful' are generalised innocent cheer-leading for 'lovely young 
people'.

Most important of all, sexual action - whatever form it took - began 
only after boys had reached the age of 18 (Davidson claims they matured 
later in the ancient world). Indeed, apart from legal prohibitions, 
young boys were chaperoned by their personal paidagôgos to ensure that 
they were not interfered with.

That is all eloquently put. One point of dispute will be that, since the 
evidence is often oblique, much interpretation and reading between the 
lines are necessary (the same is true of Dover's arguments). Further, it 
is very difficult to argue that, because something was prohibited or 
policed, it was not regularly done (si monumentum requiris...).

Myth also is not without its problems. For example, Davidson must 
eliminate sex with minors. So when Zeus snatches the youthful and very 
beautiful Ganymede up to heaven to be his cup-bearer, Davidson suggests 
this had religious, not sexual, significance; he even likens a depiction 
of Ganymede serving Zeus ambrosia at a sacrifice to Jesus serving wafers 
at the Eucharist. That is grotesque.

Nevertheless, Davidson's case will need answering. The ground becomes 
distinctly trickier when he moves on to the question of adult 
disposition. Basically, he needs to show that there is evidence of adult 
same-sex relationships that were long-lasting and represented exchanges 
of 'gracious favours' (Davidson's translation of the Greek kharis), 
pleasing to both.

He is on pretty secure ground with the institutionalised same-sex 
activities of the Spartans that resulted in relationships of deep 
political significance, and of the Macedonians, well exemplified in the 
relationship of Alexander with Hephaistion. But he struggles to 
generalise the phenomenon (to Athens, for example), largely because 
there is so little hard evidence for it.

He cites Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad, who in fact sleep with 
women throughout that epic. They are very closely bonded, of course - 
Achilles, beside himself with grief at Patroclus' death, is all over him 
physically when his body is brought back from the field; but in the 
military context, bonding is of the essence, sex is not.

The consequence is that Davidson, who seems very fastidious about 
'genital acts' anyway, has to argue that sex was not very important; for 
'love', as he rightly says, is about more than sex. But by that 
criterion, historians might conclude that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, 
who were once (a recent book claims) so closely bound together as to be 
almost in love, would count as homosexuals (adding a whole new dimension 
to the concept of the grace-and-favour apartment).

For all the richness and subtlety of Davidson's argument, I am not 
persuaded that the dragon Dover has been slain. Indeed, the very length 
and in some cases eccentricity of this book suggest that Davidson is 
aware of his difficulties. It is also a surprise that he does not 
discuss the strange phenomenon that Greek same-sex rarely seemed to 
exclude hetero-sex.

Nevertheless, we can all agree with his conclusion: that homosexuality 
was 'a complex public phenomenon, essential to understanding Greek 
politics and philosophy, warfare, art and society', rather than a bit of 
after-hours frottaging somewhere out on Lycabettus Heath.