And yet there was always another side to the story. We hear of laws that punished men who "mixed with" or even "chatted" with boys. Xenophon, who knew Sparta better than anyone, says that the Spartan lawgiver had laid down that it was shameful even "to be seen to reach out to touch the body of a boy". Slaves called "pedagogues" - paidagogoi - were employed by Athenians to protect their sons from unwanted attention, and by Plato's time there were some people who had "the audacity to say" that homosexual sex was shameful in any circumstances. Indeed Plato himself eventually made so bold. At one time he had written that same-sex lovers were far more blessed than ordinary mortals. He even gave them a headstart in the great race to get back to heaven, their mutual love refeathering their moulted wings. Now he seemed to contradict himself. In his ideal city, he says in his last, posthumously published work known as The Laws, homosexual sex will be treated the same way as incest. It is something contrary to nature, he insists, and although there won't be laws against it, nevertheless a propaganda programme will encourage everyone to say that it is "utterly unholy, odious-to-the-gods and ugliest of ugly things".

For these and other reasons there has long been debate about the true nature of this Greek custom - what the Greeks called eros, a "passionate life-churning love", or philia, "fond intimacy". Was it essentially sublime or sodomitical? A source of anxiety or a cause for celebration? Sometimes the Greeks seemed to approve of it wholeheartedly, even to suggest that it was the highest and noblest form of love. And other times they seemed to condemn it. Sometimes the ideal seems to be a spiritual, passionate but unconsummated "Platonic" love, like that much praised by Plato's Socrates. It was this notion that allowed Ganymede, ancient mascot for the vice unmentionable among Christians, to appear on the doors of St Peter's in Rome, where, amazingly, he remains, or as the emblem of "piety" in Christian picture-books. So popular were such prints of Ganymede in the Catholic Baroque that Rembrandt painted a harsh rejoinder. Instead of sublimely rising, his Ganymede is kicking and screaming, dragged off in incontinent terror.

   Alexander the Great is another popular example. Even though the available historical sources clearly indicate that the Greek king had different female lovers each night, he is considered the most famous gay man of antiquity, simply because a screenwriter in Hollywood imagined him as one. In reality, Alexander the Great most likely slept with more women than Hugh Hefner! But how did we end up with these false misconceptions about ancient Greek society and homosexuality?

The whole thing officially opened up by Kenneth Dover's work Greek Homosexuality in 1978. Since then, as MacDowell points out , homosexuality in ancient Greece “has been discussed a good deal, mainly from a sociological and anthropological point of view.” However, few mention Athenian laws against homosexuality . It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to speculate that a decorated and experienced historian such as Dover avoided this account of the official stance of Athens on homosexuality. Instead, he based his research and conclusions on certain pieces of such art as vase painting and the idealized depiction of homoerotic relationships described briefly by Plato in some of his works.