Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: Boys Were Their Gods (Classical Studies)

Just what I was looking for and a pretty good price too . I am very happy! A+

Cross references were a bit confusing to me.

I got the feeling that the truth was written here. I loved the fact that there were so many direct quotes from the ancient Greek and Roman commentators of the day. It has added to my knowledge of how Greek and Roman society functioned. Excellent read!!

The authors presented 100 vases! Flipping through the pages and looking at them before reading was interesting...but....When I started reading about each vase - I was amazed at how complex and simple and what I was really looking at it became!It was well written in that they talked about each vase...sometimes going back to it and referring to specific vases even though the chapter might be dealing with another related topic. Lear and Cantonella pulled it altogether in a logic and easy to read book.They explained what I was looking at and also other reference books as well. They didn't gloss over each vase...but came back to many of them to tie the story of this love altogether.It was well laid out and I know I learned a lot, because subsequently I have looked at other vases and now I can really 'see' the courtship, the erastes the eromenus ...the story of the relationship between them. It also taught me to look to the background, the symbols as this too was revealing.

The book is good, but it's not easy reading. It seems to me that it will serve a future generation of scholars very well.

The pictures were small and hard to see and of poor quality.

Lear and Cantarella have produced a great cross-over volume. They make a serious contribution to the scholarship on gender and sexuality in the ancient world; at the same time, their book is accessible to the general reader curious about sex and gender or ancient Greek culture and art. The study of same-sex love in the ancient Greek world was fundamental to the birth of modern gender studies, and from the beginning scholars have acknowledged that artistic evidence is as important to this area as literary evidence; the scenes on painted vases have always been considered particularly important. Most scholarship in the area has, however, focused on literary sources (Plato, Aristophanes, etc.), and even when visual evidence has been used, it has generally been interpreted simplistically, as if art portrayed social reality directly. This richly illustrated volume is the first general introduction to scenes of same-sex love in vase-painting. It gathers all the different types of scenes and explains how this artistic genre portrays same-sex love through its own language of repeated elements. It argues (quietly) that vase-painting portrays pederasty (the erotic relations between adult men and adolescent youths that were customary in the Greek world) as a central part of the life of ideal elite males; other types of male-male love, when they appear, are portrayed, by contrast, as comic and ugly.The book rarely engages explicitly in scholarly debate, though it does so occasionally, as when Lear briefly disproves the common idea that vase-painting portrays pederastic courtship, metaphorically, as a kind of hunt. Instead it responds to other scholars in a subtler way, for instance by focusing less on the relatively rare scenes of consummated sex that dominate scholarly discussion and more on the much more common scenes of courtship. The result is a book that provides the average, interested reader with a fascinating introduction both to Greek pederasty and to the interpretation of the scenes on the painted vases that fill the Classical rooms in every art museum. I have only a few complaints. Although scenes of female same-sex love are extremely rare in vase-painting, it might be nice if the authors at least discussed them briefly: the Greeks may not have seen any connection between female-female love and pederasty, but for a modern reader, they are part of the same phenomenon. Also, it will be a pity if this book does not come out in paperback. It could interest a large market, but at the hardcover price many of us will have to read it in the library.

Accurate scholarship; the images are beautiful.

The best work on the subject since Prof Dover's 'Greek Homosexuality' and indeed surpasses that research. Prof Lear's work (in particular) provides a much clearer understanding of this social phenomenon thanks to a much wider study of vase paintings and inscriptions and a much more thorough investigation into the details. The subsequent analysis of common tropes and motifs gives the best insight yet into such relationships, although much of course still remains unanswered and, given the passage of time, always will.

Même si le propos du livre est très intéressant, il faut savoir que le texte n'occupe que 40 % environ du livre (tout le reste n'étant des listes de références diverses concernant les vases cités ou les ouvrages utilisés par l'auteur ). Les images sont peu visibles sur le Kindle et on ne peut pas vraiment les agrandir, et cela est très frustrant. Donc, au total assez décevant et cher vu le peu de texte à lire et surtout les images peu visibles.