out of the past

Reprints from the classics; biographies of famous homosexuals. ONE believes that the public as a whole is quite unaware of the great and decisive contributions made to civilization by homosexual men and women in every age, as a result of much suppres sion of the truth, distortion of facts and ignorance indulged by certain critics, historians and biographers.

PLATO

PART II

(Those who missed the first in this series of extracts, appearing in the February, 1955 issue, will find therein a short introduction by a member of the Editorial Staff, as well as a brief note by the translator.)

A CONTINUATION OF THE SPEECH BY PAUSANIAS:

"If men were forbidden by law, as they should be, to form connections with the merest of youths, they would be saved from laying out immense pains for a quite uncertain return; nothing is more unpredictable than whether such a youth will turn out spiritually and physically perfect, or the reverse. As things are, good men impose this rule voluntarily on themselves, and it would be a good thing if a similar restriction were laid upon the common sort of lovers; it would be a correlative of the attempt which we already make to forbid them to form connections with free-born women. It is men like these who bring love into disrepute, and encourage some people to say that it is disgraceful to yield to a lover; it is their lack of discretion and self-control that gives rise to such strictures, for there is no action whatever that deserves to be reprobated if it is performed in a decent and regular way.

"If we go on to consider what men's code of behaviour prescribes in the matter of love, we shall find that, whereas in other cities principles are laid down in black and white and are thus easily comprehensible, ours are more complicated. In Elis and Boeotia and Sparta and wherever men are unready of speech the code states quite simply that it is good to gratify a lover, and no one, young or old, would say that it is disgraceful that it is disgraceful . . . In many parts of Ionia, on the other hand, and elsewhere under Persian rule, the state of affairs is quite the reverse. The reason why such love, together with love of intellectual and physical achievement,

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