Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters (Deipnosophistae) 602a · 602a
Lovers against tyrants
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Myrtilus — Ἱερώνυμος δ’ ὁ περιπατητικὸς περισπουδάστους φησὶν γενέσθαι τοὺς τῶν παίδων ἔρωτας, ὅτι πολλάκις ἡ τῶν νέων ἀκμὴ καὶ τὸ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἑταιρικὸν συμφρονῆσαν πολλὰς τυραννίδας καθεῖλεν. παιδικῶν γὰρ παρόντων ἐραστὴς πᾶν ὁτιοῦν ἕλοιτ’ ἂν παθεῖν ἢ δειλοῦ δόξαν ἀπενέγκασθαι παρὰ τοῖς παιδικοῖς. ἔργῳ γοῦν τοῦτο ἔδειξεν ὁ συνταχθεὶς Θήβησιν ὑπὸ Ἐπαμινώνδου ἱερὸς λόχος καὶ ὁ κατὰ τῶν Πεισιστρατιδῶν θάνατος ὑπὸ Ἁρμοδίου καὶ Ἀριστογείτονος γενόμενος, περὶ Σικελίαν δ’ ἐν Ἀκράγαντι ὁ Χαρίτωνος καὶ Μελανίππου ⟨ ἔρως ⟩.
Hieronymus the Peripatetic says that the love of boys was much sought after because the vigour of the young and their comradeship with one another, joined in one purpose, often overthrew tyrannies. For with his beloved present a lover would choose to suffer anything at all rather than earn the name of coward with his beloved. This was shown in practice, at any rate, by the Sacred Band that Epaminondas formed at Thebes, by the death that Harmodius and Aristogeiton brought on the Peisistratids, and in Sicily, at Acragas, by the love of Chariton and Melanippus.
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The setting
Myrtilus calls a philosopher as witness: Hieronymus of Rhodes, a follower of Aristotle in the 3rd century BC, the same writer who tells the story of Sophocles and the stolen cloak a few pages on.
A note on this passage
This is the political defence of the custom: lovers make the best soldiers and the worst subjects. A man will not run with his beloved watching.<br><br>The examples are the famous ones. Plutarch says the Sacred Band of Thebes was 300 men in pairs of lovers and gives its founder as Gorgidas, not Epaminondas (<i>Pelopidas</i> 18). Harmodius and Aristogeiton killed Hipparchus, the tyrant's brother, in 514 BC, and Athens honoured them with statues as the men who freed the city. Thucydides tells the plot as a lovers' quarrel and points out that Hippias went on ruling for three more years (6.54–59).
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