Citations:philerast


 * 1924, Francis Birrell and Shane Leslie (translators) and Robert Gregg Bury (contributor), Plato’s Symposium: or, Supper (Fortune Press, Nonesuch Press, Whitefriars Press), page 40:
 * When in turn they reach man’s estate they love youths themselves, nor are they interested by nature in marriage or in begetting children, except under compulsion of the Law. Otherwise they are quite happy living with each other without marriage. In general terms such people are either paiderasts or philerasts, being always attracted by kindred kind. But when a boy-lover, or any other, chances to meet his own original half, they are both seized with an ecstasy of affection and intimacy and love, and can hardly bear to be separated for as much as a single instant from each other.
 * 1989, Martin Beumi Duberman (editor, contributor), Martha Vicinus (editor), and George Chauncey, Jr. (editor), Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past, volume 1 (NAL Books; ISBN 0453006892, 9780453006897), page 488:
 * On the meaning of the term “philerast,” see Elaine Fantham, “Zêlotypia: A Brief Excursion into Sex, Violence, and Literary History,” Phoenix, 40 (1986), 45–57, esp. 48, n. 10.
 * 1990, David M. Halperin, One hundred years of homosexuality: and other essays on Greek love (Routledge; ISBN 0415900964, 9780415900966), pages 20 and 131:
 * Aristophanes’s account features a crucial distinction within the category of males who are attracted to males, an infrastructural detail missing from his description of each of the other two categories: “while they are still boys [i.e., pubescent or pre-adult], they are fond of men, and enjoy lying down together with them and twining their limbs about them, . . . but when they become men they are lovers of boys. . . . Such a man is a paederast and philerast [i.e., fond of or responsive to adult male lovers]” at different stages of his life (191e–192b, quoted selectively). Now since — as the foregoing passage suggests — the classical Athenians sharply distinguished the roles of paederast and philerast, relegating them not only to different age-classes but virtually to different “sexualities,” what Aristophanes is describing here is not a single, homogeneous sexual orientation common to all those who descend from an original male but rather a set of distinct and incommensurable behaviors which such persons exhibit in different periods of their lives
 * Perhaps the first hint of Plato’s departure from the hierarchical norm governing sexual relations between males can be glimpsed in Aristophanes’s speech in the Symposium: as Foucault has observed, Aristophanes’s notion that each lover is half of a former whole individual makes the desire of each human being formally identical to that of every other, and so militates against the asymmetry of conventional paederastic relations. Note, however, that Aristophanes avoids drawing such a conclusion from his own myth: in classical Athenian society, as he portrays it, male homoerotic individuals are philerasts and paederasts by turns (191e6–192b5).
 * 1996, Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford University Press; ISBN 0198201710, 9780198201717), page 126:
 * Despite legal constraints men of superior status often took it for granted that they could penetrate their inferiors at will; and inferiors included women, boys, servants, and foreigners. This assumption, if correctly identified, would render the modern distinction between homo- and heterosexuality largely irrelevant. Similarly, the distinction between pederast and philerast was less dependent on personal proclivities than on the age at which the growing male could assert himself.
 * 1997 August 31, 0zhgAAADgQDOL6XTNkyEzaSdGZ54wTE1ck5LHiTxsohY2WCyEBQ Leo”, Broome House: Paedophiles, in uk.politics.misc, Usenet:
 * They also had a word which can be rendered ‘philerast’, meaning a boy who loves his lover. Isn’t that sweet?
 * But that is all historical digression
 * 1999, John Corvino (editor), Same Sex: Debating the Ethics, Science, and Culture of Homosexuality (Rowman & Littlefield; ISBN 0847684830, 9780847684830), page 370, footnote 25:
 * To be sure, the pederastic ethos of classical Athens did not prohibit a willing boy from responding enthusiastically to his lover’s physical attentions: Aristophanes himself maintains that a philerast both “enjoys” and “welcomes” (khairein, aspazesthai: 191e–192b) his lover’s embraces. But that ethos did stipulate that whatever enthusiasm a boy exhibited for sexual contact with his lover sprang from sources other than sexual desire.
 * 2002, January, Albert C. Labriola (editor), Milton Studies, volume 40 (University of Pittsburgh Press; ISBN 0822941678, 9780822941675), essay 3: “Milton’s Wedded Love: Not about Sex (as We Know It)”, by Thomas H. Luxon, page 50:
 * Milton strained to redefine marriage as the friendship Socrates recommended — an erotics beyond the sexual. As a result, his notion of marriage sometimes looks a lot like a heteroerotic paederasty, with Adam as the paederast and Eve the philerast destined never to outgrow the role of student and beloved.
 * 2002 December 20, Vigdis Songe-Møller and Peter Cripps (translator), Philosophy Without Women: The Birth of Sexism in Western Thought (Continuum International Publishing Group; ISBN 0826458491, 9780826458490), page 146:
 * Aristophanes regards as homosexual (this word does not occur in Greek and consequently not in Plato’s text either, which uses instead the terms ‘pederast’ and ‘philerast’) only those men who love young boys.
 * 2005, Thomas H. Luxon, Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage, and Friendship (Duquesne University Press; ISBN 0820703737, 9780820703732), pages 185, 187 and 190:
 * It is noble for a youth to submit to his lover only under very carefully specified circumstances. Both pederast (lover) and philerast (darling) must conform to a strict code of intentions and manners, otherwise the act of submission and the gratification it supplies are both utterly disgraceful and ignoble.
 * No longer God’s darling, Satan tries to pose as a worthy darling for the Son, but readers of Paradise Lost know as well as the Son that Satan is no proper philerast.
 * Even if the Son ate just a small bit of food Satan offers, just enough to satisfy his hunger and no more, or looked with pleasure for even a moment at one of the youths or nymphs, he would be admitting Satan as his philerast, one who gratifies his mentor’s bodily desires in return for instruction in wisdom and virtue.
 * 2006 September 22, Margaret J. Arnold, Renaissance Quarterly, Fall 2006, "Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage, and Friendship", a review of the 2005 Thomas H. Luxon publication (see above):
 * The final chapter, “Heroic Solitude: Paradise Regained,” returns to Plato’s Symposium for Pausanias’s discussion of sacred and profane love. In this context Luxon effectively characterizes Satan as a figure assuming the guise, first of a potential philerast or darling in his first temptation, later reversing roles in the temptation of the cities.
 * Even if the Son ate just a small bit of food Satan offers, just enough to satisfy his hunger and no more, or looked with pleasure for even a moment at one of the youths or nymphs, he would be admitting Satan as his philerast, one who gratifies his mentor’s bodily desires in return for instruction in wisdom and virtue.
 * 2006 September 22, Margaret J. Arnold, Renaissance Quarterly, Fall 2006, "Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage, and Friendship", a review of the 2005 Thomas H. Luxon publication (see above):
 * The final chapter, “Heroic Solitude: Paradise Regained,” returns to Plato’s Symposium for Pausanias’s discussion of sacred and profane love. In this context Luxon effectively characterizes Satan as a figure assuming the guise, first of a potential philerast or darling in his first temptation, later reversing roles in the temptation of the cities.