Prostitution in ancient Rome was legal and licensed. The moral stance of Roman society towards it is a complex topic and there are indications that it evolved through time.
Prostitution took many forms. It ranged from the sexual services that were routinely offered in many establishments - such as Roman baths (thermae) or inns (tabernae and stabula) - to the dedicated brothels (lupanar). Most prostitutes were female slaves or freedwomen. The balance of voluntary to forced prostitution can only be guessed at. Privately held slaves were considered property under Roman law, so it was legal for an owner to employ them as prostitutes. Pimping and prostitution were, however, considered disgraceful and dishonourable activities, and their practitioners were considered “infamous” (infames); for citizens, this meant loss of reputation and many of the rights and privileges attached to citizenship. Slave-owning patrons and investors may have sought to avoid loss of privilege by appointing slaves or freedmen to manage their clandestine investments. Some large brothels in the 4th century, when Rome was becoming officially Christianized, seem to have been counted as tourist attractions and were possibly state-owned.
Latin literature makes frequent reference to prostitutes. Historians such as Livy and Tacitus mention prostitutes who had acquired some degree of respectability through patriotic, law-abiding, or euergetic behavior. The high-class "call girl" (meretrix) is a stock character in Plautus's comedies, which were influenced by Greek models. The poems of Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Martial, and Juvenal, as well the Satyricon of Petronius, offer fictional or satiric glimpses of prostitutes. Real-world practices are documented by provisions of Roman law that regulate prostitution, and by inscriptions, especially graffiti from Pompeii. Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum from sites presumed to be brothels has also contributed to scholarly views on prostitution.
Moral stance on prostitution
There were social settings in which men of any social status were free to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval, as long as they demonstrated self-control and moderation in the frequency and enjoyment of sex. Brothels were part of the culture of ancient Rome, as popular places of entertainment for Roman men. Sexual services were routinely offered by the slave attendants in Roman baths (thermae) where both male and female patrons were serviced by both male and female attendants .
There are also signs that there were social settings in which prostitution was shunned. Men coming out from a brothel would typically cover their heads to hide their faces. Cicero explicitly mentions having recognised an opponent exiting a poppina with his head covered, indicating that he had used the services of a prostitute. The practice was so common that the expression "covering one's head like when coming out of a brothel" is used in literary works in unrelated contexts . A joke preserved in the Satyricon plays on the double meaning of the word stabulum - cheap housing or a brothel - and clearly mocks the intelligence of men who spend their money on prostitutes .
There is also evidence that the Roman sexual morals evolved during the era. They tended to view the earlier Greeks as being of somewhat loose morals. The conversion to Christianity during the late Roman Empire also played a very significant role, although the change was linear and happened over many centuries . It is not clear to which point Christianity was a driving factor and to which point the emerging Christianity itself was shaped by this gradual change in the Roman society.
The prostitutes
Terminology Most scholarship on Roman prostitution implies a social hierarchy, whereby meretrix ("woman who earns, paid woman") is a free-born, higher-class registered prostitute, scortum (possibly from "hides, leather") is an impoverished low-class street-walker, and amica a purely euphemistic "lady-friend".Adams, J. N., Words for "prostitute" in Latin, University of Koeln, 1983, pp. 321 – 358 Witzke offers examples from Roman comedies to show that all these terms may be used to refer to the same individual, a hierarchy of politeness, with meretrix the most respectful, but equally used for a brothel slave worker and a high-class free prostitute. Scortum is an insult in some circumstances but affectionate banter in others, and amica is euphemistic, used in Roman comedies by naïve adolescent clients to downplay the commercial basis of their relationship. There are no low-class street prostitutes in Roman comedies.Witzke, Serena S. "Harlots, Tarts, and Hussies?: A Problem of Terminology for Sex Labor in Roman Comedy." Helios, vol. 42 no. 1, 2015, p. 7-27. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/hel.2015.0000.
In most modern scholarship, meretrix (plural: meretrices) is taken to be the standard term for a registered female prostitute, a higher class of sex worker — the more pejorative scortum can be used for prostitutes of either gender, with a distinctly condemnatory edge when used by Roman moralists. Unregistered or casual prostitutes fall under the broad category prostibulae, "lower class"; the relatively uncommon lupa, (from Lupus femina, "she-wolf") is rarely attested in the literature but was probably common among the lower social classes. To Adams, lupa suggests a particularly low, predatory prostitute who works from graveyards.Adams, J. N., Words for "prostitute" in Latin, University of Koeln, 1983, pp. 321 – 358
Although both women and men might engage male or female prostitutes, female prostitutes far outnumbered males, and evidence for female prostitution is the more ample. A stable legal definition of "prostitute" came late in Roman legal history. It defined a prostitute as someone sexually promiscuous who received payment for sex. The greater emphasis in this legal couplet was on promiscuity, not payment. Prostitutes were thought to do what they did because they had an excessive appetite for sex, and pimps (lenones) through greed for money.McGinn, Thomas A. J. “The legal definition of prostitute in late Antiquity.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 42 (1997): 73–116. https://doi.org/10.2307/4238748.
Circumstance
Some prostitutes were self-employed and rented a room for work. A girl (puella, a term used in poetry as a synonym for "girlfriend" or meretrix and not necessarily an age designation) might live with a procuress or madame (lena) or even go into business under the management of her natural mother. These arrangements suggest the recourse to prostitution by free-born women in dire financial need, and such prostitutes may have been regarded as of relatively higher repute or social degree. Prostitutes could also work out of a brothel, bathhouse or tavern for a procurer or pimp (leno), who provided them with clients and protection. Some worked unescorted on the streets, or from graveyards, with virtually non-existent overheads but high risks of non-payment and assault, and no recourse to law. Ordinary women who went out unescorted were frequently mistaken for prostitutes.McGinn, Thomas A. J., Prostitution, sexuality, and the law in ancient Rome, 1998, pp. 210, 334, Oxford University Press, published online in 2003 by google booksFlemming, 1998, pp. 48 – 49
Most prostitutes seem to have been slaves or former slaves. There is some evidence that slave prostitutes could retain at least a proportion of their earnings. In the Empire as a whole, and among prostitutes as a whole, prices ranged between 1 and 25 asses. This would have yielded an average daily income of 10 asses, before fees due to her pimp or brothel; about twice the income of a male day-labourer.McGinn, 1998, pp. 210, 334 In Pompeii, prices were between 2 and 20 asses. Exactly what services were provided for these sums is not known; nor is the status of the women involved. According to a certain Lucilius, the lowest payment – for an unspecified service – was "". For services of the highest class professionals, no upper limit is apparent: the wealth of the dictator Sulla is said to have been founded on a high class prostitute's bequest. The trope of the "generous whore" goes back to Rome's foundation myth, with Acca Larentia's gift of land to the Roman people, earned during her years as a meretrix. Historically, most meretrices earned little, compared to their pimps and owners.Flemming, 1998, pp. 50–52
Some courtesans were counted among Rome's wealthiest and most influential women. In 49 BC Cicero was scandalised to find that Pompey, although a married man, allowed his mistress Cytheris, a former slave and actress-turned-courtesan, to occupy the seat of honour reserved for the family materfamilias. In the context of Augustan poetry, Richard Frank sees Cytheris as an exemplar of the "charming, artistic and educated" women who contributed to a new romantic standard for malefemale relationships that Ovid and others articulated in their erotic elegies; a welcome guest for dinner parties at the highest level of Roman society.Frank, Richard I., "Augustan Elegy and Catonism," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.30.1 (1982), p. 569. One hundred and twenty years later, Suetonius describes an episode in which the emperor Vespasian's mistress, the capable and talented ex-slave and freedwoman Antonia Caenis, offered familial kisses of greeting to his sons. The elder son, Titus, courteously accepted. The younger, Domitian, refused and offered his hand instead. Suetonius reports this as an example of Domitian's insufferable arrogance and rudeness.Strong, Anise K., Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World, pp. 62–63 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316563083.004 Cambridge University Press, first print publication, 2016
Infamia, registration and tax
Prostitutes were "infamous persons" (infames), socially disgraced by their unchaste profession. They had few rights, and little or no protection under the law. They could be subjected to physical punishment. They could not give evidence in court, and Roman freeborn men and women were forbidden to marry them; as loss of chastity was irreparable, their infamia was a life-long condition that could not be redeemed before the conversion to Christianity which held a different doctrine.
Still, there are surviving examples of at least some degree of legal protection for sex workers. There is a preserved decision by a judge to banish as a murderer a Roman senator who had killed his favourite prostitute and to confiscate a tenth of his property as a compensation to the victim's family, despite the objections of the other senators .
Most prostitutes, and pimps, were slaves or former slaves, with no social standing or reputation to lose; pimps were purveyors of human flesh and sensual pleasure. Other Infames included actors and gladiators, who exerted fascination and sexual allure; and butchers, gravediggers and executioners, polluted by their associations with blood and death. Romans assumed that actors, dancers and gladiators were available to provide paid sexual services. Courtesans named in the historical record are sometimes indistinguishable from actresses and other performers.