Sexual Labor In The Athenian Courts

Oratory is a valuable source for reconstructing the practices, legalities, and attitudes surrounding sexual labor in classical Athens. It provides evidence of male and female sex laborers, sex slaves, brothels, sex traffickers, the cost of sex, contracts for sexual labor, and manumission practices for sex slaves. Yet the witty, wealthy, and independent hetaira, well-known from other genres, does not feature. Its detailed narratives and character portrayals provide a unique discourse on sexual labor and reveal the complex relationship between such labor and Athenian society. Through a holistic examination of five key speeches, Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts considers how portrayals of sex laborers intersected with gender, the body, sexuality, the family, urban spaces, and the polis in the context of the Athenian courts. Drawing on gender theory and exploring questions of space, place, and mobility, Allison Glazebrook shows how sex laborers represented a diverse set of anxieties concerning social legitimacy and how the public discourse about them is in fact a discourse on Athenian society, values, and institutions.

Oratory is a valuable source for reconstructing the practices, legalities, and attitudes surrounding sexual labor in classical Athens. It provides evidence of male and female sex laborers, sex slaves, brothels, sex traffickers, the cost of sex, contracts for sexual labor, and manumission practices for sex slaves. Yet the witty, wealthy, free, and independent hetaira well-known from other genres, does not feature. Its detailed narratives and character portrayals provide a unique discourse on sexual labor and reveal the complex relationship between such labor and Athenian society. Through a holistic examination of five key speeches, Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts considers how portrayals of sex laborers intersected with gender, the body, sexuality, the family, urban spaces, and the polis in the context of the Athenian courts. Drawing on gender theory and exploring questions of space, place, and mobility, Allison Glazebrook shows how sex laborers represented a diverse set of anxieties concerning social legitimacy and how the public discourse about them is in fact a discourse on Athenian society, values, and institutions.

This is a pioneering study that examines the sale of sex in classical Athens from a commercial (rather than from a cultural or moral) perspective. Following the author's earlier book on Athenian banking, this work analyzes erotic business at Athens in the context of the Athenian economy. For the Athenians, the social acceptability and moral standing of human labor was largely determined by the conditions under which work was performed. Pursued in a context characteristic of servile endeavor, prostitution--like all forms of slave labor--was contemptible. Pursued under conditions appropriate to non-servile endeavor, prostitution--like all forms of free labor--was not violative of Athenian work ethics. As a mercantile activity, however, prostitution was not untouched by Athenian antagonism toward commercial and manual pursuits; as the "business of sex," prostitution further evoked negativity from segments of Greek opinion uncomfortable with any form of carnality. Yet ancient sources also adumbrate another view, in which the sale of sex, lawful and indeed pervasive at Athens, is presented alluringly. In a book that will be of interest to all students of sex and gender, to economic, legal and social historians, and to classicists, the author explores the high compensation earned by female sexual entrepreneurs who often controlled prostitutional businesses that were perpetuated from generation to generation on a matrilineal basis, and that benefitted from legislative restrictions on pimping. The author juxtaposes the widespread practice of "prostitution pursuant to written contract" with legislation targeting male prostitutes functioning as governmental leaders, and explores the seemingly contradictory phenomena of extensive sexual exploitation of slave prostitutes (male and female) coexisting with Athenian society's pride in its legislative protection of slaves and minors against sexual outrage.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The experience of Athens has shown that law may be administered satisfactorily without a professional class either of judges or of lawyers. Magistrates chosen by lot were constantly required to exercise important judicial functions for which they had no special training; nor were they able to gain a fund of knowledge by experience, as they held office for one year only. In all probability, the general efficiency of the magistrates was largely due to the practice which permitted them to choose their own assessors. This enabled a weak magistrate to secure the assistance of a competent man to aid him in his official duties. There is, however, no indication that these assessors were reappointed by succeeding magistrates, as is the case in the British system of government, where deputies may continue to hold office under different ministers of the crown. With the object of making each citizen take his full share in public life, and of preserving equality ( crorifita) in the citizen body, litigants, if citizens, were required to take their own cases in court. But this was an ideal beyond the possibility of achievement even in the Athens of Pericles. And so there arose a class of men whose business it was to write speeches for those who were unequal to the task of pleading their own cases. These Koyvfpajxu. did to a certain degree constitute a professional class, but they were not lawyers in our sense of the word. A knowledge of rhetoric was quite as important for their success as a knowledge of law. Moreover, the necessity of fitting the speech to the character of his client tended to keep the speech-writer in the background. Indeed, every artifice was resorted to in order to keep up the delusion that the litigant...

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Prostitution in the ancient Greek world was widespread, legal, and acceptable as a fact of life and an unavoidable necessity. The state regulated the industry and treated prostitution as any other trade. Almost every prominent man in the ancient world has been truly or falsely associated with some famous hetaira. These women, who sold their affections to the richest and most influential men of their time, have become legends in their own right. They pushed the boundaries of female empowerment in their quest for self-promotion and notoriety, and continue to fascinate us. Prostitution remains a complex phenomenon linked to issues of gender, culture, law, civic ideology, education, social control, and economic forces. This is why its study is of paramount importance for our understanding of the culture, outlook and institutions of the ancient world, and in turn it can shed new light and introduce new perspectives to the challenging debate of our times on prostitution and contemporary sexual morality. The main purpose of this book is to provide the primary historical study of the topic with emphasis upon the separation of facts from the mythology surrounding the countless references to prostitution in Greek literary sources.

Recovers the voices, experiences and agency of enslaved people in ancient Greece.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to ancient Athens, its topography, monuments, inhabitants, cultural institutions, religious rituals, and politics. Drawing from the newest scholarship on the city, this volume examines how the city was planned, how it functioned, and how it was transformed from a democratic polis into a Roman urbs.