Catamite

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A catamite is the younger partner in a pederastic relationship between two males, which was a popular arrangement in many areas of the ancient world.

The word is also used to describe the practise in early Japan, where monks would have sexual relationships with younger monks; samurai with pages; and noblemen with younger members of the aristocracy.

The word catamite is derived from the Latin catamitus, itself borrowed from the Etruscan catmite, a corruption of the Greek Ganymedes, the boy who was seduced by Zeus and became his beloved and cup-bearer in Greek mythology.

[edit] In literature

Anthony Burgess starts his novel Earthly Powers with the 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 Cormac McCarthy's depiction of survival in a post-apocalyptic society in The Road, where many have reverted to cannibalism, the protagonists encounter, while hiding from a distance, people that were enslaved and who are referred to as "catamites", along with pregnant women and carriage-pulling slaves.