Antologia Grega: a Musa dos Rapazes (livro XII)

Abstract

Book XII of the Greek Anthology, the one this volume first offers in Portuguese translation, gathers around 260 epigrams united by the homoerotic subject they all develop. Besides a small group of components devoted to heterosexual love, erroneously included in the collection by scribers and here translated as well, they all deal with the model of a love-relationship between an adult (the so-called erastes, the top-lover) and a teenager (the eromenos, supposed to be the bottom). The Boyish Muse’s immediate parallel is Book five of the Greek Antholoy, devoted to heterosexual love. Nonetheless, a first reading of both of them sheds light on their similarities, enhancing several common topics and images, themselves prove enough of a same reality that is celebrated – both the joys (rather few) and the (many) pains of love.