Any man who carried on sexual relationships with other adults could expect to find themselves deeply ridiculed. Many Greek poets lamented the first growth of a boy's beard because that was the age at which their relationship had to end. The pederastic partnership was also heavily hedged about with social rules.
The older lover would typically have a wife at home and the younger lover would be expected to marry a woman later in life.
These relationships were not what we would today call homosexual.
Uli Nimptsch (1897–1977) Britten Pears Arts
