Prostitutes in Ancient Athens

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Prostitutes in Ancient Athens

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Ancient Athens was a highly polarized society in which citizenship meant everything. Citizenship permitted individuals to not only participate in the democratic

government but also gave them access to all the rights and splendors of the city. A

citizen controlled influence over slaves, foreigners and most importantly women.

Athenian women were relegated to the status of child bearers and keepers of the household. There was no room for personal expression or freedom and the strict

moral code in many cases restricted these women from even leaving their homes. There was a select group of women however who overcame these obstacles to achieve greater sexual, economical, and social freedom. They were the prostitutes.

The freedom which prostitutes enjoyed would be better understood only after first assessing the status of "respectable" women in Athens. Girls were raised from an early age to learn domestic affairs and were to be wed even as early as the age of fourteen (Just 1989: 40). Marriage was almost mandatory as single women were looked upon as shameful and might even be labeled as "whores". The wedding was almost always arranged by the father or kyrios and from this point on the woman's role was clear. Pericles gives a good explanation of the ideal wife in his famous Funeral Oration when reminding the women of Athens that: "Your great glory is not to be inferior in the way nature made you; and the greatest glory is hers who is least talked about by men, whether in praise or in blame (Thucydides: 2.45)." This implies that an Athenian's woman virtue lay in her absence from the public eye. Athenians made sure to protect their wives' virtue by excluding women f...

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...culed on the stage and was later brought to trial on charges of "impiety (Cantarella 1987: 55)." Her individuality and intelligence not only angered but frightened the Athenian misogynists even though she was eventually acquitted. Aspasia clearly shows how much freedom was available to a prostitute in Athenian society.

The life of the prostitute in Athens was clearly a more liberal lifestyle than most women enjoyed in which the woman could aspire to wealth, independence and even indirect political power. The only setback to these benefits was the scorn of women and the contempt of men when a prostitute became too prominent. Women like Aspasia helped introduce an early type of feminism in the unlikeliest of settings. The Athenian prostitutes were clearly women that refused to succumb to the male dominated society that saw women as inherently inferior beings.

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