Prostitutes in Ancient Athens Essay -- History Greece Creek Females Es

Prostitutes in Ancient Athens Works Cited Missing Ancient Athens was a highly polarized society in which citizenship meant everything. Citizenship permitted individuals to not only go into in the democratic government only also gave them access to all the rights and splendors of the city. Acitizen controlled influence over slaves, foreigners and most importantly women. Athenian women were relegated to the status of electric razor bearers and keepers of the household. There was no room for personal expression or freedom and the strict moral code in many cases restricted these women from even exit their homes. There was a select group of women however who overcame these obstacles to achieve greater sexual, economical, and social freedom. They were the vilifys. The freedom which prostitutes enjoyed would be better understood only after graduation exercise assessing the status of respectable women in Athens. Girls were raised from an early age to learn domestic affairs and were to be wed even as early as the age of fourteen (Just 1989 40). Marriage was almost mandatory as single women were looked upon as shameful and might even be labeled as whores. The wedlock was almost always arranged by the father or kyrios and from this point on the womans role was clear. Pericles gives a good explanation of the ideal wife in his famous Funeral Oration when reminding the women of Athens that Your great glory is not to be inferior in the way nature made you and the greatest glory is hers who is to the lowest degree talked about by men, whether in praise or in blame (Thucydides 2.45). This implies that an Athenians woman virtue lay in her absence from the public eye. Athenians made accepted to protect their wives virtue by excluding women f... ...culed on the stage and was later brought to trial on charges of impiety (Cantarella 1987 55). Her individuality and intelligence not only angered but frightened the Athenian misogynists even though she was eventually acquitted. Aspasia clearly shows how much freedom was available to a prostitute in Athenian society. The life of the prostitute in Athens was clearly a more liberal lifestyle than most women enjoyed in which the woman could aspire to wealth, independence and even indirect semipolitical power. The only setback to these benefits was the scorn of women and the contempt of men when a prostitute became too prominent. Women like Aspasia helped introduce an early type of feminism in the unlikeliest of settings. The Athenian prostitutes were clearly women that refused to succumb to the male dominated society that saw women as inherently inferior beings.