On the other side of the divide if we can only lift the Victorians’ blinders for a moment we see a very different world: a world where friendship is considered the occasion for deep emotions and exaggerated behavior. This other view is much older than the one the Victorians bequeathed upon us: it can be seen clearly in such works as The Song of Roland, where the hero faints when he sees that his friend is dead. It is a world where male friendship is not a footnote in a book about homosexuality. Rather it is a living force of its own, considered one of the highest forms of human emotion and behavior, and worthy of profound sentiments!! And we have taken such a world and said, "Look. Here’s evidence of homosexuality." Tsk, tsk, tsk.
The death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux, from an illuminated manuscript c. 1455-1460.
Of all the people who lived on the other side of that divide who might have understood us, the classical writers would have been most sympathetic. They, like us, tended to look for sex within every friendship. Indeed, they were the ones who first theorized that Achilles and Patroklos were lovers. Yet even so, look at the list of the essays and dialogues that classical writers produced on platonic friendship: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Books 8 and 9), Cicero’s On Friendship, Plato’s Lysis, Plutarch’s How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend, Seneca’s On Benefits, as well as various discussions by the Neopythagoreans, the early Christians, and others.
Why are historical writings on friendship ignored by scholars, except as tools to study other subjects? Why are dozens of books and articles published each year on the history of homosexuality, but virtually none on the history of friendship? Why does Yahoo list nearly one hundred sites on gay history but no sites on the history of friendship?
I do not propose to answer the above questions; I do not know the answer. I do know that the co-opting of historical passages on friendship by scholars of homosexuality, without similar consideration of such passages by scholars of friendship, is offering us a distorted view of both the history of homosexuality and the history of friendship. Only by establishing strong scholarship on the history of male friendship can we reach the point where we can distinguish "homoeroticism" (strong emotions between males) from true homoeroticism (sexual love between males).
As someone who writes non-scholarly articles on the history of male homosexuality, I would dearly like to see that day come. As someone who is female, I would also like to see more scholarship done on the history of female friendship and the much-neglected history of male-female friendship. And when that day comes, perhaps all of us, no matter what our views on "homoerotic" passages may be, can read the description of Socrates and Diotima and sigh, "Oh, what a beautiful portrait of friendship."
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