VI. PREMARITAL RELATIONS

In morality, as in alphabet, measures, weights, coinage, costume, music, astronomy, and mystic cults, classic Athens seems more Oriental than European. The physical basis of love is accepted frankly by both sexes; the love philters that anxious ladies brew for negligent men have no merely Platonic aim. Premarital chastity is required of respectable women, but among unmarried men after the ephebic period there are few moral restraints upon desire. The great festivals, though religious in origin, are used as safety valves for the natural promiscuity of humanity; sexual license on such occasions is condoned in the belief that monogamy may be more easily achieved during the balance of the year. No stigma is attached in Athens to the occasional intercourse of young men with courtesans; even married men may patronize them without any greater moral penalty than a scolding at home and a slightly tarnished reputation in the city.⁵⁸ Athens officially recognizes prostitution, and levies a tax upon its practitioners.⁵⁹

With a career so open to talent, harlotry becomes in Athens, as in most other cities of Greece, a well-plied profession with many specialties. The lowest order of them, the pornai, live chiefly at the Piraeus, in common brothels marked for the convenience of the public with the phallic symbol of Priapus. An obol secures admission to these houses, where the girls, so lightly clad that they are called gymnai (naked), allow their prospective purchasers to examine them like dogs in a kennel. A man may strike a bargain for any period of time, and may arrange with the madam of the house to take a girl to live with him for a week, a month, or a year; sometimes a girl is hired out in this way to two or more men, distributing her time among them according to their means.⁶¹ Higher than these girls in the affection of the Athenians are the auletrides, or flute-players, who, like the geisha of Japan, assist at “stag” entertainments, provide music and gaiety, perform dances artistic or lascivious, and then, if properly induced, mingle with the guests and spend the night with them.⁶² A few old courtesans may stave off destitution by developing training schools for such flute girls, and teaching them the science of cosmetic adornment, personal transfiguration, musical entertainment, and amorous dalliance. Tradition hands down carefully from one generation of courtesans to another, like a precious heritage, the arts of inspiring love by judicious display, holding it by coy refusal, and making it pay.⁶³ Nevertheless some of the auletrides, if we may take Lucian’s word for it from a later age, have tender hearts, know real affection, and ruin themselves, Camille-like, for their lovers’ sakes. The honest courtesan is an ancient theme hoary with the dignity of age.

The highest class of Greek courtesans is composed of the hetairai—literally, companions. Unlike the pornai, who are mostly of Oriental birth, the hetairai are usually women of the citizen class, who have fallen from the respectability or fled from the seclusion required of Athenian maids and matrons. They live independently, and entertain at their own homes the lovers whom they lure. Though they are mostly brunettes by nature, they dye their hair yellow in the belief that Athenians prefer blondes; and they distinguish themselves, apparently under legal compulsion, by wearing flowery robes.⁶⁴ By occasional reading, or attending lectures, some of them acquire a modest education, and amuse their cultured patrons with learned conversation. Thais, Diotima, Thargelia, and Leontium, as well as Aspasia, are celebrated as philosophical disputants, and sometimes for their polished literary style.⁶⁵ Many of them are renowned for their wit, and Athenian literature has an anthology of hetairai epigrams.⁶⁶ Though all courtesans are denied civil rights, and are forbidden to enter any temple but that of their own goddess, Aphrodite Pandemos, a select minority of the hetairai enjoy a high standing in male society at Athens; no man is ashamed to be seen with these; philosophers contend for their favors; and an historian chronicles their history as piously as Plutarch.⁶⁷

In such ways a number of them achieve a certain scholastic immortality. There is Clepsydra, so named because she accepts and dismisses her lovers by the hourglass; Thargelia, who, as the Mata Hari of her time, serves the Persians as a spy by sleeping with as many as possible of the statesmen of Athens;⁶⁸ Theoris, who consoles the old age of Sophocles, and Archippe, who succeeds her about the ninth decade of the dramatist’s life;⁶⁹ Archeanassa, who amuses Plato,⁷⁰ and Danae and Leontium, who teach Epicurus the philosophy of pleasure; Themistonoe, who practices her art until she has lost her last tooth and her last lock of hair; and the businesslike Gnathaena, who, having spent much time in the training of her daughter, demands a thousand drachmas ($1000) as the price of the young lady’s company for a night.⁷¹ The beauty of Phryne is the talk of fourth-century Athens, since she never appears in public except completely veiled, but, at the Eleusinian festival, and again on the feast of the Poseidonia, disrobes in the sight of all, lets down her hair, and goes to bathe in the sea.⁷² For a time she loves and inspires Praxiteles, and poses for hisAphrodites; from her, too, Apelles takes his Aphrodite Anadyomene.⁷³ So rich is Phryne from her loves that she offers to rebuild the walls of Thebes if the Thebans will inscribe her name on the structure, which they stubbornly refuse to do. Perhaps she asks too large an honorarium from Euthias; he revenges himself by indicting her on a charge of impiety. But a member of the court is one of her clients, and Hypereides, the orator, is her devoted lover; Hypereides defends her not only with eloquence but by opening her tunic and revealing her bosom to the court. The judges look upon her beauty, and vindicate her piety.⁷⁴

Lais of Corinth, says Athenaeus, “appears to have been superior in beauty to any woman that had ever been seen.”⁷⁵ As many cities as claimed Homer dispute the honor of having witnessed her birth. Sculptors and painters beg her to pose for them, but she is coy. The great Myron, in his old age, persuades her; when she disrobes he forgets his white hair and beard, and offers her all his possessions for one night; whereupon she smiles, shrugs her rounded shoulders, and leaves him statueless. The next morning, burning with readolescence, he has his hair trimmed, and his beard cut off; he puts on a scarlet robe and a golden girdle, a chain of gold around his neck and rings on all his fingers. He colors his cheeks with rouge, and perfumes his garments and his flesh. He seeks out Lais, and announces that he loves her. “My poor friend,” she replied, seeing through his metamorphosis, “you are asking me what I refused to your father yesterday.”⁷⁶ She lays up a great fortune, but does not refuse herself-to poor but comely lovers; she restores the ugly Demosthenes to virtue by asking ten thousand drachmas for an evening,⁷⁷ and from the well-to-do Aristippus she earns such sums as scandalize his servant;⁷⁸ but to the penniless Diogenes she gives herself for a pittance, being pleased to have philosophers at her feet. She spends her wealth generously upon temples, public buildings, and friends, and finally returns, after the custom of her kind, to the poverty of her youth. She plies her trade patiently to the end; and when she dies she is honored with a splendid tomb as the greatest conqueror that the Greeks have ever known.⁷⁹