Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths

Lovers' Legends Unbound is a theatrical production directed by Agnes Lev, performed by Timothy Carter, with incidental music composed and performed by Steve Gorn. The work was released by Haiduk Press in 2004 as an audio-CD together with an illustrated libretto.

Taken from a review of the piece by Keith Matthews, "The study of male homosexuality in Ancient Greece only began in the 1970s, particularly following the publication of Kenneth Dover's Greek Homosexuality in 1978. This book helped to strip away many of the misconceptions about same-sex love in the Classical world that had grown up during the nineteenth century and that were becoming commonplace with the growth of the Gay Liberation movement from the late 1960s. What Dover sought to demonstrate was that in Classical Athens, there was an institutionalized form of same-sex behavior, whereby an older man (the ’εραστης, ‘desirer’) is inflamed with passion for a youth (the ’ερομενος, ‘the desired’) and eases his path into full adult life. He suggested that this almost ritualized ‘education’ of the youth might have deeper roots in a Primitive Indo-European initiation rite that has left traces in other cultures."[1]

• Tantalus and the Olympians
• Pelops in Pisa
• Laius and Chrysippus
• Zeus and Ganymede
• Hercules and Hylas
• Orpheus
• Apollo and Hyacinthus
• Narcissus
• Achilles and Patroclus
• Hippodamia

Framing the tales is Pseudo-Lucian's "Different Loves".

• Haiduk Press—Lovers' Legends
• Haiduk Press
• Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths at the Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology