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Neoplatonism .O NAVY NAVY which the offender had been the object of See Seafaring. blackmail-thus acknowledging the va- lidity of Magnus Hirschfeld's claim that the existing law encouraged the extortion NAZISM of homosexuals. The prohibition was not The ideology and practice of extended to lesbians, so that female homo- National Socialism, which under the lead- sexuality remained legal. ership of Adolf Hitler ruled Germany from When detected, male homosexu- 1933 to 1945, united several virulent als were arrested and consigned to the strands of hostility to homosexuality. concentration camps, where they were Inheriting the repressive attitudes of the placed in the lowest category of prisoners. nineteenth-century sexual purity move- In the camps homosexual inmates were ments, Nazi ideologuesreacted also to the required to wear the pink triangle as an licence they perceived as eroding the so- identifying mark; subsequently, this cia1 fabric of Germany under the Weimar emblem was adopted as a positive symbol Republic (191843). Popular sentiment by the gay liberation movements of the amongtheNazisfavoredastrongpolariza- 1970s. Estimates of the number of pink tion of male and female roles, which the triangle men killed vary from 10,000 to perception of homosexuals as "the third 250,000; probably the true number will sex" contradicted. Equating population never be known. Sadly, homosexual vic- growth with power, the Nazis also pur- tims of the Nazis were the only such goup sued a vigorous pronatalist policy. Their denied monetary compensation from the attitude toward male homosexual behav- West German government afterworldwar ior, regarded as a threat to the survival of IIbecauseof theircontinuingillegalstatus. the German people, was unequivocably Even today commemorations of the Holo- negative. Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi caust often fail to mention them. Abizarre leader most concerned with the question, footnote is the appearance of two tiny advocated drowning homosexuals in bogs groups of "gay Nazis" in California in the as a return to the tribal custom of the mid 1970s; this episode is a reflection, ancient Germans recorded by Tacitus. probably of ephemeral significance, of the It is a historical paradox that the lingering myth of the "fascist perversion." presence of a few known homosexuals in the ranks of the early Nazi Party, notably BIBLIOGRAPHY. Heinz Heger, The Men with the Pink Triangle, London: Gay Emst Rohm, the head of the paramilitary Men's Press, 1980; Manfred Herzer, Brownshirts (SA),gave unscrupulous op- "Nazis, Psychiatrists, and Cays," ponents and propagandists of the left the Ca birion, 12 (19851, 1-5; Riidiger leverage required for the superficial plau- Lautmann, "The Pink Triangle," Iournal sibility of their myth of the "fascistperver- of Homosexuality, 6 (1980-8I), 141-60; Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The sionn-a supposed affinity between sexual Nazi War Against Homosexuals, New deviation and Nazism. In fact, Rohm and York: Holt, 1986. his associates were liquidated on Hitler's Wayne R. Dynes orders in the Night of the Long Knives, June 30, 1934. The jurists of the Third Reich NEOPLATONISM reinforced the existing antihomosexual A revival and recasting of Plato- clause of the Reich Penal Code by adding nism-mingling with it Pythagorean, a new section (175a), but at the same time Aristotelean, Stoic, and mystic ideas-- inserted an article in the Code of Criminal Neoplatonism supplanted Stoicism as the Procedure (154b) that allowed the public dominant ~hiloso~h~of the classical world prosecutor to take no action in a case in from the mid-third century to the closing NEOPLATONISM 4 of the pagan schools at Athens and else- nent of Renaissance Neoplatonism. Ex- where by Justinian in 529. Philosophers posed to Greek thought by the arrival in from Antiochus (d. ca. 68 B.c.)to Plotinus Italy of learned Byzantines fleeing Con- (205-269170)) who opposed all sex, includ- stantinople after its fall to the Turks in ing homosexuality of every type, evolved 1453, the young Ficino discovered Plato this new synthesis. In Rome when he was and his later followers, learning Greek in forty, Plotinus founded a circle of leading order to study the original texts. (Plato had politicians and scholars, including his most been known in medieval Europe only important disciple, Porphyry (23213-ca. through often faulty Latin versions, some 3051, who arranged for the publication of of them secondary translations from the Plotinus' Enneads almost on the eve of the Arabic.) An eclectic, Ficino sought to rec- official recog~iti~nof Christianity in 313. oncile Platonism and Neoplatonism with In the fourth century, from its chief cen- Christianity, using another body of Greek ters in Syria and then Pergamon, its star texts, the Hermetic Corpus compiled in proponent being Iamblichus, Neoplaton- late antiquity. ism became the creed of the pagan antago- Of special significance is his res- nistsof Christianity, which had beenmade urrection of the Platonic ideal of love, as it the state religion by Theodosius ca. 390. is known from the Phaedrus and the Sym- Neoplatonism even influenced posium. In the sixteenth century Ficino's Christianity through St. Gregory of Nyssa version was repackaged in countless trea- and other theologians of the Byzantine tises on love, becoming the prototype of a Empire, and through St. Augustine. Neo- new concept of "courtly love" that was platonism survived at Athens and Alexan- very different from the medieval variety. dria into the sixth century. It appeared in Ficino advocated a profound but highly the writings of the pseudo-Areopagite spiritual love between two men, ideally (about 500) and John Scotus Eriugena in united by their common quest for knowl- the ninth century, as well as in the workof edge. This loveis caused, following Plato's the middle Byzantine polymath Michael conception, by the vision of beauty con- Psellus. One of the principal features of veyed by the soul of the other individual- Neoplatonism was its spectrum of grada- a beauty that reflects the celestial perfec- tions between "the One" and "matter': the tion of God. Through the physical beauty world-mind, the world-soul, and nature- of a young man-women were in Ficino's each stage being characterized by dimin- view unsuitable as catalysts of this sub- ishing unity. Mystical as well as rational, limity-the conscience of the enlightened Neoplatonism encouraged Christian be- man ascends to the Beauty which is the lief in intermediate powers such as angels archetypal Idea (in Plato's sense) on which and demons. One of Porphyry's works in the beauty that he responds to depends- five books,Against the Christians, of which to God himself. With Cosimo and Lorenzo fragments survive, though the source was de' Medici's patronage, he founded-in condemned to the flames by the Chris- imitation of Plato's Acadeiny in Athens- tians in 448, used historical criticism to the Platonic Academy in Florence, which prove the lateness of composition of the was to be a major center of Italian Renais- Book of Daniel, as elsewhere he proved the sance thought. "Book of Zoroaster" a forgery. His work on In the course of 'the sixteenth logic became the standard Byzantine text century those who followed Ficino be- and his critique of Homer a philological came increasingly uncomfortable with the landmark. homoerotic aspects of his philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the love. Deploying an intellectual sleight of Florentine philosopher and humanist who hand, they heterosexualized the ideal-so was also homophile, was the chief expo- that today "Platonic love" usually means NEOPLATONISM the love of man and woman that includes Reversing roles, Nero made his husky no physical expression. freedman Doryphorus many him (though William A. Percy dispensing with the castration). Nero's many misdeeds have earned him an infamy outstanding even NERO(37-68) for the profligate age in which he lived. Roman emperor. Exiled as a re- Recent historians, however, have sought sult of the disfavoroftheEmperor Caligula, to redress the balance. His early years were the boy Nero and his ambitious mother markedby aseriouseffort at governmental Agrippina were rehabilitated and allowed reform. Unlike his cruelty, his sexual ir- to return to Rome after the emperor's regularities no longer seem monstrous. death in 41. Several Years later APiPPina And Nero presided over what has been married the emperor Claudius and1 on his called the Roman architectural revolution, demise in 54, was able to secure the throne the beginning of the great phase that for her son. Guided by the philosopher the empire's accomplishments in this field Seneca, the empire then entered an ausPi- unsurpassed. The image perpetuated by cious period of sound government. Grow- Henryk Sienkiewicz' novel Quo Vadis ing bored of the tedium of rule, however, (18961 and by ~~lly~~~dfilms is not Nero became addicted to luxury and to his confirmed by sober historical analysis. artistic pursuits-he imagined himself a distinguished poet and performer. He BIBLIOGRAPHY. K. R. Bradley, constructed for himself a great palace Suetonius' Life of Nero: An Historical Commentary, Brussels: Latomus, 1978; known as the Domus Transitoria. This Miriam Tamara Griffin, Nero, the End of proved insufficient, and Nero apparently a Dynasty, New Haven: Yale University ordered a large part of Rome set on fire in Press, 1984; Villy Ssrenson, Seneca, the 64, to serve as a site for the construction of Humanist at the Court of Nero, Chicago: his Golden House. As foreign relations University of Chicago Press, 1984. became more difficult, his connections Warren Iohansson with the Senate soured, and the plots against him required increasingly repres- NETHERLANDS,THE sive measures. A revolt by the army and (HOLLAND) Senate caused him to commit suicide, A European kingdom of fifteen uttering the words, "What an artist is Dutch-speaking the perishing in me." His death ended the Netherlands has in recent times acquired Julio-Claudian dynasty.
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