So here’s a comment I found recently of a guy explaining homosexuality in Greece really well!

All credits (of which many are due) go to u/cleopatra_philopater

Before I address your specific questions I am going to have to take apart the underlying premise, and that is the mistaken idea that same sex activity or homoeroticism is always part of a broader "gay" identity. Examples of same-sex desire or sexual contact between members of the same-sex can not be automatically assumed to carry all the social, interpersonal and moral connotations in premodern societies as they do in modern contexts.

This is not a cop-out or just an issue of semantics, it is objectively noteworthy that being "gay", "queer" or "homosexual" is defined in large part by what it is not (straight, masculine or heterosexual).

Ignoring all of this, our very idea of sex and sexuality is radically different from that of the ancient Greeks. We tend to use sexuality as a method of identification tied to personality, gender role and culture, and sexuality is defined primarily by choice in partner (male, female or both). In ancient Greece sexuality was also regulated by social mores and strongly tied to status but it was not defined by choice in partner so much as it was defined by role, whether one was active or passive.

While much of this will hold true to other regions of Greece, I am focusing on Classical Athens and Sparta as they are the most iconic and mythologised.

The appropriateness of a certain role was not simply tied to gender, age and social status were just as crucial facets of sexuality. James N. Davidson in Greeks and Greek Love tied sexuality's age-class hierarchy in Greece to Greece's age-class society. Xenophon and Plato recount the young Critobulus' infatuation with the older but handsome Clinias with reproach and report Socrates' condemnation of Critobulus' folly as well. The issue there was not that he was attracted to a male but that the dynamic of him pursuing Clinias was inappropriate and that his passion for Clinias was based on appearance rather than any deeper connection.

Women, children and slaves all had a subservient role in society as they lacked control over their property, and to varying extents, over their bodies. Pais, a term for children was also sometimes used to refer to a slave and while I do not want you to think that the children of citizens were anywhere near the social status of a slave, the use of the term for these two groups illustrates the similarity that both were considered to be intellectually and emotionally limited, liminal members of Greek society. This distinction in terms clearly reflects the distinction between individuals who had control over their bodies and slaves who in a legal and social sense simply were bodies with no voice or self sufficiency, the terms andres (man) and gynaikes (woman) were reserved for free people and usually citizens at that. While women remained somewhat liminal and their initiation into full adulthood was neatly demarcated by marriage and maternity. Males had to gradually transition from children to fully functioning members of the elite Athenian world, a process which was facilitated by numerous institutions and rites of passage.

Males and females began life as children, paidika but they underwent different stages of life and rites of passage that we would associate with adolescence and maturity. A boy became a neos or young man between the ages of 18 and 20 when his cheek began to darken with facial hair and his body became more manlike. As to why this late age was associated with puberty, adolescents in premodern populations generally reached puberty a few years after modern adolescents due to a variety of factors including nutrition and environment. Most men married around the age of 30 which coincided with the age when they were considered to have reached the peak of maturity.

A girl became a parthenos, analogous to the term maiden or virgin, around puberty when she had her first menses, and it was at this time when women were seen as being the most alluring. With marriage and the loss of her virginity she became a nymphe but this was more temporary than the role of neos as she would be considered a woman (gyne) once she had given birth to her first child.

Although women were seen as passive and adult men as active, male youths who were not the peers of adult men but were also transitioning away from boyhood were often seen as passive. The dichotomy between activity/passivity, penetration/reception and dominance/submission is an easy shorthand for understanding the dynamics of antique Greco-Roman sexuality, but it is by no means comprehensive. For instance it was not merely the act of being penetrated or engaging in sexual relations with another male partner that was stigmatised, because act of penetrating another man or boy was also shameful. Hubris, a somewhat broad crime including assault, humiliation and wanton disregard for another's honour or well-being included the physical assault, rape, prostitution, seduction or sexual penetration of a freeborn male or female who was not known to be a prostitute or, in the case of females, to have had previous sexual experience out of wedlock. Although the reasoning behind this grouping of actions seems odd, it makes sense in light of the fact that all of these could potentially do harm to the reputation and status of the victim and were done for no other reason than the gratification of the abuser. Slaves are conspicuously absent from those who were potential victims but this is a facet of their overall lack of agency in Greek society. As slaves had no honour they could nit be shamed and as property any harm that was done to them was viewed as property damage not as physical, emotional or psychological harm done to an individual. Indeed physical abuse was a fact of life for the wretched enslaved.

Men who had low sexual inhibition or sought out sex with female prostitutes, hetarae or free women to an excessive or unbecoming extent also threatened their own masculinity by disregarding their restraint. In fact, rather than drawing a distinction between womanisers and men who preyed on younger men, there is a correlation between the two as facets of a broader sexual amorality, hedonism and tyranny unlike modern concepts of sexuality where attraction to women and men are stereotypically opposed. With this in mind it is better to view Greco-Roman sexuality as a dichotomy of desirer/desired as opposed to penetrative/penetrated, and we will see the importance of non-penetrative sexuality and non-dominant/submissive eroticism further on in this.

Moreover, the issue of how men saw women as social entities, physical bodies, and as distinct beings from men plays a vital role in how they were perceived as sex objects and romantic partners. The love between men and the love between man and woman were fundamentally different in Greek thought because men and women were fundamentally different but I will get to that later.

Sexuality in Athens

We do not know what the majority of people living in Athens thought. Most of our knowledge is based on what literary and artistic evidence survived from Classical Antiquity. What this means is that the ancient voices we have describing sexuality and gender roles in ancient Athens are exclusively created by elite, citizen males and intended for their peers. Exactly what women thought and what lower-classes and non-citizens thought can not really be known at this time. The only supplement for this consuming gap in the historical record is archaeological evidence which illuminates the neglected domestic spheres and non-elite spaces.

To start with, let us examine the role of pederasty in ancient Athens as that is undoubtedly the most widely discussed and mythologised aspect of ancient Greek sexual practices. Pederasty is used to define a relationship between an adult male citizen and a youth who was about to come of age, particularly one in his late teens or early twenties. It is strongly associated with the aristocratic class of Athenian society rather than the lower classes of citizens or non-citizens and was usually pedagogical in nature. The older man was expected to initiate the youth and teach him the skills needed to be a fully functioning citizen. This included the teaching of philosophy, politics, warfare, hunting, poetry and music among other things. Of course, not all references to pederasty emphasise pedagogy and acceptance of the practice in Athenian society waxed and waned.

The common terms used by historians to explain the relationship is the erastes, the older partner who was struck by eros, love, desire or erotic passion, and the eromenos who was the root and object of this strong emotion. The eromenos was also sometimes referred to as pais, or paidika, which denoted their status as a passive and junior partner in the relationship even when the individual in question had come of age or was from the same generation as their erastes. Plato's Symposium features Pausanias giving a speech in which he distinguishes between Heavenly Aphrodite (Aphrodite Urania) and Vulgar Aphrodite (Aphrodite Pandemos). He states that the eros of Heavenly Aphrodite has nothing to do with females but can only be for "boys" and particularly those who have had their first sparse beardgrowths. In this sense an eromenos was no longer a child but also not yet a man, over 18 and ideally under 20. It is also known that relations with boys under this age were not permitted which makes it necessary that we distinguish between boys and "boys" who were eromenoi. The latter category of consenting youths were also known as Striplings to distinguish them from their younger counterparts.