Sad to say, the real Spartans were among the most mystical of Greek cultures... Also, perhaps the most collectivist.

The early-on throw-away line about the Athenians being "boy-lovers" set a hard pace for cognitive dissonance, given all the information from the PBS special on that subject. I think that for most Greeks the boy-loving was recreational. For the Spartans it was mandatory.

We learn as well that "Athens had the strictest laws pertaining to homosexuality of any democracy that has ever existed" (62). In non-democratic Sparta, as well as in democratic Crete and the rest of democratic Hellas, there were similar prohibitions with similar punishments as that meted out in Athens, and Georgiades gives us citations galore to prove his main thesis: "At no time, and in no place, was this practice considered normal behavior, or those engaged in it allowed to go unpunished" (passim)....

Greek vase painting has been a favorite source for the distorters of Greek culture and civilization. Georgiades points out that, of the tens of thousands of vases unearthed so far (the count for just the province of Attica, where Athens is located, is over 80,000), only 30 or so have an overtly homosexual theme; representing, in other words, just .01% of the total (127). When one compares this small percentage to what we see today on TV, in ads, books, magazines, the cinema, etc., one can just imagine what future generations will think of us.

Naturally, [Adonis Georgiades] is going to be more than just a little upset over the distortions and outright fabrications circulating in today's multicultural, postmodern world. A world where the unsuspecting and historically challenged are subjected to whatever deconstructed version of reality the purveyors of the kind of putrescent pap think most suits their worldview of "diversity" and "cultural equality." To such dissembling dimwits, Plato, Dr. Ruth, and Chief Seattle are intellectually, ethically, and philosophically equal! As a result, the unique contributions made by the Greeks in the millenniums-old struggle to lift mankind out of the slime of ignorance and superstition are trivialized, ignored, or put into an ersatz context which helps to promote the "isms" in fashion at the moment.

Thus, we discover that the Greeks hated and victimized their women, that they imposed their culture upon the poor, suffering peoples they conquered, that they were heartless slave-owners, that they stole their philosophy from the brown-skinned Egyptians, that they appropriated their alphabet from the Semitic Phoenicians, and that some of their most outstanding personalities -- and even some of their gods and goddesses -- were Black! Those of you who have cracked a respectable number of pre-postmodern books, or are frequent visitors to this site, know that such invidious absurdities are untrue, and can easily be proven to be untrue. The fact remains, however, that such is the blather being hustled these days, and a whole generation of innocent youth is being exposed to this poison: A poison purposely injected into their minds in order to create the stateless, colorless, genderless, faithless, inarticulate, boob-tube-mesmerized, consumer-drones the proponents of this Zyclon-B-of-the-intellect want to inhabit the "Global Village" they are hell-bent on creating.

"Also at 16 a male child was expected to find an older male and begin a "relationship" (Forest, 1968). The word relationship is used because even though there is much evidence to support...this wasn't a homosexual relationship, it was bordering on it. Cicero (Roman philosopher and author) himself is very clear on this stating, "The [Spartans], while they permit all things except [sexual contact] in the love of youths, certainly distinguish the forbidden by a thin wall of partition from the sanctioned, for they allow embraces and a common couch to lovers.(Scanlon, 2005)" This relationship was formed as a way to help educate the boy growing up and as a way to reinforce the boys' masculinity."

I don't obsess, BTW, about "boy-lovers." I don't even have anything particularly against man-boy love, so long as it's voluntary on both party's parts, which is a trick, however, in itself, given the power imbalance...

Would YOU find a movie that glorified the NAZI SS a piece of good art, just because they were portrayed as being true to their cause, and mouthing words about "freedom?"

Choosing to make a Spartan, who believed in slave holding, on a communal social structure enforcing egalitarianism, in a state-regimented life, into some kind of freedom fighter is as unreal to me as making a NAZI SS man into one. I don't obsess, BTW, about "boy-lovers." I don't even have anything particularly against man-boy love, so long as it's voluntary on both party's parts, which is a trick, however, in itself, given the power imbalance...