A Problem in Greek Ethics Being an inquiry into the phenomenon of sexual inversion, addressed especially to medical psychologists and jurists — Reading Notes

From Homeric Silence to Dorian Cult

Symonds begins by noting that Homer shows no knowledge of paiderastia; the later Greeks, he argues, retrojected their own ideals onto Achilles and Patroclus. The treatise then traces a shift: the heroic, martial love of the Dorian states (Sparta and Crete) is presented as a disciplined institution, while Ionian and Athenian practices are depicted as more commercial and morally ambiguous. Symonds draws on Meier's article to support his theory of a North Hellenic origin, emphasizing the Dorian ethos of mentorship and military bonding.

The Legal and Topographical Landscape of Athenian Love

Symonds maps Athenian paiderastia onto specific urban spaces: the Cerameicus, the monument to Cimon, the hill of Lycabettus, and the surgeon's shop at the Peiræus. He cites orations by Æschines and Lysias to illustrate how contracts for sexual favors were legally recognized, and how public brothels for males were state-regulated. The case of Phædo—sold in war, prostituted, then bought by Socrates' circle—exemplifies the precarious line between free youth and slave. Symonds uses these details to argue that disgrace attached only to the youth who prostituted himself, not to the adult lover.

Recurring Images of the Palæstra and the Symposium

Throughout the treatise, Symonds returns to the gymnasium as a central scene of Greek love. He quotes Plato's Lysis and Charmides, Xenophon's Symposium, and the graffiti on walls to show how athletic training and sympotic drinking fostered erotic bonds. The statue of Erôs in the gymnasia, Cicero's comments, and the laws regulating these spaces all reinforce the idea that paiderastia was woven into civic life. Symonds also notes the role of the paidagogos and the life stages of a Greek boy, from childhood to ephebe.

The Rhetoric of Blame and the Specter of Hybris

Symonds devotes significant attention to the concept of hybris—the violation of a free youth's honor. He analyzes the speech of Æschines against Timarchus, where the defendant is accused of selling his person to fund gluttony and gaming. The passage, Symonds observes, reads like a Florentine sermon of Savonarola. He also examines the oration of Lysias against Simon, a case of violent rivalry over a boy from Platæa. These legal documents reveal the tension between accepted practice and public shame, and Symonds uses them to argue that Athenian law both tolerated and policed paiderastia.

Symonds never claims to have exhausted his subject; he presents his work as a preliminary inquiry for medical psychologists and jurists. Readers should attend to the way he moves between literary sources (Homer, Pindar, Plato) and documentary evidence (law-court speeches, inscriptions). The treatise is best approached as a layered argument about how a society can simultaneously idealize and regulate a form of love.

I’ve spent many quiet evenings with Symonds’ Problem in Greek Ethics, noting how he sorts the heroic from the vulgar without a shrug of judgment. It reminds me of another old companion, A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 05 — Edition Insights, whose pages also treat human oddities as questions, not scandals. They share that patient, unhurried glance at what we are.