Plato's last and longest dialogue, and the other side of the argument. An old Athenian tells a Cretan and a Spartan that love between men is against nature, and accuses the Cretans of making up the myth of Ganymede to excuse it.
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Three old men, an Athenian, a Cretan and a Spartan, walk from Knossos toward the cave of Zeus on a long summer day, designing the laws of a new city as they go. Twice the talk turns to love. In Book 1 the Athenian blames the men's common meals and gymnasia of Crete and Sparta for encouraging sex between men, which he calls contrary to nature. In Book 8 he proposes laws to stop it, and admits that his two companions' cities would never accept them. We are pressing those two passages. It is being pressed now and can't be read here yet. Support it and it opens sooner.
Plato was still working on the Laws when he died in 347 BC. It is the only dialogue in which Socrates does not appear at all.
This is the passage people quote to show that the Greeks condemned love between men. Read in full, it also shows what the Athenian was arguing against: he says plainly that the custom of Crete and Sparta was on the other side. The same Plato wrote the Symposium and the Phaedrus.
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