| NOTE: Some postings may have been deleted at the discretion of Ben
Boxer. Erotic pictures posted on the regular version of the list are automatically
deleted from the digest and are archived separately. Viewing them requires
a password available only to members. Profiles posted to the list are
also moved into a separate viewing area, but do not require a password.
Click here to browse through
them.
In this issue:
-Queer as Folk comes down under
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Foxtel, our News Corporation cable channel will be showing Queer as Folk, the UK version from next week. However,...."due to the subject matter, and to give the viewers the opportunity to view the program as the producers intended, we give you the opportunity to dial a special number to view the program". Foxtel are running the show on its own channel, so people must choose to view it, and the special channel is there so people don't accidentally stumble upon it. The special channel is free. At 10pm on a Sunday night, I can see how those easily offended will stumble upon it.
Good on ya Rupert. I know this a bit unusual, but I remember that after Hurricane Mitch, several religious groups were already beginning to rally for donations to help the people here in Honduras. So a News program began to tell where each group was. An Evangelic group named "Christian Companionship Herd" or whatever they're named complained about it. They (the evangelics) send a letter saying that one thing is a Christian and another thing is a Catholic. As a Catholic (believer, not practitioner) it really offends me that attitude. It felt like that Jerk who is CEO of that company who's obssessed with having the name "Virgin" solely for his company. I just want to vent this out because this paranoid group is really annoying sometimes here (my brother in law joined them because of some recurring nightmares and then he left them after one of the members told him that the church is more important than his family.) I really loved to walk through their prayer sessions ( when they ocurred at my sister's house) with only my checked boxers, a white t-shirt with lot's o' holes and a walkman and since I don't look like you average skinny asian (I'm a fat asian bear cub) well... It was fun to see their killer stares. I'm not going to poopoo other religions (hey I'm sounding like Pat Robertson who wipes his ass with the beliefs of others and then apologises at the end of every show!!!) But it bothers me so hear others doing it as if it were their right just beacuse they say so...
Angel Perhaps the timing of this topic is wrong, as many of us are still working on taxes and sometimes these number's ain't pretty. So I apologize for the topic. My lover and I find ourselves in a situation that perhaps some of you can relate to. My lover is 69 yo, and I am 30, and we've been together for 9 years. We're going over setting up a will, and find ourselves very frustrated about some of the results as far as inheritance tax amounts. We consulted with a (straight) lawyer that listed a number of disadvantages about the fact that, for one thing, I am not a US citizen/resident (working on green card paper work still), am 39 years younger than him (generation skippining tax) and that we're only "friends" (as opposed to spouses). All it comes down to is that the federal government gets to keep 65% of any estate I inherit. I do not doubt that the lawyer we consulted is right in his assessments, but I wonder if he has gone that extra mile to find other exemptions or benefits that can apply and that would reduce that rediculous % number. From the conversations that have taken place, I get the feeling that our being a gay couple is not especially an incentive for him to get us the best results possible. From the corrspondance that occurs within the list, I know there are quite a few brilliant guys that belong to the Ben Boxer's list, as well as many professionals that may be able to point us in the right direction. Maybe some one knows a gay laywer we can talk to (we live in the NYC area), or some of you have gone or are going through the same preparations for inheritance? We would really appreciate any thoughts you can share with us.
Pete and Javier
Dear Pete and Javier,
And, do you understand that a quite large sum is exempted
from the estate
tax? The threshold before it kicks in is high enough that
the tax does not
affect most estates.
To Pete and Javier:
Rich
Dear list members, We had great input from you, and though we have sent individual thank you notes, we also want to publicly aknowledge the fact that this list rocks. Thank you all, and especially Ben for bringing us all together and maintaining this high quality group. Thanks to all the input we received, we feel better prepared to look at alternatives to deal with the cumbersome taxes.
Love you all,
A startling phallic stalagmite, the likely focus of ancient cult activity, is discovered in Nakovana cave, Croatia. A Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) researcher, Dr. Tim Kaiser, led an international team of archaeologists to find the world's first-known Illyrian sanctuary from 2,000 years ago. The ROM is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This unprecedented discovery, made in a newly discovered chamber within the Nakovana Cave (located in Dalmatia on a remote hillside on Croatia's Adriatic coast), has revealed an astonishing phallic stalagmite surrounded by ritual artifacts. The excavation of this unusual site, evidently sealed for the last 2,000 years, has provided new insight into the Illyrian people, contemporaries of the ancient Greeks. Until now, very little was known about the Illyrians' beliefs, cults and symbolic lives. "This discovery is rare and provocative. The archaeological evidence we have found to date strongly points to some mysterious, previously unknown cult activity, which may have been practiced in secrecy by the Illyrians," said Dr. Tim Kaiser, Research Associate in the ROM's Department of Western Art and Culture and co-director of the Nakovana Cave project. "For archaeologists to find a sealed, undisturbed cave site is fairly unusual. Nakovana is like a window on a Mediterranean past that's much richer than we ever thought." The Illyrians were a loose federation of Indo-European tribes who appeared in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula around 1000 B.C. Contemporaries of the Greeks, the Illyrians were their trading partners, but were considered by the Greeks to be "barbarian" warriors, both on land and at sea. In 1999, ROM researchers carried out preliminary excavations on the outermost chamber of the Nakovana Cave, and were astonished to discover that the cave really consisted of three linked chambers, two of which were sealed by rock falls. Unsealing the cave's hidden middle chamber, which is approximately 50 meters in length, the archaeologists found a central, unmistakably phallic stalagmite (a naturally formed mineral structure on the floor of a cavern), surrounded by a remarkable quantity of important artifacts, including hundreds of high quality scattered pottery fragments of Greek and Illyrian origin. The cave appeared to have been unseen by human eyes for at least 2,000 years. Returning this summer for further excavations in July & August, Dr. Kaiser and his associates discovered that the large (60 centimeters) phallic stalagmite had been purposely placed at the center of the cave, in a strategic location that allowed a shaft of light from the cave entrance to shine directly upon it at particular moments each year. Dr. Kaiser concluded that it was the focus of Illyrian cult activity, likely involving rites of potency, fertility, drinking, and feasting. Evidence was found to suggest that the sanctuary was used as a ritual site for offerings to the gods. Among the broken votive offerings are dedications to Aphrodite and to love, scratched upon cups and jugs imported from around the Mediterranean world. While the exact nature of these rituals is unknown, Dr. Kaiser speculates upon the possibly orgiastic nature of these rituals, perhaps carried out in secret by participants in an exclusive cult. "The hundreds of fine ceramic vessels at Nakovana leave no doubt about the special nature of this site," Kaiser said. "These cups and amphorae were among the finest of the day and their use in the cave underscores the gravity of the rituals enacted there."
The presence of earlier artifacts found in excavations of
the cave floor, dating as far
back as the Early Neolithic Period (6000 B.C.), suggests
that the Nakovana Cave may
have been an important site for a very long time. The area
around the cave was of
great strategic importance for the Illyrians, as it
dominated an important
transportation route between the Adriatic Sea and the
Neretva River valley. The
researchers also discovered over 70 burial mounds around an
Illyrian hill fort that
overlooks the cave, and pottery fragments identical to those
found in the sanctuary.
http://www.rom.on.ca/nakovana/
In my opinion, we do not practice nearly enough public,
communal phallic
worship today.
These Illyrians were on to something. ;-)
Thanks, Hon. How about you and I schedule and perform a mutual public, communal phallic worship for Boston City Hall Plaza on Patriot's Day this year? The natives will be astonished.
George of Boston (Boston Bill) RogueKC@AOL.COM wrote: ...we do not practice nearly enough public...phallic worship today....
Speak for yourself.....I certainly do MY part!
Strato of Sardis had the right idea when he wrote in the third century AD: "Animals, being mindless, only couple with females, whereas men, having the advantage of intelligence, do it differently. Therefore, any man who goes out of his mind for a girl is an animal." Hee hee! Funny guys, them ancients! But love between older and younger men was no joke in ancient Greek culture. In Crete, older men were invited by the families of younger men to seduce and "kidnap" their sons. For sixty days the lovers engaged in riotous festivities ending with the sacrifice of a bull. The young man would then be given the title "Illustrious" and be expected to fight at the side of his lover in battle. It was in Crete that old Zeus was said to have carried away the young Ganymede, and there was a popular song celebrating this sort of love, in which young men were admonished not to turn down "the warrior lusting for you!" Thebes was famous for its battalion of lovers who thus provided inspiration for young men all over Greece to achieve the goal of silverfoxy romance. The story of the Trojan hero Achilles' love for Patrocles brought tears to every eye when Achilles wept with grief over his dead lover's body after battle, "What could surpass the sacred intercourse with your thighs?" There were many famous pairs of hero-lovers. Statues were erected to two who were responsible for the death of a tyrant. They became the heroes of democracy. Plato speaks in his "Symposium" of kissing contests among young men around the grave of a fallen lover, celebrating the tenderness of such relationships. Marriage was considered an institution for procreating children to carry on the family name, but families encouraged their sons to become lovers with their older male gym instructors or teachers to "perfect their cultural education." Addeus of Macedonia advised young men in 323 BC when they met someone they "fancied" not to "waste any time trying to disguise your intentions, but immediately grab hold of his balls with both your hands....."
Ha ha! I wonder how many of us would dare to
use that approach today? As I said before, them
ancients were funny guys! Being the older man admirer that I am, it would almost seem like paradise to live during that time period! Did the wise Socrates, a man accused of corrupting the young people of Athens, have himself young male lovers too? I heard that somewhere before, but am not sure. I've enjoyed the history lessons.
Clark "Clark" wrote: ...Did...Socrates...have...young male lovers, too?
Ben Boxer replies: As for Socrates himself, judge from this passage in the ancient writings of Lucien: "...whatever Plato may say, it is unlikely that handsome Alcibiades after sleeping beneath the same blanket as Socrates rose intact from his embraces....." In intellectual circles, one still speaks of homosexual desires as "Socratic" yearnings! The playwright Aristophanes ridiculed Socrates and some of his philosopher pals for their habit of doing the rounds of the Athens gyms and bath houses picking up young guys. There were male brothels. Male prostitution was very profitable. Many of the brothels were staffed with young slaves brought in from Syria or Egypt because young Athenians were supposed to be above commercial sex. There were at one time laws against old men going into gyms because of their allure for young men, and a lot of people considered sex with men past 40 indecent. Some things never change! Not that the laws did much good. Silverfoxes and foxhunters got together anyway. Valerius Maximus writes that Pindar, at the age of 80, fell asleep in a gymnasium with his head resting on the knees (or buried in the lap?) of a handsome hunk. When the attendant went over to check it out, he found Pindar dead where he rested! Sophocles at 55 confessed that he fell in love all the time, and Euripedes confessed at age 72 that he was madly in love with 40-year-old Agathon, saying, "A fine Autumn is a beautiful thing indeed!" Anacreon boasted, "I am old, there's no denying it...but I can still dance (among the young men)!" He was notorious for delighting in his homosexual proclivities. Philip of Macedonia was assassinated in 336 BC by one of his lovers, Pausanias, because King Philip would not punish a member of (the King's) family who had turned him (Pausanias) over to be gang-raped by a group of mule drivers. Philip's son, Alexander the Great, scandalized the Macedonian court by kissing his favorite, the eunuch slave Bagoas, on the lips in front of his officers. (If you have not read lesbian Mary Renault's magnificent novel "The Persian Boy," about Alexander and this selfsame Bagoas, you are missing a priceless treasure of gay literature.) Alexander ordered the death of the Persian ruler Orsines because Orsines mocked Bagoas, saying he "would not talk to a man who prostituted himself like a woman." Plutarch has described the insane grief of Alexander over the death of his warrior lover Hephaestion and how Alexander crucified the doctor who had not been able to save his beloved. At Hephaestion's funeral, Alexander the Great ordered his officers to cut off their hair and shave the manes of every horse in his army and massacre every man, woman and child in sight (in the conquered territory where Hephaestion died). One famous event after the battle of Issus (Autumn 333 BC) gives us an idea about Alexander's and Hephaestion friendship, when Alexander had captured Darius's throne tent with the complete Persian imperial retinue including Darius's mother - Sisygambis; his wife - Stateira; his harem. and other princesses. When Alexander and Hephaestion went to meet Sisygambis, she prostrated herself at the feet of the most kingly figure. She chose by mistake the taller Hephaestion! Alexander is said to have responded, "Don't worry, mother, he is Alexander, too." Alexander himself must have compared their relationship to that of Achilles and Patroklos. According to Plutarch, when they visited Troy, Alexander laid a wreath upon the tomb of Achilles, while Hephaestion did the same upon Patroklos'. This comparison is further credited by the king cutting his hair in honor of Hephaestion's death, just as Achilles had done for Patroklos. Is all this stuff really true? Well, Plutarch, the historian who gave us the information in the previous paragraph, had this to say in his "Life of Pericles" about accuracy in historical "reporting," including his own: "It is so hard to find out the truth of anything by looking at the record of the past. The process of time obscures the truth of former times, and even contemporaneous writers disguise and twist the truth out of malice or flattery."
In a lighter vein, here's a riddle I have loved for
years. Question: What's purple and ruled the
world? Answer: Alexander the Grape!
That's almost as good as: What's red and goes
BANG BANG BANG BANG? Answer: A
four-door apple!, except what has that to do with
ancient Greece????
Here's Alexander with a nose job. Amazing what reconstructive surgery can achieve!
  ------------------------------ From: "Ben Boxer" benboxer@mediaone.net Subject: Re: Gay History: Greek Love
"Clark" wrote:
Subject: Re: Gay History: Greek Love Now I remember what drove me to my Art History classes year after year... These wonderful finds of the great Masters chill me to the bone, and warm my heart all at the same time. Bravo!
Thanks Ben.
With regard the discussion of Phillip of Macedon and
Alexander the Great.
You will find many of these stories in well researched
biographies aside from
Renau and Plutarch. Try Alexander of Macedon by Green, and
others. The
stories are all approximately the same.
For today's gays these stories are powerful and the men
impressive. For they
were men in every sense of the word and the romance is
remarkable. At least
I find them so.
The image of Alexander the Great reminds me of a book
"The Persian Boy" by Mary Renault. One of the great
classics in its time ...... Mary Renault wrote a
trilogy on Alexander's Life, "Fire From Heaven" on
Alexander's early days, "Persian Boy" on his prime and
then finally, "Funeral Games" on his last days of
death.
Louis Rothman wrote: Please translate that first line. All that I can remember from Homer's Iliad is "Sing, Goddess, of the wrath of Achilles."
Dear Lou, The first line is: Sing, Goddess, of the xxx of Achilles, the son of Peleus. Wrath or anger is the word often used to translate that xxx word. Such a translation refers to Achilles' anger at not receiving his share of the spoils of war. Doing the translation this way disguises the fact that a really major part of Achilles problem was his grief over the death of his lover Patroclus. The original Greek uses a word that means strong emotion, combining the English idea of anger with the English idea of grief. A translation that combines both of the primary concepts of the long poem is to translate the xxx word as passion. There may be a better English word, but I don't remember one right now. Any ideas?
Compare the notion that you get with these three different translations: In #1, I want to know what he was pissed off about. I wouldn't guess that he had a lover who was killed. I would think that Patroclus was just a good friend. In #2, I want to know who died that he had loved so strongly. I wouldn't guess that he was pissed that Agamemnon has disrespected him. In #3, I want to know what he was feeling so strongly about. Two answers emerge from the poem, not just one. What angers me is the grief for a dead lover is seldom hinted at in modern translations, because the translator doesn't want us to know that these Greeks had male LOVERS. Just another way of falsifying the past to make people think that the hetroid way is the only way.
George of Boston (Boston Bill)
Dear Lou, George, and Fellow Members, In Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, there is but one English translation and one only for the entry for "menis," "menios," f., and that is "wrath" or "anger." Achilles is furious because Agamemnon, as commander-in-chief of the Achaean forces at Troy, has repo-ed Achilles' war prize, the girl Briseis, because the commander himself had to give up his war prize, Chryseis, because the will of Zeus so ordained, and it was not proper for the commander-in-chief to be war-prize-less. So, he orders Achilles to give up Briseis. Explicit references to Patroclus and Achilles being lovers is lacking in the Iliad, but there is a word--which escapes me now--that Victorian editors glossed over as "untranslatable" that pretty clearly refers to these Mycenaean princes having call boys at their courts for the pleasure of honored guests. Now I'm gonna have to dig that reference out, and it is late. I promise the list that I will report.
Steve in the northern Detroit burbs And there it is, my friend Bill. That is why I believe that the "Bible" is no more than a historical, not-terribly-relevant-or-accurate book of history. Nothing more. Written by fallable men in painfully purgatorial times to guide the lives of those that might be fortunte enough to live for twnety years or so... as opposed to thousands of years. It's just a fucking book. A book that has been translated and re-translated hundreds (at least) of times. A book that has literally thousands of scripts and writers left out, but selected by the secretive, horrified composers of the time. Why the fuck do we even pay attention to it now??? It's just a book of history, and like most books of history, is painfully innacurate, personally unkind to most involved, and painfully outdated. Yet we hang on every word as if it fell from the heavens. Guess what guys... It did not fall from the heavens!! It is a series of scripts written by fallable men, long after the death of this person we know as "Jesus", in many cases hundreds of years later... and it's all interpretation. How on EARTH have we gotten to a place where we consider it a perfect guide that should be interpreted word for word?? Amazing! Are we all just sheep? Sadfully, many of us are... I guess that's the general idea. <----Stepping off of my pedestal and taking a deep breath. OK, a couple more deep breaths are in order.
OK a few more. Ancient Rome ascended to the status of a world power after its conquest of Greece. The Romans were great copiers of Greek architecture and other Hellenic ideas. Homosexuality was no exception. Its celebration in Greek art and literature lent it prestige. Greek was the classical language of diplomacy, its culture the epitome of elegance. Its social mores were an inspiration to the patrician familes of Rome. They wanted to live in the "Greek" style, cluttering their mansions with Greek sculpture and paintings and objects of art. A mark of good breeding and sophistication was a household staff of Greek nannies, tutors and slaves who, in turn, imparted Greek culture and language to the offspring who would ultimately inherit Rome. The rich even sent their sons to Athens for their higher education, where they read the Greek classics of Plato, Xenophon and Pindar, thus becoming exposed to the gay awareness of the Greeks. Homosexuality was widespread in the days of the Roman Republic despite laws against it which were rarely enforced. Under the Empire, the example came from the top. Several emperors were known for their taste for men: Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, Otho (who played at selling himself to men like a slave for sexual purposes), Hadrian (and his beloved Antinous), Marcus Aurelius, Commodus (who called his big-dick lover "my donkey"), and Heliogabalus (who "married" his love-slave and kissed his phallus in public as a form of worship). Some wealthy Romans kept private harems of male slaves. Male whorehouses advertised themselves with large phalluses placed outside. The "gay" district of ancient Rome centered around the Street of the Tuscans, like Castro Street in San Francisco. There were gay bars, some of which would have been host to silverfoxes.
An idication that a man could be had was for him to scratch his head with his middle finger. For many centuries it was thus called "the finger of infamy." This custom may be the origin of the more discreet invitation to sexual pleasure used to this day -- scrathing the palm of the sex object's hand with the middle finger, in the spirit of ancient Rome! Long live the Gay Gene! Today, we talk about "penis envy." In ancient times, as Boston Bill pointed out the other day, it was "penis worship." I think most of us can identify with both syndromes at first hand (hee hee!).
Where a man puts his phallus has always been a social divider. Men who put them in women are on one side; those who put them in men are on the other. Breaking it down further, gay men who put them in other men are called "Greek" active while bottoms, vice versa, are known as "Greek" passive. Such terminology derives from the ancient Roman taste for all things Hellenic. After its conquest of Greece, the Greek style of everything became immensely popular throughout the Roman world. Greek sculptures, paintings and art objects decorated the mansions of Roman patricians. Roman gentry spoke Greek as the language of elegance and diplomacy much as French is used today. They breast-fed their offspring on Greek nurses, honed their sons' intelligence with Greek tutors, toned their boys' growing bodies in athletics taught by Greek gym instructors, and took care of their lads' budding sexuality by putting them to bed with male Greek slaves to satisfy the first stirrings of manhood and thus to keep them out of the disease-ridden stews of Whorehouse Row. They saw nothing unnatural about a slave having "a meaty, fat-tipped needle stuck up his arse," in the unsubtle words of the satirist Gaius Lucilius. It was considered an insult to accuse a free-born Roman of being the passive partner. Bisexuality was considered quite normal, if not desirable. Horace confided that he was "ambidextrous," i.e. liked both sexes, and Martial declared that "males are meant for two things: women on the one hand, men on the other." It was the custom for wealthy young Romans brought up with a male slave (pick your age of choice!) as a bedmate to give orders when they got married to have the slave's hair cut to indicate the groom would prove faithful to his bride. I suspect that gesture was more ceremonial than actual, given that they grew up exploring the pleasures of risk-free (no pregnancy) homosexual love. The novelist Petronius quipped, "One must love one's spouse as a legitimate asset -- but who wants to be condemned to loving one's asset only?" There was a special ceremony used when a slave was so loved by his master that he set him free to change his status to free citizen and therefore make him a more suitable, socially acceptable lover. The slave took his master's family name and wore a Phrygian cap, symbol of manumission. A brimless, limp, conical cap fitting snugly around the head, it appeared later in history as a symbol of liberty by the French revolutionaries and was also worn in the United States before 1800, where it was known as a "liberty" cap. In the first centuries after Christ, the Christians and some uptight Romans began denouncing "pagan Rome," zeroing in, as they do today, on homosexuality as "moral turmoil." Saint Paul wrote, "men have given up their natural intercourse with women and are consumed with desire for each other." To some, the fall of Rome in 410 AD came as fitting retribution for its "sins." Sounding like today's Christian firebrands Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the Emperor Justinian in the beginning of the sixth century AD declared of homosexuality:"Such a crime is the cause of famines, earthquakes and plagues...Therefore, those who commit it must be punished by death; otherwise the whole Empire may fall into ruination because of them." Rome did fall into ruination after that, but it was hardly the fault of the great force called homosexuality which had inspired the greatest artists, architects, historians, poets and authors for millennia before. It was the onslaught of power-seeking barbarians with a lust for gold and little culture but the art of brandishing a sword. Heeding such misguided "moral" judgment as that offered by Justinian, the ancients turned away from the light of man's sexual love for man that had so illumined the hearts and minds of the armies of lovers who had fought and won their wars. As a result, the Western world entered an era most appropriately defined as the Dark Ages.
------------------------------ End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #167/8
|
The photo is copied from Archeology Magazine, March/April
2001, page 19.
The text is taken from the web site of the Royal Ontario
Museum.
Methinks there was love afoot between
Silverfox Poseidon and Foxhunter Apollo, shown
together in the attached detail of a frieze from
the Parthenon, the great temple whose ruins still
grace the Acropolis in Athens. The frieze
survives from the fifth century BC
Ben Boxer adds to an earlier response:
I previously mentioned a quote from Lucien which
answers your question in the affirmative. I also
spoke of "Socratic yearnings" as a term for gay
desire. The name of Socrates has long been
associated with carnal relationships between older
and younger men. I have attached here an
illustration from a mediaeval treatise on human
sexuality ("De Figuris veneris") which clearly
shows the sexual coupling of an old man with a
young man. It's title in the manuscript? "Socratic
Love"!
Popular cruising spots were barber shops and the public bath houses. (Attached is a mosaic from a bath house in the North African city of Timgad used to indicate the availability of male prostitutes inside. It depicts a man with a large cock spraying a copious quantity of semen.)
Attached is the image of a bronze phallus cast in ancient Rome as an essential item in the family budget. No sensible Roman household could do without one. It was insurance -- a talisman to protect against the evil eye. This was a desktop model. The laptops might have been more fun! I wonder if they used miniature models as hood ornaments on their chariots?