Background
III, William Armstrong Percy, was born on December 10, 1933 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Son of William Armstrong Percy, II and Anne Minor Dent.
(Combining impeccable scholarship with accessible, straigh...)
Combining impeccable scholarship with accessible, straightforward prose, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece argues that institutionalized pederasty began after 650 B.C., far later than previous authors have thought, and was initiated as a means of stemming overpopulation in the upper class. William Armstrong Percy III maintains that Cretan sages established a system under which a young warrior in his early twenties took a teenager of his own aristocratic background as a beloved until the age of thirty, when service to the state required the older partner to marry. The practice spread with significant variants to other Greek-speaking areas. In some places it emphasized development of the athletic, warrior individual, while in others both intellectual and civic achievement were its goals. In Athens it became a vehicle of cultural transmission, so that the best of each older cohort selected, loved, and trained the best of the younger. Pederasty was from the beginning both physical and emotional, the highest and most intense type of male bonding. These pederastic bonds, Percy believes, were responsible for the rise of Hellas and the "Greek miracle": in two centuries the population of Attica, a mere 45,000 adult males in six generations, produced an astounding number of great men who laid the enduring foundations of Western thought and civilization.
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III, William Armstrong Percy, was born on December 10, 1933 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Son of William Armstrong Percy, II and Anne Minor Dent.
Bachelor, University Tennessee, 1957. Master of Arts, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1961. AM, Princeton University, 1962.
Doctor of Philosophy, Princeton University, 1964.
Teaching assistant Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1957—1960. Assistant professor University New Orleans, 1962—1964, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1964—1966. Associate professor University Missouri, St. Louis, 1966—1968, University Massachusetts, Boston, 1968—1973, professor history, since 1973.
Member, secretary planning committee University Massachusetts, Boston, 1968—1970. With United States Army, 1956, 1953.
(Combining impeccable scholarship with accessible, straigh...)
Active Civil Rights Movement, Baton Rouge, 1964—1966, Anti-War Movement, Baton Rouge, 1966, Act Up, Boston, 1990—1996, Washington, 1990—1996. Member of Boston Athenaeum (proprietor since 1976), American History Association (chair committee on Lesbian and Gay history 1989-1991).