title: The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World
author: James Davidson
description: Starred Review. Ithis marvelously entertaining and erudite follow-up to <i>Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens</i>, Davidson has written the definitive study of the varieties of same-sex love in ancient Greece. Abjuring recent theory-laden views of ancient Greek sexuality, and in particular homosexuality, Davidson examines the great variety of loves practiced across all ages and classes in such locales as Sparta, Crete and Macedonia. He draws deeply on etymology, philology, archeology, poetry and philosophy, observing, for instance, that the various Greek words for lovefrom <i>agape</i> (fondness) to <i>pothos</i> (longing) and <i>eros</i> (driving love)define an amatory universe in which a variety of feelings and sexual practices characterize relationships between individuals. Thus, love manifests itself differently depending on whether the lovers are Spartan women, gods and heroes, comrades-in-arms or master and slave. There is the sweet and playful eros of the lyric poets, the patriotic eros of Pericles' funeral speech, and the letters of Alexander that reject offers to send him the most beautiful boys in the world. Davidson's study is brilliant social history and a first-rate history of classical Greece. B&amp;w illus. <i>(May 26)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: EXPLORATIONS
    
   TABLE OF CONTENTS
    
   The Saturn Game
   The Bitter Bread
   The Ways of Love
   The Voortrekkers
   Epilogue
   Starfog
    
   Introduction to EXPLORATIONS
    
   by Poul Anderson
    
   When Jim Baen and I were first discussing this book, what should go into it, he suggested that the motif
  and title be "The Ways of Love." I felt this was too limited a theme, and we settled on "Explorations."
  Each story deals with some aspect of humanity's future movement into the cosmos, which we both hope
  so much will come to pass. Then Jim noticed, to our mutual surprise, that each is also a love story
  anyway.
    
   On second thought, perhaps this is no coincidence. The Greeks distinguished three emotions which
  English lumps together as "love." Yet are the three kinds really unrelated? Might not sexual love (eros),
  love for God (agape), and every other sort of affection (phile, from which we get such words as '
  'philosophy'' and * 'philanthropy") spring from a common source, or even be different faces 