Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Greece’

Christmas

Posted in History, Holidays, tagged , , , , , , , on December 25, 2010| 4 Comments »

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men! –  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As I discussed in my column of December 21st, there have been winter solstice festivals for at least as long as there has been agriculture, and perhaps longer than that; even hunter-gatherer cultures in the temperate zones would have been adversely affected by winter and would therefore have feared the sun’s “death” and rejoiced in his return.  But the story of the Western celebration we now call Christmas begins in ancient Greece with the festival called Lenaea, whose origin stretches back to the beginning of the third millennium BCE.  At this time the primitive Aegean peoples were still very worried about the coming winter and so the festival we now observe as that of peace and goodwill was at that time anything but.

As JustStarshine explained in her Yule essay, the first solstice-season gifts were not exchanged between humans but rather offered to the gods in order to placate them and thereby induce them to restore warmth, vegetation and life.  And in the ancient Middle East, as in so many other cultures, that meant living sacrifice…and the most valuable form of sacrifice to the ancients was that of a human.  At Lenaea, women (the givers of life and representatives of Gaea, the Earth Mother) would drink wine, work themselves into a religious frenzy and go out into the forest, running wild until they encountered a lone hunter from another tribe, whom they would then literally tear to pieces and devour so as to restore fertility to the earth.  Afterwards, a newborn male baby was dedicated as a symbol of the reborn Dionysos, god of the vines which were their most important crop.  Of course the festival always worked, and the sun soon began to increase in strength again, but as the Greeks evolved they began to find human sacrifice repugnant; the human victim was replaced by a wild bull or goat (the sacrifice must be male to identify with the dying god), and the myth of Tantalus arose to demonstrate the repugnance of human sacrifice and cannibalism to the gods.  Note that the story specifies the time of the abhorrent sacrifice as soon after the rape of Persephone, thus tying it to the mythological origin of the seasons.  But even in its earliest form Lenaea featured three elements which are still essential to the Christmas celebration:  feasting, drinking and veneration of a newborn baby as a god.

Eventually, as the Greeks became confident that sun and vegetation would return without such ghastly appeasement, the sacrifice became a goat which was killed by a priest and then cooked and prepared for the feast rather than devoured raw.  The women became funeral mourners and presenters of the baby selected to represent the newborn god, but the memory of the terrible old ritual was preserved in the myth of the Maenads.  By the 5th century BCE Kronia (the festival of Kronos, god of time) had been added just before the solstice, and eventually most of the solstice celebration became attached to it rather than Lenaea (which became a formal festival rather than a popular one).  When the Romans “borrowed” much of Greek culture and religion, Kronos was identified with their popular and important harvest-god Saturn, while Dionysos was conflated with the Roman wine god Bacchus (who did not symbolize nearly as important an idea to the Romans as he had to the Greeks).  Thus, though both Kronia and Lenaea were adopted into Roman culture (as Saturnalia and Brumalia, respectively), the former proved much more popular and soon grew from its original one day (December 17th) to an entire week (December 17th-23rd).  Saturnalia was celebrated with the usual feasting and drinking, and also with a reversal of the social order (masters waiting on servants, an idiot being declared the ruler of the celebration, etc) to symbolize the reversal of the sun’s course.  It is also in Saturnalia that the tradition of giving a gift to the gods (i.e. a sacrifice) became the giving of gifts to each other.

When Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar in 46 BCE, he established the official first day of the sun’s return (astronomical winter) as December 25th; the solstice itself therefore usually occurred on the 24th or sometimes the 23rd.  But because the Julian calendar did not adequately compensate for the slight difference between 365 days and one year, the actual date of the solstice slowly drifted backwards and by the beginning of the 4th century it usually occurred on the 21st rather than the 24th, making the first day of winter the 22nd rather than the 25th.  But the Romans were a tidy, well-organized people and couldn’t let a little thing like that bother them; the birthday of Sol, the sun, had been declared as December 25th by Julius Caesar and so it stayed even when the actual event moved.

The Roman Empire was vast and home to many different local cults, a number of which spread empire-wide thanks to the well-developed Roman infrastructure; the three most important of these for our purposes were the cult of Isis, that of the Persian sun-god Mithra, and Christianity.  We’ve already talked about Isis on November 3rd and December 23rd and we’ll get to Christianity in the next paragraph, but for now let’s talk about Mithra.  Being a sun-god he was born at the winter solstice, springing up full-grown and armed from a rock.  The miraculous event was witnessed by shepherds, and they greeted the newborn god with gifts from their flocks and harvests.  Mithra was very popular with warriors, and his cult became so widespread in the legions that the Emperor Elagabalus (218-222) decreed the worship of a new deity named Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) who was a combination of Mithra with the minor Roman god Sol and the Syrian sun god El-Gabal, of whom Elagabalus had been a priest in his youth.  The god’s festival was (as you might expect) celebrated on the official date established by Julius Caesar, December 25th.  Despite Elagabalus’ short reign the cult of Sol Invictus proved popular and soon absorbed many smaller cults of sun or warrior gods; the Emperor Aurelian later declared him the chief god of the Empire with the intention of giving all Roman subjects a single god they could worship in addition to (rather than instead of) their own gods.  In 274 he declared the festival of Sol Invictus to be a major Empire-wide holiday, and transferred the old Saturnalia celebrations to the new festival.

Christianity was, of course, quite popular in the Empire by this time, and the association of Jesus with Sol Invictus was so natural that it quickly became an established fact, much to the consternation of church leaders.  By the beginning of the 4th century many Roman Christians celebrated the birth of Christ on December 25th, thus giving the public holiday their own private meaning; earlier writings on the subject theorize that Jesus was born sometime in the spring.  And when the Empire was Christianized a few years later, the Sol Invictus festival seamlessly turned into Christmas, with all traditions intact and the Christian nativity myth added to it.  Incidentally, the date of the solstice continued to drift backward in the calendar, so by the time Pope Gregory XIII ordered calendric reform in 1582 it was occurring on December 12th!  When Gregory corrected the discrepancy, he only had it calculated back to 325 (the year of the Council of Nicea), by which time a three-day error had already accumulated as mentioned earlier; but since Jesus was not regarded as a sun god it hardly mattered that Christmas wasn’t on the day of the reborn sun any longer.

The Church fathers weren’t too happy about Christ’s birthday being celebrated with pagan rituals, but there wasn’t much they could do about it; the people wanted their winter festival and they got it despite repeated efforts by priests (and after the Reformation, even more vicious assaults by Protestant ministers) to discourage it.  As the Church expanded into the Germanic and Celtic countries, their native celebrations merged with Christmas and brought in such traditions as the Yule log, Christmas tree, holly, mistletoe, etc (which we already mentioned on the 21st) and also caroling and the Christmas pageant or pantomime (which we’ll talk about tomorrow).  We also discussed the origins of Santa Claus on the 6th and the modern commercialization of the holiday yesterday.  And so arose Christmas as we know it, the end product of a long series of transformations from a terrifying ritual enacted to avert ecological disaster to the traditional celebration of peace and joy to the modern commercial festival of consumerism.  Personally, I think we should’ve quit while we were ahead, so I’ll just keep observing the traditional love-and-goodwill way and leave the frenzied fighting for holiday bargains to the modern Maenads.

Read Full Post »

Saint Nicholas

Posted in History, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , on December 6, 2010| 25 Comments »

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. –  Clement C. Moore

How did the 4th century Greek bishop whose feast is celebrated today become the symbol of the spirit of Christmas in a large part of the world, and what in the world does it have to do with prostitution?  The answer to both questions is the same:  Nicholas of Myra (270 – December 6th, 346) was a very wealthy but very devout man with a reputation for both extreme generosity and the ability to work miracles, and one of his most famous deeds is the source of both an important part of the Santa Claus legend and Nicholas’ designation as the patron saint of prostitutes.  This busy and popular saint is also the patron of archers, children, merchants, sailors, students and repentant thieves, plus Russia and a number of cities including Aberdeen, Amsterdam and Liverpool, but for the purposes of this column we’ll concentrate on his association with Christmas and harlots.

In Greece, Saint Nicholas is sometimes called Nikolaos Thaumaturgos (Nicholas the Miracle-worker) because of the many miracles legend attributes to him, which include feeding his city on a small portion of wheat during a famine and resurrecting three children murdered by a Sweeny Todd-like evil butcher.  His remains are believed to exude a fragrant liquid with miraculous properties, which is drawn forth every year on this day.  But his popularity and greatest fame derives not from these miracles, but from the mundane acts of kindness he was well-known for, such as dropping coins in the shoes of poor parishioners left outside to dry overnight. Obviously, this practice is the source of the legend about Saint Nicholas leaving presents in children’s shoes (later stockings), but his association with whores is related to another of his legendary traits – that of bringing presents down chimneys.

According to the story, a formerly wealthy man who had fallen on bad times had three daughters, but could not afford dowries for them.  Because of this they would not be able to marry, and in the absence of other marketable skills would be forced into prostitution to support themselves.  But on the night before the eldest daughter came of age, Saint Nicholas threw a purse full of gold coins through the window so she would have a dowry.  He repeated the gift a year later on the night before the second daughter came of age, and the third year the father decided to lie in wait so as to thank his daughters’ unknown benefactor.  But Saint Nicholas wished to remain anonymous, so he climbed upon the roof and dropped the bag down the chimney instead.  Now, it seems to me that since Nicholas actually prevented the girls from becoming hookers it would be more appropriate to consider him the patron saint of those who help unwilling prostitutes to leave the trade, but I suppose Christian whores were glad to be given a patron as loveable and highly-regarded as Saint Nick so I won’t split hairs.

During the late Middle Ages, nuns of some orders honored the saint on his feast day by leaving baskets of food and clothes on the doorsteps of the poor during the night, and sailors of western Europe attended church services followed by “Nicholas fairs” at which unusual goods such as spices and oranges were sold; the sailors would buy treats for their wives and children at such fairs.  By the Renaissance these observances evolved into the tradition of giving gifts to children on Saint Nicholas Day, and in the Netherlands this day (rather than Christmas) eventually became the primary occasion for gift-giving.  The Dutch name for the Saint is Sinterklaas (a corruption of Sint Nikolaas) and the mythology surrounding him is a combination of legends about the historical bishop and traditions about the god Odin; like the god he is elderly and white-bearded, rides a magical horse and has omniscient knowledge of the behavior of individual mortals, but he wears a bishop’s robes and distributes largess on the eve of December 6th.  These Dutch traditions spread to neighboring countries, and the French Pere Noel and English Father Christmas eventually absorbed his white beard and propensity for gift-giving (though on Christmas Eve rather than St. Nicholas Eve), largely through association with the American Santa Claus.  Indeed, the name “Santa Claus” is simply an Anglicized pronunciation of the Dutch “Sinterklaas” which originated among the Dutch settlers in New York.  In some parts of Germany both Christmas and Saint Nicholas’ Day are celebrated (though December 6th is of lesser importance), and this is also true of American cities with a strong German background such as Cincinnati, Cleveland and Milwaukee.

The Saint’s modern image began to take shape in New York and New England of the late 18th century from a fusion of the Dutch Sinterklaas and the English Father Christmas.  In 1809 Washington Irving became the first writer to describe the combined figure (in his History of New York), and in 1823 his friend Clement Clark Moore collected many of the now-familiar traditions in his famous poem, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”; here we see the reindeer-drawn sleigh, coming down the chimney, presents in stockings, fur-trimmed red suit, etc, though Moore still prefers the name “Saint Nicholas” to the doubly-corrupt “Santa Claus”.  In the latter part of the century editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast published a number of drawings of the jolly old saint, and by the turn of the century the image and mythology we know so well today was firmly established not only in the U.S. where it had originated, but also in many other countries (where it merged with or supplanted traditional depictions of Father Christmas, Papa Noel etc).

“Merry Old Santa” by Thomas Nast, 1881

But like all living mythologies, that surrounding Saint Nicholas (or “Santa” to use his modern name) continues to grow.  Mrs. Claus appeared in the mid-19th century, the elves evolved from older traditions about Saint Nicholas’ servants such as Zwarte Piet (“Black Peter”), and the saint’s temperament has mellowed so much that nobody receives coal or switches any more despite the fact that modern children are arguably far less well-behaved than those of times past.  Writers of stories, songs and television shows have added new elements to the story, and some (such as Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer) have become extremely popular.  Even the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has made a contribution by tracking Santa’s Christmas Eve progress on radar every year since 1955;  now the organization even has a website dedicated to the purpose.

Obviously, few modern people (and virtually no children) know that the jolly old fat man in the red suit has a warm spot in his heart for whores, and it’s probably better that way since it’s really none of their business.  But every December there are a few sneaky signs such as cartoons in Playboy, silly jokes (Q: Why is Santa so jolly?  A: He knows where all the bad girls live), escorts and strippers treating themselves (and Santa) to photos in his lap (guilty!), and playing of Eartha Kitt’s classic gold digger’s anthem “Santa Baby”.  And I know for a fact that I’m not remotely the only member of our profession who employs some of her generous income every Yuletide season to assist Santa by donating to his helpers with their kettles outside stores and by providing toys for his chief favorites, the children, through programs like Toys for Tots.

Read Full Post »

Playing the Harlot

Posted in History, Perception, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 16, 2010| 21 Comments »

And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more. –  Ezekiel 16:41

In the replies to my column of October 10th, Bredstik asked a question which I first started to type a reply to, but then quickly realized it deserved a whole column.  Here is his question:

I feel compelled to ask possibly a few more…

Generic statements, so I don’t have to write a whole book, in order to frame the questions below. Truthfully, I’m having a hard framing the question succinctly so I’m trying to carefully blurt out what’s in my head as clearly as possible….hope it makes sense…

In the U.S. (and other places), the major religions are monotheistic. Of these, when they speak of ‘God’, it is basically identified/understood as being male (as a protector/father figure). There is no balancing feminine “force” in these religions that gives the feminine side equal consideration/status/dominance. Male “ideals” are predominant, female ones are … not as dominant . Even though the core teaching of the morals/ethics of these religions are frequently non gender specific, there is a sense that there is a male deity watching over and guiding things/events.

Question(s):
Do you think that religious views are *the* major factor in people believing what they do about prostitution (girls needing to be protected, male dominance, immoral, etc)?

Regardless of the answer above, do you have any info/data/good links/thoughts on how prostitution is viewed differently by countries (in current times, nothing ancient) where there is balanced or less pronounced “male dominant” deity (are prostitutes socially better off, worse off, or basically the same)?

I don’t think monotheism is really the culprit as much as patriarchal culture is.  Despite neofeminist dogma about prostitution being a manifestation of patriarchy, the truth is actually the opposite:  Prostitutes had our highest status in the ancient Goddess-centered cultures because we were rightfully viewed as the gateway between mortal men and the great Feminine Principle.  It wasn’t until the patriarchal cultures succeeded in subordinating the Earth Mother to the Sky Father that our status started to slip, and that preceded monotheism in most of the Western world by several centuries.  For example, by the 6th century BCE  free temple prostitutes in Athens had largely been supplanted by slave-girls given to the temple as donations, and the Athenian leader Solon tried to eradicate secular prostitution by establishing cheap state-owned brothels and persecuting streetwalkers (as discussed more fully in my July 31st column).  In general, male-dominated governments are not really happy about being unable to control prostitutes, and maladjusted men are unhappy that women they don’t own can demand (and get) generous compensation for their sexual favors while men cannot make similar demands from women.  Just look at all the TV and movie fantasies (such as Hung) of male prostitutes who can make a good living from an adoring female clientele, or of male pimps controlling harems of beautiful hookers.  These shows are about as realistic as your average cartoon, yet insecure men love to make and watch them because they’re a fantasy inversion of the uncomfortable truth:  That women control male access to sex, always have, and always will.

That having been said, I think Judeo-Christian religion is a major source of the West’s extreme version of the Madonna/whore dichotomy (and thus an aggravating factor in the generally shoddy Western treatment of prostitutes).  To understand the reason for this, it’s necessary to go back to the origins of the Hebrew people.  The Hebrews were one of a number of Semitic tribes who probably entered Egypt during the rule of their Hyksos kinsmen in the 17th-16th centuries BCE; thus, they became rather unpopular when the native Egyptians overthrew their foreign overlords and restored native rule with the 18th dynasty (“Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.” – Exodus 1:8).  And though it is highly unlikely that they were actually enslaved as in the traditional conception, it is very likely that they were subject to severe discrimination and probably persecution as well.  Then sometime around 1300 BCE, a lesser Egyptian prince whom history calls Moses forged himself a bloodline and in partnership with the Hebrew leader Aaron offered to lead the tribe back to Canaan, land of their ancestors.

Moses was no fool; though he had been passed over (no pun intended) as heir to the throne he had been schooled in leadership as every prince was, and well understood what was needed to forge a loose agglomeration of related clans into a nation worth ruling.  He seems to have favored the monotheistic model of his ancestor Akhenaton, but transferred Aton’s characteristics to the Hebrew deity El-Shaddai, whom Moses referred to as Yahweh (“I Am that I Am”).  Unfortunately for Moses’ plans, the Hebrews were not yet ready for monotheism and were perfectly happy to continue in the polytheistic ways of their ancestors and cousins.  Moses soon recognized the need for a set of strict laws and customs which would unify his followers into one tribe, a “chosen people” separate and distinct from all the related peoples of Canaan; when he decided to codify the laws and pronouncements he attributed to Yahweh, he therefore included prohibitions against nearly everything the Canaanites did.  If you’ve ever wondered why Mosaic law bans such innocuous activities as eating shellfish, now you know; the desert-dwelling Hebrews were unused to them anyhow, so Moses forbade them as a “Canaanite food”.  Since the Canaanites were a settled agricultural people (unlike the Hebrews, who were nomadic herdsmen) they had a well-established system of religious fertility rituals, most of which had sexual components.  Hence the plentiful sexual prohibitions in Mosaic law:  By specifically banning the Hebrews from every kind of sexual behavior which formed a part of one Canaanite religious ritual or another (including male homosexuality and women having sex with animals), Moses kept the Hebrews from participating in those rituals and thereby prevented them from being tempted away from the cult of Yahweh.

But barring Hebrew women from becoming temple prostitutes certainly didn’t keep the Hebrew men from patronizing native ones, so the successors of Moses (the Judges and later the prophets) developed a robust tradition of condemning harlots and harlotry wherever they saw them.  Since the Hebrews were staunchly patriarchal and thereby had the same public misgivings about our profession as every other patriarchal culture (discussed above), they developed unusually vicious anti-whore rhetoric which was if anything only intensified in their religious heirs, the Christians and Muslims.  But while most majority-Muslim countries still have official bans on prostitution, most enlightened majority-Christian countries allow it to one degree or another (though many of these, such as Canada and the UK, practice institutionalized hypocrisy by decriminalizing prostitution itself but criminalizing every activity which is involved in its practice).

Here is a map of the world which shows the legal status of prostitution country by country.  Nations where prostitution is banned are red, those in which it is restricted in some way are beige, and those in which it is at least technically legal are green; there is also a table below the map which explains the exact legal status country by country.  Note the illustrious company the United States chooses to be in; practically every other “red” nation is either a majority-Muslim state, a totalitarian one or one which has only recently emerged from totalitarianism.  Contrast this with the green nations:  All of Western Europe, most of Australia, all of the Western Hemisphere except for the US and a few tiny, poverty-stricken third-world states, and even several African countries.  The few “restricted” countries include Japan (where every kind of prostitution except “full service” is legal), India (much like Canada but worse), Norway and Sweden (where it is illegal to buy sex but not to sell it).

Looking at Bredstick’s final question in light of this map, I think we can safely say that there is very little correlation.  The patriarchal Judeo-Christian sky father is indeed pre-eminent in the prohibitionist Muslim countries and the US, but Europe, Australia and certainly South America are primarily Christian and yet grant their women rights denied to us in the US.  China and the former Soviet Bloc countries have no officially recognized religion, yet engage in the same paternalistic control of women’s bodies as the largely-Christian United States.  The two countries Sailor Barsoom mentioned which have prominent female deities (Japan and India) are not exactly known for the high status of their women, and they restrict their whores with the same kind of arbitrary legalism as is present in de facto criminalization countries such as the UK.  If I had to pick one factor which seems to correlate most closely with the legalization status of prostitutes, it would be the general attitude toward sex in that country; most Europeans and Hispanic people have far healthier attitudes toward sex than the prudish Americans, Muslims and Marxists who run the majority of prohibitionist states.

Read Full Post »

Phryne

Posted in Biography, Harlotography, History, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2010| 47 Comments »

Come yourself to me, and in this enclosure we will fall into each other’s arms. –  Phryne

I mentioned in yesterday’s column that one of my heroines was Phryne (390-330 BCE), the hetaera of classical Athens, whom I first read about in the paperback version of The Book of Lists when I was 13 or 14.  Though it is not difficult to find information on this great lady online, I felt it only right to compose my own tribute to the woman who was one of my earliest examples of the truth that degradation is something jealous people try to impose on whores rather than something intrinsic to our profession.

Any discussion of Phryne herself is pointless without a brief introduction to the world in which she lived.  By the 4th century BCE the ancient tradition of sacred prostitution was a mere shadow of its former self; the practical Greeks had largely replaced the whore-priestesses with exceptionally beautiful slave-girls given to the temples as offerings, and though these sacred harlots were honored as representatives of Aphrodite they were still technically slaves.  Though religion remained very important to the Greeks it was no longer the all-encompassing institution it had previously been, especially in progressive Athens;  the old aristocrats had fallen out of power, and the temples were increasingly under state control.  This was due to the birth of democracy, which was quickly followed by that of her bastard child the professional politician; then, as now, power-hungry individuals were willing to do anything to increase their personal power.

“Phryne at the Festival of Poseidon in Eleusin” by Henryk Siemiradzki (1889)

One of these early politicians was Solon (638-558 BCE), whom nearly a hundred generations of male historians have lauded as wise and credited with helping to usher in the Golden Age of Athens.  Female students of history are not so quick to praise him, however; Solon established a set of laws intended to curtail the relatively high status of women in Greek society, thus making a lie of Athenian talk of “freedom” and “democracy”.  Athenian wives were denied education and public life; like women in modern Islamic countries, they were segregated to their own quarters in Athenian homes and not permitted to go out except to religious ceremonies, and even then they were closely guarded by male family members.  They were not even allowed to do their own shopping; this task was performed by slaves.  Wives and daughters were condemned to toil and drudgery, discouraged from speaking and handed down as chattel from their fathers to their husbands to their sons.

Given this grim regime, it is certainly no wonder that many women rebelled, as illustrated in this passage from Geoffrey Grigson’s The Goddess of Love:

A girl disenchanted with spinning and weaving and all the chores which withered and wasted the flower of a girl’s life, made a bonfire of her gear outside the door of her house and chose garlands and music and the sweet life instead; she became a courtesan and in her new career naturally called on Aphrodite: “Cyprian, you shall have ten per cent of all I earn,/Just find me work, and you shall have your cut.”

This is still true of many whores today, but for “spinning and weaving” substitute “office work and the rat race.”  It should come as no surprise, then, that many of us still worship an aspect of Aphrodite.

But Solon was not to be so easily foiled; he responded to the explosion in secular prostitution by establishing state brothels staffed with (mostly Asian) slave girls captured in war or purchased on the open market.  Solon set a very low price (one obol, equivalent to ferry fare or the cost of three liters of cheap wine) on these girls so as to drive down the market value on the services of independent whores, and the lives of these poor captives was even more wretched than that of the Athenian wife; they were confined to cramped cells and saw no profit from the Aphrodite-only-knows how many low-class men they were required to service each day.  It was no doubt because of these horrific conditions that wealthier men still preferred to hire streetwalkers, so they continued to thrive despite competition from the public brothels; Solon responded to this by outlawing streetwalking, so the girls were forced to bribe the police with money and sexual favors in order to avoid arrest.  These Ancient Greek cops, like those of 18th century France, were therefore the forerunners of pimps as I discussed in my column of July 27th.

After Solon’s death persecution of streetwalkers declined, and in many other Greek city-states there never were any such laws.  And so conditions were ripe for the rise of the hetaerae (courtesans), the very first call girls.  They were independent, educated and shrewd, and many of them became fabulously wealthy.  Alone among Greek women they belonged to no one and could even own property for themselves; they went about in public as they pleased, even attending the theater and other venues forbidden to “virtuous” women.  Some of them even retired by establishing gynoecia, schools for the education of young courtesans.  The services of the hetaerae were even sought by kings, philosophers and poets; one of them, Aspasia, was the mistress of Solon’s later successor Pericles (495-429 BCE).  This, then, was the world in which Phryne lived.

The Colonna Venus, a Roman copy of the Aphrodite of Cnidus

She was born Mnesarete in the city of Thespiae in Boetia; Phryne (meaning “toad”) was her stage name and referred to the fact that she had a yellowish complexion.  This does not appear to have detracted from her beauty, however, which was so great that she became the model for several contemporary paintings and sculpture, including a statue of Aphrodite by her client Praxiteles.  This statue was purchased by the city of Cnidus after the city of Cos (who had originally commissioned it) objected to its being nude, and became such a popular tourist attraction that the city was able to pay off its entire debt.

Phryne’s beauty did not only make money for others, however; she became so fabulously wealthy that she even offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes after they were destroyed by Alexander the Great in 336 BCE,  on the condition that the words “destroyed by Alexander, restored by Phryne the courtesan” be inscribed upon them.  The prudish government of Thebes refused her, just as the modern government of Nevada refuses to tax brothels on the grounds that it would “legitimize” them.  Though her regular price was high, she adjusted it depending on how she felt about the client; since she considered the King of Lydia to be a tyrant she charged him a ridiculous price (which he paid and then recovered by a special tax on his subjects), but she gave herself to the philosopher Diogenes free of charge because she admired his mind.  And when the Athenian leader Demosthenes offered her a sum equal to the annual salary of a regular workman, she turned him down cold; this may have been a contributing factor to her legal troubles described below.

Eventually, she became such a celebrity that she went about veiled so that only those who paid could look upon her; however, at the festival of Poseidon in Eleusis, she stripped completely and waded into the sea in full view of everyone as an offering to the god.  The event impressed the spectators so that it inspired several works of art, including the Aphrodite Anadyomene of Apelles.  The politicians, however, were impressed in a different way; they were jealous of her power, wealth and popularity and so used the occasion as an excuse to arraign her on the trumped-up charge of “profaning” the festival by her offering.  In those days, blasphemy was a very serious charge; if convicted, she would have been executed.  She was defended by the renowned lawyer Hypereides, who was one of her clients, but despite his skill Phryne appeared doomed by the prejudice of the court; after all, she was independent, proud, educated, outspoken, powerful and wealthy, the diametric opposite of everything a “virtuous” Athenian woman was supposed to be.  As a last effort, Hypereides tore off her gown to display her naked body to the judges, crying ““How could a festival in honor of the gods be desecrated by beauty which they themselves bestowed?”  The desperate gambit succeeded; the Ancient Greeks viewed physical beauty as a gift of Aphrodite, and Phryne’s figure was so perfect the judges had no choice but to accept it as a sign of divine favor.  Since they dared not risk incurring the anger of the love goddess, the judges were forced to acquit the famous courtesan, but they were so unhappy about their failure to make an example of her that the “nudity defense” was henceforth specifically banned in Athenian courts.

“Phryne Before the Areopagus” by Jean-Leon Gerome (1861)

Contrary to what some male historians would like to believe, the hetaerae did not regard each other as rivals but as a sisterhood, as evidenced by this excerpt from a letter of thanks written to Hypereides by the hetaera Bacchis soon after Phryne’s acquittal:  “We courtesans are grateful to you, and each one of us is just as grateful as Phryne.  The suit, to be sure…involved Phryne alone, but it meant danger for us all, for…if we…face prosecution for impiety, it’s better for us to have done with this way of living…you have not merely saved a good mistress for yourself, but have put the rest of us in a mood to reward you on her account.”  History does not record whether the ladies rewarded him in the manner implied, but he and others like him soon had many cases, for the Athenian government and those of other city-states (under Theban and later Macedonian domination) began to prosecute the hetaerae more maliciously and much more often, forcing them to form some of the earliest recorded corporations in order to keep experienced defense lawyers on permanent retainer.  Less than a decade after Phryne’s death the Golden Age of Greece gave way to the Hellenistic Era, and courtesans did not again have it so good until the height of the Roman Empire over 300 years later.

Yet Phryne’s story survived the ages, and her legendary beauty has continued to inspire not only visual artists but also literary ones:  Baudelaire wrote two poems about her, the composer Saint-Saëns wrote an opera about her (Phryne, 1893), and several modern writers have penned novels about her.  And I’m certainly not the only modern whore who feels a strong sense of sisterhood and connection to her; like her, we know what it is like to be vilified by “moral” women who lack the strength and imagination to live as we do, and persecuted by powerful men who employ our services, then offer us up as sacrificial lambs whenever it’s politically expedient to do so.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts