Prostitution was a common aspect of ancient Greece.This article was originally translated from the French Wikipedia article Prostitution en Grèce antique 22 May 2006. In the more important cities, and particularly the many ports, it employed a significant number of people and represented a notable part of economic activity. It was far from being clandestine; cities did not condemn brothels, but rather only instituted regulations on them.

In Athens, the legendary lawmaker Solon is credited with having created state brothels with regulated prices. Prostitution involved both sexes differently; women of all ages and young men were prostitutes, for a predominantly male clientele.

Simultaneously, extramarital relations with a free woman were severely dealt with. In the case of adultery, the cuckold had the legal right to kill the offender if caught in the act; the same went for rape. Female adulterers, and by extension prostitutes, were forbidden to marry or take part in public ceremonies.

Pornai

The pornai ()The first noted occurrence of this word is found in Archilochus, a poet at the beginning of the 6th century BC(fragment 302) were found at the bottom end of the scale. They were the property of pimps or pornoboskós () who received a portion of their earnings (the word comes from pernemi "to sell"). This owner could be a citizen, for this activity was considered as a source of income just like any other: one 4th-century BC orator cites two; Theophrastus in Characters (6:5) lists pimp next to cook, innkeeper, and tax collector as an ordinary profession, though disreputable.Keuls, p.154. The owner could also be a male or female metic.

In the classical era of ancient Greece, pornai were slaves of barbarian origin; starting in the Hellenistic era the case of young girls abandoned by their citizen fathers could be enslaved. They were considered to be slaves until proven otherwise. Pornai were usually employed in brothels located in "red-light" districts of the period, such as Piraeus (port of Athens) or Kerameikos in Athens.

The classical Athenian politician Solon is credited as being the first to institute legal public brothels. He did this as a public health measure, in order to contain adultery. According to Athenaeus in the Deipnosophistae, the poet Philemon in his play Adelphoi praises Solon for the institution of brothels as a public good:

[Solon] seeing the city full of young men and these having the necessary nature and erring into what was not fitting, set up purchasable women for you in places common to all and prepared. The women stand naked, do not be deceived; see everything. You are not well with yourself having [it]; You have a way; the door is open. One obol; jump in. There is not even coyness or nonsense, nor has she snatched [it]. But immediately, as you wish and whatever way you wish. You went out; tell her to wail, she is a stranger to you.Philemon, The Brothers (Adelphoi), cited by the Hellenistic author Athenaeus in his book the Deipnosophistae ("The Dinner Sophists"), book XIII, as cited by Laura McClure, Courtesans at table: gender and Greek literary culture in Athenaeus. (Routledge, 2003)

As Philemon highlights, the Solonian brothels provided a service accessible to all, regardless of income. (One obolus is one sixth of one drachma, the daily salary of a public servant at the end of the 5th century BC. By the middle of the 4th century BC, this salary was up to a drachma and a half.) In the same light, Solon used taxes he levied on brothels to build a temple to Aphrodite Pandemos (literally "Aphrodite of all the people").

In regards to price, there are numerous allusions to the price of one obolus for a cheap prostitute in fifth- and fourth-century Athens. It is difficult to assess whether this was the actual price or a proverbially low amount.

Independent prostitutes who worked the street were on the next higher level. Besides directly displaying their charms to potential clients they had recourse to publicity; sandals with marked soles have been found which left an imprint that stated (AKOLOUTHEI, "Follow me") on the ground.Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, p.109. They also used makeup, apparently quite outrageously. Eubulus, a comic author, offers these courtesans derision: "plastered over with layers of white lead, … jowls smeared with mulberry juice. And if you go out on a summer's day, two rills of inky water flow from your eyes, and the sweat rolling from your cheeks upon your throat makes a vermilion furrow, while the hairs blown about on your faces look grey, they are so full of white lead".of Athenaeus, Deipnosophisae. trans. Charles Burton Gulick, 1937l; accessed 19 May 2006

These prostitutes had various origins: Metic women who could not find other work, poor widows, and older pornai who had succeeded in buying back their freedom (often on credit). In Athens they had to be registered with the city and pay a tax. Some of them made a decent fortune plying their trade. In the 1st century BC, at Qift in Roman Egypt, passage for prostitutes cost 108 drachma, while other women paid 20.W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectæ (OGIS), Leipzig, 1903–1905, II, 674.

Their tariffs are difficult to evaluate: they varied significantly. The average charge for a prostitute in 5th and 4th century ranged from three obols to a drachma.Ar. Thesm. 1195; Antiph. 293.3; PI. Com. 188.17 Expensive prostitutes could charge a stater (four drachmas),Theopomp. Com. 21: οὗ φησιν εἶναι τῶν ἑταιρῶν τὰς μέσας στατηριαίας or more, like the Corinthian Lais in her prime did.Epicr. 3.10-9 In the 1st century BC, the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara, cited in the Palatine anthology, V 126, mentions a system of subscription of up to five drachma for a dozen visits. In the 2nd century, Lucian in his Dialogue of the Hetaera has the prostitute Ampelis consider five drachma per visit as a mediocre price (8, 3). In the same text a young virgin can demand a mina, that is 100 drachma (7,3), or even two minas if the customer is less than appetizing. A young and pretty prostitute could charge a higher price than her in-decline colleague; even if, as iconography on ceramics demonstrates, a specific market existed for older women. The price would change if the client demanded exclusivity. Intermediate arrangements also existed; a group of friends could purchase exclusivity, with each having part-time rights.

Musicians and dancers working at male banquets can also undoubtedly be placed in this category. Aristotle, in his Constitution of the Athenians (L, 2) mentions among the specific directions to the ten city controllers (five from within the city and five from the Piraeus), the astynomoi, that "it is they who supervise the flute-girls and harp-girls and lyre-girls to prevent their receiving fees of more than two drachmas"Aristotle in 22 vols, trans. H. Rackham ; accessed 20 May 2006 per night. Sexual services were clearly part of the contract,See, for example The Wasps by Aristophanes, v. 1342 ff. though the price, in spite of the efforts of the astynomi, tended to increase throughout the period.

Hetaera

More expensive and exclusive prostitutes were known as hetaerae, which means "companion". Hetaerae, unlike pornai, engaged in long-term relationships with individual clients, and provided companionship as well as sex. Unlike pornai, hetaerae seem to have been paid for their company over a period of time, rather than for each individual sex act. Hetaerae were often educated, and free hetaerae were able to control their own finances. Hetairai are described as providing "flattering and skillful conversation" in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistai. Classical literature describes hetairai as performing similar social functions as intellectual companions.

Temple prostitution in Corinth

Around the year 2 BC, Strabo (VIII,6,20) in his geographic/historical description of the town of Corinth wrote some remarks concerning female temple servants in the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth, which perhaps should be dated somewhere in the period 700–400 BC:See Introduction in [Baladié]. The fragment is in Geographika VIII,6,20

The text in more than one way hints at the sexual business of those women. Remarks elsewhere of Strabo (XII,3,36: "women earning money with their bodies") as well as Athenaeus (XIII,574: "in the lovely beds picking the fruits of the mildest bloom") concerning this temple describe this character even more graphically.

In 464 BC, a man named Xenophon, a citizen of Corinth who was an acclaimed runner and winner of pentathlon at the Olympic Games, dedicated one hundred young girls to the temple of the goddess as a sign of thanksgiving. We know this because of a hymn which Pindar was commissioned to write (fragment 122 Snell), celebrating "the very welcoming girls, servants of Peïtho and luxurious Corinth". Trans. Jean-Paul Savignac for les éditions La Différence, 1990.

The work of gender researchers like Daniel Arnaud, Julia Assante and Stephanie Budin has cast the whole tradition of scholarship that defined the concept of sacred prostitution into doubt. Budin regards the concept of sacred prostitution as a myth, arguing taxatively that the practices described in the sources were misunderstandings of either non-remunerated ritual sex or non-sexual religious ceremonies, possibly even mere cultural slander.; more briefly the case that there was no sacred prostitution in Greco-Roman Ephesus ; see also the book review by Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, April 28, 2009 . Although popular in modern times, this view has not gone without being criticized in its methodological approach, including accusations of an ideological agenda.

Sparta In archaic and classical Sparta, Plutarch claims that there were no prostitutes due to the lack of precious metals and money, and the strict moral regime introduced by Lycurgus. A 6th century vase from Laconia, which shows a mixed-gender group at what appears to be a symposium,Conrad M. Stibbe, Lakonische Vasenmaler des sechtsen Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Number 191 (1972), pl. 58. Cf. Maria Pipili, Laconian Iconography of The Sixth Century BC, Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph, Number 12, Oxford, 1987. might be interpreted as depicting a hetaira, contradicting Plutarch. However, Sarah Pomeroy argues that the banquet depicted is religious, rather than secular, in nature, and that the woman depicted is not therefore a prostitute.

As precious metals increasingly became available to Spartan citizens, it became easier to access prostitutes. In 397, a prostitute at the perioicic village of Aulon was accused of corrupting Spartan men who went there. By the Hellenistic period, there were reputedly sculptures in Sparta dedicated by a hetaera called Cottina. A brothel named after Cottina also seems to have existed in Sparta, near to the temple of Dionysus by Taygetus, at least by the Hellenistic period.

Social conditions

The social conditions of prostitutes are difficult to evaluate; as women were already marginalized in Greek society. We know of no direct evidence of either their lives or the brothels in which they worked. It is likely that the Greek brothels were similar to those of Rome, described by numerous authors and preserved at Pompeii; dark, narrow, and malodorous places. One of the many slang terms for prostitutes was khamaitypếs () 'one who hits the ground', suggesting to some literal-minded commentators that their activities took place in the dirt or possibly on all fours from behind. Given the Ancient Greeks' propensity for poetic thinking, it seems just as likely that this term also suggested that there is 'nothing lower', rather than that a significant proportion of prostitutes were reduced to plying their trade in the mud.