Scholars may have fought bitterly over whether the relationship between them was sexual (it undoubtedly was), but words like "gay" and "homo" and "LGBT" are com

Scholars may have fought bitterly over whether the relationship between them was sexual (it undoubtedly was), but words like "gay" and "homo" and "LGBT" are completely anachronistic in an ancient Greek context. Greek sexual norms were completely unlike our modern ones in many ways, some of which make most people in the modern West uncomfortable, including the LGBT community. For example, take the Sacred Band of Thebes: > It was composed of 150 male couples, each pair consisting of an older erastês (ἐραστής, "lover") and a younger erômenos (ἐρώμενος, "beloved"). That second word—erômenos—is deeply tied to pederasty, which is something that neither the LGBT community nor conservatives want to talk about. Greek writers describe relationships with an erômenos as often starting at about 13 years old. I think the instinct to distance the modern LGBT community from the ancient Greeks is well placed. It's a rhetorical minefield that allies would be better off avoiding.