The term pederasty or paederasty embraces a wide range of erotic practices between adult males and adolescent boys. Pederastic relations have been variously described - as spiritual or materialistic, lawful or criminal, loving or commercial, compassionate or abusive, sexual or chaste – and have been documented from prehistory to modern times. Rendered as 'age-structured homosexuality', it is, along with gender-structured relations and egalitarian relations, regarded as one of three main subdivisions of homosexuality proposed by anthropologists.