Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE–200 CE

4. Woman Wine = Prostitute in Classical Athens?

Woman + Wine = Prostitute in Classical Athens? clare kelly blazeby The image in figure 4.1 depicts two women; one holds a drinking cup to her chest while holding out another to her companion who plays the aulos. They recline against cushions and are naked apart from jewelry and headwear. To someone unfamiliar with the scholarship surrounding Attic red-figure pottery, the scene represents nothing more than two women enjoying wine, music, and each other’s company. However, the caption below the scene in Women in the Classical World explains that this is a drinking cup “with a pair of hetairai amusing themselves as if at a symposium; their nudity and poses, as well as the drinking vessels they hold, make it clear that these are not what the Athenians would consider respectable women” (Fantham et al. 1994, 118). The authors further explain that drinking cups offer “many images of naked hetairai by themselves, which must have functioned like pinups for male consumers” and that on the cup in question, “one pair [of hetairai] faces each other, relaxed on pillows, as if having their own private, all-girl symposium, probably a male fantasy” (Fantham et al. 1994, 116–17). Sarah Pomeroy (2002, 109–10) describes the image on an archaic Laconian cup (see fig. 4.2) as depicting “women and men together at a symposium. Because the woman reclines with the man and doubtless drinks wine as he does, some viewers, perhaps because they are more familiar with the iconography of Athenian vase painting, may deduce that she is a hetaira.” The woman is absolved from this charge however with the explanation that “Spartan girls and women regularly drank wine,” and the conclusion drawn by Pomeroy is that we must therefore be viewing a religious scene. 86 4 Figure 4.1. Artist unknown. Attic red-figure kylix, ca. 520–510 BCE. Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid, 11.267. Drawing by Tina Ross. Figure 4.2. Arcesilas painter. Laconian cup fragments, ca. 565 BCE. Samos (Heraion) K1203, K1541, K2402, and Staatliche Museum, Berlin Charlottenburg, 478x, 460x. Drawing by Tina Ross after Maria Pipili in Pomeroy 2002. Looking more closely at these images, what exactly is it that would have us understand these women as particularly Athenian hetairai ? The women in figure 4.1 are naked, but there are no men involved, so must nudity automatically be indicative of a sexualized scene involving prostitutes? As Sian Lewis rightly points out, “prostitution is a trade, not an identity” and questions “whether ‘hetaira’ is something a woman can ‘be’ on a pot: can there be a prostitute without a customer ?” (2002, 99, 101). Lewis cites ten other drinking cups with scenes of women reclining and drinking in the company of other women but without male partners (2002, 113); nudity aside, what else could possibly suggest to scholars that these women are not respectable? The answer lies quite simply in the fact they are drinking wine and that the images are painted on drinking cups. Wine and Men: Sympotic Tyranny According to Pomeroy (1975, 143), “wine drinking was an activity ideally reserved for men,” and the study of wine drinking of the Greek classical period has almost without exception focused on elite men at play in the symposium. The symposium is the framework around which all studies of classical Greek drinking are built (Dunbabin 1991; Dunbabin 1998; Murray 1990c; Lissarrague 1990a; Murray and Tecu¸san 1995; Schmitt Pantel 1997), regardless of a body of archaeological and literary evidence that suggests that this type of drinking was enjoyed primarily by a small minority of wealthy, politically active, elite, and perhaps predominantly Athenian, men and their emulators. The symposium proper would continue to resist widening participation throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BCE and remain a largely private and aristocratic male preserve. Despite this, any and all contexts for wine consumption have become “symposia ,” and images of men and women drinking (either together or alone) are described in purely sympotic terms. Since we know that the highly ritualized and religious symposium was a men-only affair, the consequences of all drinking being understood as “sympotic” has tremendous implications for the women in our scenes, as the only women we know who could be present were hired entertainers who may or may not have provided sexual services, as well as the hetairai who most certainly did. Thus discussion surrounding the status of Athenian women depicted in red...