#might read that and think all bottoms lost their rights in classical athens or something

[kebriones]

A clarification on Athenian Laws concerning male homosexuality.

(because this particular small thing is often misunderstood, due to inability to accurately translate specific ancient greek terms into english, or lack of comprehension of context.)

In classical athens, there was a very specific set of laws, concerning ONLY male athenian citizens (so slaves, women and metics were not subject to it). These laws said that a male athenian citizen who engages in intercourse with another man IN EXCHANGE FOR PAYMENT, was not allowed to do certain things, such as hold positions of power or speak in the assembly. There were also potential penalties (not described in detail) for the person hiring an athenian citizen for this purpose. Again, this is often misunderstood, so I have to repeat, this was only when it was done in exchange for some sort of payment/recompense. The word used for these men is of the same root as εταιρα, which was the female counterpart. It is often mistranslated, there's a whole thing I could go on explaining about the different types of prostitution terms, but basically there was a distinction between prostitute and courtesan/escort/whatever you'd call them in english. Also, this law did not forbid this, and it was not a prosecutable offense by itself. The offense was if one such man disobeyed the limitations set by the law, and it's unclear to me what the deal was with the person who paid.

SO yeh. Next time someone says there were laws against homosexuality in classical athens, here's a helpful article of a guy explaining this much better than me, and goes into more detail about all the weird intricacies of the legal system, as well as the laws set in place to protect boys from grown men:

and here's our original source about these laws: