The general dislike of the profession and those who made their money this way also may have been a reason for which there were not as many actual documentations of prostitutes within citizenship records as was true in real life. ![]() While there were citizenship papers as well as ways to identify slaves, much of this process was hindered by foreign travelers, illegitimate sales (i.e., when Neaera gave money to Stephanus to work out a deal with Phyrnion), and other acts of either legal disobedience. The secondary source echoes this sentiment when referring to the behavior of women who sought to preserve their reputation, where they would rarely venture outside and always heavily cloaked if done out of necessity (Davidson 1999).įurthermore, the achieves documented by the archon of the public office for which they were responsible for record-keeping, could not have possibly been completely thorough. This then begs the question, is Apollodorus’ speech a reflection of an innate disdain for people like Neaera, or is she simply able to serve as an asset in getting revenge on Stephanus? Apollodorus is likely playing to the general attitude of society in which a woman with a reputation, who has been seen and spoken of, is of bad character, which was likely true of many prostitutes. For example, in our discussion of Against Neaera, we recognized that many of Apollodorus’ claims may have been baseless and more of an attack against Neaera’s character and profession than truth, all in an attempt to avenge Stephanus. From the perspective of a person trying to decipher ancient texts, this is just one among many inconsistencies which makes it hard to be certain that the categories of prostitute, hetarai, wife, and more are being defined correctly.Īdditionally, readers must be cognizant of biases within primary sources when trying to determine attitudes towards prostitutes. These translations all have very different meanings, mostly in the context of their relationships with men and how society views their status. Nearly immediately, Davidson provides a number of examples to describe the complexity in vocabulary used to refer to women in a broad sense “Gune, wife, can also mean more generally ‘woman’… and was sometimes used for a concubine or a mistress” (Davidson 1999). Upon reading and analyzing these sources, I realized that it is difficult to discern with certainty exactly how prostitution worked given different vocabularies, a lack of proper documentation, individual’s different feelings towards the matter or engagement with the use of prostitutes, among many other factors. ![]() Democracy a form of government in which citizens govern themselves Hellenistic a term that describes Greek history or culture after the death of Alexander the Great, including the three main kingdoms formed by the breakup of Alexander's empire helots a member of a certain class of servants in ancient Sparta immortal someone or something that lives forever oracle in ancient Greece, a sacred site where a god or goddess was consulted any priest or priestess who spoke for the gods peninsula land that is surrouned by water on 3 sides Pericles an Athenian leader played a major role in the development of democracy and the Athenian empire philosopher someone who uses reason to understand the world in Greece, the earliest philosophers used reason to explain natural events plague a widespread disease slavery the condition of being owned by and forced to work for someone else Socrates an Athenian philosopher of the late 400s B.C.This week’s class focused on female prostitution specifically in Athens using two sources, one being a primary source, that of Against Neaera, and the other a secondary source from a book written by author Davidson, “Courtesans and Fishcakes.” Using these sources, the class was able to examine how prostitution was perceived and regulated (if at all), as well as the different hierarchies and social problems which accompanied the oldest profession in the world.
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