Tribadism in Ancient Greece



Women homosexuals, whom the Greeks called, (when they mention them at all), tribads did exist in ancient Greece, but we know very little about it. Tribadism was believed by the Athenians to be more common in Sparta than in Athens. Plutarch recorded that, 'at Sparta love was held in such honor that even the most respectable women became infatuated with girls'.(III,p.99) Keep in mind that the love between two women was of no interest to the city and it found no space in the reflections of philosophers. Love between two women remained something which only women spoke of, and thus, sadly, we know little to nothing of how they experienced it, what space it occupied in their lives, and what effects it had on their emotional life as well as its consequence on their attitude towards men.

Everything we know about female homosexuality, (apart from what men say about it), comes from Sappho, daughter of Scamandronymus and Cleis. Sappho was born in Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos, about 612 B.C. She was from an aristocratic family and was married to a man called Ceicylas, to whom she bore a daughter named Cleis. Sappho was at the head of one of those associations of young women called thiasoi. The thiasoi were communities of young women, which are also documented in mainland Greece, especially in Sparta. These were not just simply 'finishing schools for young ladies', as some definitions have suggested. They were where purely spiritual loves flourished between girls. Sappho taught her pupils first of all music, singing and dancing: the instruments that transformed them from uncultivated little girls; but Sappho was not just a mistress of the intellect: her girls also learned the weapons of beauty, seduction, fascination: they learned the graces, or charis, which made them desirable women. The girls of the thiasoi went through an experience which, in society's eyes at that time, was quite unsuitable for 'respectable ladies'---they loved other women, and they loved them with a passionate love, as we can see without a slightest doubt in the poems which Sappho, over the years, dedicated to her different girlfriends.(I,p.78-80)


For information on Male Homosexual Relations,or Pedastry, Click Here.


BACK TO THE BEGINNING