Prostitution: The World's Oldest Profession

Athenian society was very dynamic in many areas while it was strict in regard to the treatment of women. Although Athenian women were protected by the state and did not know a different way of living, they were very stifled and restricted. The only exception was slaves, and heteria, prostitutes, and this was due to the fact that they had no male guardians. Since these women were on there own they had to take care of themselves, and therefore were independent. In a more recent and modern way of viewing the role of a woman, independence and freedom to do as one likes is one of the most important aspects of living. In Athens the wives had none of this freedom and the prostitutes did. Who then really had a “better”

Earlier in civilization we would refers to prostitution as a sex trade. Sex trades, trace back all the way up to the third millennium. The first major inhabitants of Mesopotamia were the Sumerians, who are known as the founders of prostitution. Ironically, their religious practices are what gave birth to prostitution. The Sumerians worship the goddess Ishtar, a deity that would remain constant throughout Mesopotamia’s Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Ishtar was the goddess of love and war, symbolized by the planet Venus, and was born anew as a maiden every morning only to become a ‘whore’ every evening. The etymology of the word lying in the Indo-European root meaning ‘desire’. (Fanni, 2014) Women in Ishtar’s service would help men who offered money to her temples with the ‘sacred’ powers of their bodies. Achieving a priority of communication with the goddess from their fertility, only women enjoyed this religious position. Thus Ishtar temples became knowledge centers concerning birth, birth control, and sexuality. Throughout the world prostitution was viewed as a religious act almost, a sacrifice. As time progression people swayed away from this idea and it became sometime that was no longer done for religious purposes but simply for money in a hard economic

Athenian women were not formally educated, rather their mothers would have taught them skills and tasks needed to run a household. Her life would center on the house and the children, although most citizen wives had slaves to carry out many tasks. There were other classes of women who were less respected than house wives, these included hetaera, pornoi, poor women, and slaves. A woman who was in an intellectual debate was called a hetaera (courtesan), hetaeras had the freedom of going where they wanted, when they wanted. Most courtesan women were intelligent and could intellectually entertain their guests. The civic life in which Athenian women were most free to participate in a religious role were the priestesses who were most necessary to organise the hundreds of religious events that occurred in Athens. These women played an important role in Panthenia the annual festival in honour of Athena. These women had high status, freedom and were able to remain

In the past decade, it seems as if the issue of prostitution has become fairly normalized in society. With the advancements in today’s technology, a fantasy is only a click away. In modern times, easily accessible video game chatrooms, and ads online make it simple to buy into the dream of sex. Selling sex, prostitution, is believed to have been around since the beginning of time. Let’s first consider the definition of prostitution, the transaction of sexual services in exchange for money or goods. There are various forms of prostitution that range from women on the street to upper echelon call girls, and it all originated the same. In The History of Prostitution (Sanger, W.) it was said that “the most historical record of prostitution comes

The most important role of women in ancient Greece, especially married women, was considered to be the production of lawful children and the execution if household chores. Also she was required to literally remain inside the home, except she was attending a special event as in those days women found in the streets were either assumed to be enslaved, a harlot, a concubine or a woman who had to find work outside of the home because of poverty (Thompson, par.8). It was also considered respectable for a woman to remain out of sight and audible range when the man of the house had guests.

During the early era of the Golden age and late of Classical age of Ancient Greece, from the years 520-321 BC womens roles were significantly different between the two mainly Greek city state Athens and Sparta. These roles that the women presented had huge differences in a way women were portrayed in their societies. Both cities were very different in many ways, the females were raised very differently, and had different duties they had to perform. For example if you commit adultery by Spartan women it was considered tolerated and encourage in their society on the other hand adultery in Athenian women was not even considered and substantially have very few consequences. Unlike the Spartan women Athenian women were treated as unimportant citizens in a lot of ways. They were classified into three different classes. The lowest class which were considered as slaves, the citizen class, and the Hetaerae which were considered as prostitutes, but they were allowed to have education and go to marketplaces, and have rights. With Spartan women they were taught to read and write, also were expected to protect themselves and the children since men were barely around. They were definitely different from other Greek cities and were mainly raised to act as warriors because of the responsibility of owning and protecting their homes. These womens had three considerable lifestyle differences how they were raised , How were their marriages, and what responsibilities they had. These will serve

The title of this book, “Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves” is written in order of the ranking of women. In classical antiquity, in some aspects, a whore had more freedom and rights than a married upper-class woman. This alone is evidence of the degree that women in classical antiquity were oppressed. Classical Greek Athenian women and Roman women had similarities in their life styles and expectations to become wives and mothers, but Roman women developed minor freedoms throughout the duration of the empire that Greek Athenian women did not possess. The only known exception to this are the women of Sparta, who had a unique level of freedom in the Greek world.

The women of Athens were very much separated from the males; not only in public, but privately- the houses were segregated on sexual lines. The proper etiquette for females, in Athens, was to be obedient and submissive. They were heavily relied on for preparation of food, bearing and educating children, house cleanliness, and spinning weaving. The Athenian women were not given the same inheritable writes as the Spartan; yet, the Women of Sparta were permitted to “safe-keep” houses. Plato, a Greek philosopher,

The women of classical Athens were confined to their assigned domain the home or the oikos and were rarely, if ever, allowed to leave this space. Women were strictly segregated from any men that they were not related to after they were married, passing from their father or guardian’s home to that of her husband. In the home there were distinct women’s and men’s quarters, often separated by the courtyard. The women had total control of running the household and maintained it with prudence

This woman were called hetaira. These women had certain freedoms that the normal women did not. Marriage was a large deal within the Golden Age of Greece. Having children was the main duty of the wife in the marriage. Once women had had children, they would earn a certain status as child bearing was seen as a necessity, obviously.

Women’s role in Greece can be seen when one first begins to do research on the subject. The subject of women in Greece is coupled with the subject of slaves. This is the earliest classification of women in Greek society. Although women were treated differently from city to city the basic premise of that treatment never changed. Women were only useful for establishing a bloodline that could carry on the family name and give the proper last rites to the husband. However, women did form life long bonds with their husbands and found love in arranged marriages. Women in Athenian Society Women are “defined as near slaves, or as perpetual minors” in Athenian society (The Greek World, pg. 200). For women life didn’t

In ancient Athens, there were different levels of courtesans: concubines, street women, hetaeras, and music or flute-girls. This trade, however, was not restricted to women – men were also sold as commodities. These women plied their trade according to their social stature, in the streets, symposiums or brothels. The symposium played a huge role in the sexual life of the ancient Athenians – often an outlet for not just sexual desire, but all desires. The economics of prostitution in ancient Athens was complex, most times treating women and men as commodities.

While the women in “The Bacchae” worshiped Dionysus because he possessed them, his worship nevertheless served as an outlet for them to escape the chains of social subordination. This is the same reason Dionysus sought women as his followers. As in most societies during the time of “The Bacchae,” the ranking of women in this setting was extremely low. In Arthur Evan’s “The God of Ecstasy: Sex Roles and The Madness of Dionysus,” Evans relates on the lives females endured and the roles they played in ancient Athenian society: “women had no vote, were not allowed to speak on their own behalf in public assemblies and courts of law, and were kept in guarded seclusion within the innermost chambers of the house” (Evans 16). Women were forced to spend

In Ancient Rome, prostitution was a common source of income and pleasure for the Roman Population. Although this profession was endemic in society, it was viewed with two contradictory ways. Society approved of the profession, but they also suspected the profession for moral reasons. People went to brothels for pleasure but were concerned about the moral implications of the act of paying for these pleasures. Despite this conflict, brothels were common in Roman Cities.

Prostitution is defined as the act of “providing or receiving sexual acts, between a prostitute and a client, in exchange for money or some other form of remuneration” (Hock 557). The idea of exchanging sex for valuables has been around since the beginning of human society. The first reported data about prostitution was reported around 3000 B.C.E in one of the first known civilizations, Mesopotamia (Caraboi and Fierbinteanu 362). It is often referred to as “the world’s oldest profession.” Today, even though prostitution is illegal in most parts of the world, it is still prevalent worldwide with different ways to exchange sexual services for payment and many different types of prostitutes. One of these types of prostitutes are brothel workers; brothel workers work in “a house of prostitution,” a brothel, which are normally in areas where prostitution is not criminalized or is legalized (Hock 560). Like prostitution, human trafficking has been around for thousands of years and is still present today.