text: have you ever heard of the word pedastry? please read source below before asnwering? please give your thoughts on this  in brief please.  source: http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/sirrobhitch.suffolk/portland%20state%20university%20greek%20civilization%20home%20page%20v2/docs/10/elinii.html yes, i had heard of the word pedarasty.  the source you list is consistant with other information about sexual practices in ancient greece.  similar things were practiced in other cultures too - japan, for example.  these days, even if consenting, such relationships are illegal in most jurisdictions.  the term pederasty embraces a wide range of erotic relations between adult males and adolescent boys. pederastic relations can have widely dissimilar manifestations – they can be lawful or transgressive, chaste or sexual, loving or commercial – and have been documented from prehistory to modern times. "pederasty" derives from the combination of pais (παις) (greek for 'boy') with erastis (greek for 'lover'; cf. eros). late latin pæderasta was borrowed in the sixteenth century directly from plato’s classical greek in the symposium. the word first appears in the english language in the renaissance, as pæderastie (e.g.: in samuel purchas' pilgrimage.), in the sense of sexual relations between men and boys.  in modern academic parlance, "pederasty" is used as a generic term to describe the cultural phenomenon of love relationships between men and adolescent boys, wherever encountered.  the main difference between pedarasty and pedophilia (from the perspective of academia) is that pedophilia is a fetish - pedophiles only are aroused by children (of either sex, not just boys), where as pedarasts might not only be attracted to young boys, and the attraction is not necessarily sexual.  the word pedarast specifically refers to boys.