Prostitution in the Ancient Greek World

Konstantinos Kapparis

• Editorial: De Gruyter
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110556803
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Historia antigua

Prostitution in the ancient Greek world was widespread, legal, and acceptable as a fact of life and an unavoidable necessity. The state regulated the industry and treated prostitution as any other trade. Almost every prominent man in the ancient world has been truly or falsely associated with some famous hetaira. These women, who sold their affections to the richest and most influential men of their time, have become legends in their own right. They pushed the boundaries of female empowerment in their quest for self-promotion and notoriety, and continue to fascinate us. Prostitution remains a complex phenomenon linked to issues of gender, culture, law, civic ideology, education, social control, and economic forces. This is why its study is of paramount importance for our understanding of the culture, outlook and institutions of the ancient world, and in turn it can shed new light and introduce new perspectives to the challenging debate of our times on prostitution and contemporary sexual morality. The main purpose of this book is to provide the primary historical study of the topic with emphasis upon the separation of facts from the mythology surrounding the countless references to prostitution in Greek literary sources.

1Prostitution in the Archaic Period

1.1Images of Venal Sexuality in Greek Lyric

The mythical beginnings of prostitution, according to Quintus Ennius, go back to the time when Venus taught the art of prostitution (artem meretriciam) to the women of Cyprus so as to have company in her immodesty.12 In reality, the early history of prostitution in the Ancient Mediterranean is lost in the mist of time, but we can be sure that in an area where sea-travel was widespread in the second millennium BC, and agricultural settlements had grown into cities with marketplaces already from the late stone age, sex as a commodity should be present well before the time of our historical records. From our earliest written records comes loud and clear the voice of a rebel poet who reacted to the lofty ideals of the epic tradition that had bred many generations before his time.13 The verses of Archilochos set out to demolish the epic ideology of glory, immortality, wealth and honor, and later centuries remembered him through Pindar’s words as the “vitriolic Archilochos”.14 Among the limited number of his fragments which have survived we find a glorification of cowardice in the infamous poem about the shield, a renunciation of wealth and glory in favor of drink and sex, cynical remarks about how pointless bravery can be when in war victory goes to the one who has the better weapons, bragging about drunkenness while on guard, and a whole array of other human flaws.15 In this anti-heroic world we should not be surprised to find a number of references to prostitution. Archilochos is the first author who offers definite testimony about the existence of organized prostitution in the Greek world as early as the first half of the 7th century. A shockingly explicit reference to oral sex with ejaculation is probably the oldest unambiguous reference to a prostitutional setting in Greek literature:

She was sucking like a man from Thrace or Phrygia drinking beer

From a pipe; and she was bending over doing her job.16

H.D. Rankin interprets this as an allusion to fellatio, and believes that it could be an attack on Neoboule, or alternatively “another preserved vignette of the poet’s sordid experience”.17 This short couplet contains everything we would normally associate with the common prostitute: the references to the boorish and incontinent barbarians who in later times would be typically associated with her clientele in literary sources,18 a graphic image of female lust and oral sex, and an unmistakable description of a sexual position which indicates rough and ready sex. A lengthier reference to prostitution, this one bringing together the infamous pair of the cinaedus and the porne, is found in a poem of doubtful authenticity attributed to Archilochos:19

The catamite (κίναιδος)20 and the bad whore (πόρνη) have the same mind:

Both are very glad to take the coins,

Getting aroused and penetrated deep,21

Laid and bonked hard,

Banged and screwed deep,

Stretched and humped all over the place,

And no stallion was ever enough to satisfy both of them

But they love sucking more and more dick, of every dirty scum

Trying big dicks, thick dicks,

Those that leap forward, and the ones that hide too,

Pulling everything into the deep chasm of the terrifying pit,22

Right through the middle and all the way up to the belly button.

So, the lecherous trollop could really go to hell

with her entire clan of wide-ass buggers;

We should only care about the source of the Muses and a proper life,

for we know that this is pleasure and unadulterated joy.

If this passage belongs to Archilochos, it contains the earliest occurrence of the term porne in Greek literature. It would also provide certain proof for the presence of social attitudes which are commonly encountered in the literature of the classical period and its heirs, such as the stereotype of the insatiable whore and his/her love of money. The persona of the kinaidos is developed further in another poem attributed to Archilochos:

Iron is the only object which Kapys values -

The rest is nonsense to him; unless standing upright a penis

disappears into the recesses of his buttocks;

He is delighted to see his lover,

up to the point that he’s having fun getting pierced.

When this ceases, he ditches the old lover

in search of more robust stallions.

Zeus, let them all die and go to hell,

those untrustworthy and loveless hustlers (κινουμένων)23

The opening line of the fragment is difficult to interpret. Davidson understands it as a reference to a sword and translates “it is the only kind of steel that Capys cherishes … it is, for him, no sword worth talking about”.24 However, there is no word meaning “sword” in the original and the syntax, at least in the preserved section of the poem, does not allow us to read it in this manner.25 To add to the problem, the term which Davidson has translated as “upstanding” (ὀρθοστάδην) is an adverb and alludes to a sexual position,26 suggesting an interpretation according to which Capys enjoys being penetrated in an upstanding position. This is why we should probably understand the word σίδηρος literally as a reference to iron.

If we accept the latter interpretation, we would then need to answer the question why a lecherous man who enjoys relentless penetration would love iron too. If one were to interpret iron as a form of currency, like the famous iron bars which the Spartans used down to the classical period,27 then the passage makes very good sense as a reference to a male prostitute. Maria Kostoglou, in a study which discusses iron and steel bars as a form of currency on the Aegean coastline and Thrace, has concluded that between the 9th and the 5th century steel spits were commonly used as currency bars, and were even used in a cultic context as votives to temples.28 So, according to this reading of the opening line, Kapys (which incidentally sounds like a Thracian name) rejoices in low value currency which he receives in return for sexual favors. This interpretation would also cast the last two lines of the poem into a new light: the speaker brings damnation not upon men who enjoy sex with other men,29 but upon cheap prostitutes who would do anything for cash.30 This reading of the poem would also speak for an earlier date, when the use of steel bars as currency was still widespread, and it would support Archilochean authorship.

Several other Archilochean poems can be interpreted as a reference to prostitution, although not with absolute certainty. For example, Douglas Gerber has plausibly interpreted fr. 34 West “there is no way that we will entertain you for free” as a reference to prostitution.31 Whether we are prepared to accept such interpretations or not, and despite any quibbles about the authorship or context of individual fragments, we can safely infer from the works of Archilochos that prostitution was in existence and probably flourishing already in the first half of the 7th century in the coastal cities of the Aegean; the great Parian poet is the first witness in its history whose voice reaches us loud and clear.

Hipponax of Ephesos is a true heir of the tradition of Archilochos, to the extent that sometimes there is confusion about specific works, and even biographical tales - such as the story that both drove their enemies to suicide with their bitter verses. He lived approximately a century after Archilochos, at a time when political unrest and uprisings, which led to the establishment of tyrannies, were commonplace in the Greek world. Perhaps in this respect he differs from Archilochos. Whereas the latter was reacting to a tradition which believed in great universal values, and was trying to replace the Homeric world of gods and heroes with one of flawed human beings, rebellious and full of questions, Hipponax is not interested in these larger issues. His outlook is typically mid-archaic, concentrating mostly on the small, the mundane, the ephemeral viewed from a negative and depressed perspective. As Albin Lesky puts it, Archilochus “views the whole of human existence, or at least the whole of his own life … But Hipponax asks no questions; his verses express the momentary perception and nothing more.”32 The meagre fragments of Hipponax include several references to prostitution. From Suetonius’ collection of the terminology of prostitution we learn that Hipponax introduced several terms for prostitute, which were preserved in later lexicographers.33 Particularly intriguing is the reference to mysachnos, in the masculine.34 Suetonius attributes the invention of the term mysachne (in the feminine) to Archilochos and correctly recognizes that it refers to a prostitute who has sex in the filthy dust, presumably a street-walker.35 If Hipponax was indeed referring to a male prostitute, it would imply that he borrowed the term from Archilochos, and changed the gender. More important, this would be one of the earliest references to male prostitution, and the earliest reference to a street-walker in Greek literature.

Anacreon of Teos, a junior contemporary of Hipponax, is another important name associated with the Archilochean tradition. His references to prostitution are more extensive than his predecessors, and for that reason studied to a greater extent in previous scholarship. Moreover, they are not plagued by the same doubts about authenticity which shadow the works attributed to Archilochos. Anacreon is extensively associated with sympotic literature. Scenes which feature drinking parties, games and playful scenarios are prominent in his work, to the extent that an entire collection of drinking poetry from later antiquity, the Anacreonteia, was linked to him. A fair number of young boys and women, sometimes mentioned by name, feature in his works in situations which from the perspective of classical Athenian morality would appear compromising. Women mentioned in those poems are commonly thought to be hetairai and references to overt sexuality are usually interpreted as references to prostitution. This assumption is based upon perceptions and stereotypes of women from the literature of the classical period, and should be viewed with skepticism. A number of these passages has been discussed to some length by Leslie Kurke in a study of the origins of prostitution in the archaic lyric.36

Anacreon’s poem on Artemon has received a considerable amount of attention for its savage critique of a nouveau-rich man, an “upstart parvenu,”37 with his ostentatious show of wealth and a luxurious lifestyle which was typically associated with oriental effeminacy.38 William Slater suggested that the poem is not an attack but rather affectionate teasing for being cheap. The traditional view that the poem is an attack for ostentation and bad taste was re-established in two subsequent studies by Malcolm Davies and C. Brown.39 The second stanza contains a reference which is significant for the study of prostitution in the archaic world. It is just one word, which means “whores by choice” (ἐθελοπόρνοισιν), signifying the existence of free persons in prostitution, who chose this trade on their own volition:

That filthy cover of a bad shield, the companion

Of bread-makers and whores by choice, the wicked Artemon,

Making a dishonest living.

The issue of voluntary prostitution may be dif...