Detractors of the Greek homoeroticism: an essentialist historiography

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the essentialist mark of the approach of some historiographicalworks written before the Stonewall event (1969) which, as long as they studied the Greek love,education and mythology, needed to put on the agenda the question, so embarrassing at thattime, of the Greek homoeroticism. That historiography, trying to outline the pedagogic side ofthat homoeroticism, due to its crucial importance to the Greek culture, filches or misinterprets itserotic side, slipping to the incomprehension of the Greek sources which prove the relation exactlyerotic of the Greek phenomenon. The moment of the writing of those historiographical workswas of extraordinary authoritarism and extreme conservatism, when powerful interdictionsweighed on the homosexuality in the occidental World, justifying largely the superficiality ofthose analyses.