Were the Spartans Pederasts?
A great deal of "the literature" about ancient Sparta includes the citizens of that great city in the numbers of those ancient Greek perverts who practiced pederasty.
Paul Cartledge is among the many academicians who have accepted this myth:
One particularly striking instance of this displaced or surrogate fathering was the institution of ritualized pederasty. After the age of twelve, every Spartan teenager was expected to receive a young adult warrior as his lover – the technical Spartan term for the active senior partner was ‘inspirer’, while the junior partner was known as the ‘hearer’. The relationship was probably usually sexual, but sex was by no means the only or even always the major object. The pedagogic dimension is nicely brought out in the tale of a Spartan youth who made the mistake of crying out in pain during one of the regular brutally physical contests that punctuated progress through the Agoge.