http://www.stoa.org/diotima/perseus/texts.shtml
Homosexual literature
In Ephesus:
"Ephesus was famous for its shrine of Diana, where thousands of sacred prostitutes
believed fornication brought believers into contact with deity in much the same way the Gnostics used authentia (authority)
to bind the flesh and the divine together. When these women converted to Christianity they had to unlearn these pagan practices.
'Virtually without exception, female teachers among the Greeks were courtesans, such as Aspasia, who numbered Socrates and Pericles among her students. Active in every major school of philosophy,
these hetairai made it evident in the course of their lectures that they were available afterwards for a second occupation.
But the Bible teaches that to seduce men in such a manner was indeed to lead them to slaughter and the halls of death (cf. Prov. 2:18; 5:5; 6:27; 9:18).
The verb authentein is thus peculiarly apt to describe both the erotic and murderous." (Trombley, Who Says Women Can't Teach, p. 177).
http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/bibhom/mythsin.html
DocEuripBacc.html
I was just driving the herds of kine to a ridge of the hill as I fed them, as the sun shot forth his rays and made the earth grow warm; when lo!
I see three revel-bands of women;
Autonoe was chief of one,
thy mother Agave of the second,
while Ino's was the third.There they lay asleep, all tired out; some were resting on branches of the pine, others had laid their heads in careless ease on oak-leaves piled upon the ground,
observing all modesty; not, as thou sayest,
seeking to gratify their lusts alone amid the woods, by wine and soft flute-music maddened.
Anon in their midst thy mother uprose and cried aloud to wake them from their sleep, when she heard the lowing of my horned kine. And up they started to their feet, brushing from their eyes sleep's quickening dew, a wondrous sight of grace and modesty, young and old and maidens yet unwed.
First o'er their shoulders they let stream their hair; then all did gird their fawn-skins up, who hitherto had left the fastenings loose, girdling the dappled hides with snakes that licked their cheeks.
"homosexual" occurs once on this page.
Harvey Alan Shapiro, Art, Myth, and Culture: Greek Vases from Southern Collections
Attic Red-Figure Cup Collection of The University Museums, University of Mississippi Phase I Cultural Center (1977.3.103) Attributed to the Bonn Painter [Robinson] Ca. 510 B.C. Height: 7 cm. Diameter (with handles): 23 cm. Interior: Satyr with rhyton and column-krater.
The satyr, ithyphallic as usual in early red-figure painting, crouches beside an enormous column krater. His right hand, concealed by the rim of the krater, is dipping out wine to fill his rhyton, a drinking cup made from an animal's horn. He wears a red fillet with tassels or flowers over his bald head and horsy ears. To the left of his head, the name LEAGROS (Leagros) is written from right to left.
As companion of Dionysos, the satyr is an appropriate ornament for a cup; this is one of many grotesque or obscene pictures drawn on the interior of cups, where their emergence as the wine level sank might startle or amuse the drinker. Half animal, half human in appearance, satyrs are spirits of uninhibited sensuality, perpetually drunk, perpetually lustful, totally without intellect (one early poet called them "unemployable loafers"). Their animal nature is indicated by their appearance, with horse tails, ears like pigs or horses, piggy snub noses and bald heads (baldness in antiquity was considered a sign or virility) and, in early black-figure, shaggy coats of hair all over their bodies. In vase painting their chief occupations are drinking, dancing, flute playing and sexually assaulting maenads, goats, goddesses and occasionally each other. In later red-figure, satyrs appear tamer; the maenads ward off their attacks without much trouble, and they begin to appear in scenes of ritual, where it is clear that the women involved are not spirits of nature but human women, and the satyrs behave more quietly. In the later 5th century a new type of satyr appears, youthful, with a more human face and a full head of hair, as well as better manners.
The name Leagros on this cup does not belong to the satyr but to a young Athenian contemporary of aristocratic birth. The Greeks set a very high value on physical beauty, counting it almost as a virtue in itself, and certainly a quality whose lack somehow diminished even an otherwise admirable person. In a society which approved and encouraged homosexual love affairs between men and youths, the beauty of adolescent boys was admired most of all. A particularly attractive boy could become a popular sensation, courted by many wooers, celebrated by poets and even by vase painters, who would inscribe his name on their products, either by itself or with the adjective KALOS -- "beautiful." A very few of these inscribed vases may have been commissioned as gifts or keepsakes, but for the most part the painters must simply have been trying to add a note of fashion and aristocratic elegance to their wares. The Leagros of this cup must have been outstandingly lovely, for his name appears on more than 60 surviving vases.
Bibliography
CVA, Robinson Collection 2, pl. 3, 1; ARV2, 1593, 38. For satyrs: Brommer 1937.
Lucy Turnbull