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

by Allison Glazebrook, Madeleine M. Henry

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299235642
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	01/06/2011
Series:	Wisconsin Studies in Classics
Edition description:	1
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Allison Glazebrook is associate professor of classics at Brock University, Ontario, Canada. Madeleine M. Henry is professor of classical studies at Iowa State University and author of Menander’s Courtesans and the Greek Comic Tradition and Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

1. Introduction: Why Prostitutes? Why Greek? Why Now?

Allison Glazebrook and Madeline M. Henry

2. The Traffic in Women: From Homer to Hipponax, From War to Commerce

Madeline M. Henry

3. Porneion: Prostitutes in Athenian Civic Space

Allison Glazebrook

4. Bringing the Outside In: The Andron as Brothel and the Symposion's Civic Sexuality

Sean Corner

5. Woman + Wine = Prostitute in Classical Athens?

Clare Kelly Blazeby

6. Embodying Sympotic Pleasure: A Visual Pun on the Body of an Auletris

Helene Coccagna

7. Women for Sale? Interpreting Erotica in the Havana Collection

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz

8. The Brothels at Delos: A Study of the Evidence for Prostitution in the Maritime World

Davina M. McClain and Nicholas K. Rauh

9. Ballio's Brothel, Phoenicium's Letter, and the Literary Education of Greco-Roman Prostitutes: The Evidence of Plautus' Pseudolus

Judith P. Hallett

10. Sex Trade Labourers and Political Conspiracies During the Late Roman Republic

Nicholas K. Rauth

11. Suetonius and the Terminology of Prostitution

Konstantinos K. Kapparis

12. Conclusion: Brothels and More

Thomas A. J. McGinn

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Editorial Reviews

By questioning the class-based polarity between courtesan (hetaira) and whore (porne), the authors substantially correct academic readings of the Greek prostitute as cultural construct, embedding them in gritty reality.”—Marilyn Skinner, University of Arizona

“Common prostitutes, such as those found in brothels, around harbors, and on the streets of ancient cities, have long been ignored in favor of their more glamorous counterpart, the hetaira. This volume for the first time puts the focus on the degradation, marginality, and exploitation inherent in the ancient sex trade through an exploration of the literary and artistic representation of prostitutes and the civic and domestic spaces they inhabited.”—Laura K. McClure, coeditor of Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World

From the Publisher