The Annals of Gor

Introduction

To keep this article consistent, I will utilize the spelling "heteira."

Heteara
Variant(s): or hetaira, heteira
Inflected Form(s): plural he-tae-rae; or hetaeras or hetairas or he-tai-rai
Etymology: Greek hetaira, literally, companion, feminine of hetairos
      "One of a class of highly cultivated courtesans in ancient Greece." — Merriam-Webster Dictionary ©2004-2006

he-tae-ra
VARIANT FORMS: also he-tai-ra; he-tei-ra
Inflected forms: pl. he-tae-rae, or he-tae-ras, also he-tai-rai, or he-tai-ras
ETYMOLOGY: Greek hetaira, feminine of hetairos, companion.
      "An ancient Greek courtesan or concubine, especially one of a special class of cultivated female companions." — The American Heritage Dictionary: Fourth Edition. 2000-2006.

hetaera, hetaira
      "Educated courtesan of ancient Greece; prostitute." hetaeria, (pl. - ae )
      "Society; club"
hetaerism
      "Concubinage; primitive communal ownership of women." — Tiscali Reference

Greek Hetaira (Female Companion)(Latin: hetaera ), one of a class of professional independent courtesans of ancient Greece who, besides developing physical beauty, cultivated their minds and talents to a degree far beyond that allowed to the average Attic woman. Usually living fashionably alone, or sometimes two or three together, the hetaerae enjoyed an enviable and respected position of wealth and were protected and taxed by the state. Though they were generally foreigners, slaves, or freedwomen, their freedom was greater than that of the married woman, who was bound to seclusion. That their homes were frequented by married men was not censured by society. They were often hired as entertainers for symposia and family sacrifices. The hetaerae of Corinth and Athens were especially noted for their outstanding physical and cultural accomplishments. Phryne and Lais are historic representatives. — Encyclopdia Britannica ©2004

The word heteira literally means "female companion." In English, the word is usually translated courtesan. She does not sell sex; that's a pornos, or prostitute. It's not entirely clear if some of the most famous courtesans in the ancient world ever had sex. In Hebrew, the word heter means "forbidden."

In ancient Greece, courtesans, or heteirai were sophisticated companions, independent and sometimes influential women. The Courtesan The heteira were required to wear distinctive dresses, hired by the wealthy and the middle class to facilitate parties that were, in no small part, also business meetings. These women were also required to pay taxes. Unlike the woman who chose to be a wife, she traveled freely throughout the city. She didn't own slaves, but she hired employees for her business of providing entertainment at parties: musicians, singers, jugglers, dancers, pornos (prostitutes). There is evidence that, unlike most other women in Greek society at the time, the heteira were educated. She did not vote in the Assembly, but she was expected to follow the debates, perhaps for intelligent and knowledgeable discussion with he whom she was courtesan to. Much unlike her married counterparts, the courtesan spent most of her waking life either at the men's parties, or preparing for them.

Some similarities have been found between the ancient Greek Heteira and the Japanese Geisha, complex figures that are perhaps in an intermediate position between prostitution and courtesans. Among the most famous were Aspasia, long-time companion of the Athenian politician Pericles, and Thais, a concubine of Alexander the Great. Heteirai appear to have been regarded as distinct from Pornê (also: pornos),or simple prostitutes, and also distinguished from mistresses or wives. In his speech Against Neaera, Demosthenes is quoted as saying: :''"We have hetaerae for pleasure, pallakae to care for our daily body's needs and gynaekes to bear us legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our households." The male form of the word, hetaeros (pl. hetaeroi) signified male companions in the sense of a business or political associate. A heteira would perform the same role along with her sexual aspects, while a mistress and wife would not.

Although the term has been applied to people from several cultures and historical periods, the term courtesan itself was not used until the Renaissance period in Europe, who held a socially recognized, if not quite socially accepted, position as well-compensated companions. The word is generally reserved for those who enjoyed the most social status for such services, and refers to a person paid and/or supported for the giving of social companionship and intimate liaisons to one or more partners. The role of courtesans should be neither overly romanticized nor offhandedly scorned. On the positive side, they had freedoms that were extremely rare for other women at the time. They were not only financially comfortable (at least, when business was good) but were financially independent, with control of their own resources rather than a dependency on male relatives. They were very well-educated, compared even to upper-class women, and often held simultaneous careers as performers and artists. On the negative side, courtesans were, as a means of survival, dependent on upper-class "protectors" to provide them with shelter and support. They were required to provide charming companionship for extended periods, no matter what their own feelings might be at the time. They were also, because of the sexual aspects of their profession, subject to lower social status and religious disapproval. They were sometimes limited in their apparel by various sumptuary laws and were restricted in where they could appear at social functions. Periods of overt religious piety in a city would often lead to persecutions of the courtesans, up to and including accusations of witchcraft.

Status of Women in History

Let's probe a bit deeper, taking several steps back in time.

Women have historically played as lesser counterparts to men. Written by a fifth century BCE playwright by the name of Sophocles, the following quote all too well describes how women were quite aware of their place of society, and didn't always accept it.

"But now outside my father's house, I am nothing. Yes, I have often looked on women's nature in this regard, that we are nothing. When we reach puberty and can understand, we are thrust and sold away from our ancestral gods and from our parents. Some go to strange men's homes, others to joyless houses, some to hostile. And all this once the first night has yoked us to our husband. We are forced to praise and say that all is well."

Men throughout history have made women objects to be admired and possessions to be tamed. As early as 2200 BCE, records have been found that depict a man's advice to his young adult son concerning his need to "get rid of her if she is powerful in the household."

Women in Babylonia are examples of females who were relegated to slightly less than second-class status. Women of Egypt, during this time, fared a little better; they were allowed to own land or a business. Egyptians were considered permissive to their women, although they were still not given the same status as men. In Rome, family was held in more esteem and that made a difference in the way women were treated. Roman women were not allowed to hold political offices, but they were allowed to make "suggestions" to men seeking advice. Roman women had lives outside the home. Hebrew women did not have the freedom of Egyptians, but neither were they as repressed as the Athenians. their lives mirrored that of Roman women except that they centered their lives around the covenant to their God.

Women in Ancient Greece

Females in ancient Greece had the lowest and worst existence in this time period. Only the ancient Greek men had rights and women were generally considered property to be bought, sold, and inherited. The human world of the polis (city-state) was governed by the principle of male authority over females, and the laws regulating succession and inheritance authorized men's appropriation of women's reproductive potential. Philosophers in Athens liked to believe that "women have strong emotions and weak minds." Because of this ideaology, women in the polis were subject to kyrieia ("guardianship"), which gave fathers, husbands, brothers, or adult sons both the authority to act on their behalf and the responsibility for their support and well-being. Wives were necessary for the procreation process but were mostly left to themselves and not allowed outside access to people or stimuli of any kind. Children were also subject to their fathers' guardianship — the boys until they reached majority, the girls until it was transferred to their husbands. A woman's chief civic privilege and duty was to bear legitimate children to her husband — the sons who would become his heirs and citizens of the polis, and the daughters through whose marriages alliances would be forged with other households. When a man had a daughter but no sons, then his daughter became an epiklêros ("heiress"), endowed like Athena with the authority to transmit his legacy. She was married to her father's nearest male relative (usually his brother and her paternal uncle), and her sons became their maternal grandfather's heirs. Women were, however, allowed to take part in many games, such as playing ball and board games with dice. Spinning and weaving were, above all, the domain of women, an activity which might be performed by slaves as grueling household labor, by wives to exercise and display their artistic skills.

Men were responsible for the education of their wives and some definitely provided intellectual content. The Greek women were some of the best educated women ever in spite of the fact that they did not go to school. Men need have no loyalty to one heteira, and their visits to a heteira were not counted as being disloyal to their wife. Slavery made the relationship with a concubine an accepted practice; and immediate gratification was always available from a porne, or prostitute. Public opinion did not condemn any of these practices, although one who indulged himself to a degree that society considered to be excessive might be classed as the drunkard or glutton. More indications of how all women, even "free" women were considered property in this example. Should a women become widowed, she and her property were assigned to a man, often a relative. If she was associated with a lot of property, they she would become the man's wife and she might even displace the wife he might have had.

Unmarried women filled all sorts of roles; the lowest form being those who lived in brothels or on the street. Heteiras were mistresses, taught to play instruments and make polite, informed conversation. Sexual favors were a given of course, but a heteira was actually a woman of learning and entertainment. In Greek sculptures and other forms of art, a slave's hair was depicted as being bobbed, while other sculptures depict the heteira with her hair bound up. Heteira were an important part of the social life of ancient Greece and were the subject of gossip. In addition to the heteira and prostitutes, there were house slaves; women slaves who could be commanded and trusted by the wife of the head of the house.

In his Dialogues of the Courtesans, Lucian (second century AD) relates an exchange between two friends about a successful courtesan:

"In the first place, she dresses attractively and looks neat; she's gay with all the men, without being so ready to cackle as you are, but smiles in a sweet bewitching way; later on, she's very clever when they're together, never cheats a visitor or an escort, and never throws herself at the men. If ever she takes a fee for going out to dinner, she doesn't drink too much — that's ridiculous, and men hate women who do — she doesn't gorge herself — that's ill-bred, my dear — but picks up the food with her finger-tips, eating quietly and not stuffing both cheeks full, and, when she drinks, she doesn't gulp, but sips slowly from time to time … Also, she doesn't talk too much or make fun of any of the company, and has eyes only for her customer. These are the things that make her popular with the men. Again, when it's time for bed, she'll never do anything coarse or slovenly, but her only aim is to attract the man and make him love her; these are the things they all praise in her."

The iconography of the symposium cup sometimes is ambiguous and not always consistent.The woman above can be identified as a hetaira because of the couch and cup that are characteristic of the drinking party. Floral garlands, which often were worn, are another indication, as is the short hair of slaves, and, of course, nudity and sexual depictions. The Heteira Away from the symposium, scenes that do not depict negotiation, the money purse, and courting gifts (such as an apple) are more difficult to characterize, especially since hetairai might wear the same clothing and hairstyle as freeborn women.

While adultery (which involves visits to another man's wife, a widowed mother, or an unmarried daughter) was considered a serious crime and could earn a man's instant death, this held no bearing for prostitution, which was legal in Athens — as long as it was not practiced by an Athenian citizen. This meant that prostitutes tended either to be slaves, whether female or male, or metics, who, not being born of Athenian parents, themselves, could not be citizens but who did have certain rights as resident aliens. Among prostitutes, a distinction was made between the common pornê (or, pornos) and the hetaira. In a society in which men tended to marry late, in which marriages usually were not for love, and in which the women of citizen families often were secluded, "to be least talked about by men," in the words of Pericles, "whether they are praising you or criticizing you," the role of the hetaira perhaps is inevitable. Not permitted to marry a citizen, at least the hetaira could hope to captivate one by her wit and beauty, or, if a slave, to win the purchase of her freedom, which was the very thing that young men were warned against: squandering their fortune on a seductive woman. It is this tension between the perceived rapacity of hetairai and the ruinous infatuation which they inspired that provides the conventional themes for much Greek literature.

A man, although not allowed to divorce, could have a heteira who could provide him with a sexual relationship and intellectual companionship, while he had a wife who was to manage his household and raise his children and heirs. Adultery, which required a wife's collusion, brought into question the legitimacy of her husband's children. A husband was required to divorce an adulterous wife, and she was punished further by exclusion from the city's religious rituals. This dual sanction was the equivalent of disenfranchisement for women, since the citizen women's entitlements in the polis involved principally the rights to bear legitimate children, to participate in religious festivals for women, and to assume an honored place in other public religious celebrations.

While a man who committed adultery with another man's wife could be killed on the spot, rape was punishable by a fine. Rape, as known by the ancient Greeks, was not the rape known to modern man. There are two kinds of rapes: acts of passion and acts of aggression. For the ancient Greeks, rapes were crimes against property, because all women were considered to be the property of their father, husbands, or masters. If a woman was raped, it was the responsibility of the owner of the woman to pursue the criminal. A man could legally kill the rapist of a wife or daughter. The rapist of a slave would have to be brought to court for civil punishment. If the woman who was raped became pregnant, she was supposed to be honored that she was chosen by such a powerful person and cheerfully bear the offspring. Of course this idea was not popular with the women. Nor was it popular with the fathers and husbands who might be the subjects of these attacks. The result was that the women were secluded to prevent rapes. The heteira, of course, did not have the protection of their families. The men of the community could force themselves upon the heteira and the heteira had little recourse. A man could force his women slaves to have sex with him, but this was not considered rape. Women slaves could also be raped by outsiders when they left the house for chores.

Also, in his Dialogues of the Courtesans, Lucian satirizes the tormented relationship between hetairai and their admirers. For the courtesan, there are only promises, thusly prompting the taut rebuke of a friend:

"He had never given you so much as a penny, or a dress, or a pair of shoes, or a bottle of scent. Always there are excuses and promises and hopes for the distant future … Aren't you ashamed that you're the only courtesan without an earring, a necklace, or a lace wrap?"

Another's advice is equally critical:

"You spoilt him by loving him too much, and letting him see it. You shouldn't make very much of him at all. Men become proud when they see that … take my advice and shut him out once or twice. Then you'll find him burning with passion and really mad in his turn for your love."

A heteira went to a great deal of trouble to avoid any explicit relationships she had with men, so it is difficult to talk about a heteira being paid. There is always more status in receiving gifts than being paid for a commodity. But the ancient Greeks had coins for money which they could use to buy a slave, or time with a prostitute. But you could not buy a heteira, but you might win her favor with the right gift. Purportedly written by Athenians in the fourth century BC, Alciphron (c.200 AD), a collection of imaginary letters says much the same thing:

"And so it is one of the chief tricks of those who practise our profession to keep postponing the moment of enjoyment and, by arousing hopes, to keep their lovers in their power … Well, then, we courtesans must at one time be 'occupied,' or again be 'unwell,' or must sing, or play the flute, or dance, or get the dinner ready, or decorate the room; blocking the way to those intimate pleasures that otherwise would surely wither fast, so that our lovers' passions, made more inflammable by the delays that intervene, may burst into the hotter flame … "

Generally, woman became a heteira if her family could not provide for her, or had no marriage prospects for her. If a family had a daughter who was beautiful and talented, she would be sold to a school where whe would then be trained to be a heteira. If a woman was sold off as a slave, generally it was because she showed some promise of being a sex slave. Some masters would send a female slave to heteirai school, especially if she were very beautiful. It would have been deemed as an investment, should the woman later be able to buy her freedom at a very high price and provide them a good profit. The highest status of the ancient Greek woman was to be married to a wealthy man. The wife of poor man might aspire to being a heteira, but women would have a hard time hiding her skill as a heteira, so it was moot desire for fear of being sold off. However, a heteira might display her skill as a wife and find herself married. There are several stories of heteira, and even slaves, becoming wives. There are even stories of wives becoming enslaved only to become someone else's wife.

The more intelligent girls were sent to heteira school where they learned music, dancing, and other entertaining skills, such as rhetoric, so they could present at the symposiums. If they were successful they could eventually buy their freedom. Less successful girls had to turn to sex for their livelihood, with the least successful girls becoming prostitutes .Governmental officials seemed to be quite fond of heteirai and heteirai were quite capable of conversing with the politicians about politics. It seems very likely that the heteira were influential in the role of governmental matters.

A new bride, upon entering her husband's home for the first time, was incorporated into its domestic cult through a ritual of adoption performed at the hearth which duplicated the rite through which both strangers and slaves were welcomed. A wife, then, was in some respects an outsider in her husband's home, and indeed legally she never abandoned her ties to her natal family, into which she might be recalled if she became an epiklêros ("heiress"), and to which she, along with her dowry, returned in the event of divorce (and also if she was widowed and childless). And, although its particulars are disputed, the institution of aphaeresis ("carrying-off") apparently permitted a father under certain circumstances to remarry his daughter to a more desirable husband. A free man, incidentally, would employ the same institution (aphaeresis) to assert the freedom of a friend who had been seized as a slave.

Sex was performed by the heteira in many situations. Sometimes it was entirely private in the home of the heteira. Sometimes it was in public, A Heteira and Client such as at a symposium for the entertainment of the men. One of the more famous hetaira attended a party at a bar and got drunk. Before she left every one of the men had sex with her. The next morning she remembered nothing. She was very unhappy when she found out what had happened because she lost her fee for all that sex. And she could not remember having any fun at all. The men had so much fun they told everyone. In the event a heteira became pregnant, rarely would she raise the child herself, but instead, especially a female child, would sell it into slavery. Did men ever force more then one heteira to have sex with another heteira for entertainment? That is hightly doubtful, as the Greek men did not care for lesbian activity, although acts of bestiality and menage a trois were most certainly done.

A prime example of a heteira was Aspasia. She was not a native Athenian; born in Miletus and an important member of the Athenian Empire on the coast of Ionia. Aspasia came to Athens and served as an heteira, and eventually became the leader of a group of heteirai and is said to have taught them rhetoric (to make them more skilled in conversation with their male clients). She moved in the highest circles of Athenian society and fell in with Pericles, the great Athenian leader, who not only was attracted by her sexual charms, but also found her intelligent and politically wise. She is said to have held her own in political discussions with leading politicians and even to have impressed Socrates. You can read more on Aspasia, and other famous heteirai further down.

Let's take a journey deeper into ancient Greece.

The Beginning and Evolution of Male Domination

Hesiod's Theogony ("Birth of the Gods") is the ancient Greek creation-epic. Its narrative is organized around a progression from a world dominated by the generative power of the female to one governed by the moral authority of the male. In the first stage of the myth, the goddess Gaia ("Earth") comes into being and generates Ouranos ("Sky") out of herself and together they produce the Titans, the generation of monstrous and primordial deities. However, when Ouranos attempts to secure his primacy by confining the Titans in Gaia's womb, Gaia arms her youngest son Kronos with a sickle and he castrates his father. Kronos impregnates the Titan goddess Rhea with the Olympian gods, but swallows them down as they issue from her womb until Rhea substitues a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes for her youngest son Zeus. Zeus then forces Kronos to disgorge the Olympians, and after a fierce battle in which the Titans are defeated and establishes the Olympian order. Therefore, in order to escape his predecessors' fates, Zeus swallows his first wife Mêtis ("Cunning Wisdom") and gives birth to Athena from his head. Once this act establishes the principle of male control over female reproductive power, generation can proceed normally, and among the many children born to Zeus from his union with goddesses of the older and younger generation are those whose names symbolize the beneficence of his rule (e.g., Justice, Good Order, Peace).

The Parthenon and Pythagoreans

Crowning the high, rocky preeminence of the Athenian acropolis lie the Parthenon. It was constructed as part of the building program begun around 450 BCE under the direction of Pericles to commemorate the Greeks' triumph over the Persians and to celebrate the achievements of Athenian democracy. Divine and mythical females figure prominently in the Parthenon's architectural program, to which those of a number of other Greek temples are similar. Their representation reveal much about the ideology of women's incorporation into the ancient Greek polis (city-state). In the sculpted panels (metopes) on the western end of the temple — the side first visible on approach mdash; appear the battle between the Greeks and Amazons, mythical warrior women who lived at the boundaries of the civilized world free of men and male domination. To the north of the acropolis, in the plain stretching out below, lies the agora or civic center; on a hill to the west was the Pnyx, the meeting place of the Athenian assembly. On the southern slope of the acropolis is the theatre of Dionysus. From the first of these two centers of civic life women were excluded, and they may also have been restricted from the third, for women were prohibited by law from transacting business exchanges in significant amounts, and they were also barred from appearing as witnesses or litigants in the many law courts located in and around the agora. Thus, only poor women, non-citizen women, or slaves formed part of the daily hustle and bustle of the agora. Furthermore, citizen women were not voting members of the body politic, and so did not participate in the assembly deliberations about which we read so much in our ancient sources, though it is thought that the heteira may have attended to remain knowledgeable on politics.

While women were represented freely on the dramatic stage by male actors, they most likely did not attend the performances. The predominance of women on the Athenian tragic stage has often seemed perplexing when constrasted with their exclusion from other arenas of communal life including, perhaps, the dramatic performances themselves. But the theatre was first and foremost a ritual space, dedicated to the god Dionysus, in whose honor the tragedies were enacted as part of his spring festival. And Dionysus himself was above all lord of transgressive behavior, whose entourage included both satyrs, male symbols of bestiality and phallic excess, and maenads, female embodiments of divine possession and of wild and ecstatic transport. Furthermore, the conventions of the Greek tragic stage required mimetic disguise, and its male actors assumed the masks and costumes of both gods and heroes, men and women, in tribute perhaps to the god's power as master of transformations, and especially to his androgynous character as "the double god," at once both masculine and feminine. Both by its ritual setting and its conventions, then, the world of Greek tragedy was marked as anomalous from the perspective of ordinary social life.

These same features also combined to transform the tragic stage into a realm of the imaginary: a site where the tensions, ambiguities, and contradictions of the polis and its ideals could be freely explored. And among these, none was so fraught with complex meaning as the dimorphic social organization which divided male from female within the polis, consigning women to subordinate social status and reserving for men the privileges of autonomy and power. Women and the category of the female, however, were central to what might be called the communal imagination of the ancient Greeks. This ideological space of the polis was structured through the principles of polarity and analogy, and the opposition between male and female was one of its governing categories. For example, among fourth-century BCE Pythagorean philosophers, who were organized as philosophical and religious societies in the southern and Greek parts of Italy, one group taught that there was not one principle underlying the sensible universe, but ten, and that these were organized in contrasting pairs:

Limit and Unlimited
Odd and Even
One and Plurality
Right and Left
Male and Female
Rest and Motion
Straight and Crooked
Light and Darkness
Good and Evil
Square and Oblong

Hmm. The Pythagorean Table of Opposites articulates the opposition between male and female starkly, but the distinction in the Parthenon sculptures between the warrior-goddess Athena and the warrior-women Amazons expresses similar ideas in a subtler and more complex way: the goddess who acknowledges submission to the male is contrasted with the mythical females who refuse it. For more on Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, please see the "Pythagoras" page.

The Symposium

In Homer's epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey (which were composed in the eighth or seventh century BCE), Telemachus sends his mother Penelope from the great hall, so that the men may occupy themselves with male pursuits. When their husbands are present the aristocratic women of the Odyssey join the men in the great hall, while in the classical period respectable women did not appear in the andrôn or men's quarter of the house where men gathered for feasting and entertainment.

The symposium, exclusive to the privileged male elite, was a social institution — or a drinking party — which followed the evening meal. It was characterized by its homosexual or bisexual ethos; its philosophical and political discourse and creative competitions, in which elegies were sung to the accompaniment of a flute and lyric songs and poems by the lyre.

The presiding deities of the symposium were the three Graces (Charites). Their names define the spirit of the symposium: Euphrosynê ('good cheer'), Thalia ('abundance', 'festivity'), and Aglaia ('beauty'). Any behavior at a symposium that might offend the gods or undermine the spirit of good will was frowned upon. Xenophanes, the philosopher poet, recommended stories of noble behavior so that virtue might be remembered and energetically praised (Frag. B1, 17-23).

The symposium began with libations poured to the Agathos Daimôn ('Good Spirit') and then there was a triple libation to Zeus Olympios ('the Olympian'), the Heroes, and Zeus Sôter ('the Savior'). Heteira After the libations, a paean was sung to Dionysus, the god of wine and to Apollo. Then the wine was mixed with water in a mixing bowl (kratêr), generally diluted with three to four parts water, then to be poured by a young slave from an oinochoë into the cylix of the guests. The members of the symposium made a decision about the proportion of wine to water and how much wine to drink. All had to abide by this decision. Wine was the Greeks' drink of choice, but it was considered the drinking of unmixed wine as unhealthy. Unmixed wine tended to be strong, with an alcohol content as much as 15 or 16 percent (at which point the yeast is killed by the alcohol it produces). As the symposiasts (members of the symposium) began to feel the effects of even watered wine, the less intellectual embrace of slave boys (though not always welcomed) and flute girls, and, of course, hetairai. The symposium usually took place in the andrôn (men's room), the most well-appointed room in the house. Around this dining area, participants each wore wreaths and reclined on a kline (couch), resting on the left elbow to keep the right hand free. During the symposium, the singing of songs by guests, sometimes improvised, sometimes from the poets, or discussions that ranged from athletics to philosophical issues. Often professional musicians and performers such as acrobats and dancers were hired.

The symposium often ended in a kômos, a drunken, boisterous procession of revelers through the streets in search of more fun, accompanied by music and singing in honor of the gods, to yet another drinking party, often involving rowdiness and sometimes even physical assaults on passersby. Looking at the historical red-figure vases prominent for this period, you can find all of this depicted, especially on the drinking cup used at the symposium, the cylix (kylix).

Sappho

Sappho is the best-known of ancient Greek women poets, and many of her songs commemorate the pleasures of the female circles with which her name is traditionally associated. These relationships were both highly aestheticized and highly eroticized, although the fragmentary character of the poetic remains and the absence of a context makes it impossible to specify their setting with certainty. In all likelihood Sappho's lyrics, like those of the contemporary Spartan poet Alcman's maiden songs, reflect the existence in her time of ritual associations in which girls were trained in singing and dancing in preparation for their transition into adulthood and marriage. In one of the lyric fragments, Aphrodite is invited to appear in "a lovely grove of apple trees," and invited to "gently pour forth in golden cups / nectar mingled with our festivities." Several of the fragments elaborate the vocabulary of physical beauty and erotic desire. Recalling one departed companion, Sappho remarks: "But now she stands out among the Lydian women / as after sunset / the rosy-fingered moon / Surpasses all the stars." And in a fragment of Alcman, the erotic effect of one girl's touch is described: "… and with desire that looses the limbs, but she looks glances more melting than sleep and death …"

In Times of War

Women provided the polis with its soldiers, and among the Spartans this contribution was marked by the construction of an equivalence between the warrior who perished in battle and the woman who died in childbirth, providing exemption for both from the normal prohibition against named tombstones. In Athens, women's contribution of their sons to war was commemorated most visibly in the many scenes of the warrior's farewell on vase-paintings, where a woman helps him arm or, even more frequently, holds the pitcher and bowl for the ritual libation at the family's altar preceding the warrior's departure.

When cities fell, its women suffered enslavement. Examples are the fate of the women of Troy in myth, and that historically correct of the women of Melos, when their island was reduced to submission by the Athenians in 416 BCE, during the Peloponnesian War. When the city was under siege, women did not hesitate to take up whatever arms were available. During the siege of Plataea, the women pelted the invaders with stones and tiles from the rooftops. And although the women of Sparta were especially renowned for the fierceness of their patriotism, Athenian women too, on one occasion at least, imitated their husbands' public action: the men in the assembly had stoned a councilman to death when he proposed capitulation to Persia during the Persian Wars; the women ran to the councilman's home and killed his wife and children by the same means.

When warriors fell in battle, women in epic poetry and art joined in the public lamentations in the archaic period, both as family members and as professional mourners, and they are often depicted tearing their hair and lacerating their flesh in grief. Both sumptuary legislation in the sixth century, and the fifth-century custom of a communal burial and commemoration of the war dead in Athens, restricted women's public roles in funerary ritual, but family members, including especially its women, played an important part in the prothesis ("laying out") and ekphora ("funeral procession") of their own dead, as well as in periodic commemorative rites for ancestors.

The Academy and the Lyceum

While the agora and the assembly meeting-place (the Pnyx) were the centers of communal civic life in the polis, there were other institutionalized places and occasions for male gatherings, such as the gymnasia where they came together for sports and other forms of recreation, and the symposia, drinking-parties after the evening meal. Two such gymnasia, the Academy and the Lyceum, are better known for the philosophical schools associated with them. And indeed, several of Plato's dialogues are set beside or within the gymnasium, where men socialized and, in the fourth century at any rate, explored philosophical issues.

The Spartans

In the Politics and Ethics, Aristotle defends the subordination of wife to husband on the basis of the principle that the male is by nature superior and the female inferior. Consequently, he is made to rule and she to be ruled, but not, however, in the manner of a slave, from whose status Aristotle frequently takes pains to distinguish that of women. Plato, Aristotle's predecessor and teacher, had argued differently in the Republic, where, as in Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae, the proposal of equality for women is contingent upon the abolition of private property and the family. Justice, in both the human soul and in the state, he claims, is genderless, and while differences in the capacity for it exist, they are correlated more closely with distinctions of class or type rather than sex. Plato's ideal state has much in common with Spartan political institutions, where both the private and public life of the citizen was organized communally, with public education (the agôgê) structured around a system of age-grades, and military training provided in the syssitia ("dining clubs") to which men of twenty were elected and where they dined daily even after marriage. The upbringing of girls in Sparta was also state-supervised, and included institutionalized training in dancing and athletics. In Plato's Republic, boys and girls are given the same education, with an emphasis on mathematics, but we have no evidence that girls in the historical Sparta learned to read and write.

The Spartan polis was possibly less idiosyncratic in the ancient Greek world than our sources on the subject, which are uniformly biased and tendentious, would have us believe. Women in Athens, for example, though not trained in athletics, seem nevertheless to have had opportunities for sport and exercise. And it is certain that, among the wealthy, at any rate, they learned to read and gathered in private homes to share music and poetry. On a series of vases beginning in the mid-fifth century BCE, women are depicted reading together from papyrus book-rolls, playing the lyre while deciphering the notes from a papyrus "score", and checking boys' recitations against a papyrus text. On other vases, groups of women appear to be holding contests in singing and recitation among themselves.

The syssitia at Sparta were public, compulsory, and universal. Their analogue in Athens was the symposium, a private and voluntary institution which, like the gymnasium, provided the setting also for philosophical dialogue. The symposium more commonly, however, provided an occasion for drinking, music, dancing girls, and sexual encounters. The women whose presence at symposia is attested on numerous vases were exclusively pornê, slave women, or heteirai, who were usually either free foreigners or resident aliens.

Slave boys, too, were available to satisfy men's sexual desires, but at Athens sexual relations between citizen men were institutionalized by a ritualized form of courtship which encouraged homoerotic and paederastic relations between an older and younger man (the erastês, or lover, and erômenos, or beloved). Also, institutionalized pederasty functioned both as a general political phenomenon and as a feature in the formation of political alliances. The form of intercourse practiced between Athenian men was ideally intracrural ("between the thighs"), and did not involve penetration, submission to which violated bodily integrity and was regarded as appropriate for only women or female slaves. Male citizens who prostituted themselves by accepting payment in return for sex suffered the penalty of partial disenfranchisement.

Communal life for men in Athens was not restricted to its centers of political activity, but included institutions where the physical, intellectual, and aesthetic aspects of their lives might also find expression. Communal associations among women, except in the sphere of religion, were not institutionalized. Among the wealthy, however, where the daily drudgery of childcare and household labor could be entrusted to slaves, opportunities for informal social gatherings seem to have been exploited freely.

The Flute Girl

The aulêtris, or flute-girl, is not a heteira. Flute Girl She is ranked below the hetaira in status, and often was a slave, can usually be recognized in Grecian art by her flute and its case, although hetairai also were musicians and dancers. The flute-girl also was expected to offer sexual favors at the symposium.

The elegy was sung to the accompaniment of the aulus (aulos), an instrument translated as "flute" but which was end-blown like the oboe. It usually was played in pairs (diaulus) by a flute-girl (aulêtris). The elegy is an example of so-called sympotic poems and is represented by the sensual verses of Anacreon and those of Theognis, who celebrates his lover and laments the passing of aristocratic power. In the scene above, a symposiast reclines on a striped cushion, keeping time with his hand and holding the flutes (auloi) of the young girl who dances before him. On the wall is her flute case.

Famous Heteira

Aspasia

Factual information about Aspasia is difficult to locate in the ancient sources. Playwrights, biographers and other ancient authors use Aspasia to illustrate their views on philosophy, rhetoric and Pericles. Modern scholars agree, however, that the basic facts of Aspasia's life as recorded by Diodoros the Athenian (FGrHist 372 F 40 ), Plutarch (Plut. Per. 24.3 ) and the lexicographers are correct. She was born in the city of Miletus between 460-455 B.C., the daughter of Axiochus. Miletus, part of the Athenian empire, was one of the leading cities in Ionia, an area of Greek settlement located along the coast of Asia Minor.

Arriving in Athens as a free immigrant around 445 B.C., Aspasia worked as a heteira. In fact Aspasia, which meant "Gladly Welcomed," was probably her professional name. As the paid companion of aristocratic men Aspasia attended symposiums, drinking parties combined with political and philosophical discourse. At the symposiums she met the most influential and powerful men in Athens, including Pericles. Sometime around 445 B.C. Aspasia began to live with Pericles, who at that time was the leader of Athens. He had been divorced from his wife for five years, with whom he had two sons. According to Plutarch, it was an amiable divorce because the marriage was not a happy one (Plut. Per. 24.5 ). Aspasia Plutarch relates more information about Aspasia than any other ancient author. Unfortunately, Plutarch's Lives are full of distortions and historical inaccuracies. In respect to Aspasia and Pericles, he states that Pericles valued Aspasia's intelligence and political insight, but he emphasizes that Pericles' feelings for her were primarily erotic. This may be an attempt on Plutarch's part to remove the stigma from Pericles of having been overly influenced by a woman.

Plutarch describes the relationship between Aspasia and Pericles as a very happy one. He states that she was so loved by Pericles that he kissed her everyday when he left the house and again when he returned (Plut. Per. 24 ). Plutarch portrays Aspasia as the influential courtesan. He writes that Aspasia was trying to emulate Thargelia, a famous Milesian courtesan whose lovers were the most powerful men in Greece. Using her influence over these men Thargelia helped win Thessaly over to the Persians at the time of Xerxes' invasion. Plutarch blames Aspasia for Pericles' decision to start the war against Samos, a wealthy and powerful member of the empire. The Milesians and the Samians were involved in a border dispute. The Samians refused to submit the conflict to Athenian arbitration. Supposedly, Aspasia pressured Pericles to take military action against Samos (Plut. Per. 25.1 ). Although it would have been natural for Aspasia to take the side of her native city, she and Pericles both must have realized that the loss of Samos to the empire would have meant the rapid end of Athenian domination of the Aegean.

The exact status of Aspasia's relationship with Pericles and her position in Pericles' household is disputed. While some say that she was his a pallakê (concubine ), Plutarch (Plut. Per. 24 ) seems to imply, and Diodorus the Athenian (FGrHist 372 F 40 ) says, that she was his akoitis. She and Pericles had one son also named Pericles. As the mistress of Pericles' household and hostess to his friends and supporters, Aspasia participated in discussions revolving around politics and philosophy with the leading men of the Athenian empire. According to several ancient authors, Socrates respected her opinions (Plut. Per. 24.3; Xen. Ec. 3.15; Cicero, De Inventione 31.51 ). As a pallake she would have been outside of the legal, traditional role of an Athenian wife. Freed from the social restraints that tied married women to their homes and restricted their behavior, Aspasia was able to participate more freely in public life.

Strong evidence that Aspasia's role in Athens went beyond that of mistress to Pericles is given by Plato in the Menexenus. In this dialogue Plato has Socrates recite a funeral oration composed by Aspasia that glorifies the Athenians and their history. The Menexenus is a humorous vehicle for Plato to make a serious, but negative comment on rhetoric and popular opinion in Athens. Everything in Aspasia's speech is selected, arranged and stated by Plato in order to produce the greatest possible irony. By satirizing a speech "written" by Aspasia, Plato acknowledges her role as a leader of rhetoric in the Greek Classical Age.

Several ancient authors state that Aspasia herself operated a house of courtesans and trained young women in the necessary skills (Plut. Per. 24.3 ). Aristophanes and others refer to "Aspasia's whores" (Aristoph. Ach. 527 ). Although as Pericles' pallake she was taken care of financially, Aspasia may have been preparing for her future after the death of Pericles. According to Plutarch, she was known in Athens as a teacher of rhetoric. Perhaps these women were her pupils (Plut. Per. 34 ). Aspasia's heteirai would have had as patrons the elite men of Athens, especially the supporters of Pericles. Around 438 B.C. Pericles' political enemies began attacking those close to him in court and eventually brought charges against Pericles himself. Soon Aspasia became a target. She was brought to trial on charges of impiety and of procuring free women. She was acquitted thanks to a passionate and tearful defense by Pericles (Plut. Per. 32.1-3 ). Although her political wisdom was valuable to Pericles, not having an Athenian citizen as a legal wife, but rather living with a foreign hetaira in an unofficial marriage may have been a political liability for him.

The plague in Athens in 430 B.C. killed both of Pericles' sons by his first wife. This led him to ask for an exemption from the citizenship law, which he himself had enacted, for his illegimate son by Aspasia. The citizenship law decreed that only persons whose father and mother were both Athenians could be legal citizens. The people of Athens agreed to Pericles' request. His son was legitimized and made a citizen of Athens. He later became a general, but was executed in 406 B.C.

In 429 B.C. Pericles died from the plague. A year later Aspasia became involved with a sheep seller named Lysicles in another unofficial marriage. He was an uneducated man of humble birth who rose to prominence thanks to her guidance. She taught him how to speak in public and gave him the benefit of her valuable insights and personal contacts in Athenian politics (Plut. Per. 24.6; Scholia to Plato, Menexenus 235E ). He was one of the new type of political leaders who came to prominence after the death of Pericles. This was probably the same group who had led the earlier attacks against Pericles and his friends, including Aspasia herself. Questions remain regarding Aspasia's decision to marry so quickly after Pericles' death. She might have been in need of a protector from Pericles' enemies. The selection of another politician as her husband might also suggest a desire to remain involved in the politics of Athens.

There is no information about Aspasia's life after this point. Although the actual extent of her influence on Athenian politics and society during Athens' most glorious period will never be certain, she did become one of the few women in the ancient Greek world to be noted and remembered. She became so famous that Cyrus, a prince of Persia, Athens' most hated enemy, gave the name Aspasia to his favorite concubine. Through the succeeding centuries ancient authors, including playwrights and biographers, used Aspasia as a well-known historical figure to illustrate their views on philosophy, politics, rhetoric, Pericles and Socrates.

Phrynê

If the rhetoric of Aspasia was celebrated, then so was the beauty of Phrynê. Athenaeus says that Phrynê was the model for the Aphrodite of Cnidus , and that, on the pedestal of his statue of Eros, Praxiteles declared that it portrayed his passion for Phrynê, to whom it was dedicated. Pliny relates the story (most likely anecdotal) that the sculptor carved two figures of Aphrodite in marble, one draped, the other nude. Both were for sale, each for the same price. The one that was clothed was chosen by the inhabitants of Cos, who considered it to be their only decent choice. The other was purchased by the citizens of Cnidus, where it "achieved an immeasurably greater reputation. Later King Nicomedes was anxious to buy it from them, promising so to discharge all the state's vast debts. The Cnidians, however, preferred to suffer anything but this, and rightly so; for with this statue Praxiteles made Cnidus a famous city." Pliny says that the shrine in which Aphrodite stood was completely open so as to allow the statue to be viewed from every side and that, of all the other works there, it alone received the attention of those who sailed to the island to see it.

In Book XIII of the Deipnosophists (Sophists at Dinner), collections of chreia (witty sayings) of famous heteirai and anecdotes about them can be found. One of my favorites, incluces this one, in which Phrynê, when asked for her favors, she demanded a mina in payment.

"'Too much' was the reply. 'Didn't you, the other day, stay with a stranger after you had received only two gold pieces?' 'Well then, said she, 'you too wait until I feel like indulging myself, and I will accept that amount.'"

Praxiteles was also said to have executed a gilded statue of her at Delphi, which Pausanias remarks upon in his description of Greece. Once, when Phrynê was accused of impiety (the penalty for which was death), she was defended by Hypereides, who also was her lover and considered by the ancients to be second only to his contemporary Demosthenes as an orator. At the climax of his speech, Hypereides tore away her gown to reveal her breasts to the magistrates, who felt such fear for one who seemed to be the handmaiden of Aphrodite, herself, that Phrynê was acquitted.

Although Phrynê always wore her tunic closely wrapped around her body in public and did not frequent the baths, she was said to have removed her clothes at the festival of Poseidon, loosened her hair, and stepped naked into the sea. Praxiteles witnessed the event, recounts Athenaeus, as did the painter Apelles (fl. 352-308 BC), who was inspired to portray her as "Aphrodite Anadyomene" (Rising from the Sea). "Made famous by the Greek verses which sing its praises," says Pliny, it later was shipped to Rome by Augustus, who, because of the Julian claim to be descended from the goddess, dedicated it in a temple to Caesar, his adoptive father.

Laïs

Phrynê's great rival was Laïs, of whom Alciphron reports, "… when she has on her clothes her face is wondrous fair, and when she has taken them off her whole body appears as fair as her face." The beautiful Laïs was the daughter, says Plutarch, of the courtesan Timandra and the renowned Alcibiades, whose own physical beauty often was remarked upon. The mistress of Demosthenes and Diogenes the Cynic, Athenaeus relates that Apelles saw Laïs when she still was a young girl, carrying water from the fountain, and brought her to a symposium. To those who jeered at him for bringing a child, not a heteira, he replied that she soon would be a beautiful women, herself, the delight of men. And so she became. Athenaeus recounts that artists came to paint her bosom, and how the hedonist Aristippus, who spent several months every year with Laïs, was reproached for giving her so much money, whereas Diogenes the Cynic paid nothing for her favors. His reply was that, "I give Laïs many bounties that I may enjoy her myself, not that I may prevent another from doing so." When Diogenes, himself, criticized Aristippus for his behavior, he retorted that, just as Diogenes did not object to living in a house in which others have lived or to sailing on a ship in which others have sailed, so he should not find fault in his consorting with a woman who had been enjoyed by other men.

Neaera

As Aspasia and Phrynê both had been brought to trial, so was another heteira by the name of Neaera. However, in this case, the transcript, which records certain events that had occurred thirty years before, survives in a speech, Against Neaera (ca. 340 BC), which is attributed to Demosthenes. It provides a reminder that the life of a heteira had a reality that is not conveyed in the anecdotes and witticisms told of them.

Neaera had been purchased as a slave and, while still a very young girl, worked as a prostitute in Corinth. So desirable was Neaera that, eventually, she was bought for thirty minas by two of her customers. They kept her for themselves until they were about to marry and then offered Neaera her freedom, which she purchased through the donations of other lovers, one of whom took her to Athens. But, when he discovered that she had been with other men, including several slaves, at a symposium, she was obliged to leave, taking her clothes, jewelry, and two maid servants with her. Eventually, Neaera had children, including a daughter, and found another lover, who returned with her to Athens. There, she pretended to be a respectable Athenian woman, blackmailing customers who thought they had committed adultery with the wife of a citizen. The status of her daughter also was concealed, and twice she was married to unsuspecting citizens, one of whom was king-archon, which meant that the daughter, herself, participated in some of the city's most sacred rites. When her old lover appeared to claim Neaera and property she had stolen from him, an arrangement was made for Neaera to live with both men, each of whom, it was agreed, would spend an equal amount of time with her.

The outcome of the trial is not known but, if found guilty of concealing her true status as a resident alien, Neaera was at risk of being sold again as a slave, and her paramour, the confiscation of his property and the loss of citizenship. Such was the threat to the claims of legitimacy that defined Athenian women within society.

Sources

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Disclaimer

These pages are not written for any specific home, but rather as informational pages for those not able to get ahold of the books and read them yourself. Opinions and commentaries are strictly my own personal views, therefore, if you don't like what you are reading — then don't. The information in these pages is realistic to what is found within the books. Many sites have added information, assuming the existences of certain products and practices, such as willowbark and agrimony for healing, and travel to earth and back for the collection of goods. I've explored the books, the flora, the fauna, and the beasts, and have compiled from those mentioned, the probabilities of certain practices, and what vegetation mentioned in the books is suitable for healing purposes, as well as given practicalities to other sorts of roleplaying assumptions.

The Heteira

And the Flute Girl