To illustrate this point, it is worth quoting Gilbert Highet’s translation of Werner Jaeger’s Paideia [Vol II, Cap 8] summarizing Pausanias’s speech from Symposium in defense of male Eros.  “[Pausanias] makes a particularly illuminating attempt to use the uncertainty of prevailing moral judgments on the matter [of homoeroticism] to support his theory.  He does so by citing and comparing the different views held about male Eros in various counries.  In Elis and Boeotia--that is, in the most primitive, least intellectually developed regions of Greece--homosexual love is perfectly respectable.  On the other hand, in Ionia (upon the Persian frontier of Greece), it is severely condemned.  Pausanias declares this is due to the influence of the barbarians with their own political attitudes.  Despotism is based on mistrust, and in such a regime warm friendships are always suspected of leading to conspiracies.  ... The attitude of Athens and Sparta was neither whole-heartedly in favor of [the ideals of male Eros] nor against them, as other states were.  It was complicated and equivocal.  It was halfway between the extremes.”

Hellenistic tolerance was not unanimous even within the Greek world.  Alongside the rather ambiguous acceptance which Plato seems to chronicle in the Symposium is his rejection of homosexuality as an un-natural vice in the Laws.  In The Laws [Book VIII] Plato has the “Athenian Stranger” in whose voice most of The Laws is cited state that homosexuality was banned in all of Greece down to the time of the mythical King Laius [father of Oedipus], who decreed that homosexuality was to be tolerated.  The Athenian proceeds to argue that homosexuality is in fact not sexuality (which in Greek implies activity leading to reproduction) but is a class of friendship.  The Athenian then argues that homoeroticism is peculiarly human, because it is completely contrary to nature, but can be analysed as a type of friendship.  Friendship so understood falls in a scale of feelings ranging from lust to greed -- from obsession with instant gratification to a selfish desire to completely monopolize the object of one’s desire.  In the middle is a kind of social friendship, in which the object of friendship is viewed as an autonomous human whose response to one’s friendship is valued and whose independence is nurtured.  The Athenian proceeds to categorize the problems with arriving at such a social friendship and argues that most real-life friendships fall very short of the ideal.  The Athenian Stranger then leads discussion amongst several participants concerning banning male on male sexual relations, which they all agree would be highly desirable.

Similarly, though many Hellenistic writers seem to accept homosexuality as a natural part of military service, several biographies of Alcibiades introduce a moral caution against allowing flagrant homosexuals to control the military.  Alcibiades helped engineer the defeat of Athens by the Persians twice, once to punish a lover by whom he had been jilted, and once because public disgust at his favoritism to his lovers caused him to be censured.  Likewise, Aristotle in his notes toward a comprehensive legal code condemns homosexuality, suggesting that in the ideal world it would be outlawed as an abuse of power.

As the Classical Roman Empire evolved, revulsion against homsexuality intensified.  Nietzsche blamed opposition to homoeroticism on the progress of Christianity, but in truth the opposition to homosexuality long predated the propagation of Christian doctrine.   The tendency to restrict and outlaw homosexuality appears to be independent of the Jewish influence.  One of the clearest passages detailing the Roman disgust at open homosexuality occurs in the Historia Augusta biography of Elagabalus, briefly Caesar about the year 220.   Elagabalus, according to the history, not only sent paid agents through the Roman baths seeking men with exceptionally large organs which Elagabalus “admitted to every cavity of his body,” but also engaged in a thoroughly obscene, even pornographic, marriage ceremony with a subordinate named Zoticos.  The writer of Historia Augusta characterizes Elagabalus’s flagrant homosexuality as blasphemous - not an easy charge for a pagan writer to bring.  

When Constantine [d. 337] caused the Roman Law to be codified by Justinian and other jurists, homosexuality was expressly condemned.  From that time forward, the more objectionable practices of pederastic prostitution began to disappear, though not entirely until well through the Dark Age.  The range of practices available was thoroughly modern. The paintings from the lupanarium in Pompeii, which because of their frankness have been published only in restricted issues, depict a wide variety of homoerotic acts, frequently performed by adults upon children.  The institution of slavery in the Roman Empire meant that young boys and girls were powerless to resist prostitution.

Christian teachers discussed homosexuality on many different occasions, consistently viewing it as part of the objectionable apparatus of paganism.   Thomas Aquinas [d.1274] enunciates the majority view from the Middle Ages.  In the Summa Theologica, Thomas examines the Aristotelian list of virtues and vices. He raises the question as to which vice is the most reproachable, and concludes that intemperance probably is.  Thomas then raises from elsewhere in Aristotle the principle that the more blameworthy forms of intemperance are the more unusual.  He concludes the discussion by noting that “those vices which surpass the boundaries of human nature are most greatly reprehensible.  That reduces the reprehensible form of intermperance to those in which there is boundless excess, as when someone takes pleasure in eating the flesh of humans, or in sexual coupling with beasts, or man with man.” [Summa 2:2 q.142, a.4]  This example displays the extreme horror with which Thomas views homosexuality, which he ranks beside bestiality and cannibalism.