In this essay, I researched the Athenian attitudes towards same sex relationships between men during the classical period, a subject that was made popular in the 1970’s by James Dover. After a short introduction on how homosexuality was perceived and a thorough walkthrough of Aeschines speech Against Timarchus, I reached a better understanding of two main questions, the first being what the role of pederasty was, how boys were protected by the law and if the law was only meant to protect boys or also adult men. The second question being whether Timarchus was guilty of prostitution or the jury judged him wrongfully. Through using the method close reading of the speech, in which Aeschines accuses Timarchus of theft and prostitution, which the jury voted Timarchus to be guilty of, I try to answer those two questions. In the process, I also discuss Aeschines relationship with Demosthenes, the person who spoke in Timarchus favour. The conclusion I come to for the first question is that there were certain laws in place for pederasty, some of which must have protected the boys, but as other authors before me have pointed out also must have been in place to protect adults from being tempted to, what they considered, sin. For the second question, I conclude that Aeschines is lacking evidence of Timarchus' crimes of prostitution. Before Timarchus was put on trial he was about to prosecute Aeschines, which is a motive for Aeschines to get him banned from public speaking, a matter easily achieved by getting Timarchus judged guilty of crimes, I believe, were made up.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-328330 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Schouten, Fleur |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Antikens kultur och samhällsliv |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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