This and the emphasis on adult heterosexuality set this book apart from much recent research and reassert a more balanced outlook on ancient Greek sexuality. Calame carefully positions this evidence in its cultural context, arguing that erotic lyric is part of an amatory strategy participating in the very erotic interaction it describes. Lyric poets represent Eros as a contradictory, bitter-sweet force who violently strikes his victim in the seats of emotion, not the mind, and acts from a distance through the sense of sight rather than touch. They view love in the asymmetrical mode and, through the pervasive use of the first person voice, force the reader to identify with the desiring subject who pursues an unfeeling adolescent object, whether male or female. Since the poets' subject is desire rather than its attainment, love is generally unrequited, and rejected lovers have no hesitation in heaping abuse and ill-will on those who spurn them or break faith.
Epic poetry speaks with a different voice and different conventions.
In place of unattainable pursuit set in the present, it describes legendary and divine reciprocal philotes practiced on a bed in a relationship of trust based on mutual consent. Though philotes is characteristic of marriage, it is not confined to married couples. Seduction, which builds a sense of philia , is a common prelude to philotes. This seduction is often accomplished by words and even lies, leading to Calame's conclusion that erotic poetry itself was intended to play a seductive role for poet and reader. Chapter 3 examines the practical effects of erotic poetry.