Sexuality And Gender In The Classical World - Readings And Sources / quote 3 of 8
The myth of a pagan sexual golden age
Our own culture has its myths about the remote past, and one myth that dies hard is that the "invention" of sexual guilt, shame and fear by the christians destroyed a golden age of free, fearless and pagan sexuality. ....linguistic inhibition, then, was observably strengthened in the course of the classical period; and at least in some art-forms, inhibition extended also to content... pp.20-21
...Greek girls were segregated from boys and brought up at home in ignorance of the world outside the home... ..Married young, perhaps at fourteen, a girl exchanged confinement in her father's house for confinement in her husband's. ..greek laws were not lenient towards adultery, and moikheia, for which we have no suitable translation except "adultery", denoted not only the seduction of another man's wife, but also the seduction of his widowed mother, unmarried daughter, sister, niece, or any other woman whose legal guardian he was. ...while an adolescent boy who blushed at the mere idea of proximity to a woman was praised as sophron, 'right-minded'... pp. 21-22