Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World

The Bad Girls of Athens: The Image and Function of Hetairai in Judicial Oratory

The Bad Girls of Athens The Image and Function of Hetairai in Judicial Oratory allison glazebrook In a climactic moment of the epilogue of [Demosthenes] 59, Apollodorus makes the following appeal to his audience (114): So let each one of you believe that he is casting his vote, one in defence of his wife, another his daughter, another his mother, another the city and its laws and religion, so that those women are not seen to be held in equal esteem with this whore [pornê], and that women reared by their kinsmen with great and proper decency [sôphrosunê] and care and given in marriage according to the laws [kata tous nomous] are not shown to have equal rights with a woman who has been with many men many times each day, in many lascivious ways [meta pollôn kai aselgôn tropôn], as each man wished. (Carey 1992, 77) In the course of this appeal, Apollodorus presents an obscene and debased description of the hetaira Neaira1—he calls her a “whore” (“pornê”), and makes her availability and sexual expertise explicit. Absent is a popular modern image of the ancient prostitute as witty, cultured, and educated—more like an intellectual companion than a sexual partner (Licht [1932] 1956, 339 and Seltman 1956, 115).2 Instead, Apollodorus distinguishes the law-abiding, decent woman from her inferior , the prostitute. He erects a boundary, perhaps more ideological 125 than real, between women eligible for marriage and women available for pleasure. This description, contrasting with the frequent references labeling Neaira a “hetaira,” actually blurs any boundaries between categories of prostitutes. In general, scholars distinguish between pornai and hetairai. They view the former as low-class prostitutes and the latter as sophisticated courtesans. Apollodorus’s dissolution of categories complicates attempts to interpret the image of Neaira and to define the status of various prostitutes, rendering the focus on a taxonomy of prostitution misplaced. Recent scholarship demonstrates that context is important to the understanding of images and terms relating to prostitution and reveals that attitudes toward the sex worker in the ancient world were complex . The work of David Halperin (1991) and Leslie Kurke (1997) reveals that ancient writers created and manipulated images of the prostitute for social and political purposes. Madeleine Henry (1985 and 1987) points to evidence of contradictory attitudes toward such women in ancient Greek comedy. Together, these scholars demonstrate the importance of genre, date, and context of the sources to studies on prostitution . Utilizing such a method, Kapparis (1999, 408–9) concludes that Apollodorus, most frequently labeling Neaira a “hetaira,” clearly intends his reference to her as a “pornê” in his epilogue to be insulting and not an indication of a change in her status. As Kapparis demonstrates, knowledge of rhetorical technique is key to interpreting characterizations of women in judicial oratory. By examining the representation of prostitutes in such texts, I aim to show that invocation of the image of the hetaira is part of an orator’s strategy against an opponent. Rather than Neaira, my focus is on how orators construct and manipulate images of hetairai to their own advantage and on what the genre of judicial oratory tells us about Athenian attitudes toward hetairai. Hetaira as Constructed Image An adverse attitude toward hetairai exists in judicial oratory, where rhetorical strategies, sexual stereotypes, and social reality shape the image of the hetaira. She is often a sign of an opponent’s extravagance and corrupt nature. Aeschines describes Timarchus as “being slave to the most shameful pleasures: gourmet foods and expensive dinners, flute-girls and hetairai, dice, and other pursuits that must not have power over a noble and free man (1.42).” He further accuses Timarchus of having squandered his patrimony on such habits and then of prostituting 126 allison glazebrook himself as a way to earn money to meet these needs. Callistratus argues that Olympiodorus never married and instead wastes inheritance money on a hetaira while his sister and niece live in poverty ([Demosthenes ] 48.53). He intends the hetaira to serve as a sign of Olympiodorus ’s extravagance and corrupted nature. Furthermore, Demosthenes reproaches Apollodorus for freeing hetairai (36.45), and the speaker of Isaeus 3 relates how young men who cannot control their passion for such women bring themselves to ruin (17). Clearly, Athenians look down on excessive desire for hetairai and those who waste money on such women. The orators also present...