[5] David Halperin Oxford classical dictionary for homosexuality. The application of 'homosexuality' (and 'heterosexuality') in a substantive or normative sense to sexual expression in antiquity is not advised. Greek and Roman men generally understood sex to be defined in terms of sexual penetration and phallic pleasure, whether the sexual partners were two males, two females, or one male and one female. The physical act of sex itself required, in their eyes, a polarization of sexual roles into 'active' and 'passive'. Those roles in turn were correlated with superordinate and subordinate social status, with masculine and feminine gender styles, and with adulthood and adolescene. Phallic insertion functioned as a marker of male precedence; it also expressed social domination and seniority. The isomorphism of sexual, social, gender, and age roles made the distinction between 'acitivity' and 'passivity' paramount for categorising sexual acts and actors of either gender; the distinction between between homosexual and heterosexual contacts could still be invoked for certain purposes, but remained of comparatively minor taxonomic and ethical significance ... to be sexually penetrated was always potentially shaming, especially for a boy of citizen status... In Classical Athens ... free boys could be openly courted, but a series of elaborate protocols served to shield them from the shame associated with bodily penetration, thereby enabling them to gratify their older suitors without compromising their future status as adults.