Pindar's Tenth Olympian and athlete-trainer pederasty

The comparison of the adolescent boxer Hagesidamus and his trainer Ilas to Patroclus and Achilles in Pindar's Olympian 10.16-21 and the subsequent comparison of Hagesidamus to Ganymede in Olympian 10.99-105 suggest that the relationship was in some sense pederastic, particularly in the wake of Aeschylus' treatment of Achilles and Patroclus in these terms in Myrmidons. This possibility motivates a broader examination of the evidence for such relationships in fifth-century Greece. There is no doubt that the palaestra was a central locus for the formation of pederastic liaisons and that athletic nudity was integral to the esthetic construction of adolescent beauty. There is also no doubt that the trainer's position afforded him regular intimacy and close physical contact with boys; several Hellenistic texts take for granted the erotic opportunities connected with the position. The Solonian law presuming to protect pupils from such relationships, attested in Aeschines, was probably a late fifth-century development in reaction to their common occurrence in earlier generations. Evidence also exists for lovers acting as financial backers to boy athletes or as informal trainers. Some of the most intriguing evidence for the conflation of the trainer's and lover's roles can be found in red-figure vase painting of the late sixth and fifth centuries.