Homosexuality was, of course, known before they came, but they made it honorable.

Homer never mentions it, and it was not known as legitimate to the AEolians or the Ionians.

Bethe, who has written a valuable study of Dorian _paiderastia_, states that the Dorians admitted a kind of homosexual marriage, and even had a kind of boy-marriage by capture, the scattered vestiges of this practice indicating, Bethe believes, that it was a general custom among the Dorians before the invasion of Greece.

Such unions even received a kind of religions consecration.

It was, moreover, shameful for a noble youth in Crete to have no lover; it spoke ill for his character.