Women in general appear to have been marginalised in many ancient Greek societies – though this has been exaggerated by many scholars – but even amongst women some groups were more marginalised than others. These include poor but free women, slave women, free but foreign women, and prostitutes, who could be poor and wealthy, free and slave, and were generally foreign, though occasionally citizen girls must have fallen into this profession. These prostitutes were arguably the most marginalised girls and women in classical Athens (hardly anything is known about prostitutes in other Greek cities, except for Corinth), being primarily non-Athenian and often slaves.
Prostitution was very much a fact of life in classical Athens. The prosecutor of Neaira says that hetairai are kept for pleasure, concubines (pallakai) ‘for the daily care of our bodies’, and wives for legitimate children.1 Both hetairai and pornai were considered to be normal adjuncts of Athenian society. There was no ‘moral stigma’ attached to a male citizen’s involvement with prostitutes – either hetairai or pornai – and there was no ‘moral’ significance to the status of prostitutes: they were not ritually impure, for example, because of the fact that they had sexual intercourse with numerous men. This is a significant point to bear in mind when looking at the religious activities of these girls and women. Two terms were usual for female prostitutes: pornai or hetairai. Hetairai were ‘high-class’ prostitutes with perhaps some education, wit or conversational skills, suitable as dinner-guests, while the less favoured pornai, prostitutes, were available to all comers and engaged in activities including fellatio and anal intercourse. There were also pallakai, concubines, who could easily lose pallake status if their lover became tired of them, and be sent to a brothel as a prostitute.2 Flute girls (auletrides) presumably also ended their entertainment at drinking parties by having sexual intercourse with the men present.
Hetairai could command high prices for their favours, and it is these prostitutes who are found in religious contexts, because so much of Greek religion was a monetary affair. A worshipper needed money to buy a cow to sacrifice or to purchase something made of precious metal to dedicate in a temple. So amongst prostitutes the religious life of the less well off is unknown (as is that generally of most poor women in Greece), except that in a general way they must have prayed, attended festivals, and perhaps made cheap dedications. Certainly they were not banned from festivals, sacrifices or temples because of their profession.
Several ancient authors wrote works specifically about prostitutes which are now lost. What survives are quotations, excerpts of these works, in Athenaeus, a Greek living in Naukratis, Egypt, in the late second and early third century AD. He describes a symposium – banquet – which lasted several days and which ranged widely over numerous topics, including prostitutes and prostitution. During the discourse, the speakers quote numerous works on prostitutes, such as those by Aristophanes of Byzantium, Apollodoros, Ammonios, Antiphanes, Gorgias of Athens, and Kallistratos. Athenaeus in a long section quotes or cites the evidence of these ancient authors, and provides some valuable material about prostitutes and religion, especially at Corinth. Machon in the third century BC wrote of Athenian prostitutes in his Chreiai (‘Bright Sayings’), large sections of which are also quoted by Athenaeus.3 In addition, there were other writers who dealt with prostitutes, who were clearly a popular stereotype in literature,4 and there were several plays with the titles of the names of prostitute characters.5
Prostitution was simply a fact of life in ancient Greece. At Athens, prostitutes were seen in fact as being a safeguard against adultery: what sexual lusts citizen men had, even if married, could be taken up by access to prostitutes or concubines, rather than with other citizens’ wives. The ready availability of female prostitutes was a hallmark of Athenian society. The fourth-century BC poet Philemon comically ascribed to Solon the Athenian reformer (archon at Athens in 594 BC) the establishment of state-owned brothels where a visit to the prostitutes cost just 1 obol – about one-sixth of a day’s wage, so extremely cheap – his aim being to prevent young men from becoming adulterers. The fourth-century BC poet Xenarchos made a clear connection, as had Philemon, between the availability of prostitutes and the way in which this should restrict the number of adulterous liaisons. Nikander of Kolophon, in fact, taking these comic notices too literally, imagined that Solon set up the cult of Aphrodite Pandemos at Athens, financing it from the profits of brothels.6
Timarchos, the impious male prostitute
Even in the early twenty-first century AD, the mention of prostitutes and prostitution will lead readers to think first of girls and women who engaged in this profession. But in classical Athens, there were male prostitutes called (amongst other terms) hetairoi and pornoi, the masculine form of the words hetairai and pornai, used for female prostitutes. Aeschines accuses Timarchos of being such a male prostitute in his speech Against Timarchos, the most detailed source for attitudes to male prostitution.7
At Athens, there was a great deal of aversion to a male citizen submitting to anal intercourse – sodomy – with another male citizen, or even worse, a foreigner, particularly if the act involved a transfer of financial favours, i.e. was prostitution. In Athens, pederastic relationships between an older, usually bearded man, and a young boy, just approaching or having experienced puberty, were socially acceptable. But intercourse was meant to be of an intercrural kind, in which the elder male had an orgasm while rubbing his erect penis between the legs of the boy. Touching of the youth’s genitals did occur, and is often shown on vases, and in many cases youths who reject unwelcome advances stop the hand of the courter as he reaches for their genitals.8
There were numerous laws to prevent boys being left alone in the company of older men in the dark, so that there was a clear fear that such pederastic relationships had the potential to involve sodomy.9 The cultural norm was phallic sexual penetration of social inferiors: women, prostitutes, slaves (boys, girls, men or women) and foreigners; one did not sexually penetrate one’s peers or those who would become one’s peers. Accordingly, pederastic relationships with young male citizens could occur but were meant to take place without anal penetration, which would detract from the boy’s maleness and social standing when he became an adult.
The younger man was expected to look up to and admire the older man. They were erastes and eromenos, lover and beloved. The lover gave sexual attentions, and the younger received but did not sexually reciprocate them. But there was also a tension here, that such relationships could also be viewed as prostitution, particularly when the giving of gifts, such as a rooster, knucklebones, or something more elaborate, occurred.10
Aeschines in his speech against Timarchos in 345 BC portrays him – a citizen – as a male prostitute, and mentions the law that prohibited male citizens who have prostituted themselves from serving as priests, holding political office, or being a herald or ambassador; nor were they allowed to speak in the political assembly or the council. Solon himself, Aeschines notes, was said to have laid down the law that male prostitutes could not speak in the assembly because if they sold their own bodies they would by extension sell the state. Aeschines objects that Timarchos, who had been pressed into prostitution as a boy – through no fault of his own, Aeschines says – chose to continue in this profession when he became an adult, and yet has been on embassies sent to other states.
As an ambassador Timarchos wore a garland (i.e. was wreathed), a symbol of sacrosanctity and associated with religious festivals. Male citizen prostitutes could not perform priestly functions, as they were considered to be impure of body and therefore not fit to serve the gods.11 Men and women priests had to be ‘holokleros’, free of blemish. Male prostitutes also could not enter temples.12 Timaios wrote that Demochares the Athenian was such a male prostitute that he wasn’t even fit to blow the sacrificial flame, in order to start the fire.13 But such pejorative connotations did not spill over into attitudes towards girls and women who were prostitutes, where citizenship was not an issue. These were attitudes to male citizen prostitutes which were based not on any ideology of normative heterosexuality but on the construction of citizenship at Athens, and male sexual dominance over those who were not males and/or citizens. Girl and women prostitutes and their religious activities were not affected by the considerations that ‘polluted’ Timarchos and Demochares.
Aspasia: an impious prostitute?
Wearing a saffron outer garment and her hair modestly veiled, Aspasia stands with Perikles and admires the Parthenon (west) frieze where Pheidias points out relevant details. So did Lawrence Alma-Tadema depict Aspasia in 1869 in his oil painting, Pheidias and the Frieze of the Parthenon.14 She is not depicted here as a hetaira but as Perikles’ mistress; she is a respectable woman (with veiled hair), except that perhaps the saffron dress – the colour of sexuality for the ancient Greeks – hints at her status. And she is not portrayed as out of place in what is – or will become – the temple of Athens’ virgin goddess, Athena herself. Whether this painting accurately reflects the historical situation or not remains to be seen.
Aspasia was from the Greek city of Miletos on the Asia Minor coast, probably coming to Athens in 451 BC or the following year. In the surviving ancient portrait of her, she is respectable, with her hair partly covered; it has been suggested that this herm is a copy of a funeral monument, which could account for her serious expression. She was said to have been involved in the philosophic discourses of her time,15 and Perikles’ admiration and attraction to her may well have been primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) intellectual rather than sexual.16 Routinely, modern historians describe her as a hetaira, but there are no real grounds for this description, as she is not once described by the ancient sources as such. She was a free non-Athenian woman, who lived with Perikles at Athens after he divorced his wife, by whom he had had two sons (Paralos and Xanthippos). By Aspasia, Perikles had Perikles (Junior), who was made a citizen by special decree in 430/29; his father’s citizenship law of 451/0 provided that only those with two Athenian parents could be citizens.17 It is highly probable, on the basis of a funerary inscription, that the elder Alkibiades was married to Aspasia’s sister, whom he may have met in Miletos during his period of ostracism from Athens.18
Antisthenes and Aischines (not the orator), pupils of Socrates who was sentenced to death in 399 BC, each wrote a Socratic dialogue entitled Aspasia.19 Antisthenes wrote that Perikles went in and out of Aspasia’s house twice a day to greet her, and wept more when speaking on Aspasia’s behalf in the courts when she was prosecuted for impiety (asebeia) than when his own life and property were in danger, and brought about her acquittal through his tears.20 Plutarch also gives the charge as that of impiety, with Hermippos the comic poet as the prosecutor, who further accused Aspasia of procuring free women for Perikles’ sexual gratification. This charge is reflected in the previous gossip that he had his way with the citizen women who came to the acropolis to admire the work of the artist Pheidias on the Parthenon.21
The motivation behind her trial for impiety was presumably political in nature, in line with the prosecutions of another two of Perikles’ associates – Pheidias for embezzlement, and Anaxagoras for impiety. Plutarch dates the trial of Aspasia to about the same time as the prosecution of Pheidias, c. 438–436 BC,22 and it probably occurred at approximately the same time as Diopeithes’ decree that those who didn’t believe in the gods or who taught scientific theories about the heavens were impious, which was obviously aimed at Anaxagoras.
Simply because Hermippos was a comic poet does not mean that there was an imaginary scene in a play in which Aspasia was prosecuted for impiety, and that later authors reading this play thought that there had been a real trial for impiety.23 The evidence for an impiety trial is quite contemporary: Antisthenes and Aischines. Her involvement in numerous philosophical discourses with the Socratic circle and the extremely strong tradition of her as a Socratic interlocutor make it probable that Aspasia was tried about her notions concerning divinity, whatever these might have been: perhaps they were similar to Anaxagoras’. That she was tried for impiety because she had entered the Parthenon is unlikely. In addition, the inscribed lists of dedications from the Parthenon list a woman named Aspasia as having dedicated a gold tiara; and this is probably (but not certainly) Perikles’ Aspasia.24
Thucydides, a great admirer of Perikles, does not mention her once, and the first literary reference to her is in a play (written c. 440–430 BC) by Kratinos, who refers to her as a ‘dog-eyed’ pallake (pallake kynopis), a concubine; as a metic and non-Athenian woman, her status as Perikles’ sexual partner could be nothing else.25
Aspasia was said to have influenced Perikles’ political decisions, such as Athens’ war against Samos, the enemy of Miletos, Aspasia’s hometown, this anecdote being first found in the writings of Duris of Samos.26 She was also (in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, produced 425 BC) the cause of the Peloponnesian War that convulsed the Greek world from 431 to 404 BC.27 Eupolis referred to her as Helen, a clear reference to Helen’s role in causing the Trojan War and Aspasia’s in the Peloponnesian.28 The Athenian ideal of the decorous wife, encapsulated by Perikles’ own advice in his Funeral Oration as recorded by Thucydides, meant that Aspasia could not have been popular in Athens.29 In Eupolis’ Demes, produced in 411 BC, Perikles asks, ‘Is my nothos (illegitimate son) alive?’ and is told, ‘Yes, and he would have been a man long ago, except for the evil of having a porne as a mother.’30 After Kratinos’ probably correct reference to her as a pallake, Eupolis, his younger contemporary, referred to her after her death as a porne. As we have seen, this was a pejorative term for a lowclass, cheap prostitute, and clearly was used posthumously to attack Aspasia’s reputation. Aspasia, in modern parlance, was Perikles’ ‘de facto wife’ but could never aspire to legitimate marriage. There is no reason to doubt that she made a dedication to the virgin goddess in the Parthenon; and her reputation (and/or Perikles’ position) led to an impiety trial, not because of her sexual status, but as an attack on her lover.
Aphrodite Hetaira
Philetairos in a play referred to there being a shrine (hieron) to ‘the Companion’ (Hetaira) everywhere, but that there was none to ‘the Wife’ (Gamete) in all of Hellas. This ‘Companion’ was Aphrodite Hetaira as she was called by the Athenians. But Apollodoros in his On the Gods argued that Aphrodite Hetaira referred to the less specific meaning of hetairoi and hetairai, as ‘friends’, and that Aphrodite Hetaira brought friends of both sexes together; Athenaeus adds that Sappho called her friends hetairai.31 Hesychius mentions a shrine at Athens where male and female hetairai, friends, went; Philetairos is limiting the meaning of hetaira in order to make a comic point, and this cult was not one concerned with prostitutes.
The Magnesians celebrated the Hetairideia festival, because Jason, when he had formed the band of Argonauts, sacrificed to Zeus Hetaireios (Zeus of the Companions); the Macedonian kings also celebrated the Hetairideia.32 Ephesos also had a temple dedicated to Aphrodite Hetaira.33 But Aphrodite Porne – Aphrodite the Whore – did have a shrine at Abydos: the legend was that a porne, common prostitute, had brought freedom to the city, and in gratitude the city founded the temple to the goddess.34
Prostitutes and temples
It is sometimes suggested that the charge against Aspasia was that she had visited temples, and that prostitutes were not allowed to do so; Derenne cites three passages to the effect that prostitutes could not enter holy places.35 But the evidence cited is unconvincing. Male prostitutes in Athens could not enter temples, or go on embassies requiring the wearing of wreaths, but girl and women prostitutes were not similarly debarred.
The speaker of [Demosthenes] 59 indicted Neaira, alleging that although she was a foreign woman who had been a prostitute at both Corinth and subsequently Athens, she was living with the citizen Stephanos as his wife, which was against the law, as only an Athenian woman born of two Athenian parents could be the wife of a citizen. Stephanos gave Neaira’s daughter, previously called Stybele but now Phano, as wife to Phrastor, an Athenian citizen, who soon ejected her from his house when he discovered that she was not Stephanos’ daughter but Neaira’s. Stephanos next gave Phano in marriage to Theogenes, a poor man, selected by lot to be the basileus archon, who had important religious rites to perform.
As the wife of the basileus archon, Phano offered the sacrifices ‘which cannot be spoken about’ on behalf of the city, saw what she should not have seen being a xene (foreigner), went where only the wife of the basileus archon should go, and administered the oath to the gerarai. She was even given in marriage to the god Dionysos himself, carrying out the ancestral rites on behalf of the city, which were sacred and unnameable. But he stops short of saying the daughter is a prostitute; in fact, while the speaker has a good case that Neaira the mother was a prostitute, he doesn’t make a case for the daughter being such. Rather, what he stresses here is that a woman who was a xene, a foreigner, performed these sacred rites and that Stephanos passed her off as his citizen daughter when she was not. The speaker pursues his theme further, noting the law that the wife of the basileus archon who performs these rites had to be an Athenian and a virgin at her marriage and that the Athenians showed piety towards the god by making this law (§§85–6). Another passage (§73) makes it clear that as a xene Neaira’s daughter should not have partaken in the rites conducted by the wife of the basileus archon.
In case his points that Phano was a xene and not an Athenian do not convince the jurors, the speaker offers another line of argument. Even if Phano is an Athenian, then she must be an adulteress, because her ‘father’ Stephanos has claimed that he found a man in the act of adultery with her. He then points out that adulterous women are debarred from public sacrifices, which a slave or a foreign woman (xene) could attend to watch and offer prayers (§§85–6).36
Barring adulterous women from shrines kept the holy places free of miasma and asebeia. It is only if prostitutes were classed as adulterous that they were debarred from temples at Athens under this particular prescription. This could not be the case as there was a law that sex with prostitutes was not adultery (§67). If Phano is a xene, she should not have been the wife of the basileus archon; if she is an Athenian then she is an adulterer, by her father’s own testimony, and therefore not allowed to attend – let alone perform – sacrifices. This part of the speech proves two things: that a foreign woman could not be the wife of the basileus archon, and that while adulterous Athenian women were barred from public sacrifices, foreign women could attend these.
In another section of this speech which is relevant (§§113–14), the speaker argues that if Neaira as a prostitute is allowed to pass herself off as a citizen, then no one will marry the freeborn poor women, who will have to become prostitutes in order to have a livelihood. The prostitutes themselves will have the rank of the freeborn women, and the poor freeborn women will give birth to children to whomsoever they please, and still join in the rites and ceremonies of the city. But the speaker is not saying that the involvement of prostitutes at sacrifices and prayers would be unusual. Rather he is stating that the poor free Athenian women will become adulterers – they will bear children to whoever they please – and nevertheless take part in the rites, even though they are adulterous and no longer respectable.
A speech by Isaeus indicates that slaves and prostitutes were debarred from entering a particular, unnamed, temple and seeing rites – which are not specified – that only Athenian citizen women were meant to see at that temple.37 This passage is sometimes cited as evidence that prostitutes could not attend the Thesmophoria, but while women-only rites at Athens were largely in honour of Demeter, there were several such rites – for example, the Stenia, Haloa and Skira – and so it is not necessarily the Thesmophoria which is being referred to here. In this case, the slave involved (who had been a prostitute) was passing herself off as a citizen’s legitimate wife, and her two bastard sons by two clients as the sons of her aged ‘husband’. Her crime is that of impersonating a citizen wife and of having taken part in rites that she should not, as a xene, have participated in.
Clearly, adulterous women could not attend sacrifices or visit temples, and non-Athenian women were barred from certain rites. But that is as far as the evidence goes. It would help if there were evidence for prostitutes at temples, but there is not, except for their presence at temples of Aphrodite. Prostitutes are described as leaving a temple of Aphrodite at Athens in a third-century BC work by Machon, and they prayed in her temple at Corinth in 480 BC. As this goddess relates to their occupation, it is not particularly persuasive evidence for the presence of prostitutes at temples. But prostitutes did make dedications in temples, and perhaps this is relevant.
Moreover, they were initiates in the Eleusinian Mysteries, which means that they entered the telesterion at Eleusis. In addition, Sinope, a hetaira, made a sacrifice at Eleusis in the fourth century BC. Moreover, when Stephanos and Phrynion (the latter had helped to contribute to the price of Neaira’s freedom) were arguing about who had sexual rights to Neaira, they met ‘in the temple’ with arbitrators and Neaira, with an agreement made that Stephanos and Phrynion would share her on alternate days.38 A man might also take his pallake, concubine, to a private sacrifice. Given that prostitutes and sexual intercourse with them were not generally considered polluting in classical Greek thought, it is not surprising that prostitutes were not debarred from temples. At Maionia they were specifically allowed into a shrine which required men who had recently had intercourse to purify themselves: the peculiarity of this last measure indicates how unusual it would have been for prostitutes not to enter temples.39
The whores of Demetrios Poliorketes
Demetrios Poliorketes in 307 BC liberated Athens from the regime of the pro-Macedonian Demetrios of Phaleron, and numerous honours were granted to him, such as the use of the opisthodomon (rear chamber) of the Parthenon as accommodation; there he had intercourse with free youths and free women to such an extent that when he introduced (women) prostitutes there he was thought to have purified the place in comparison. The comic poet Philippides referred to Demetrios in the following lines:
"He took over the acropolis as his inn,
and introduced his hetairai to the virgin goddess".
These hetairai (prostitutes) were obviously lodged in the opisthodomon of the Parthenon. This is not actually referred to as impiety by Philippides or Plutarch, but Plutarch writes that by his activities with youths and free women Demetrios did not behave as was fitting towards the goddess, and his treatment of the Parthenon is obviously included in the ‘shocking and lawless things’ that he did.40 Sexual intercourse in temples was always considered unlawful in Greek thought.
Prostitutes and looted temple treasures
The Phokian commanders Phayllos and Onomarchos were fond respectively of women and boys; when the Phokians plundered the treasures of Delphi to pay for their mercenaries in the Third Sacred War (356–346 BC), these two gave away to their lovers some of the dedications which had been made at Delphi. Phayllos gave to the flute girl (auletris) Bromias a silver drinking cup, dedicated by the Phokaians (of Asia Minor), and a golden ivy-wreath, dedicated by the Peparethians.
She would have played the flute at the Pythian festival at Delphi had she been allowed, but the crowd prevented her from doing so (because she was a prostitute): this was one line she was not allowed to cross, and so there were apparently some scruples about prostitutes and the divine. But her presence itself was permissible, as long as she did not act the flute girl. On another occasion, Philomelos, strategos autokrator (supreme general) of the Phokians in the fourth century, gave a gold laurel crown, dedicated by the city of Lampsakos, to Pharsalia, a dancing girl from Thessaly; later she travelled to Metapontion in Italy, where according to two different accounts, the manteis (soothsayers) tore her to pieces because of the god’s golden wreath, and in another, when she was near the temple of Apollo – the god of Delphi – in Metapontion, young men each trying to take the crown from her tore her to pieces. It was said that she was killed because the wreath belonged to the god. It is not her status as a prostitute which is the problem here: Pharsalia met the fate of temple-robbers which the ancients thought she deserved.41
Sacred laws dealing with prostitutes
Sacred laws occasionally mention prostitutes, and while there is only one from the classical period, they are relevant nevertheless in that they indicate that the prostitute was presumably not unwelcome in shrines that did not have such rules, unless unrecorded social conventions prevented their entrance to these shrines. In a fourth-century BC purity inscription from Metropolis in Ionia, two days’ purity was required after sex with one’s wife, and three days after sex with a prostitute, before a worshipper could enter the shrine. Here the idea is presumably that sex was impure, and that sex outside marriage more so – by a day. But the contrast is much stronger at third-century AD Lindos on Rhodes (some 600 years or so later): sexual intercourse with a prostitute meant a wait of thirty days before entering the shrine, but intercourse with another woman simply required washing to obtain purification.42
But this is so long after the classical period that this regulation indicates by contrast that in the classical period such lengthy purification periods did not apply. As to prostitutes themselves, a cult in Maionia specified that a prostitute (hetaira) had to abstain from intercourse for two days before entering the shrine, and had to ‘purify herself all over’, probably by washing; a man was able if he had intercourse with a woman to enter the same shrine that day after washing.43 Clearly cults which saw intercourse as polluting included prostitution in this category, but this was clearly far from the general formulation of pollution in classical ritual practice. The presence of prostitutes at some panhellenic festivals was obviously normal: one brothel-keeper took his prostitutes to the Delphic amphictyonic gathering at Pyloi and other festivals.44 A spectator marking out a site for his tent at the Isthmian festival makes a lewd reference to sexual activity, and is probably hinting at the presence of prostitutes.45 The presence of prostitutes at festivals and their access to shrines need not be doubted.
Phryne, an impious prostitute
The state might choose to adopt a new divinity for worship, as it did in the case of the Thracian goddess Bendis.46 Or foreign merchants could apply for permission to build a shrine for their favourite deity, as in the case of the Egyptians for Isis and the Kitians for Kitian Aphrodite.47 But at Athens, the introduction of a new god by an individual could become the subject of an impiety trial: Socrates, in 399 BC, provides the best example.48 There were at least three other cases. Demades was fined for proposing a decree that Alexander (the Great) be worshipped as a god at Athens.49 The other two cases involved a prostitute (Phryne) and a woman priest (Nino).
Phryne, a prostitute originally from Thespiai, was prosecuted at Athens by Euthias for impiety (asebeia) in about the middle of the fourth century BC for introducing the worship of Isodaites (later equated with Dionysos);50 his case was that: ‘I have shown that Phryne is impious, she has celebrated shameful revels, she is the introducer of a new god, she has assembled illegal thiasoi of men and women.’ The unofficial character of some cults and their bands of devotees, thiasoi, at Athens is made clear by a deme decree from the Piraeus that forbade thiasoi to assemble in the deme Thesmophorion.51 There were bands of worshippers who came together of their own initiative; the city itself did not forbid this practice but could (and did) take action if individuals brought a lawsuit about it or related matters. Phryne, a prostitute and a woman, had organised bands of men and women to worship a new god. The comic poet Poseidippos in the third century BC mentions that Phryne was acquitted in her trial because of her tears, when she clasped each of the jurors by hand.52
According to Athenaeus, it was a capital charge and she was defended by the orator Hypereides. As he was not convincing the jurors of her innocence, he brought her out where all the jurors could see her, tearing off her chitoniskoi (short tunics) so that her breasts were exposed, and he broke out into
lamentations at the sight (of the breasts that were to be deprived of life). The jurors became superstitious of the ‘expounder and attendant’ of Aphrodite, and acquitted her, concerned that Aphrodite’s wrath might fall on them for executing a piece of her handiwork like Phryne.53 This story of the chitoniskoi appears first in Athenaeus, and, while it might be earlier, it is significant that Poseidippos does not mention it, and it might well be apocryphal.54
Phryne’s body was most beautiful in the ‘hidden parts’, such that at the festivals of the Eleusinia and Poseidonia55 in the presence of all the Greeks she took off only her cloak, let down her hair and walked into the sea: in fact, according to Athenaeus, she was the model for Apelles’ painting "Aphrodite Rising from the Sea and Praxiteles" sculpture, the Knidian Aphrodite (or the Knidia). Praxiteles’ Phryne as Aphrodite was the first three-dimensional nude statue of a woman to be created in the Greek world. It was eventually housed in a special building at Knidos in Asia Minor, and became a tourist attraction. There was a front and back entrance, and a woman was entrusted with the keys to the doors and opened them for those who wished to view the statue.56 While it is possible to argue that the connection between Praxiteles and Phryne is entirely fictitious,57 Praxiteles’ connection with her is a very strong element of the tradition, and some woman or women served as the model/s; a prostitute would in no way have been an inappropriate model for a goddess who was after all their especial patron.58
The reference to the Eleusinia might well be to the day of the EleusinianMysteries on which the mystai took their piglets down to the sea to purify them; ‘all of Greece’ was invited to participate in the Mysteries. Phryne apparently became an initiate of the Great Mysteries at Eleusis, along with other prostitutes, such as Metaneira, Lysias’ friend (see below). At Thespiai, her home, Phryne dedicated the statue of Eros which Praxiteles had carved for her. Her clients paid for Praxiteles to make a golden statue of her and set it up on a column of Pentelic marble at Delphi; it was inscribed with her name: ‘Phryne, daughter of Epikles, of Thespiai’. Athenaeus saw it there, centuries later, between the statues of Philip II of Macedon (Alexander the Great’s father), and Archidamos, the Spartan king.59 The Cynic Krates commented, however, that the statue was a monument to the akrasia (‘incontinence’) of the Greeks.60
In the case of Phryne, it was not necessarily her status as a prostitute which led her into what the Athenians regarded as impiety, but rather her status as a free foreign woman with more freedom than the average Athenian housewife. However, her status as a metic may have made her more vulnerable, and the Athenians less tolerant, than might otherwise have been the case, though Socrates, also tried for impiety, was both a male and a citizen.
Prostitutes as initiates in the Eleusinian Mysteries
Phryne was arguably an initiate at Eleusis, but other evidence is unequivocal. Lysias was the lover of Metaneira, one of seven girls purchased for prostitution by Nikarete who ran an establishment for this purpose at Corinth. At the time of the Mysteries at Athens, Lysias invited Nikarete to Athens and asked her to bring Metaneira as well, so that Metaneira could be initiated with him. They came and Metaneira was presumably initiated. The Mysteries were open to Athenian and non-Athenian, slave and free. Prostitutes, along with others, desired a blessed afterlife.61 And presumably Lysias wanted Metaneira in his happy afterlife with him. After this, Simos the Thessalian brought Neaira, with Nikarete, to Athens for the Great Panathenaia; she drank and dined with many men, as hetairai do, the speaker says. No mention of religious activity is made; she was there as part of the festivities to entertain the men. But there was nothing to prevent her from seeing the procession and sacrifices, if she chose to do so.62
In the fourth century the hetaira Sinope, brought a victim to be sacrificed at Eleusis, and the hierophant Archias duly offered it. Prostitutes, like everyone else, had specific religious needs. Sinope had enough money to purchase a sacrificial beast, and the hierophant himself, the chief priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries, carried out the sacrifice for her.63 Themistios the Athenian was punished with death because he treated a Rhodian lyre player (she is unnamed) violently at the Eleusinian festival: she was probably part of the entertainment at a symposium at the festival, and Themistios was punished with the extreme penalty for violating the sacrosanctity of the festival.64
The tombs of prostitutes
Tomb monuments for prostitutes are apparently not classical. Harpalos,Alexander the Great’s treasurer who embezzled funds and fled to Athens in 324 BC, fell in love with Pythionike, a prostitute at Corinth and then Athens, and when she died constructed a monument to her costing several talents on the Sacred Way between Athens and Eleusis at Hermos, which Pausanias describes as the tomb (mnema) most worthy of note of all the ancient tombs of Greece; there was another tomb monument for her in Babylon.65 In the satyr play Agen, there was a reference to ‘the famous temple (naos) of the prostitute (porne)’ built by Harpalos, in his satrapy on the Indus river, where some barbarian magoi (magicians) persuaded him that they could call up the spirit of Pythionike.66
There was a shrine and sanctuary, and Harpalos dedicated the temple and the altar to Pythionike Aphrodite; Pythionike was the embodiment of the divine Aphrodite.67 Such a cult could only come with the hellenistic period, and the weakening of the divide between mortals and immortals. On Pythionike’s death, Harpalos took up with the prostitute Glykera; summoned by Harpalos to Tarsos, she was honoured there as queen (basilissa), and people did obeisance to her; a bronze statue of her was set up at Rhossos.68 Stratonike, one of the prostitutes of Ptolemy II Philadelphos of Egypt, had a monument (mnema) near the sea at Eleusis; why is not stated, but perhaps she was an initiate of and devoted to the Eleusinian cult.69
Lais the prostitute claimed that Aphrodite Melainis (‘of the Dark’) would appear as an epiphany in a dream, and tell her of the coming of extremely wealthy lovers. Pausanias mentions Lais’ tomb at Corinth, near the shrine of Aphrodite Melainis. She had another monument in Thessaly: she fled there with her lover Hippostratos of Thessaly, from her numerous other lovers and ‘the great army of prostitutes’ in Corinth. In Thessaly the local women were jealous of her, and luring her into a temple of Aphrodite stoned her to death; the temple came to be called ‘Homicidal Aphrodite’. The epigram on her Corinthian tomb as quoted by Athenaeus does indicate that she was buried in Thessaly,70 and while the historicity of all this is perhaps questionable, it does indicate that in death prostitutes were the equal and sometimes more than so of their citizen women counterparts in being honoured by funerary monuments, given the resources of their patrons and the consequent tombs erected in their memory.
The dedications of prostitutes
Just as citizen men and women, and foreigners of both genders, made dedications to the gods, prostitutes also did so, and the main beneficiary of their dedications was Aphrodite, as might be expected.71 Prostitutes will have felt little need to call on Athena in her capacity as goddess of weaving (though note Kottina’s dedication to her discussed below),72 or Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, from whose agricultural rites the city of Athens seems to have debarred them. Prostitutes did have children, but any dedications which they might have made to Artemis or other deities associated with child-bearing have left no trace.
Doriche the prostitute from Naukratis dedicated the ‘much-talked-of obeliskoi’ (roasting spits) at Delphi, which were mentioned in a play by Kratinos. Athenaeus takes Herodotos to task for confusing Doriche with Rhodopis: Herodotos reports the story current amongst the Greeks in Egypt that one of the pyramids was built by the hetaira Rhodopis, who lived at Naukratis during King Amasis’ reign. She was born in Thrace and had been brought to Naukratis by a Samian; Sappho’s brother while in Egypt paid for her freedom. She continued her trade and spent a tenth of her money on as many iron roasting spits as this would buy, and sent them to Delphi. Herodotos writes that they could still be seen there in his day, behind the Chian altar.73 This prostitute was apparently known by both names; perhaps Rhodopis was her ‘professional’ name.
Delphi clearly did not refuse this or other offerings, such as that of Phryne, made by professional sex-workers. Prostitutes had no especial attachment to Delphi or the god Apollo but it was the most important panhellenic sanctuary and a dedication there was an especial mark of piety (and advertised the success of their careers). Perhaps more surprisingly, Polemon wrote about the hetaira Kottina of Sparta in his work Concerning the Dedications in Lakedaimon.
"There is a small statue of the hetaira Kottina, because of whose fame a brothel is called after her even today, very near Kolone, where the temple of Dionysos is; the brothel is easy to spot and known to many in the city. Her dedication, on the other side of the statue of Athena of the Bronze House, is of a small bronze cow and the small statue [of Kottina] just mentioned."74
Kottina dedicated the statue perhaps not because of any especial affinity with Athena (the deity could hardly have been her patroness) but rather because Athena was one of Sparta’s most important deities and the Bronze House one of its most prestigious shrines. While Plutarch could write that Sparta was
not visited by any ‘rhetoric teacher, vagabond seer, keeper of hetairai, or any craftsman of gold or silver ornaments, because there was no coinage’, clearly there were prostitutes active at Sparta, presumably slaves or drawn from the perioikoi, the people of the neighbouring cities.75
The hetairai from Athens who accompanied Perikles during the siege of the island of Samos in 440 BC dedicated the statue ‘Aphrodite in Samos’, which some called ‘in the reeds’, and others ‘in the marsh’, when they had earned enough money from their labours. Presumably it was housed in Aphrodite’s temple on Samos.76 The scene as the prostitutes embarked and disembarked from the boats that took them from the island, the discussions amongst the prostitutes about the dedications, and what sums were able to be contributed by individual prostitutes are all details that have to be left to the imagination of the historian, unless the story is subjected to unnecessary scepticism. The dedications of prostitutes, earned as they were through their profession, were not in any way ‘tainted’ or ‘impure’ and this is in accord with what is known about ancient attitudes towards sexuality and prostitutes. Women prostitutes were not in any way unclean or morally impure; Aphrodite, but also Athena and Apollo, received the rewards of the prostitutes’ labours.
Prostitutes and festivals
Prostitutes were also apparently regular participants at the Adonia, as well as the Eleusinian Mysteries and various panhellenic festivals. The Athenian comic poet Alexis in his Philouse (‘The Girl in Love’), referred to a festival of hetairai at Corinth, which was different from the one for ‘free-born women’; clearly the free-born women and the prostitutes celebrated separate and probably quite different festivals for Aphrodite, the goddess of the city. Alexis notes that at their festival it was the practice for the prostitutes to revel in the company of men.77
The third-century poet Machon had several short pieces on individual prostitutes, including one each on Gnathaina and her prostitute granddaughter Gnathainion. Gnathaina celebrated the Aphrodisios, a festival of Aphrodite (presumably similar to the festival of the Corinthian prostitutes) at Athens,
feasting in the company of clients; with her prostitute granddaughter Gnathainion she came out of the temple of Aphrodite (the Aphrodision), which happened to be the same day as the festival of Kronos, and Gnathainion then travelled down to the Piraeus for a festival (perhaps that of Kronos) in order to meet a client.78 Machon also has prostitutes swearing in jest an oath by Artemis, and by the two goddesses (Demeter and Persephone);79 what the goddesses would have thought about any such oath has to be left to the imagination.
Athenaeus mentions that Nemeas the prostitute at Athens in the fourth century BC had taken the name of a festival (i.e. the panhellenic Nemea in the Peloponnese, perhaps because she had done well there), but cites Polemon On the Acropolis to the effect that this was forbidden to prostitutes and slave women. However, prostitutes with the names Anthea, Isthmias and Pythionike are known.80
Women, often naked but sometimes clothed, are shown on some vases carrying huge phalloi. These were borne aloft in processions at the Country Dionysia and the City Dionysia, but it is unlikely that these representations are of citizen women acting as bearers of phalloi. In fact, men are known to have carried the giant phalloi in processions, and these vase representations must be male fantasies of prostitutes with giant dildos.81
The sacred prostitutes of Corinth
Herodotos provides details about prostitution at Babylon, where every woman before marriage had to prostitute herself once in the sanctuary of Mylitta (according to Herodotos, the Assyrian name for Aphrodite) at Babylon – clearly a rite of passage. Herodotos notes that this practice existed also in some parts of Cyprus,82 and that in Lydia girls earned their dowries through prostitution; but nothing sacred is mentioned about the transactions.83 According to Justin, the Cypriots sent their virgin daughters before marriage down to the seashore to prostitute themselves (presumably to sailors and other strangers), dedicating their earnings to Aphrodite to ensure that in marriage they would remain chaste to their husbands.84 At Byblos in Syria women who did not take part in the Adonia festival had to have sexual intercourse in the agora, once, with a stranger, by way of a fine, with the price paid for their services dedicated to Aphrodite.85 But such rites are absent from mainland Greece in the classical period.
Corinth was renowned for its prostitutes, both secular ones and those who belonged to Aphrodite, more so than any other Greek city. ‘Not for every man is the sea voyage to Corinth’ went the proverb: Corinth, on the Isthmus and between two seas, became a great trading city.86 The ship captains and sailors squandered their money on the Corinthian prostitutes, who had a reputation for their expensiveness, hence the proverb.87 The first indication of the practice of sacred prostitution in Greece comes from no less an authority than Pindar himself. In 464 BC, Xenophon of Corinth competed at Olympia and vowed that if he was victorious he would dedicate hetairai, prostitutes, to Aphrodite at Corinth, his hometown. Pindar wrote both an ode, Olympian 13, to commemorate Xenophon’s victory in the stade (180 metres) and pentathlon, and also a skolion (‘song’) which was sung at Corinth. Athenaeus, in dealing with Xenophon’s vow, notes that at Corinth individuals made such vows of hetairai to Aphrodite; that is, it was not uncommon practice.88
Pindar opened the skolion, sung at the sacrifice made to Aphrodite at which the hetairai were present, by addressing Xenophon’s hetairai themselves. Pindar calls them young girls (korai), servants of Peitho (Persuasion) in rich Corinth, burners of frankincense on the altars of Aphrodite Ourania (Heavenly Aphrodite), granted without reproach ‘to have the fruit of your soft bloom plucked in lovely beds’:89
"O mistress of Cyprus, here to your grove
Xenophon has brought a hundred-bodied herd of grazing girls [korai]
Rejoicing in his fulfilled vows".90
The meaning of the words usually translated as ‘one-hundred-limbed’ is uncertain. Does it denote twenty-five or fifty girls, as is usually suggested? A better translation is rather ‘hundred-bodied’; i.e. Xenophon vowed and dedicated 100 young girls. The mechanics of the vow are unknown: did Xenophon make a public declaration before going to Olympia, warning the temple of what he planned to dedicate? Or did he inform the temple after his victory? Presumably he went to the slave market at Corinth and purchased his 100 prostitutes, and clearly the temple would have had to make some provision for their accommodation, as well as other arrangements. Xenophon was from Corinth, and he would certainly have known about the temple and its prostitutes, as well as the relevant organisational details.
Strabo, writing many hundreds of years later, notes that there was a large number of hetairai sacred to Aphrodite in Corinth, with numerous merchants and soldiers coming to this city to spend their money on them, and that the shrine owned more than 1,000 hierodouloi (‘sacred slaves’) who had been dedicated by both men and women: because of these hierodouloi the city was crowded and wealthy.91 Presumably the money for their services – for Pindar makes it clear that they do not simply become temple functionaries but practise the art of sex – went directly to the goddess. In addition to the hierodouloi there were of course many other (i.e. ‘secular’) prostitutes in Corinth.
Chamaileon of Herakleia noted the ancient custom that when Corinth prayed to Aphrodite on important matters, as many prostitutes as possible were invited to join in the supplication; the prostitutes prayed to the goddess and were later present at the sacrifice to her.92 So when the Persians invaded Greece in 480 BC, the prostitutes entered Aphrodite’s shrine and prayed for the safety of the Greeks.93 Clearly both hierodouloi and non-sacred prostitutes are meant, joining the citizen wives. The Corinthians dedicated a pinax to the goddess, recording the names of the prostitutes who had made supplication and who later joined in the sacrifices.94 Simonides wrote an epigram to commemorate the prayers and the pinax:
"These women on behalf of the Greeks and their fair fighting fellow citizens Were set up to pray with heaven-sent power to Kypris For the goddess Aphrodite did not choose to hand over The acropolis of the Greeks [Corinth] to the bow-carrying Persians."95
Herodotos is criticised by Plutarch for not mentioning this prayer which the Corinthian women made to Aphrodite to inspire their men with passionate love (eros) for the fight against the barbarian.96 Plutarch writes that the praying women of this epigram were statues set up in the temple of Aphrodite, and it is easy to understand how he makes his mistake: in the epigram reference is made to ‘these women . . . were set up to pray’ and Plutarch obviously took this as a reference to a common type of dedication, statues. But in Athenaeus’ account, the writing of the epigram is linked to the dedication of the pinax on which the names of those who prayed were recorded, and so the pinax presumably had a painting showing women praying.97
The inscription of the epigram could be seen according to Theopompos on the left as one entered the temple.98 Whether the praying women were the Corinthian wives or the prostitutes or both is sometimes debated.99 Chamaileon as cited by Athenaeus makes them prostitutes, while Plutarch has the Corinthian women praying for their husbands and Simonides writing the epigram about the wives. The scholiast to the Pindar passage, like Plutarch, has the women as the wives of the citizens.100 Chamaileon is certainly to be followed here not simply as the earliest authority, but also because Chamaileon was commenting upon the role of the prostitutes in praying to the goddess in times of crisis. After all, it would be particularly appropriate for the prostitutes to invoke Aphrodite’s aid in consuming the warriors with lust (eros) to annihilate the enemy; that prostitutes had ‘heaven-sent power’ from Aphrodite, their especial goddess, which they use while praying, also makes sense.
Pausanias saw the temple of Aphrodite at Corinth, and the statue of armed Aphrodite (Aphrodite Hoplismene) within.101 Aphrodite is shown on Roman coins in her Acrocorinth temple with a shield.102 If Aphrodite is an eastern import, as is often argued, then she could easily have had martial characteristics, just as Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and war. At Corinth she is not the Aphrodite of the Iliad, wounded and driven from the battlefield by the Greek hero Diomedes,103 but rather a warlike, powerful deity who can protect the city against a powerful foe.
There is also evidence from cities other than Corinth for sacred prostitutes. At Eryx in Sicily there was a temple of Aphrodite, which Strabo states in ‘ancient times’ was ‘full’ of sacred women slaves (hierodouloi gynaikai), dedicated in fulfilment of prayers not only by people in Sicily but from elsewhere as well. No specific reference to prostitution is made,104 but this seems so like Corinth that the conclusion that these were prostitutes is plausible.
Strabo mentions at Akilisene in Armenia that men and women slaves were dedicated to Aphrodite. Prostitution of these is not mentioned, but he notes the local custom that the leading men dedicate their daughters for a long time to the goddess before marriage for the purposes of prostitution. But the parthenoi are choosy and take on men only of their own social standing. They were paid for their services, but as they were themselves wealthy the girls gave gifts (sometimes of greater value) in return. It would be difficult under these circumstances to accept that the temple slaves were also not engaging in prostitution.105 It is possible that here the male slaves who were dedicated also served as prostitutes.
At Komana, also in Armenia, there was a great number of women in the city ‘working their bodies’. Most of these women were sacred to Aphrodite (they were hierai, ‘sacred women’), so that the city was a ‘lesser Corinth’, and men from all around would come because of the prostitutes and enjoy themselves.106 At a very basic level, the slaves became the property of the goddess, but they had to earn their keep, ‘working their bodies’, as at Corinth. Aphrodite owned slave prostitutes, dedicated to her by men and women. Gods, after all, owned livestock, lands, olive trees, rivers and springs, all of which could be leased for the god’s benefit. Aphrodite hired out her sacred slaves, just as another god might lease land for the financial benefit of a sanctuary.
According to Justin, when Epizephyrian (western) Lokris in Italy was threatened in war by Leophron, tyrant of Rhegion in 477/6 BC, the Lokrians vowed to prostitute their virgin daughters to Aphrodite; they were saved but did not fulfil the vow. Pindar refers to the relief of the virgin in front of her house at Lokris, thanking Hieron for releasing her from the dangers of war: this is sometimes taken as a reference to the vow, but, having been saved, the virgin ought to have been prostituted. Pindar, therefore, could be referring to the relief of the young girl at not being sold into slavery or concubinage.107
Klearchos recorded that the Epizephyrian Lokrians, like the Lydians, Cypriots and various others, prostituted their daughters. The mention of Lokris is probably a reference to the vow of the Lokrians.108 But while Justin has the prostitution as something vowed as a one-off event (which in any case did not take place), Klearchos treats it as an ongoing practice; perhaps he has confused a single event and written sloppily as if it were a regular occurrence. Certainly nothing in the iconography of Lokris hints at prostitution of daughters: in fact, it is Persephone who seems to be the most important goddess here. About a century later, Dionysios II, according to the same passage in Justin, reminded the Lokrians – who were having little success against the Lucanians – that they had not fulfilled their vow, and the girls went to Aphrodite’s temple to supplicate the goddess, where Dionysios took the opportunity to lay claim to their jewellery, but the prostitution of the girls did not take place.109
Aphrodite and the Ludovisi throne
Aphrodite can be approached by women both of the citizen and of the prostitute class at Corinth, and the duality of her worshippers is seen best in the so-called Ludovisi Throne.110 Cut from a single piece of marble and hollowed out to give three sides and a base, this piece may have served as a windbreak at one end of an altar (the description ‘throne’ is inaccurate). The central panel shows two women attendants (probably nymphs) helping Aphrodite out of the sea and covering her. They stand on pebbles, and presumably Aphrodite is to be imagined as emerging from the sea, as in her birth myth. On either side of the marble piece there are two carvings of women worshipping the goddess. On the left side a naked young woman sits on a cushion and plays the double pipes; her curves are sensuous and the cushion is moulded around her buttocks and lower back; her right leg is crossed over the left at the knee; her breasts are exposed to view. Her nudity is relieved only by the cap which tightly binds her hair; a hole in her visible (left) ear was presumably intended for an earring.
On the right-hand panel is a contrasting woman, who is fully clothed with a cloak covering her head and arms, leaving only the face and hands exposed to view; her dress is long, revealing only her sandalled feet. In her left hand she holds a small object, probably an incense holder, and, while her right hand is damaged, she appears to be taking incense and placing it in a small incense-burner (thymiaterion) immediately before her. Her modesty complements the voluptuousness of the flute player. The contrast is surely that between the prostitute who worships Aphrodite with music, and the citizen wife who reverently burns incense for the goddess. Aphrodite is here not the goddess of adultery threatening to undermine marriages, but presents two roles: the goddess of sexuality as worshipped by the prostitute, and the deity who bringslove to the marriage bed. The dichotomy of her roles is encapsulated in the reverence of both these very different women, a paradigm of the situation on the Corinthian acropolis.
Epicurean hetairai as dedicators to Asklepios
The names of seven hetairai who were members of the philosophical school of Epicurus (341–270 BC) during his lifetime are known; while the Pythagorean school had strict notions about prostitution,111 this was apparently not the case with Epicurus. The names of four of the hetairai, Mammarion, Hedeia, Nikidion and Boidion, also appear in inscriptions of dedications made to the healing god Asklepios at Athens. These names may well represent the same women, and the inscriptions are contemporaneous with the school at Athens, founded by Epicurus in c. 307 BC. An inventory of dedications to Asklepios from the shrine on the south slope of the acropolis has the names Mammarion and Hedeia appearing within some fifteen lines of each other, which would seem too much of a coincidence for them not to be the Epicurean hetairai.112 Mammarion’s dedication is lost, but Hedeia’s was of 4 drachmas. Hedeia, Nikidion and Boidion are recorded – again in close proximity – in an inventory of dedications to Amphiaraos, another healing deity, at Oropos.113
Nikidion and Hedeia at Oropos each dedicated a typion (a small model of some part of the body), and Boidion a model of eyes, reflecting her particular medical need. But hetairai did not constitute a large proportion of the Asklepieion dedicators, as scholars in the past have assumed. Aleshire has studied the inventories and concluded that most of the women dedicators are in fact Athenian citizen women.114 But if prostitutes were cured of illnesses, then they, like everyone else, had to thank the gods when they were cured. If these women in the dedicatory lists were hetairai, it has to be imagined that they spent a night or more in the sacred healing building, the abaton, at the Asklepieion at the foot of the acropolis, and that they travelled to the Amphiaraion on the Athenian border with Thebes and spent some time there. The rule that men and women slept on different sides of the altar in the sleeping chamber of the Amphiaraion might have had to be more strictly enforced on such occasions.115
Women foreigners worshipping in Athens
There were large numbers of metics, foreigners or ‘aliens’, in Athens, and both men and women metics paid a special tax to the state.116 Metic participation in Athenian state cult was limited, and the metics must have had their own cults, some of which are known.117 Non-citizens were excluded from priesthoods; when the people of Plataea were made Athenian citizens after the destruction of their city in the Peloponnesian War, they were not to be eligible to be selected by lot for the nine archonships or for the priesthoods, but their descendants were to be eligible if born from citizen wives (i.e. Athenian women).118 Non-citizens would be automatically debarred from any rites to do with phratries and gene, and hereditary priesthoods, of course, would be closed to them. Metic women could not become women priests in Athenian cults. That resident foreigners in cities, generally known outside Athens as paroikoi rather than metics, could be involved in the religious life of cities other than Athens is clear,119 but metic women’s role in these cities is largely unascertainable.
A decree of the deme Skambonidai in giving details of sacrifices provides that metics were to share in the sacrificial meat; it is possible that the sacrifice in question is to the tribal hero, Leontis.120 At the Hephaistia festival at Athens, there were to be 100 beasts for the citizens in the sacrificial carve-up, and the
In the classical period, the daughters of metics carried hydriai and skiadia (urns of water and sunshades), the latter for the benefit of citizen daughters, in the annual Panathenaic procession.122 Stools were carried for the kanephoroi,123 and as the metic daughters carried the skiadia for the kanephoroi, it is possible that these diphrophoroi were also metic daughters. On the Parthenon frieze, four hydriaphoroi – bearers of hydriai – are shown: but they are male.124 This has led scholars to assume that this task at the time of the carving of the frieze was performed by citizen males but that it was at a later date transferred to the metic girls.125 However, it is difficult to accept that girls could have carried the rather large hydriai that the youths are carrying.126 Male metic youths in purple gowns carried skaphai, long rectangular metal troughs; the north Parthenon frieze depicts three such youths.127 The skiadaphoroi and diphrophoroi are absent from the Panathenaic east frieze, which shows a large num er of young girls, but all of them citizens; the two girls sometimes claimed as diphrophoroi are in fact arrephoroi, citizen girls. No metic daughters are depicted on the Parthenon frieze, and in a way, this is not surprising. Metics, then, at Athens had some clearly defined participation in Athenian religious life, but would largely have been excluded from the official religious life of the polis, and would have pursued their own religious practices, which in the case of many metics would have involved worshipping the same gods as the Athenians, sometimes at state festivals such as the Panathenaia, and presumably also at festivals celebrated only by metics, involving foreign deities, such as Isis in the case of the Egyptians.
It would not be surprising if metics – both men and women – made dedications in Athens, both to ‘Athenian’ and to ‘non-Athenian’ deities. In 333/2 BC, merchants from Kition in Cyprus were given permission to found a sanctuary of Aphrodite in Athens, on the precedent of the grant previously made to the Egyptians to establish a shrine of Isis. A dedication in the fourth century BC by a Kitian woman to Aphrodite Ourania should be connected with their new sanctuary.128
A mid-fourth-century BC relief inscribed, ‘The washers dedicated to the Nymphs and all the gods’, with a list of twelve names of the dedicators following, provides a possible example of a joint dedication by metics andcitizens. Pan, Acheloos and the Nymphs, the divine recipients of the votive, are carved on the relief. As the relief was discovered not far from the shrine of Pan, Acheloos and the Nymphs on the Ilissos stream, these ‘washers’ presumably worked nearby. Ten of the twelve dedicators are men, and of these only four give a patronymic, assigning them to the citizen class. The other six are presumably metics or perhaps slaves; their names include Manes, which also appears as the name of a dedicant of another votive (see below). The names of two women, Leuke and Myrrhine, without designations, are probably those of non-citizens as well.129 Occupation and a similar interest in the same deities allowed these citizens and non-citizens to cross both gender and ethnic boundaries in dedicating this thanksgiving offering. One fourth-century BC dedication was made by Manes and Mika at the Piraeus to the ‘Mother of the Gods’. Manes is a Phrygian name, and he is probably non-Athenian, which the absence of a patronymic strongly supports; Mika (presumably his wife) was probably also a metic.130
Little is known about slave women and the gods, but many prostitutes would have been slaves. Foreign women and slaves could, as seen above, attend public sacrifices, either to watch or to supplicate the gods. But that a slave woman attended secret rights intended only for citizen women was a scandal.131 With pre-pubescent girls, the distinction between slaves and free could apparently be slightly relaxed, and so the slave girl Habrotonon in Menander’s Epitrepontes played a small harp, but also joined in the fun with the free girls at the night festival of the Tauropolia.132
Obviously the Athenians of classical Athens and the rest of Greece did notattribute particular ‘moral’ (or ‘immoral’) qualities to prostitutes. Their routine sexual practices, even the sometimes hereditary nature of the occupation, did not exclude these women from religious rites. In fact, it is clear that Greek men placed value on women’s participation in religion: it was presumably considered that the gods expected women to worship them and that women were important mediators of the divine.
At Athens, no particular importance was attached to prostitutes’ worship, but at Corinth their collective religious activity was believed to be powerful enough to avert crisis and disaster from the state through the special affinity they had with Aphrodite, the protector deity of Corinth. Prostitutes visited temples, made dedications and worshipped in their own private groups; a prostitute like Phryne could in fact be seen as the handiwork of the goddess. Their religious activity could be collegial, involving their coming together with other prostitutes and their clients, to celebrate festivals and drink wine as well, though here religious piety and business were obviously mixed. There was no reason to circumscribe their religious activities; prostitutes were not offensive to the gods.
These women who lived by and through sexual intercourse with numerous men are the most visible of the non-Athenian women at Athens. In some ways they had more freedom than citizen wives, particularly the free hetairai, though the position of the slave porne and flute girl cannot have been enviable. Other foreign women leave a few traces but little is known of their religious activities.
The participation of metic girls in the Panathenaia, however, suggests that their involvement was welcomed and considered important for the state as a whole. The city could not overlook such a large body of girls; they had to be integrated into the community’s worship of the gods. Although excluded from the political community metics were nevertheless viewed as part of the overall body of worshippers, and were allowed some participation in state cults, while also having their own rites, brought from their home cities.
Impious prostitutes were no more numerous than impious women priests or impious citizens, on the evidence of surviving references to prosecutions of women for impiety. This could well indicate that they were not particular targets, despite their vulnerable nature, for prosecution. It might also indicate
that prostitutes did not have a great many opportunities to be impious, which suggests that the temples were open to them: i.e. if they were not allowed to enter temples it might be expected that there would be some firm evidence about this and instances of them being charged with this offence. Restricted in their religious activities by the fact that they were non-citizens, prostitutes nevertheless could participate in many religious activities, especially and naturally the rites in honour of Aphrodite. But primarily, it is important to note that it was their status as outsiders, foreigners, rather than any impurity brought upon them by the nature of their profession that excluded prostitutes from roles that, as seen in previous chapters, citizen girls and women performed. In general, citizen women and prostitutes must be seen – in some contexts – as worshipping the same deities side by side in Greek cities.
Notes
1 [Dem.] 59.122.
2 Hetairai: Athen. 583f; pallake and brothel: Antiphon 1.14 (Dillon and Garland 1994, 2000: doc. 13.49).
3 See the collection of Gow 1965; Athen. 567a, 583d, 586a–b, 591d, 596f, 591d.
4 See Henry 1995: 57–64.
5 Athen. 567c.
6 Philemon PCG vii F3 ((Dillon and Garland 2000: doc. 13.88); Xenarchos PCG vii F4 (Dillon and Garland 2000: doc. 13.91); Nikander of Kolophon FGH 271–2 F9; cf. Euboulos PCG v F67 (Athen. 568f–569).
7 Evidence for male prostitutes: Aesch. 1, Against Timarchos, passim, but note §§3, 7–14, 19–21, 29, 40–1, 52, 70, 72, 74–5, 79, 130, 155, 158–9, 165, 184, 188; Ar. Wealth 149–59 (Dillon and Garland 2000: doc. 13.92); Dem. 22.58, 61; [Dem.] Letter 4.11; Lys. 3; Xen. Mem. 1.6.13; Eupolis PCG v 99.26; Alexis PCG ii F158 (Arnott 1996: F244); Kratinos PCG iv F3; Ephippos 20; Timaios FGH 566 F35b, cf. F124b (Demochares; see below); DL 2.9.105. Note for pederasty and homoeroticism: Pl. Symp. 181d–185b, 191c–192e. There was a tax on male and female prostitutes; the right to collect it was contracted out by the council (boule) to private individuals: Aesch. 1.119–20; Poll. 7.202. Select bibliography:Dover 1989: 19–42; Krenkel 1978: 49–55; Foucault 1984: 47–62; Reinsberg 1993: 201–12; Halperin 1989: 37–53; 1990: 88–104; Winkler 1990: 45–70; 1990a: 171–209, esp. 186–97; Cohen 1991: 171–202; Cantarella 1992: 48–53; Keuls 1993: 274–99; Kilmer 1993: 11–25; Thornton 1997: 110–20; Dillon and Garland 2000: docs 423–40; for pederasty, note Percy 1996; cf. Athen. 605d.
8 Solon F25 (West), cf. Aeschyl. Myrmidons TrGF 3 F135 (both Dillon and Garland 2000: docs 13.65–6); Ar. Birds 137–42; scenes of intercrural sex, genital fondling, and rejection: Dover 1989: pls B76, B250, 271, R59, R196a; Kilmer 1993: pls R142, R196, R371.
9 Aesch. 1.7–14.
10 Ar. Wealth 149–59.
11 Aesch. 1.3, 19–21, 29, 72, 188. Cowards also suffered restrictions on their religious activities: Aesch. 3.176.
12 Dem. 22.73.
13 Timaios FGH 566 F35b, cf. F124b (Polyb. 12.13.1, 12.15.4).
14 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Pheidias and the Frieze of the Parthenon, 1869, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery inv. 118.23 (Henry 1995: 103–4; Spivey 1997: fig. 248; Cartledge 1998: 278–9).
15 Note esp. Pl. Menex.; see Henry 1995: 29–56, for her appearance in Socratic discourses by Socrates’ disciples Antisthenes, Plato, Xenophon and Aischines.
16 Vatican Museums 272 (Richter 1965: i.154–5, pls 875–6; Ridgway 1970: 65–8; 1981: 240–1; Henry 1995: 17). Her name is engraved at the base of the herm (IG xiv 1143). Richter considers the herm to be a Roman copy of a fifth-century BC original (it was found in Italy), but Ridgway argues that it is a commissioned Roman piece.
17 Law: Ath. Pol. 26.3; citizenship grant: Plut. Per. 37.3.
18 IG ii2 7394; early fourth century BC; Bicknell 1982; accepted by Henry 1985: 10–11.
19 Antisthenes F142, Giannantoni 1990: 2.191 (= Athen. 220d); commentary on Antisthenes’ Aspasia: Giannantoni 4.323–5.
20 Antisthenes F143 (Giannantoni p. 191 (= Athen. 589e; cf. Plut. Per. 24.9 (greeting)); Antisthenes F144 (Giannantoni p. 192 = Athen. 533c–d); or consult F34 = Athen. 220d, F35 = Athen. 589e in Caizzi 1966: p. 34. 21 Trial: Plut. Per. 32.1, 5 (Plut. Per. 32.5 = Aischines F67, Giannantoni p. 614), cf. F59–72 (Giannantoni pp. 611–18). Aischines, like Antisthenes (Athen. 220b–d), wrote an Aspasia (F59 Giannantoni p. 611); Hermippos PCG v T2; cf. Plut. Per. 13.15 (Pheidias and women).
22 Motivation: Ostwald 1986: 192; date: Mansfeld 1980: 76–80.
23 Pace Dover 1975: 28, cf. 24; Gomme 1956: 187; Henry 1985: 17; cf. de Ste Croix 1972: 236; Ostwald 1986: 194; Stone 1988: 233–5. For Aspasia’s trial: Mansfeld 1980: 31–3, 76–7; Ostwald 192, 194–5; Bauman 1990: 38, 41; bibliography of those who accept or reject that she was tried: Mansfeld 32 n. 130; Baumann 181 n. 29; add: de Ste Croix 1972: 235.
24 IG ii2 1409.14 (395/4 BC); with Harris 1995: 191, v.421.
25 Kratinos PCG iv 259 (the Cheirones; produced c. 440–430 BC?).
26 Duris of Samos FGH 76 F65; 340–260 BC; Harp. sv Aspasia (citing Duris, Ar. Ach. 524–9, and Theophrastos Politics); Plut. Per. 24.2, 25.1.
27 Ar. Ach. 524–9; 425 BC: the theft of three of Aspasia’s prostitutes by Megarians caused the outbreak of the war; the tradition that she ran a brothel is also mentioned in Plut. Per. 24.5, but probably has no basis in reality, despite Aristophanes.
28 Eupolis PCG v F267. For women as causes of war, see especially the list in Athen. 560b–f, where Aspasia is not mentioned.
29 Thuc. 2.45.2 (Dillon and Garland 1994, 2000: doc. 13.27).
30 In Eupolis’ Demes, produced 411: PCG v F110.
31 Philetairos PCG vii F8 (Athen. 559a, 572d); Apollodoros FGH 244 F112; Sappho F142, 160 (Voigt); Hesych. sv hetairas hieron.
32 Hegesander FHG iv F25 (Athen. 572de).
33 Eualkes FGH 418 F2 (Athen. 573a).
34 Neanthes FGH 84 F9 (Athen. 572e–f).
35 Baumann 1990: 38; Ostwald 1986: 195; Mansfeld 1980: 32 n. 131; Derenne 1930: 9; [Dem.] 59.85–6, 113–14; Is. 6.50.
36 Aesch. 1.183: Solon’s law that adulterous women could not attend public sacrifices. 37 Is. 6.49–50.
38 [Dem.] 59.46; ‘in the temple’; unfortunately, the speaker is not more precise.
39 Pallake: Antiphon 1.16–17; Maionia: LSAM 18.13–15 (147/6 BC), see below.
40 Plut. Demet. 12.1–7, 23.5–24.2, 26.1–5; Philippides PCG vii F25 (Demet. 26.5).
41 Theopompos FGH 115 F248, cf. F247 (Athen. 604f–605d); Plut. Mor. 397f.
42 Metropolis: LSAM 29.4–8 (fourth century BC); Lindos: LSCG Suppl., 91.18, cf. 19: ‘unlawful’ (paranomon) sexual activities.
43 LSAM 18.13–15 (147/6 BC).
44 Dio Chrysostom 77/78.4, cf. 35.15; Dillon 1997: 189.
45 Ar. Peace 879–80, with Sommerstein 1985: 174–5.
46 Garland 1992: 111–14.
47 IG ii2 334.
48 See Dillon and Garland 1994: 278–86; 2000: 284–93.
49 Athen. 251b; Ael. VH 5.12.
50 Plut. Mor. 389a; cf. Versnel 1990: 119.
51 IG ii2 1177.3–4 (LSCG 36; middle of the fourth century BC).
52 Poseidippos PCG vii F13 (Athen. 591e–f).
53 Athen. 590d–e.
54 As Havelock 1995: 45 notes, the baring of breasts was not unusual, not only in funerary contexts, but also as a plea for compassion; later accretion: Cooper 1995: 312–16.
55 This was the well-known Poseidonia festival on Aegina, at the time of which Aristippos spent two months with the prostitute Lais on the island (Athen. 588e).
56 Luc. Amores 13–14; Pliny NH 36.4.20 (whose description differs and might refer to a previous building which housed the statue); Havelock 1995: 58–63; Spivey 1996: pl. 113. Aphrodite herself comes as a tourist, exclaiming in wonder, “Where did Praxiteles see me naked?”: Plato xxv (Page 1976).
57 Havelock 1995: 4.
58 She was also said to be the model for Praxiteles’ ‘Smiling Courtesan’: Pliny NH 34.70. Throughout Alexandria there were many images (eikones) of Ptolemy’s woman cupbearer Kleino (Polyb. 14.11.2; cf. Ptolemy of Megalopolis FGH 161 F3; Athen. 576f).
59 Trial: Athen. 590d–f, citing: Hyp. 60 F171–80 (Jensen pp. 143–5); Hermippos FHG iii F66 (see also F67); Diodoros Periegetes FHG ii F5; Aristogeiton Against Phryne F4 (Müller 1858: 2.436); Herodikos Komoidoumenoi (Athen. 591c); other information on her: Athen. 590f–591f. Spengel 1853: i.455.8–11 records the specific charges, and this appears to have been either the epilogue of Euthias’ charges or at least part of the speech. Cf. for Phryne, Athen. 558c; Timokles PCG vii F25; Amphis PCG ii F24 (Athen. 591d); Machon F18 (Gow 1965: 54 =Athen. 583c); Apollodoros FGH 244 F212 (Athen. 591c); Kallistratos On Hetairai (Athen. 591d); Propertius 2.5; Quintilian Instituto Oratoria 2.15.9 (that Phryne revealed herself, not Hypereides). See Versnel 1990: 118–19; Garland 1992: 150; Havelock 1995: 42–8; Cooper 1995; Parker 1996: 162–3, cf. 214–17. There was a tradition that there were two prostitutes called Phryne.
60 Statue at Delphi: Alketas FGH 405 F1 (Athen. 591b–c); Plut. Mor. 401a; Ael. VH 9.32; Paus. 9.27.3 (cf. 1.20.1–2); DL 6.60; epigram of Praxiteles’ Knidian Aphrodite statue (modelled on Phryne) at Athens: Athen. 591a; Anth. Pal. 16.203–6. Praxiteles’ statue of Eros dedicated at Thespiai: Athen. 591b.
61 [Dem.] 59.21–2 (the word mystagogos is not used). Lysias is described as a sophist in [Dem.] 59.21 and is sometimes connected with Lysias the orator, an attractive but not necessary assumption.
62 [Dem.] 59.24.
63 [Dem.] 59.116; Athen. 594ab.
64 Dein. 1.23.
65 Athen. 586c; Poseidonios FGH 87 F14 (Athen. 594e–595c); Dikaiarchos FHG ii F72 (a tomb monument which none other approaches in size; the remains of the foundations: Travlos 1988: 177, 181); Theopompos FGH 115 F253 (cf. F254); Philemon PCG vii F15; Alexis PCG ii F143 (Arnott 1996: F216); Paus. 1.37.5; Plut. Phok. 22.1–2; Diod. 17.108.5; Osborne and Byrne 1994: 386; Flower 1997: 258–62.
66 TGF pp. 810–11; c. 325 or 324 BC (Athen. 595e–f).
67 Theopompos FGH 115 F253; cf. Athen. 603d.
68 Athen. 586c, 595d–e citing: Theopompos FGH 115 F254a–b, and Kleitarchos FGH 137 F30, TGF pp. 810–11; Flower 1997: 261.
69 Ptolemy Euergetes FGH 234 F4 (Athen. 576f).
70 Athen. 588c–589b (cf. 587c); Paus. 2.2.4; Plut. Mor. 767f–768a; see the same story at Polemon F44 (Preller 1838: 75), from Athen. 589a–b, who has ‘Anosia (Unholy) Aphrodite’ rather than ‘Androphonos’, homicidal; schol. Ar. Wealth 179; see also for Lais: Plut. Nik. 15.4; Hyp. F13 (Jensen p. 116); Strattis PCG vii F27; Nymphodoros FGH 572 F1; Timaios FGH 566 F24; Steph. Byz. sv Eukarpeia (Timaios FGH 566 F24b), sv Krastos (Neanthes FGH 84 F13). Note also the case of Ptolemy, son of King Ptolemy II Philadelphos and a concubine, when he took refuge in the temple of Artemis in Ephesos and was killed there; his hetaira Eirene who had fled to the temple with him hung onto the door knockers of the temple and her blood was spilled on the altars, until she too was killed (Athen. 593a–b).
71 A prostitute in Luc. Dial. Het. 7.1 says that she will offer a goat to Aphrodite Pandemos, a young steer to Aphrodite Ourania, and a wreath to ‘the giver of wealth’, i.e. Demeter, if she and her daughter find another rich lover.
72 Anth. Pal. 6.283, 285.
73 Athen. 596c citing Kratinos, but the lines are missing from the manuscript; Hdt. 2.134–5. Herodotos notes that Sappho in her poetry abused her brother for his actions: see also Sappho F15.11, 252, 254 (Voigt). A stone base at Delphi can be restored to read: Rhod[opis] [dedicat]ed {this/these}: LSAG 102, 103 n. 7, pl. 12; SEG 13.364; Delphi Museum 7512.
74 Polemon F18 (Preller 1838: 48 = Athen. 574c–d).
75 Plut. Lyk. 9.5.
76 Alexis of Samos FGH 539 F1 (Athen. 572f).
77 Alexis PCG ii F255; methuein, to drink, was added into the text by Porson, probably unnecessarily (see app. crit. of PCG); ‘to revel’ presumably implies plenty of drinking.
78 Machon F16–17 (Gow 1965: 47–52; Athen. 579e, 581a, 582b–c).
79 Machon F16 (Gow 1965: 48–9; Athen. 580c, 580f).
80 Polemon FHG iii, F3 p. 116; she was mentioned by Hyp. F142 (Jensen p. 138); Harp. sv Nemeas; Athen. 587c; other festival names: Athen. 586c, e, 587e, 593f, 594e; 592a–b for Theoris; [Dem.] 59.19: Isthmias. Harp. also cites Polemon but makes the prohibition specific to the names of penteteric (four-yearly) festivals (such as the Olympia).
81 Semos of Delos FGH 396 F24; Ar. Ach. 241–79; phallophoria (phallos-bearing): Krentz 1993; Cole 1993.
82 Babylon and Cyprus: Hdt. 1.199; cf. the alleged prostitution of the daughter of King Khufu (Cheops), Egypt: Hdt. 2.126.
83 Hdt. 1.93.4. See also Klearchos F43a (Athen. 516a–b). In a Greek inscription of the Roman period from Lydia, a woman (with a Roman name) records that she became a pallake and ‘unwashed of feet’ like her ancestors in accordance with an oracle (BCH 7, 1893: 276); presumably this is a reference to temple prostitution. The woman may well have consulted an oracle about a particular personal problem and been told to take up again the service of her women ancestors.
84 Justin 18.5.4.
85 Luc. The Syrian Goddess 6.
86 Thuc. 1.13.5. For sacred prostitutes at Corinth, see MacLachlan 1992; Pembroke 1996; Kurke 1996; Beard and Henderson 1998. For a possible prostitute kanephoros on a Corinthian vase, see Amyx 1988: 554–5, 563.
87 The proverb is found in: Ar. PCG iii.2 F928, p. 416; Strabo 8.6.20, 12.3.36; Hesych., Suid., Phot. sv ou pantos andros es Korinthon esth ho plous; Apostolios 13.60 (CPG ii.591); Zenobios 5.37 (CPG i.135); Diogenianos 7.16 (CPG i.289); Aulus Gellius 1.8.4; Eustathios commentary on Il. 2.570; cf. schol. Ar. Wealth 149; see CPG i.135–6 n. 37; expense: Ar. Wealth 149–52. Cf. for sailors and prostitutes: Strabo 8.6.20; Aristagoras Mammakythos (Athen. 571b; not in PCG ii).
88 Individual vows: Athen. 573e; Pindar: F122 (Maehler); Athen. 573f–574a. For this ode, see esp. Kurke 1996, with discussion of previous bibliography. For sacred prostitution in Corinth and elsewhere in the Greek world, see Licht 1932: 388–95; Yamauchi 1973; Salmon 1984: 398–400; Williams 1986: 19, 20–1; Cantarella 1987: 50; Powell 1988: 367–9; Vanoyeke 1990: 27–31; MacLachlan 1992; Blundell 1995: 35–6; Kurke 1996.
89 The translated phrase is that of Kurke 1996: 51.
90 Browsing: phorbadon; LSJ9 sv phorbadas suggests that this is metaphorical for women supporting themselves by prostitution; see esp. Kurke 1996: 57.
91 Strabo 8.6.20, 12.3.36. At 11.14.16 he discusses sacred prostitution in Armenia; see also 17.1.46. Pindar and Athenaeus do not mention the term hierodouloi in connection with Xenophon’s vow.
92 Chamaileon of Herakleia F34 (Steffen 1964: 25; Athen. 573c).
93 Theopompos FGH 115 F285a; Timaios FGH 566 F10 (both Athen. 573d); Suid., Phot. sv ou pantos andros es Korinthon esth ho plous; Apostolios 13.60 (CPG
ii.591).
94 Athen. 573d.
95 Simon. F104a–c (Diehl); Theopompos FGH 115 F285a (Athen. 573d–e), 285b (schol. Pind. Olym. 13.32b); Plut. Mor. 871b; Page 1981: 207–11, no. 14. The texts of the epigram in Athen., Plut., and schol. Pind. Olym. 13.32b all differ. The epigram need not necessarily be by Simonides (Plutarch alone makes this identification). The epigram is discussed by Page 1981: 207–11; Brown 1988; cf. Kurke 1996: 64–5. For daimoniai in line 2, see esp. Brown 1988, who argues that it is a special term for the hierodouloi of Corinth.
96 Plut. Mor. 871a; schol. Pind. Olym. 13.32b.
97 Athen. 573d; Plut. Mor. 871b; Page (1981: 209) preferred the idea that the women were painted on the pinax; Kurke 1996: 64–5.
98 Theopompos FGH 115 F285b.
99 See Page 1981: 209; Brown 1988: 8; cf. Kurke 1996: 64.
100 Schol. Pind. Olym. 13.32b (Theopompos FGH 115 F285b).
101 Paus. 2.5.1; cf. 3.15.10, 3.23.1.
102 Williams 1986: 15–17.
103 Kurke 1996: 64–5, suggests that the word prodomen means betray, rather than simply ‘hand over’, and that the Corinthians were praying that Aphrodite, with her eastern connotations at Corinth as ‘armed Aphrodite’ and being akin to Ishtar the eastern goddess of love and war, might betray the city to the eastern Persians. But it is unlikely that the Corinthians saw Aphrodite in this way (modern scholars are the ones making the connection with eastern Ishtar – nothing suggests that the Corinthians thought similarly).
104 Strabo 6.2.6; Diod. 4.83.6 (perhaps a reference to sexual activity with women at the temple); Cic. In Q. Caecilium Divinatio 55. A cult of Aphrodite was imported to Rome from Eryx in the third century BC, and Venus (Aphrodite) had a temple near the Colline gate which took its name from Eryx; Roman prostitutes had an annual festival here to worship Venus: Ovid Fasti 4.865–76.
105 Strabo 11.14.16.
106 Strabo 12.3.36. Pembroke 1996: 1263–4, attempts to play down this aspect of Greek religion, obviously uncomfortable with the phenomenon, unrealistically seeing the term ‘sacred’ as referring to ‘no more than manumission by fictive dedication of a kind . . . attested in a cult of Poseidon at Taenarum’. But this will not explain Xenophon’s vow.
107 Pind. Pyth. 2.18–20.
108 Justin 21.2.9–3.8; Klearchos F43a (Athen. 516a–b). See Sourvinou-Inwood 1974: 186–7, 195–6; MacLachlan 1995: 208–9, 219.
109 Unlike Justin 21.3.3–8, Klearchos F 47 (Athen. 541c–e) clearly followed by Ael. VH 9.8, and Strabo 6.1.8, record a tradition that Dionysios violated the
virgin daughters of the Lokrians, but not in connection with the vow or Aphrodite’s temple.
110 Ludovisi Throne, Rome: Museo Nazionale 8570; marble; fifth century BC; discovered in Rome (Boardman 1967: pl. 184; 1973: 140 fig. 143; Prückner 1968: 89–91; Simon 1959: 12 pl. 3; 1969: pls 236–8; Ridgway 1970: pl. 71; 1990: 236 pl. 119; Richter 1970a: figs 513–15; 1987: figs 124, 127; Sourvinou-Inwood 1974a: pl. 13b; Robertson 1975: 203–9, pl. 66c; 1981: pl. 83; Schefold 1981: 76–7, figs 91–2; LIMC ii Aphrodite 1170; Stewart 1990: pls 306–8; Carpenter 1991: 83 fig. 90; Keuls 1993: 217 pls 191–3; Carratelli 1996: 70, 392–3, 705 pl. 189). Robertson 205 notes other possible identifications for the figure assisted by the attendants (Hera, Eileithyia, or Persephone), but these are unconvincing.
111 See Chapter 5, pp. 153–4.
112 IG ii2 1534.27, 41 (301 BC). Castner 1982, has argued that these hetairai are the dedicators of the inscriptions, as all of the names are uncommon, and particularly because of the appearance of Mammarion and Hedeia together in IG ii2 1534.27, 41 (especially sceptical of Castner’s identifications is Aleshire 1989: 67; 1992: 89, 99). Castner 51, lists the literary evidence for the seven Epicurean hetairai; note also Athen. 588b.
113 SEG 16.300.6, 9, 12–13 (first half of the third century BC).
114 Girard 1881: 82–3, followed by many scholars, who argued that many of the dedicators were hetairai or slaves; Aleshire 1989: 67, 313, shows this not to have been the case.
115 LSCG 69.43–8.
116 For numbers, see: fourth century BC: Ktesikles FGH 245 F1 (Athen. 272c); fifth century BC: Thuc. 2.13.6–7; archaic Athens: Arist. Pol. 1275b 34–8; [Arist.]
Ath. Pol. 13.5, cf. 21.2; Plut. Sol. 24.4; see Whitehead 1977: 97–8, cf. 1986: 83–4; Duncan-Jones 1980; Dillon and Garland 1994: 330; 2000: 338–9.
117 For religion and the metics, see Gauthier 1972: 112–13; Whitehead 1977: 86–9.
118 [Dem.] 59.104–6, cf. 57.47–8.
119 Whitehead 1984: 58, for some examples.
120 IG i3 244c.8–9; c. 460 BC (LSCG 10; Dillon and Garland 1994, 2000: doc. 5.20); Whitehead 1986: 205; cf. Mikalson 1977: 428, 430.
121 IG i3 82.23; 421/0 BC (LSCG 13).
122 Demetrios FGH 228 F5 (Harp. sv skaphephoroi); Ael. VH 6.1; schol. Ar. Birds 1551. For the metics in the Panathenaic procession, see Whitehead 1977: 87; Rotroff 1977: 380–2; Simon 1983: 63, 65; Lefkowitz 1996: 80. The sources on the hydrophoroi, skiadephoroi, skaphephoroi and diphrophoroi are all lexicographical, but they mention as their own sources Deinarchos, Demetrios of Phaleron, Theophrastos, and the playwrights Hermippos, Nikophon and Menander, which give their statements some authority.
123 Schol. Ar. Birds 1551a (Hermippos PCG v F25, and Nikophon PCG vii F7); Hesych. sv diphrophoroi.
124 North frieze (three standing and one crouching): Robertson and Frantz 1975, North vi plate; Berger and Gisler-Huwiler 1996: Tafelband 42, 46–7.
125 Brommer 1977: 1.217.
126 Cf. Simon 1983: 64; Younger 1997: 151 n. 83.
127 Demetrios FGH 228 F5 (Harp. sv skaphephoroi); Poll. 3.55; Phot. sv skaphas; Phot. and Suid. sv systomoteron skaphes (see also the testimonia at Berger and Gisler-Huwiler 1996: Textband 195–6, nos 189–199). North frieze: Robertson and Frantz 1975: at North ii; Berger and Gisler-Huwiler Tafelband 42, 45–6; he was followed by two other skaphephoroi.
128 Sanctuary: IG ii2 337; 333/2 BC (Tod GHI ii.189; LSCG 34), lines 43–5 for Isis; dedication: IG ii2 4636.
129 Berlin SK709; IG ii2 2934 (Blümel 1966: 77–8 no. 90, pls 123–4 (124 for th inscription); LIMC i Acheloos 202; Travlos 1971: 294 fig. 382; Neumann 1979: 74, pl. 47a; Kunze 1992: 130–1, no. 40; BCH 116, 1992: 156; Kron 1996: 163).
130 IG ii2 4609; Ferguson 1944: 108 n. 52; Vermaseren CCCA 2, no. 267; Parker 1996: 192, with n. 145.
131 [Dem.] 59.85; Is. 6.48–9.
132 Men. Arbitrants 477–8, cf. 517 (parthenos).
By Matthew Dillon in "Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion", Routledge, UK, 2002, excerpts chapter 6 pp. 183-208. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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