Thargelia…made her onslaughts upon the most influential men [of her time]. – Plutarch
In these harlotographies, I try to alternate between modern ones (who died in the 20th or 21st centuries) and those of earlier times. Unfortunately, even those of earlier times tend to have lived in the Renaissance or later; a precious few date to medieval or classical times, and none at all from earlier. As I wrote in my biography of Thaïs,
…it seems as though Rhodopis of the 6th century BCE may be about as early as I’m able to go; her life story is a mixture of fact, surmise and legend, and though we know the names of earlier whores…they are largely inhabitants of the sphere of legend. This is really not so surprising when one considers that we know little more than the names and dates of most kings from earlier times, and virtually nothing about anyone else unless they had some impact on the affairs of kings…
Most of the hetaerae I have discussed lived in or near the time of Alexander, and a couple (Aspasia and Lais) were born in the 5th century BCE. As Thargelia flourished only half a century or thereabouts after Rhodopis, y’all probably won’t be surprised at how little is known about her, but since what is known is quite fascinating, I wanted to share it with y’all. Like Aspasia, she was from Miletus; like Lais, she is sometimes considered to be two different women with the same name; and like Thaïs, her claim to fame is bound up in the story of the Greco-Persian conflicts that dominated the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. But while Thaïs gleefully witnessed the collapse of the Persian Empire from the train of its conqueror, Thargelia was born a Persian subject and worked to sway Greek opinion toward the Empire when the Wars were just beginning.
Here’s what we know with a fair degree of certainty about Thargelia: she was an exceptional beauty with an exceptional brain and devastating powers of persuasion who managed to bring more than a few of her powerful and influential lovers over to the Persian side. Her name is also the name of an important spring festival of Apollo and Artemis, celebrated in prehistoric times (like so many ancient Greek festivals were) with human sacrifice; it probably had the same sort of ring in her culture that the names “May” or “Easter” might have in ours. Hippias of Elis claimed that she had been married fourteen times, but this seems highly unlikely; he may have garbled reports about the number of important clients whose support she won for Darius. Other accounts claimed that she married Antiochus, ruler of Thessaly, and ruled for thirty years after his death; the latter is known to be false because it was Antiochus himself who ruled for 30 years, and he was succeeded by Thorax of Larissa. She was eventually assassinated by an anti-Persian politician from Argos whom she had used her influence to imprison.
It’s such a pitifully meager amount of information, yet it’s enough to inspire the imagination: given a few more years to work, who knows how many great men she would have lured into the Persian camp? And had that happened, Darius’ invasion of Greece might have gone very differently…and with it the entirety of European history. In a world where that unnamed Argive had been killed rather than merely imprisoned, Thargelia might have been the most influential whore in history instead of a mere footnote.
Dear Maggie,
Firstly I should say that I’m leaving this comment here because for some reason the links for contacting you aren’t working on my computer at the moment, sorry for leaving an unrelated comment here but I really wanted your opinion as I respect your judgement on issues relating to talk of sex trafficking.
Secondly I’d like to say I’m a big fan, I do like a lot of the stuff you post so thanks for this, it gives a different side to the issue than I normally hear about.
And now the main point of my post is that I’ve gotten into several debates recently over prostitution and I’ve tried to illuminate people as to the fact that less women are trafficked into the business than is often stated. Unfortunately I keep coming across arguments like the one posted below:
“A lot of the negligible and [arguably questionable] “choice” advocates in the sex industry lobby are actually turning out to be brothel owners/pimps who are just calling themselves “sex workers” because they are part of the sex industry lobby that’s been infiltrating its way into mainstream conversation. The sex industry has a shit ton of money, so they’re all we hear about in the news… The opponents get no-platformed and censored.
Look, this has been going on more than 2000 years and it’s a highly gendered issue so it’s no use pretending there’s no obvious structural power dynamic that’s particularly harmful to women and children when we all know that’s not true because of the aforementioned 2000+ years of evidence.
Moreover, most of the prostitutes in UK cities have been trafficked so I don’t know where you got that idea from. In the UK ~1/10 men use prostituted women, that means 9/10 are able to control themselves. The 1/10 are likely to be committing rape – whether they know it or not – and in any case we know their demand is contributing trafficking and pimping of vulnerable women and children by fuelling it.
Men seem to like to focus on the imagined plight of high class “happy hooker” an awful lot, yet they never seem so concerned about the 99.99999% who the “happy hookers” are erasing that have had no viable choice.
You wouldn’t treat an animal the way most of these women are treated. It’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It’s about time men took some responsibility for what harm this “trade” does.”
I’m not always 100% sure how to respond to posts like these but I do try to make arguments that balance things a bit and give the sex worker’s side of things. Would you be able to give me some pointers and maybe furnish me with a few basic corrections I could make to the argument posted above?
Sorry if this is the wrong way to do this but I don’t want to be letting the side down when I’m trying to argue against prohibitionists.
Thanks for any help you can give.
What’s your source for believing most of them are trafficked? Because that’s long since debunked.
Well that’s what I’m trying to argue against, the comment undid some of my formatting so it’s not as obvious but from the quote marks just before “A lot of negligible…” to the quote marks at the end of “…what harm this “trade does.” is the argument I’m trying to rebuke.
I tried adding extra empty lines before and after it to make it a bit clearer.
But I could do with a few sources to work with in debates like this one, this blog is one I’m not great at finding others.
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