Alcibiades the schoolboy
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Alcibiades the Schoolboy (L'Alcibiade, fanciullo a scola), an Italian dialogue published anonymously in 1652, is a lively defense of pederasty loosely styled after Platonic dialogue. Set in ancient Athens, the teacher is modelled on Socrates, who so desperately wants to consummate the relationship he has with one of his students that he uses all tactics of rhetoric and sophistry at his disposal. He argues that Nature gave us sexual organs for our own pleasure, and that it would insult her to use them otherwise, citing examples from Greek mythology and culture, as well as refuting counterarguments based on the Sodom and Gomorrah story.

For many years the identity of the author was a mystery. First attributed to Pietro Aretino, an article in 1888 by Achille Neri finally identified the author as Antonio Rocco, a libertine priest and philosopher and member of the Accademia degli Incogniti, founded by Giovan Battista Loredan.

The obscenity of the text is unashamedly explicit, but it has been argued, "it must be understood in the context of similar texts of the trend of libertinism, using the term in its original sense of a sceptical philosophical tendency."

Sources

• Dall'Orto, Giovanni Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola, L' . Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. Dynes, Wayne R. (ed.), Garland Publishing, 1990. p. 34.

• "Antonio Rocco and the Background of His 'L'Alcibiade fanciullo a Scola' (1652)," Among Men, Among Women, Amsterdam: University, 1983, pp.224-32.