While essentially all of the city-states in ancient Greece acknowledged male love in some form, only pederasty, the love of an older man for a boy, was a commonly accepted from of a homosexual relationship, and was even occasionally encouraged in a polis. Two parties were involved in a pederastic relationship: an erastes, the older male, and an eromenos, his beloved, who was typically an adolescent boy. Pederasty was mutually beneficial and consenting, with both men having their own pre-determined roles and responsibilities: [i]t was his (erastes’) duty to be the boy’s teacher and protector and serve as a model of courage, virtue, and wisdom to his beloved, or eromenos, whose attraction lay in his beauty, youth and promise of future moral, intellectual, and physical excellence.…