Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship is a book by English writer Edward Carpenter, first published in 1906. It is a study of friendship (primarily male), which in this case is a thinly veiled codeword for 'homosexuality'. In earlier cultures, intense, even romantic emotional relationships between men were accepted by society. Paradoxically, these relationships were often in the context of cultures which disparaged same sex eroticism, but had no problem accepting these strong bonds between men. Carpenter, who was an early gay rights activist, explores these friendships in the early Pagan world, amongst the Greeks and the Romans, in early Christian and medieval times, and during the Renaissance.
