Book XII of the Palatine Anthology is the largest conserved collection of epigrams dedicated to pederasty, a term that in ancient Greece referred to the relationship of a sexual nature, and socially accepted, between an adolescent from a well-off family social (erómenos) and an adult male (erastés), an influential citizen who enjoyed a certain fortune and who was often the father of a family. However, the poems contained here cover a large spatial segment (from Greece in Asia Minor to Hellenized Rome) and temporal (from the 6th century BC to the 2nd century AD), so that some authors no longer feel the educational component of pedophilia , present in their origins, and they write openly homosexual epigrams. The short poems show the adoration of masculine beauty, love disappointments and the exhortation to young people to take advantage of their youthful splendor before their hair grows, as this fact supposes the decline of beauty and the end of the condition of eromena. Pedophilia and love passion are combined in some cases with pornographic themes that reflect an urban, tolerant and hedonistic society in which sexual pleasure was not banned.