1
Homosexuality Abundant literary and
visual evidence suggests the open practice of
pederastic and other forms of homosexual
love in the culture of fifth-century Athens,
so it may surprise us that none of the extant
Greek tragedies features an explicitly homo-
sexual relationship between two characters.
Nevertheless, fragmentary remains and titles
of otherwise lost tragedies confirm that such
relations did figure prominently in at least
some plays. However, the inflection they
received varied from the idealized compan-
ionate love of ACHILLES and Patroclus in
AESCHYLUS to the VIOLENT RAPE of a teenage
Chrysippus by an uncontrollably lustful
Laius in EURIPIDES (see also FRAGMENTARY
AND LOST PLAYS). This evolution may reflect
shifting public attitudes toward the place of
this originally élite institution within the ever
more egalitarian DEMOCRACY of late fifth-
century Athens.
Aeschylus’ Myrmidons may have been the
first major literary interpretation of the
Achilles–Patroclus relationship in explicitly
homoerotic terms: Phaedrus in Plato’s
Symposium (180a) treats it as a locus classicus,
and extant fragments reveal Achilles lament-
ing Patroclus’ corpse in sexualized terms that
reflect an unquestionably physical connec-
tion of their bodies (Radt TrGF vol. 3 F
135–7). Nothing in the Iliad compels us to
interpret the two heroes’ friendship in this
light, and Iliad 9.663–8 even shows distinctly
heterosexual sleeping arrangements in their
tent (see also GREEK EPIC AND TRAGEDY).
Possibly influenced by similarly ambiguous
Near Eastern traditions (Gilgamesh and
Enkidu, David and Jonathan), the panhel-
lenic epic neither emphasizes nor denies a
sexual dimension to their relationship, leav-
ing it to local audiences with different mores
to interpret the relationship as they pleased.
Presumably drawing on Iliad 11.785–8,
Phaedrus even criticizes Aeschylus for
failing  to perceive that Achilles must have
The Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy, First Edition. Edited by Hanna M. Roisman.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
been the younger and more beautiful of the
two, and therefore a “beloved” (erōmenos)
rather than a “lover” (erastēs) as Aeschylus
makes him.
SOPHOCLES’ contemporary ION OF CHIOS
related an anecdote concerning the mature
playwright’s own attraction to pretty serving
boys (in Athenaeus 13.603f–604e). It is thus
no surprise to find pederastic themes in his
work, particularly the SATYR PLAY Lovers of
Achilles, which reverses the characterization
of Aeschylus to make Achilles himself a boy
loved by SATYRS and others (see especially
Radt TrGF vol. 4 F 153). The LANGUAGE of
the play’s fragments is redolent of IMAGERY
and conceits common in pederastic lyric and
elegy of the late archaic period: for example,
Radt TrGF vol. 4 F 157 speaks of the boy
shooting “darts from his eyes,” like Pindar’s
Theoxenus (fr. 123 S–M) or Ibycus’ Eros (fr.
287 PMG). Radt TrGF vol. 4 F 149 is a
lover’s nine-line soliloquy on the paradoxical
bitter-sweetness of LOVE, a “desirable evil”
like handling ice – at first pleasurable to the
touch, later painful (cf. Theogn. 1353–6,
1369–72, 1381–5).
According to Athenaeus (13.601a–b), Sop-
hocles’ Niobe was so strongly characterized by
pederastic themes that its alternate title was
Paiderastria. One fragment shows a son of
Niobe appealing to his erastēs for help (Radt
TrGF vol. 4 F 448). Could the play’s CHORUS
have represented the pederastic lovers of
Niobe’s SONS (as well as young men betrothed
to her daughters)? If so, one can understand
their inability to intervene. Or could the lover
of one of her sons have been a major character
in the play? Whether the dramatic conflict
that brought about the children’s death
occurred between the proud MOTHER and
such men is unknown, as is much else about
this elusive play.
Although none of EURIPIDES’ extant plays
treats homosexuality as a major theme, it does
occasionally surface as a topic of HUMOR: in
2
CYCLOPS, the drunken Cyclops imagines him-
self as Zeus and the elderly, overweight
SILENUS as Ganymede (Cyc. 580–9; see also
AGE: OLD AND YOUNG), and an over-excited
XUTHUS suddenly embraces and kisses ION in
what the youth perceives as an inappropriate
advance (Ion 517–26). Medea 244–7 may
allude to homosexual affairs as an option for
bored husbands, but the key line is dubious
for METRICAL reasons. At least one critic has
argued that PENTHEUS’ fascination with the
eternally youthful, androgynous DIONYSUS
should be perceived as at least partly a homo-
sexual attraction (Poole 1990: 117–20). If so,
it would be part of the repressed, authoritar-
ian king’s downfall in BACCHAE.
Euripides’ most important treatment of a
homosexual theme was in the lost Chrysippus,
a play probably dating to around 409, since a
HYPOTHESIS to the PHOENICIAN WOMEN sug-
gests that both plays, together with the lost
Oenomaus, formed a connected TRILOGY.
Other hypotheseis attached to some manu-
scripts of the Phoenician Women may in fact
give us a fairly precise summary of this play’s
contents:
Laius, after coming from Thebes, saw
Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, on his
journey. Falling in love with the boy, he
thought it right that Chrysippus should
come with him to Thebes. Since the boy
did not wish to do this, Laius seized him
unbeknownst to his father. After singing
a long lament because of the boy’s loss,
Pelops later learned the truth and cursed
the man who seized the boy with not
having children, or if this should
happen, with being killed by the one he
begat. (Hypothesis 8[a] Mastronarde
1994)
Other mythographic sources emphasize that
Chrysippus committed SUICIDE with a SWORD
out of SHAME for having been raped by
Laius. Some fourth-century South Italic vases
depict a youthful Laius seizing a boy of
scarcely 13–14 years in his CHARIOT, and
Strattis’ Chrysippus, surely a comic PARODY of
Euripides, brought a chariot on stage with
Laius telling the boy how to hold the reins
(fr. 55 PCG), perhaps suggesting that
Euripides had brought a chariot on stage too
(see also VASE PAINTING AS EVIDENCE FOR
PERFORMANCE).
Of the play’s several fragments, at least
two  suggest Laius’ inner conflict between
overwhelming PASSION and KNOWLEDGE of the
moral wrongness of his act:
Nothing of what you chastise me has
escaped my notice,
But Nature compels me, although I have this
opinion.
(Kannicht TrGF vol. 5.2 F 840)
Alack, this is a god-sent evil for men,
Whenever one knows the Good, but doesn’t
do it.
(Kannicht TrGF vol. 5.2 F 841)
Like PHAEDRA, Laius is cognizant of the moral
issues surrounding his behavior. Similarly, the
child Chrysippus, to whom fr. 840 may be
addressed, shows a precocious ethical wisdom
in another fragment:
I would rather be ugly with wise judgment
And courageous hand than bad and
beautiful.
(Kannicht TrGF vol. 5.2 F 842)
Similar to other young voices in Euripi-
dean  drama (HIPPOLYTUS, Ion, MENOECEUS,
IPHIGENIA in IPHIGENIA AT AULIS), the boy
shows himself more continent and self-
controlled than the adult characters who
surround him.
Prose authors such as Hellanicus, Thu-
cydides, and PLATO relate a completely differ-
ent version of Chrysippus’ death at the hands
of ATREUS for non-sexual motives. Some schol-
ars (most notably Lloyd-Jones 1971: 120–1)
believe that Laius’ sexual rape of Chrysippus
was key to Aeschylus’ Laius, but nothing in
the SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, the extant third
play of the same trilogy, refers back to such an
event or to a CURSE of Pelops, nor do any later

testimonia connect this MYTH with Aeschylus.
Others have refuted this speculative theory
and argued that Euripides was the first to con-
nect Chrysippus’ death with Laius (Hubbard
2006: 233–7). Later sources (including Aelian
[VH 13.5; NA 6.15] and a Byzantine hypothe-
sis [Hypothesis 12 Mastronarde 1994]) claim
that Euripides’ play characterized Laius as the
first pederast among the human race. If so,
Euripides’ innovation appears intended to cast
the contemporary Athenian social practice of
pederasty as continuation and reenactment of
an originary atrocity that inflicted shame and
harm upon its very young victim (see also
CRUELTY AND TORTURE). After Euripides, the
theme became popular not only in comedy
(Strattis, Plato Comicus) but in tragedy as well
(Diogenes, Lycophron, and probably Meletus
the accuser of Socrates – Snell–Kannicht TrGF
vol. 1 45 T1, 88 T1, 100 T3, 48 F1).
Homosexual love and pederasty appear in
the work of Aeschylus and Sophocles as a
normal part of the spectrum of acceptable
human feelings. Indeed, one can argue from
our fragments of the Myrmidons, Lovers of
Achilles, and Niobe that those plays even por-
trayed them as noble sentiments of devotion.
However, Euripides’ drama of social criticism
presents pederasty in an altogether unfavora-
ble light: either bumbling and humorous (as
in Cyclops and Ion) or destructive of oneself
and others (Chrysippus and perhaps Bacchae).
This change in sentiment may be correlated
3
with the diminishing status of pederastic eros
within the radical Athenian democracy of the
later fifth century, but it may also be a matter
of differing personal tastes among our three
extant tragedians.
See also EROTICISM; SEXUALITY IN GREEK
TRAGEDY
References
Hubbard, T.K. 2006. “History’s First Child
Molester: Euripides’ Chrysippus and the
Marginalization of Pederasty in Athenian
Democratic Discourse,” in J. Davidson, F.
Muecke, and P. Wilson (eds.), Greek Drama III:
Essays in Honour of Kevin Lee. London: Institute
of Classical Studies: 223–44.
Lloyd-Jones, H. 1971. The Justice of Zeus. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Mastronarde, D.J. 1994. Euripides: Phoenissae.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Poole, W. 1990. “Male Homosexuality in
Euripides,” in A. Powell (ed.), Euripides,
Women, and Sexuality. London: Routledge:
108–50.
Further Reading
Hubbard, T.K. 2003. Homosexuality in Greece and
Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lear, A. and E. Cantarella. 2008. Images of Ancient
Greek Pederasty: Boys were their Gods. London:
Routledge.
THOMAS K. HUBBARD