Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts PDF Author: Allison Glazebrook
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781477324417
Category : Athens (Greece)
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"Ancient Greek oratory has long been seen as a source for cultural and historical information, in this case on sexual labor, which is generally treated differently within ancient speeches than within other genres, such as comedy or philosophy. Oratory provides evidence of male and female sex laborers, the private ownership of sex slaves, Athenian brothels, sex traffickers (the majority of whom appear to have been female), the cost of sex, the use of contracts between sex laborers and clients, manumission practices for sex slaves, and even the sharing of a sex laborer between two clients (as either joint owners or through a contract for exclusive use). As opposed to the stereotypical witty, educated hetaira that appears in other Athenian literature, sex laborers as they appear in Athenian speeches are portrayed as potentially dangerous transgressors that threaten social on both male and female sex laborers found within. Each chapter focuses on a specific theme (such as desire, the household, or dangerous women) and uses that as a touchstone to examine the representations of prostitutes and sexuality within the speech. Although prostitution was legal in ancient Athens, it was often complicated by notions of gender and sex, citizenship, slavery and ownership, and other issues that become apparent in the speeches. The variety of ways in which prostitution was approached within oratory help reveal the complex cultural constructions around the activity. Glazebrook shows that the different ways in which sex laborers interact with each other and with society as a whole, as depicted in the speeches, reveal the complexity and diversity not only of sexual labor itself, but also of the attitudes, ambiguities, and anxieties that surrounded sexual labor in classical Athens"--

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts PDF Author: Allison Glazebrook
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781477324417
Category : Athens (Greece)
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
"Ancient Greek oratory has long been seen as a source for cultural and historical information, in this case on sexual labor, which is generally treated differently within ancient speeches than within other genres, such as comedy or philosophy. Oratory provides evidence of male and female sex laborers, the private ownership of sex slaves, Athenian brothels, sex traffickers (the majority of whom appear to have been female), the cost of sex, the use of contracts between sex laborers and clients, manumission practices for sex slaves, and even the sharing of a sex laborer between two clients (as either joint owners or through a contract for exclusive use). As opposed to the stereotypical witty, educated hetaira that appears in other Athenian literature, sex laborers as they appear in Athenian speeches are portrayed as potentially dangerous transgressors that threaten social on both male and female sex laborers found within. Each chapter focuses on a specific theme (such as desire, the household, or dangerous women) and uses that as a touchstone to examine the representations of prostitutes and sexuality within the speech. Although prostitution was legal in ancient Athens, it was often complicated by notions of gender and sex, citizenship, slavery and ownership, and other issues that become apparent in the speeches. The variety of ways in which prostitution was approached within oratory help reveal the complex cultural constructions around the activity. Glazebrook shows that the different ways in which sex laborers interact with each other and with society as a whole, as depicted in the speeches, reveal the complexity and diversity not only of sexual labor itself, but also of the attitudes, ambiguities, and anxieties that surrounded sexual labor in classical Athens"--

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts PDF Author: Allison Glazebrook
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477324402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
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.

Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece

Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Sara Forsdyke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107032342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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

Athenian Prostitution

Athenian Prostitution PDF Author: Edward E. Cohen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190493666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
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.

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens PDF Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108484557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
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.

What Is a Slave Society?

What Is a Slave Society? PDF Author: Noel Lenski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110863320X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
The practice of slavery has been common across a variety of cultures around the globe and throughout history. Despite the multiplicity of slavery's manifestations, many scholars have used a simple binary to categorize slave-holding groups as either 'genuine slave societies' or 'societies with slaves'. This dichotomy, as originally proposed by ancient historian Moses Finley, assumes that there were just five 'genuine slave societies' in all of human history: ancient Greece and Rome, and the colonial Caribbean, Brazil, and the American South. This book interrogates this bedrock of comparative slave studies and tests its worth. Assembling contributions from top specialists, it demonstrates that the catalogue of five must be expanded and that the model may need to be replaced with a more flexible system that emphasizes the notion of intensification. The issue is approached as a question, allowing for debate between the seventeen contributors about how best to conceptualize the comparative study of human bondage.

Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World

Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World PDF Author: Christopher A. Faraone
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299213137
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World explores the implications of sex-for-pay across a broad span of time, from ancient Mesopotamia to the early Christian period. In ancient times, although they were socially marginal, prostitutes connected with almost every aspect of daily life. They sat in brothels and walked the streets; they paid taxes and set up dedications in religious sanctuaries; they appeared as characters—sometimes admirable, sometimes despicable—on the comic stage and in the law courts; they lived lavishly, consorting with famous poets and politicians; and they participated in otherwise all-male banquets and drinking parties, where they aroused jealousy among their anxious lovers. The chapters in this volume examine a wide variety of genres and sources, from legal and religious tracts to the genres of lyric poetry, love elegy, and comic drama to the graffiti scrawled on the walls of ancient Pompeii. These essays reflect the variety and vitality of the debates engendered by the last three decades of research by confronting the ambiguous terms for prostitution in ancient languages, the difficulty of distinguishing the prostitute from the woman who is merely promiscuous or adulterous, the question of whether sacred or temple prostitution actually existed in the ancient Near East and Greece, and the political and social implications of literary representations of prostitutes and courtesans.

Economics, Sexuality, and Male Sex Work

Economics, Sexuality, and Male Sex Work PDF Author: Trevon D. Logan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107128730
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
This book provides the first economic analysis of the billion-dollar male sex work market in the United States.

Sophie's World

Sophie's World PDF Author: Jostein Gaarder
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466804270
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
One day Sophie comes home from school to find two questions in her mail: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" Before she knows it she is enrolled in a correspondence course with a mysterious philosopher. Thus begins Jostein Gaarder's unique novel, which is not only a mystery, but also a complete and entertaining history of philosophy.

Slaves and Other Objects

Slaves and Other Objects PDF Author: Page duBois
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226167895
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Page duBois, a classicist known for her daring and originality, turns in this new book to one of the most troubling subjects in the study of antiquity: the indispensability of slaves in ancient Greece. DuBois argues that every object and text in the world of ancient Greece bears the marks of slavery and the need to reiterate the distinction between slave and free. And yet the ubiquity of slaves in ancient societies has been overlooked by scholars who idealize antiquity, misconstrued by those who view slavery through the lens of race, and obscured by the split between historical and philological approaches to the classics. DuBois begins her study by exploring the material culture of slavery, including how most museum exhibits erase the presence of slaves in the classical world. Shifting her focus to literature, she considers the place of slaves in Plato's Meno, Aristotle's Politics, Aesop's Fables, Aristophanes' Wasps, and Euripides' Orestes. She contends throughout that portraying the difference between slave and free as natural was pivotal to Greek concepts of selfhood and political freedom, and that scholars who idealize such concepts too often fail to recognize the role that slavery played in their articulation. Opening new lines of inquiry into ancient culture, Slaves and Other Objects will enlighten classicists and historians alike.