Why was there no word for homosexuality in ancient Greece?
Description: Greek same-sex love. Fresco from the Tomb of the Diver. 475 BC.
Location: Paestum Museum, Italy.
The ancient Greek language is one of the oldest in the world and has an enormous wealth of words. Everything in Ancient Greek is precisely described, and often there are several words with the same meaning. However, there is no distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality. How is it possible that there is such an omission in such a language?
Antisthenes said about the great importance of the words: "Ἀρχή Σοφίας ἡ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐπίσκεψις". This means: "The exploration of the meaning of words is the beginning of education". In the Greek language there is nothing random. In this question, then, language has a position, and a particularly hard one. Homosexuals are referred to with the very offensive word "Κίναιδος"(Kinaidos), which comes from the union of the words "κινώ"(move) and "αιδώς"(shame) meaning the one who causes shame. The meaning of this word is purely insulting and condemning.
In ancient Koine Greek, the word for effeminate is κίναιδος kinaidos (cinaedus in its Latinized form), or μαλακοί malakoi: a man "whose most salient feature was a supposedly "feminine" love of being sexually penetrated by other men".
"A cinaedus is a man who cross-dresses or flirts like a girl. Indeed, the word's etymology suggests an indirect sexual act emanating a promiscuous woman. This term has been borrowed from the Greek kinaidos (which may itself have come from a language of Ionian Greecs of Asia Minor, primarily signifying a purely effeminate dancer who entertained his audiences with a tympanum or tambourine in his hand, and adopted a lascivious style, often suggestively wiggling his buttocks in such a way as to suggest anal intercourse....The primary meaning of cinaedus never died out; the term never became a dead metaphor."
Aidos(Greek: Αἰδώς) was the Greek goddess of shame, modesty, respect and humility. Aidos, as a trait, was that feeling of awe or shame which kept men from doing wrong, and those who challenged her were severely punished by the goddess of vengeance Nemesis who accompanied her. There are references to her in various early Greek plays, such as Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides and Oedipus Rex by Sophocles.
There were altars for Aidos in the main cities of ancient Greece, such as Athens and Sparta. The majority of public opinion believes that homosexuality was something socially accepted in ancient Greece, but in reality, exactly the opposite happened.
Source:
“Homosexuality In Ancient Greece The Myth Is Collapsing” Book by Adonis Georgiades
