| Popis: |
The task of defining terms such as prostitution, prostitute, and courtesan presents significant challenges, especially insofar as the relevant Greek and Latin terminology can both inform and mislead. The evidence for Greece, here above all Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries bce, and Rome, with the main focus on the period from c. 200 bce to c. 235 ce, suggests that both societies broadly tolerated the sale of sex, though not in an entirely unqualified way. Attitudes toward practitioners were typically more negative. While neither the Athenians nor the Romans banned prostitution outright in the periods under discussion, they outlawed or at least regulated certain aspects of its practice. Legal rules tended to focus on questions of status, usually to the disfavour of prostitutes and pimps. In terms of scale, prostitution can have occupied but a small place in the economies of Greece and Rome, which were overwhelmingly agricultural in nature. To all appearances, however, it was widespread, freely available, and an important object of investment as well as a source of profit for members of the upper classes, meaning that it seems to have constituted an important aspect of the service sector. |
