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The purpose of this paper is to restore the competitive dimension to our understanding of the institution of pederasty, and thereby enhance our understanding of the erotic metaphors applied to Athenian politics by authors in the classical period. The pederastic erastes-eromenos pair has often been treated in scholarship as if it existed in a vacuum, when, of course, ancient Greece was an intensely agonistic society and competition over a desirable eromenos was fierce, as our ancient sources acknowledge. I hope to show that this aspect of competition helps to explain why metaphors derived from the elite practice of pederasty were so well suited to describing the politics of the Athenian democracy. First, however, I will examine the literary evidence for competition in pederasty and the association of competition with both pederasty and athletics.