Welcome back to one of the most witty M/M writers Kayla Jameth, with her new short 496 BC, and some of the background research she did on the tale.
My latest release 496 BC continues the story begun in
Alexios' Fate and can be found in the MLR anthology Lust in Time. It can be
read as a standalone, but does better if you've read Alexios' Fate first.
496 BC takes place on the Attic coast after Alexios and
Galen set sail with King Lykos on his way to deliver Cyrus to Delphi. The title
is actually the year the events take place. I had the series set roughly during
that decade, but the naming of the stories in the anthology required an actual
date. So I buckled down and did some research on the Persian War, structures
present at Delphi during that era, and what city-states were overrun by the
Persians at different times. There is a little slop (pool term) in there, but
that is the closest I can come to an actual date that gets me everything I need
in this story and the series in general.
But the most important aspect of this story is it gives us
our first look inside Galen's heart and mind, exploring his feelings for
Alexios, his new status as a recently freed slave, and his antipathy toward his
lover's mentor. As well as giving a better view of slavery, class status, and
the homocentric nature of portions of the ancient Greek world.
There are some basic facts that play into that homocentric
culture. The first of which is pederasty. Pederasty is the practice of an older
male taking a teenaged male under his wing for guidance. This relationship was
often sexual, especially in Crete where it originated. Athens kept the sexual
aspects as well. Although, Sparta considered the older male in the role of a
foster father and thus any sexual interaction was considered incestuous.
Homocentric means fundamentally that boys hang out with boys
and girls hang out with girls. None of this mix and matching that is considered
PC these days. In Athens, that font of democracy, women and girls were kept in
the back of the house unless they were slaves and the men owned the world. In
Sparta where women had more rights than anywhere else except Egypt, the boys
and girls trained, but were still segregated.
Everywhere, however, class distinctions were the rule. The
upper class boys were mentored by older men of their class or higher. This was
social networking at its earliest. Commoners might be apprenticed, but not
mentored by their betters. Women and slaves were at the bottom. Free women
might aspire to being considered better than slaves, but slaves had more
relative freedom than any woman. A slave could leave the house, have a trade,
and even buy their own freedom. A woman needed permission and an escort to
leave her home.
Greece has been considered a place where homosexuality was
embraced, but that isn't quite the truth. Pederasty is an age-based system. The
eromenos, the boy being mentored, had
to be a youth, not another man. Equals could not be lovers. Rarely did the
relationship extend past maturity. Any sexual behavior was intercrural, between
the thighs, because penetration was for women and slaves.
Male brothels did exist, populated by slaves and war
captives. The prostitutes often shaved to continue to look like
"youths."
Men who visited the brothels or had an eromenos were still expected to marry and produce heirs. Their
wives were kept in the background and were rarely part of their lives. So the eromenos was the only one who could be
considered "out" in anything approaching the modern sense and even
then only until he reached maturity.
The Spartans, on the other hand, were homophobes. If two men
were found together, they had to redeem Sparta's honor by either committing
suicide or going into exile. Even though the Spartans revered their own Prince
Hyacinthus, one of Apollo's male lovers, with a religious festival every year.
Every city-state was autonomous and had its own culture set
against the backdrop of the Hellenistic world. We just lump them together as
Greeks even though they arose from different clans.
Visit Kayla Jameth Online
