The History of Prostitution

s of Athens.-Abode and Manners.-Appearance of Dicteria.-Laws regulating Dicteria.-Schools of Prostitution.-Loose Prostitutes.-Old Prostitutes.-Auletrides, or Flute-players.-Origin.-How hired.-Perfor

ion.-Lais.-Phryne.-Pythionice.-Glycera.-Leontium.-O

ns certain. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Homeric poems were composed for immodest audiences, and it would perhaps be fairer to lay the blame of the mytho

enants Dicteriades. Bought with the public money, and bound by law to satisfy the demands of all who visited them, they were in fact public servants, and their wretched gains were a legitimate source of revenue to the state. Prostitution became a state monopoly, and so profitable that, even in Solon's lifetime, a superb temple, dedicated to Venus the courtesan, was built out of the fund accruing from this source. The fee charged, however, appears to have been small.[26] In Solon's time, the Dicteriades were kept widely apart from the Athenian women of repute. They were not allowed to mix in religious ceremonies or to enter the temples. When they appeared in the streets they were obliged to wear a particular costume as a bad

s of Pisistratus not only gave to the Dicteriades the freedom of the city, but allotted to them seats at banquets beside the most respectable matrons, and, on certain days each year, turned them into their father's beautiful gardens, and let loose upon

egate population of the port. At Sparta the case was different. In the system of legislation which bears the name of Lycurgus, the individual was sacrificed to the state; the female to the male. Women were educated for the sole purpose of bearing robust children. Virgins were allowed to wrestle publicly with men. Girls were habited in a robe open at the skirts, which only partially concealed the person in walking, whence the Spartan women acquired an uncomplimentary name.[30] A Spartan husband was authorize

ths, fomenting treason against the state, or committing impiety. Against such charges it was rarely possible to establish a sound defense. If the accuser was positive, the Areopagus, notoriously biased against courtesans, unhesitatingly condemned the culprit to death, or imposed on her corporation a heavy fine. In this way, says an old author, the state frequently contrived to get back from these women the money they obtained from their lovers. Before the famous case of Phryne, they were wholly at the mercy of th

ners, bearing some resemblance to the opera-dancers of the last century, and they combined the most unblushing debauchery with their special calling. The lowest class of prostitutes were the Dicteriades, already mentioned. They were originally bound to reside at the Pir?us, the sea-port of Athens, some four miles from the city, and were forbidden to walk out by day, or to offend the eyes of the public by open indecen

as scarlet or purple, or jewels. Thenceforth the custom, which appears to have been general throughout the Greek cities and colonies, prescribed cheap robes, with flowers or stripes of many colors embroidered or painted on them. To this

urtesans to dye their hair of a flaxen or blonde color. Allusions to this custom abound in the light literature of Greece. Frequently a flaxen wig was substituted for the dyed locks. At a very late peri

OR COMMON PROST

the citadel was their usual haunt. It was surrounded with booths, where petty trade or gambling was carried on by day. At nightfall the prostitutes swarmed into the square. Some were noisy and obscene; others quiet, and armed with affected modesty. When a man passed on his way from the port to the city, the troop assailed him. If he resisted, coarse abuse was lavish

ue of a variable merchandise was soon abandoned. Within, at night, the sounds of music, revelry, and dancing might be constantly heard. The visitor was not kept in suspense. The curtain passed, he was in full view of the dicteriades, standing, sitting, or lying about the room; some engaged in smoothing their blonde hair, some in conversation, some anointing themselves with perfumery. The legal principle with regard to the dicteriades appears to have been that they should conceal n

business under an assumed name. Comic writers have lashed these wretches severely. On paying the tax to the state regularly, the pornobosceion, or master of the house, acquired certain rights. The dicterion was an inviolable asylum, no husband being allowed to p

ces by females who had themselves acquired them in the same manner. Alexis vigorously describes the frauds taught in these places,[38] while t

andoned, and who, led by stings of conscience and idleness to pursue their career, had still an invincible repugnance to adopt the flowered robe and yellow hair of the regular courtesan. They roamed the Pir?us, and even the streets of Athens, after dark, eking out a miserable subsistence by the hardest of trades, and haunting the dark recesses of old houses or

t, in general, their customers were the lowest of the port people-sailors, fishermen, farm-servants. Their price was a meal, a fish, a handful of fruit, or a bottle of wine. One poor creature, who belonged to n

hours by thus improving upon nature.[41] Of course, under this disguise, it was impossible to distinguish a young face from an old one. An aged prostitute thus bedizened would place herself at an open window with a sprig of myrtle in her hand, with which she would beckon to people in the street. When a customer was found, a servant would

DES, OR FLU

mythical king Midas, it was monopolized at a very early period by women, who consoled themselves for the ravages it wrought in their beauty by the power of fascination it imparted among a people intensely musical. Flute-playing soon became an ess

vals out of the field. Dancing was combined with flute-playing, and in this art the Asiatics bore the palm from the world. During the golden days of Greece, numbers of beautiful girls we

ly believe the statement. But the fair artists did not wholly rely on their music for their success. The performer danced while she played, accompanying every note with a harmonious movement of the body. There is no doubt these dances were in the highest degree immoral and lascivious. Athen?us tells a story of an embassy from Arcadia waiting upon King Antigonus, and being invited to dinner. After the hunger of the venerable guests was appeased, Phrygian flute-players were introduced. They were draped in semi-transparent veils, arranged with much coquetry. At the given signal they began to

phy in reference to this strange custom. He was dining with a party of young men, when a youthful flute-player was introduced. She crept to the philosopher's feet, and seemed to shelter herself from insult under the shadow of his venerable beard; but he, a disciple of Zeno, spurned her, and burst forth into a strain of moralizing. Piqued by the affront, the girl rose, and played and danced with inimitable grace and pruriency. At the close of the performance her owner put her up to auction, and one of the first bidders was the philosopher. She was adjudged to another, how

Corinth. At that ceremony all the great flute-players of Greece assembled to celebrate their calling. Men were not usually allowed to be present, a regulation prompted perhaps by modesty, as the judgment of Paris was renewed at the festival, and prizes were awarded for every description of beauty. The ceremony was often mentioned as the Callipygian games; and a sketch of a scene which took place at one of these reunions

ction of religion and the law, they throw no inconsiderable light on the real character of Greek society. Their value may be best apprehended by trying to realize what the effect would be if sim

he ancients as Lesbian love. There is, no doubt, grave reason to believe something of the kind. Indeed, Lucian affirms that, while avarice pro

my for some fifteen or twenty years, was taken with the city by Demetrius of Macedon, and raised to the rank of his mistress. She was forty years of age at this time, yet her skill was such that she ruled despotically her dissolute lover, and left a memorable name in Greek history. The ancients asserted that she owed her name, Lamia, which means a sort of vampire or bloodsucker, to the most loathsome dep

R?, OR KE

h ambition, to look up to them, and covet their splendid infamy. An Athenian matron was expected to live at home. She was not allowed to be present at the games or the theatres; she was bound, when she appeared in public, to be veiled, and to h

on the fourth of each month, to which all the men of Athens were invited. But Venus Pandemos soon made way for newer and more barefaced rivals. Twenty temples were raised in various cities of Greece to Venus the Courtesan. In one author we find allusion made to Venus Mucheia, or the Venus of houses of ill-fame. Another celebrates Venus Castnia, or the goddess of indecency. Others honor Venus Scotia, the patroness of darkness; and Venus Derceto, the guardian deity of street-walkers. More famous still was Venus Divaricatrix, whose surname, derived, it is said by a father of the Church, a divaricatis cruribus,[52] must be left in a learned tongue. And still more renowned was Venus Callipyge, whose statue

entrée of the studio of Phidias and Apelles; they alone heard Socrates reason, and discussed politics with Pericles; they alone shared in the intellectual movement of Greece. No women but hetair? drove through the streets with uncovered face and gorgeous apparel. None but they mingled in the assemblages of great men at the Pnyx or the Stoa. None but they could gather round them of an evenin

aw. Again, every wise legislator saw the necessity of encouraging any form of rational intercourse, in order to arrest the startling progress which the most degrading of enormities was making in Greece. When Alcibiades was openly courted by the first philosophers and statesmen, it was virtue to applaud Aspasia. And besides, it can not be questioned, in view of t

position in society occupied by prostitutes from the fact that Xerxes employed this woman as negotiator with the co

She lectured publicly, among her girls and their visitors, on rhetoric and philosophy, and with such marked ability that she counted among her patrons and lovers the first men of Greece, including Socrates, Alcibiades, and Pericles. The last divorced his wife in order to marry her, and was accused of allowing

ble to save his friends Phidias and Anaxagoras, appeared as her advocate. But on such an occasion his eloquence failed him. He could only seize his beloved wife in his arms, press her to his breast, and burst into tears in presence of the court. The appeal succeeded; possibl

he kept her word, and became the philosopher's mistress, in spite of his dirt, his poverty, and his grossness. She is reported to have acquired great reputation as a practical professor of the cynic philosophy. Having engaged one day in a fierce discussion with a somewhat

tten on the spot, she became his mistress, and observed a fidelity toward him which was neither usual with her class, nor reciprocated by her lover. On one occasion, a rival announced that the price of her complaisance would be the possession of the necklace of Bacchis. The lover had the meanness to ask for it, and Bacchis gave it without a word. Again: when all Athens knew that she was the mistress of Hyperides, an officious friend came to tell her that her

her witty and sarcastic sayings, adding that the grace of her elocution imparted a singular charm to every thing she said. Her protegée, Gnathenion, grew up in time to receive the mantle which age was wresting from the shoulders of Gnathena. An anecdote is preserved which throws some light upon the profits of the calling of hetair?. At the temple of Venus, Gnathena and her protegée met an old Persian satrap, richly clothed in purple, who wa

ed by that of the only two kept women w

e bought her, and trained her in his own house. This, again, is a striking picture. Fancy a leading modern painter deliberately training a prostitute! It is to be presumed that Apelles gathered round him the best society in Greece. Lais, when her

s to the danger of visiting Corinth; the proverb, Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum, which most moderns have erroneously conceived to refer to Lais alone, was, in fact, an adage justified by the experience of merchants and sailors. It would be incorrect, however, to compare Corinth with modern sea-ports, where the natural demands of sailors require a cheap supply

pied no mean rank in Greek society, a remark was made to the effect that he ought to debar his mistress from promiscuous intercourse for his own sake. He replied phlegmatically, "Would you object to live in a house or sail in a ship because others had just preceded you in the one or the other?" Xenocrates, the disciple of Plato, resisted Lais successfully. She had made a wager that she would overcome his stoical coldness. Rushing into his house one evening in affected terror, she besought an asylum, as she said

e was old and gray; but so fascinating was her beauty, that at his second visit he laid at her feet all the savings of his life. The haughty courtesan spurned him. He went away, placed himself in the hands of a s

g long after her charms had vanished. Epicrates has drawn a melancholy picture of a drunken old woman wandering over the quay at C

ided the Thebans would commemorate the fact by an inscription. They refused. She had counted among her lovers the most famous men of the day, among whom were the orator Hyperides, whose successful defense of his mistress has already been mentioned; the p

a-side in her usual dress, and slowly disrobed herself in the presence of the crowd. She next advanced to the water-side, plunged into the waves, and offered sacrifice to Neptune. Returning like a sea-nymph, dry

he bloom of youth. Some years before she had been the familiar of young Athenians of fashion; she was now the staid mistress of two brothers, sons of an opulent corn-merchant. But her talents were undeniable. She arrived at Babylon, and was installed in the palace; began to rule over the province, and governed Harpalus, it is said, with sternness and vigor. In the midst of her glory she suddenly died; poisoned, no doubt, by some one of the hundred fair ones whom she had supplanted in the governor's affect

r wretched lover to be sensible; his folly soon roused the Athenians against him, and he was exiled with his mistress. In this exile, one of his attendants cut the throat of the venerable lover, and Glycera, left a widow, returned to Athens to pursue her calling as a hetaira. She was no longer young, and needed the aid of the dealer in cosmetics; but her prestige as the ex-mistress of Babylon procured her a certain celebrity, and she soon obtained a position in the society of Athens. Out of a crowd of admirers who attached themselves to her court, she chose two to be, as the French would say, her amants de c?ur. One was the painter Pausias; the other the comic poet Menander. The former achieved one of his most brilliant triumphs by painting the portrait of his mistress. But, whether his temper was not congen

gray-headed teacher, she was far from practicing the fidelity which was due to so distinguished a lover. She figures in the letters of Alciphron as the tender friend of several younger fashionables; and she has been accused, with what truth it is hard to say, of attempting a compromise between the doctrines of Ep

nes, and whom the vindictive orator punished by having her condemned to death; of Archippa, the last mistress and sole heir of Sophocles; of Theodote, the disciple of Socrates, under whose counsels she carried on her business

the great march of the Greek intellect. No less than eleven authors of repute have employed their talents as historiographers of courtesans at Athens. Their works have not reached us entire, having fallen victims to the chaste scruples of the clergy of the Middle Ages;

y the Lesbian and Ph?nician women. Demosthenes, pleading successfully against the courtesan Ne?ra, describes her as having seven young girls in her house, whom she knew well how to train for their calling, as was prov

have been a matter of pure faith need not be demonstrated, though the belief in them was general and profound. The former are well known in the pharmacop?ia, and from the accounts given of their effects, there is no reason to doubt that they were successfully employed in Greece, as well by jealous husbands and suspicious fathers as by ardent lovers. A case is mentioned by no less an authority than Aristotle