Catamite



In its modern usage the term catamite refers to a boy as the passive or receiving partner in anal intercourse with a man. In its ancient usage a catamite (Latin catamitus) was a pubescent boy who was the intimate companion of a young man in ancient Greece and Rome, usually in a pederastic relationship. It was usually a term of affection and literally means "Ganymede" in Latin. It was also used as a term of insult when directed toward a grown man. The word derives from the proper noun Catamitus, the Latinized form of Ganymede, the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer. The Etruscan form of the name was Catmite, from an alternate Greek form of the name, Gadymedes.

References in literature

 * In Plato's dialogue Gorgias (at 494d) Socrates uses the term in a conversation with Callicles contrasting appetites and contentment.
 * The word appears widely but not necessarily frequently in the Latin literature of antiquity, from Plautus to Ausonius. It is sometimes a synonym for puer delicatus, "delicate boy". Cicero uses the term as an insult. The word became a general term for a boy groomed for sexual purposes. Also appears in Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
 * Stephen Dedalus ponders the word in Ulysses when discussing accusations that William Shakespeare might have been a pederast.
 * C. S. Lewis in his partial autobiography Surprised by Joy described the social roles during his time at Wyvern College (by which he meant Malvern College) as including the role of "Tart": "a pretty and effeminate-looking small boy who acts as a catamite to one or more of his seniors..." and noted that "pederasty...was not [frowned upon as seriously as] wearing one's coat unbuttoned."
 * Anthony Burgess's 1980 novel Earthly Powers uses the word in its "outrageously provocative" opening sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."
 * In the postapocalyptic landscape of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, the narrator describes an army on the move on foot with "women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites."
 * In this first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 6:9-10), Paul admonishes "You know perfectly well that people who do wrong will not inherit the kingdom of God: people of immoral lives, idolaters, adulterers, catamites, sodomites, thieves, usurers, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers will never inherit the kingdom of God.