The Gayest Games in Ancient Greece

Tomorrow I’ll start telling you about the Great Panathenaean Games, which I call the Gayest Games in Ancient Greece. This took place in Athens and was one of the grandest in Ancient Greece.

The origin of the games is shrouded in the mists of time. They were created to honour the patron goddess of the city, Athena. Legend says that they started as an annual 2-day festival 729 years before the Olympics in 1507 BC. After restructuring the city-state, the minotaur-killing hero Theseus extended and expanded the games into a week-long celebration held every 4 years in 566 BC. That’s when they became known as the Greater Panathenaean Games. No-one’s sure on what date they were held. Scholars suggest anywhere between August 13^th to 21^st. I’m going for the middle point – 16^th/17^th August.

One Athenian dynasty most associated with the games were a family that makes the camp US soap “Dynasty” look like the Mili-bland, sorry Miliband, family. Their names crop up several times in the history of the games.

The chart below helps to explain the complicated family relationships.

The head of the dynasty was Peisistratus, ruler of Athens during the early years of the 4-yearly Greater Panathenaean Games. During his earlier career as military governor he had a trainee soldier-athlete boyfriend called Charmus. Peisistratus married and had 2 sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. When Charmus was older he too became a military governor and took Hippias as his boyfriend. And Charmus had a daughter called Timonassa who married Hipparchus. When Charmus died, Peisistratus or Hippias (no-one’s sure which) built an altar dedicated to him and Eros outside the city gates. On Peisistratus’s death Hippias and Hipparchus became joint rulers. Hipparchus decided to take a young boyfriend called Harmodius, but Harmodius already had an older lover called Aristogeiton, who …

Confused? I’ll finish this off later in the week.

Don’t forget that it was perfectly normal for a man to have wife and a boyfriend. But to use the terms gay or bisexual wouldn’t be accurate. They were men who had sex with men because that’s what their society did, just like keeping slaves and not giving women the vote. Very rarely there were couples we would recognise as gay today, and one couple in particular left a big mark on the Greater Panathenaean Games and the development of democracy. More on that on Day 8.

Day 1 of the Greater Panathenaean Games would have been tomorrow, and they start with something the modern Olympics doesn’t have (thank goodness), an early version of the Eurovision Song Contest. And if you thought the Eurovision contest lasted too long ……

Running up to the Gayest Games

If you’re already getting excited about next year’s Olympics and can’t wait that long then this is for you!

The Ancient Greeks had many sport festivals other than the Olympics. People often think the Olympics were held in Athens, perhaps picturing the modern fake versions that were held in Athens in 1896 and 2004. They weren’t. They were held at Olympia – that’s why they were called the Olympics!

Ancient Athens had its own games which were a LOT more interesting from a gay point of view, apart from all the athletes being male and naked. So, for the next few days, as we enter the week in which the Athens games would have been held, I’ll give “reports” on what would you would have seen each day all those centuries ago, and you’ll realise why I call them “The Gayest Games in Ancient Greece”.

The Greeks were well-known for their naked training camps. They trained their athletes to help them fight in battle. And because they were naked (“gymnos”, in Greek) they called their camp a gymnasium. They seem to have been invented by the Spartans, who were often laughed at at the Olympics because of their long, girly hair and open displays of affection between men.

Training was also a religious act. It was an attempt to become like the Greek gods by forming the body of a god. The ancient Greek statues you see of rippling muscles is what you actually saw in reality (it’s one of the few accurate parts of the film “300”). At the entrance to each gymnasium in Athens there was an altar and statue to the Greek god who looked after their training. Believe it or not he was EROS, the god of “intimate love” (as his name translates into English). Before they left for battle the athlete-soldiers would give offerings and prayers to Eros.

It was also expected of every athlete to take a younger trainee as a lover. The bond formed would last through their lives, through marriage to women, and to death. If you didn’t have a boyfriend there was something suspicious about you. The most famous brigade of lovers was the Sacred Band from the city-state of Thebes, a total of 300 soldiers specially chosen because they were all loving couples.

Tomorrow, before I begin to describe the Athenian games, I’ll tell you about their origin.

Future Shocks!

It’s a little early in the year, I know, I’m thinking ahead.

My tours of Nottingham have always been well received. Several groups have even been on more than one. I’m always looking for new themes and ideas. For several years I’ve been trying to come up with a Hallowe’en tour – complete with references to being “grabbed by the ghoulies” and “putting the willies up you”! There isn’t much information to work on with regards to the lgbt angle, except that Nottinghamshire’s Lord Byron was present at the birth of the story of Frankenstein.

Earlier this year I thought I might adapt my “Seven Deadly Gay Sins” tour and put emphasis on the various gruesome punishments in Hell awaiting the sinful. I might work out a combination of the two and research new information. I could even include my own encounter in Canning Circus cemetery with a dead (human) body that wasn’t supposed to be there (a tale I’ll go into more detail about in November).

As a Christian I also commemorate All Saints Day the day after Hallowe’en, being the dedication of my home parish church in Misterton. So by combining the 2 days I could come up with a “ Gay Demons and Queer Saints” tour.

If people would be interested in a Hallowe’en tour, conducted late at night of course, please let me know and I’ll be spurred on to put one together. If you know of any gruesome gay tales of Nottingham, suitable for a light-hearted tour, also drop me an email.

I’ll leave you with a truly awful joke – Why can’t you ever see the cross-dressing father of a ghost? Because he’s trans-parent!!! Get it? Oh, never mind.

Do you need a fag?

I got a very nice surprise earlier this week when I logged on to the LGBT History Month website. I’d been sending them information on several occasions, mainly regarding lgbt sport and the Olympics which I mentioned in a previous post. As well as the list of lgbt Olympians I compiled a history of lgbt involvement in sport from the year 14 AD. Both of these are now on the History Month website - http://lgbthistorymonth.org.uk​/updates/out-of-the-blocks-tak​es-us-to-the-future

It's a pity they spelt my name wrong!

I’m still working on them and adding new dates and events. For instance, one recent addition to an entry on the Gay Games is the participation of the 1960s Marlborough cigarette man who was famous on advertising boards around the world, Christian Haren. Another recent addition is the publication date of “The Book of Sport” written by “Queen” James I in 1617 in which he banned bear-baiting on Sundays amongst other things.

What I find amusing is that these men are on the opposite sides of tobacco addiction. Christian Haren earned a fortune as the “Marlborough Man”, presenting to the world a macho smoker that women lusted after (and a few men, given that he owned a gay bar in San Francisco and became HIV+ and spent his last years on AIDS prevention tours around American schools). King James I of Great Britain, however, detested tobacco. He wrote a very long tract denouncing smoking, and ended with one of the best sentences in the anti-smoking lobby that has never been bettered. He called smoking: “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless”. Nice turn of phrase, though I wouldn’t go that far myself, even though I’m a non-smoker.

Out of Their Trees - Rufus Wainwright

The New series of “Who Do You Think You Are?” began this week. It has featured a good handful of lgbt participants in the past.

I’ve been interested in genealogy longer than any other branch of history. For LGBT History Month 2010 I researched ancestries of many lgbt people. I found about 2 dozen lgbt descendants of Nottinghamshire Mayflower Pilgrims (I don’t call them Pilgrim Fathers because there were Mothers and Children as well), including Katherine Hepburn and Vincent Price.

Gay US/Canadian singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright has varied roots. Through his mother there’s a lot of French-Canadian ancestry which he shares with Madonna and the Duchess of Cornwall. But one descent which interested me was his Pilgrim ancestry which he shares with Barack Obama.

The name Pilgrim is always associated with the Mayflower but there were other Pilgrims – families and friends – who sailed to America in later years. Rufus Wainwright does have Mayflower ancestry, but not from the original ship.

The original Mayflower was left to rot in Rotherhithe. A second ship named Mayflower was built and sailed from London in 1629 stopping at Gravesend to pick up Pilgrim passengers. Peter Blossom of Cambridge had decided to sail with the Pilgrims to America in 1620 on the Mayflower’s companion ship Speedwell. Unfortunately, Speedwell sprang a leak and had to turn back. The Mayflower went ahead alone and Blossom didn’t get chance to join the others until the new Mayflower was built. With him went his wife and young family, his eldest child being Elizabeth aged 9. At the age of 17 she married Nottinghamshire-born Pilgrim Edward FitzRandolph.

The FitzRandolphs have an ancient heritage and a coat of arms (pictured). They descend from King William the Lion of Scotland (uncle to one alleged candidate for the original Robin Hood). By marriage into the Langton family they inherited Langton Hall near Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.

Edward FitzRandolph was baptised in Sutton in 1607. As a child he would have heard about the emerging Puritan Separatist movement in Bassetlaw. Edward and the Separatists were persecuted by the government because of their lifestyle, just as many lgbt people around the world are today. That’s why Puritans began to leave for places where they could worship in freedom.

FitzRandolph left for America in 1630 in the “Winthrop Fleet”, a group of over 700 Pilgrim settlers. Also in this fleet were the Cheseborough family, Rufus Wainwright’s ancestors from Lincolnshire.

In the Puritan colony Edward met and married Elizabeth Blossom in 1637. Over time a lot of colonists found the Puritan lifestyle becoming more strict and confining, and the FitzRandolphs were among many who moved to other colonies. The FitzRandolphs moved to New Jersey and had 12 children. Rufus descends from their youngest child Benjamin. Their eldest son Nathaniel is ancestor of President Barack Obama.

Rufus Wainwright has more Robin Hood connections. He descends from the brother of Sir William Neville, Constable of Nottingham Castle, whose boyfriend Sir John Clanvowe probably wrote the earliest surviving stories of Robin Hood. Another ancestor is King Edward II of England who spent a lot of time at Nottingham Castle and made his boyfriend Piers Gaveston the Constable.

The Flags are Out

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Olympic Countdown

Since this article first appeared a lot of new information has been revealed and new research has been carried out. This article should be seen as a mere snapshot of the information known at the date of its publication. Several facts may now be outdated or inaccurate.



With less than a year to go before the London Olympics I thought I’d share with you some research I’ve been doing over the past couple of years. LGBT History Month is held in the UK every February. For 2011 and 2012 the theme of sport. This got me thinking about lgbt involvement at the Olympics and sport in general. Two projects came out of this:

1)       my quest to list all lgbt Olympians, and

2)       the history of Ancient Greek sport.

The second of these produced a presentation called “The Gayest Games in Ancient Greece”, which told the origin and history of the Hyakinthia Festival and the Great Panathenean Games. I’ll tell you all about that another time.

The first project produced a list of 100 lgbt Olympians, “groundbreaking” as Nottinghamshire’s Rainbow Heritage put it. I suppose it is in a way as no-one has done it before. I managed to produce a chart with 100 names in time for a local exhibition in LGBT History Month 2011. Since then I’ve added a more names.

Some lgbt Olympians are well known – John Curry, Martina Navratilova and Matthew Mitcham. Some were not “out” when they competed, and a few of them were involved in controversies around their sexuality or gender. In fact, one German athlete was sent to a Nazi concentration camp because he was gay.

Fear of homophobia still prevents a lot of people from coming out. One of these was a competitor at the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, an American soldier. This created a double whammy of a problem, because even if this athlete came out he/she would be have been fired from the US Army because of their ban on serving lgbt soldiers. That anonymous athlete (whose identity I DO know but won’t reveal his/her name) is still, to the best of my knowledge, still closeted in the army.

What I would like to do in 2012 is bring you some of the stories of athletes who are out. I probably won’t get through them all.

The London Olympics has already become the gayest Olympics so far with a Diversity Group, and an invitation offered to lgbt athletes to come to the games. There’s even a special Olympic Pride badge.

I don’t think the sexuality of the athletes is as important as the quality of sport, but there are thousands of athletes who still fear prejudice and discrimination for other athletes and their own sports organisations.

For July 2012, when the Olympics take place, I’ll go all out to bring you as much information as possible and, fingers crossed, a new chart for you to download containing my target of 125 lgbt Olympians.