missmonty:

5balloonss:

the Iliad: lol Patroclus and Achilles are gay

Plato: haha yeah man, who do you think tops?? I think Achilles bottoms personally

everyone in Greece: *banging pots and pans* being gay is okay!!!

Achilles himself: I love Patroclus so much, I would murder Hector for him a thousand times.

historians: wow look how good friends Patroclus and Achilles were 🙂 just bros

It kinda makes their relationship very shallow cuz it implies only romantic love between them… Tbh their relationship has been the subject of a lot of philosophers at the time and they enjoyed having it analyzed in terms as to what does love mean and how does love get defined and expressed with males and females.

Plato himself being one who stated that love doesn’t necessarily mean sexual attraction but something that connects two people so deeply that they cannot be apart from each other what we today define as platonic love. Two people could die for one another without necessarily having had physical intrrcourse…

That also doesn’t mean they can’t or wouldn’t and doesn’t exclude the possibility of attraction.

But why reduce this whole spectrum of feelings to simply being romantic/sexual….

Just as Hollywood and western historians wanted to reduce it only to “pals”

There’s two ends to this and we don’t need to go as far as the edge on either side

Also just.. I know this is a joke but just saying “everyone in ancient Greece :being gay is OK” is not only misleading for ppl who don’t know but also incredibly inaccurate of an entire way of thinking (again reducing it to sth very basic as a concept and. Ignoring the deep cultural and political imementations) but also helps with ignoring the entire misogynistic basis of that society that has lead people to think today that antiquity was more gay friendly. Which it wants. It also reduces the struggles of what people with different sexual and romantic orientations went through

Pls stop making such posts all the time they are tiring in the end and not that funny when someone is actually aware if the reality. Or at least make them a little more considerate…

These are actual cultures and they were actual people who existed and still exist Today.

It’s not something yih own and you can write about like that

It’s so disrespectful how the US/Western tumblr reduces Greek culture to fit their modern and often shallow “ancient greeks are gays” jokes, or worse, not as jokes but as fact. Which isn’t.