Prepubescent and adolescent children are not socially equal to adults, and abusers emotionally manipulate the children they victimize. Age of consent laws exist because minors are considered incapable of meaningfully consenting to sexual activity until they reach a certain age. In the modern world, an adult engaging in sexual activity with a minor may be considered child sexual abuse or statutory rape, depending upon the local age of consent. See also: Sexual exploitation of children, Pedophilia, Hebephilia, and Ephebophilia The Anglican Church of Canada comments that the Graeco-Roman "ideal" regarding homosexuality entailed erotic love, not of children, but of young (teenage) males of the same age that a young woman would be given in marriage, and that frequently the more mature male was only slightly older than the partner. Fears that Greek models might "corrupt" traditional Roman social codes (the mos maiorum) seem to have prompted a vaguely documented law ( Lex Scantinia) that attempted to regulate aspects of homosexual relationships between freeborn males and to protect Roman youth from older men emulating Greek customs of pederasty. : 17Įffeminacy or a lack of discipline in managing one's sexual attraction to another male threatened a man's "Roman-ness" and thus might be disparaged as "Eastern" or "Greek". The use of slaves defined Roman pederasty sexual practices were "somehow 'Greek '" when they were directed at "freeborn boys openly courted in accordance with the Hellenic tradition of pederasty". : 37, 40–41 et passim Slaves often were given, and prostitutes sometimes assumed Greek names regardless of their ethnic origin the boys ( pueri) to whom the poet Martial is attracted have Greek names. In Archaic and classical Greece, paiderasteia had been a formal social relationship between freeborn males taken out of context and refashioned as the luxury product of a conquered people, pederasty came to express roles based on domination and exploitation. : 72 Homosexual behaviors at Rome were acceptable only within an inherently unequal relationship male Roman citizens retained their masculinity as long as they took the active, penetrating role, and the appropriate male sexual partner was a prostitute or slave, who would nearly always be non-Roman. In Latin, mos Graeciae or mos Graecorum ("Greek custom" or "the way of the Greeks") refers to a variety of behaviors the ancient Romans regarded as Greek, including but not confined to sexual practice. Zeus (or Jupiter) in the form of an eagle abducting Ganymede 1st-century AD Roman bas-relief
Įnid Bloch argues that many Greek boys in these relationships may have been traumatized by knowing that they were violating social customs, since the "most shameful thing that could happen to any Greek male was penetration by another male." She further argues that vases showing "a boy standing perfectly still as a man reaches out for his genitals" indicate the boy may have been "psychologically immobilized, unable to move or run away." One vase shows a young man or boy running away from Eros, the Greek god of desire.
Athenian law, for instance, recognized both consent and age as factors in regulating sexual behavior. Scholars have debated the role or extent of pederasty, which is likely to have varied according to local custom and individual inclination. The argument has recently been made that idealization was universal in the Archaic period criticism began in Athens as part of the general Classical Athenian reassessment of Archaic culture. Pederasty was both idealized and criticized in ancient literature and philosophy. It has no formal existence in the Homeric epics, and seems to have developed in the late 7th century BC as an aspect of Greek homosocial culture, which was characterized also by athletic and artistic nudity, delayed marriage for aristocrats, symposia, and the social seclusion of women. Some scholars locate its origin in initiation ritual, particularly rites of passage on Crete, where it was associated with entrance into military life and the religion of Zeus.
The influence of pederasty on Greek culture of these periods was so pervasive that it has been called "the principal cultural model for free relationships between citizens." It was characteristic of the Archaic and Classical periods. Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged romantic relationship between an adult male (the erastes) and a younger male (the eromenos), usually in his teens. Further information: Homosexuality in ancient Greece