Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World

The Psychology of Prostitution in Aeschines’ Speech against Timarchus

The Psychology of Prostitution in Aeschines’ Speech against Timarchus susan lape The Regulation of Morals in Classical Athens In 346/5 BCE Aeschines successfully prosecuted Timarchus for violating a law that prohibited any man who had mistreated his parents, been derelict in his military duty, squandered an inheritance, prostituted himself, or otherwise acted as an “escort,” from political activity in the democratic city (28–32). According to Aeschines, Solon, the author of the law, excluded prostitutes from citizenship for political reasons , believing that the man who sold himself for sexual services would be likely to betray the state (29). This explanation for the ban on citizen prostitutes is consistent with the recently emerging consensus that Athenian law regulated the sexual conduct of citizens only when it was perceived to endanger the civic community and its values rather than for either moral or paternalistic reasons (D. Cohen 1991a, Wallace 1995 and 1996). The language of extant Athenian laws certainly supports this interpretation . Yet, although Athenian laws do not explicitly regulate sexual behavior for moral reasons, from the mid-fourth century onward 139 Athenian litigants argued that they did. The discrepancy between the actual laws as we know them and the moral interpretations offered by litigants is often explained by appealing to the interested position from which litigants spoke. Although speakers may have offered selfserving and highly idiosyncratic interpretations of Athenian law, it does not necessarily follow that these interpretations carried no legal or social force. It was obviously in the interests of litigants to make claims that resonated with the intuitions and expectations of jurors. More important , the meaning of law always depends on someone’s interpretation. The key question then, is whose interpretation counts. There were no professional lawyers or judges in democratic Athens and no compilations of case law to guide judicial interpretation. Rather, the meaning of the law as it was applied in particular cases was principally determined by the arguments of litigants, especially those in the prosecutorial role, and by the verdicts of democratic juror-judges. In fact, the meaning of a law could change—even if the actual words of a law did not—as the result of a trial outcome. For this reason, prosecutors urged jurors to consider themselves actual lawmakers rather than simply judges of a single case (Lycurgus 1.9, Lysias 14. 4). This is not to claim that jury verdicts changed or created law by setting formal legal precedents: they certainly did not. Rather, litigants speak of jury verdicts as establishing informal but nonetheless authoritative social precedents. The outcome of trials was thought to articulate the practical meaning of law, including the social values and practices the laws embodied or endorsed. For example, Aeschines claims that a conviction for Timarchus will inculcate morality (eukosmia) in the city’s youth (191–92).1 Yet, it is sometimes argued that there were two moralities in democratic Athens: one for private citizens and one for the politically active like Timarchus.2 In fact, however, the difference is not that politicians were held to a higher moral standard per se but rather that their public lives made them more judicially vulnerable. Thus, trial outcomes in cases involving public figures were thought to be exemplary for all citizens—regardless of whether they were politically active or not (Dinarchus 1.27).3 Although the explicit content of Athenian laws is not moral in emphasis , Aeschines successfully argued that the laws were intended to promote and protect the morality of democratic citizens: Timarchus was convicted and punished with atimia, the loss of his citizen “rights.”4 In this study I consider the ways in which Aeschines presents Timarchus ’s alleged offenses as specifically moral problems. How did 140 susan lape Aeschines convince the jurors that their laws were intended to regulate morality despite the apparent value neutrality of the laws themselves? His success stems in part from his rhetorical strategy. By portraying Timarchus as the ultimate bad citizen, as disgusting, shameless, licentious , and incontinent, Aeschines simultaneously emphasizes the moral virtues of ordinary democratic citizens: sôphrosunê (continence or selfcontrol ), eukosmia (good order), aretê (virtue) and enkrateia (temperance ). While this strategy seems to have been highly effective, it was not unproblematic. Aeschines’ valorization of morality echoed certain ideas associated with the philosophical and elite traditions—traditions generally thought to be critical of democratic culture.5 To avoid incurring the rancor of democratic jurors, Aeschines transforms the elite...