Sexual Fluidity in Ancient Greece

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Introduction
The Red Figure and Black Figure pottery styles were prevalent in Ancient Greece staring around 600 BC. Black figure was a style that preceded red-figure pottery in which the artist left the background of the pot the color of the clay and the figures were painted with slip as well as incised into the pot so that after a 3 part firing process the figures would come out black and the pot as red. Red figure pottery followed this style in which the artist painted the background of the pot in slip and detailed the figures in diluted slip, leaving the majority of figure bodies the color of the clay and so the figures were red and the background was black.
Red Figure and Black Figure Pottery, especially kraters, have many depictions of men chasing other men and phallic symbolism which seem to point towards open homosexuality in Greece. These images may be seen as a prevalent taboo and a steer towards male dominance in Greece. These depictions along with gods and humans openly engaging in these homosexual love affairs on a piece of pottery that is displayed as a center piece lend evidence to suggest that Greece was a society of Open Sexuality.

Male Homoeroticism
There has been an establishment of two different approaches to homosexuality in Greece: historical approach and synchronistic approach. The historical approach involves searching for the root to pederasty in ancient civilizations to reconstruct a timeline on the topic, whereas synchronistic, which will be in this paper, concentrates on pederasty in 5th and 4th century Athens in terms of it being a part of the social life of Greece . By using the synchronistic we can narrow the scope of homosexuality in Greece to focus on homosexuality as a part of social li...

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