Even in antiquity, there were those that saw Ganymede's flight into the sky as a metaphor for the soul's journey into heaven. The second reading of the narrative saw Zeus' abduction of Ganymede as a deeply spiritual one. The plays of Aristophanes contain lacerating lampoons of 'men-lovers'. Any man who carried on sexual relationships with other adults could expect to find themselves deeply ridiculed. Many Greek poets lamented the first growth of a boy's beard because that was the age at which their relationship had to end. The pederastic partnership was also heavily hedged about with social rules. The older lover would typically have a wife at home and the younger lover would be expected to marry a woman later in life. These relationships were not what we would today call homosexual. Uli Nimptsch (1897–1977) Britten Pears Arts
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