Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE–200 CE

Allison Glazebrook, Madeleine M. Henry, Allison Glazebrook, Madeleine M. Henry

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780299235642
• eBook ISBN: 9780299235635
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: History of Ancient Art
• Index: History

Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE–200 CE challenges the often-romanticized view of the prostitute as an urbane and liberated courtesan by examining the social and economic realities of the sex industry in Greco-Roman culture. Departing from the conventional focus on elite society, these essays consider the Greek prostitute as displaced foreigner, slave, and member of an urban underclass.
    The contributors draw on a wide range of material and textual evidence to discuss portrayals of prostitutes on painted vases and in the literary tradition, their roles at symposia (Greek drinking parties), and their place in the everyday life of the polis. Reassessing many assumptions about the people who provided and purchased sexual services, this volume yields a new look at gender, sexuality, urbanism, and economy in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and Transliterations
• Introduction: Why Prostitutes? Why Greek? Why Now?
• 1. The Traffic in Women: From Homer to Hipponax, from War to Commerce
• 2 Porneion: Prostitution in Athenian Civic Space
• 3. Bringing the Outside In: The Andrön as Brothel and the Symposium’s Civic Sexuality
• 4. Woman + Wine = Prostitute in Classical Athens?
• 5. Embodying Sympotic Pleasure: A Visual Pun on the Body of an Aulëtris
• 6. Sex for Sale? Interpreting Erotica in the Havana Collection
• 7. The Brothels at Delos: The Evidence for Prostitution in the Maritime World
• 8. Ballio’s Brothel, Phoenicium’s Letter, and the Literary Education of Greco-Roman Prostitutes: The Evidence of Plautus’s Pseudolus
• 9. Prostitutes, Pimps, and Political Conspiracies during the Late Roman Republic
• 10. The Terminology of Prostitution in the Ancient Greek World
• Conclusion: Greek Brothels and More
• References
• Contributors
• Index
• Index Locorum