The “Oldest Profession”

Author: Pooke, A., (2009), “Did Prostitutes in Rome wear Red and Yellow?”, first published in The Imperial Courier, Volume 4, Issue 5, THE RMRS, pp. 4-6.

CAUTION: Contains adult themes.

As its name suggests, part of the Roman Military Research Society’s (THE RMRS’) remit is to educate interested parties on the Roman army. The Society also tries to accurately portray civil life, which is inextricably linked with the military. While we can admire the achievements of the Romans, we must not disregard or dismiss the darker side of their society. Thus, we cannot ignore that slavery and prostitution were widespread. Both are extremely sensitive subjects, but ones we should not shy away from when trying to understand the Romans, in context. With that in mind, the following was borne out of discussions on how we might approach, present or portray prostitution in the Roman world and thus better educate ourselves and others.

Prostitution in ancient Rome was both legal and licensed; the latter being less concerned with morality but to maximize profit. It was perfectly acceptable for Roman men of even the highest social status to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval [1]. Yet, Rome’s strict social mores meant such men had to demonstrate self-control and moderation in the frequency and enjoyment of sex. Importantly, while this was accepted, within reason, the prostitutes themselves were considered deplorable. Most were either slaves or former slaves. If freeborn they were relegated to the infames, people utterly lacking in social standing and deprived of most protections accorded to citizens under Roman law. As such prostitutes shared a lowly status with actors and gladiators, all of whom, allegedly, exerted sexual allure.

Although both women and men might engage male or female prostitutes, evidence for female prostitution is the more ample [2]. Consequently, where the feminine pronoun is used, this should not be read as implying all prostitutes were women. Likewise, stating prostitutes were of the lowest social standing is not an allegory or commentary on women’s position in Roman society. As with all things involving people, the picture is complex.

Most prostitutes were either slaves or freedwomen but determining the balance between voluntary and coerced prostitution is fraught with difficulty. As slaves were considered property under Roman law, it was legal for an owner to employ them as prostitutes. Beyond the slaves and tavern girls, some prostitutes were well-kept women from good families. Such higher-class women may well have echoed the ancient Greek hetairai (sing. hetaira meaning “companion”) who served as artists, entertainers and conversationalists aside from providing sexual service [3]. Known as meretrices (sing. meretrix), such prostitutes were specifically and closely regulated by Roman law. They were obliged to be registered with the Aedile (local magistrate) where their correct name, age, place of birth and the pseudonym under which they intended to practice their calling would be recorded. Issuing a “licence for debauchery” (licentia stupri), the Aedile ascertained the price they intended to be charged and entered their name to the official roll. Once entered there, the name could never be removed, but must remain for all time, an insurmountable bar to repentance and respectability. For this reason, Aediles might attempt to influence a girl to change her mind if she was young and apparently respectable.

Lower class prostitutes were known by many different names depending on their status within their own community. A “Doris”, for example, was noted for their enchanted forms, often in the nude, while “Lupae” (“she-wolves”) patrolled the parks and gardens “howling” for customers [4], and “Copae” were serving girls in taberna and inns. The rooms typically used by Rome’s prostitutes appear to have been simply and sparsely decorated. Like the examples visible today in Pompeii, a tablet (Latin: titulus) or fresco might be positioned above the doorway to indicate what a client could expect, and a sign would indicate when the room was “occupied”, “in service” or “busy” (Latin: occupata).

Those professional prostitutes who cultivated elite patrons could become wealthy and influential. For such “courtesans”, prostitution could be a lucrative business. A tariff inscription from Coptos in Roman Egypt, dated to AD 90, states that the passport fee for prostitutes was 108 drachmas, but for other women only 20 drachmas. Clearly it was thought the prostitutes could afford the fee.

The risks of contracting a sexually transmitted diseases were known, but little is mentioned in the surviving sources. The poet Juvenal hints at “secret diseases” (Latin: auchunnuentae) for which he says you had “best pray to Juno and take herbal remedies”. Regardless, the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease or pregnancy were “occupational hazards” for Roman prostitutes. Preventative measures needed to be taken but clearly medical knowledge had not developed to the degree we understand today. Yet medical author’s, such as Soranus [5], recorded “straightforward and sensible” advice about contraception. The techniques he described included:

• Using potions to cause temporary infertility.

• Wearing amulets embued with “magic” properties. Pliny, for example, records the tying of two little worms, believed to live in hairy spiders, in deerskin. Or maybe wearing the liver of a cat in a tube on the left foot is more appealing.

• Using pessaries of soft wool soaked in honey, alum, white lead or olive oil had a degree of effectiveness. The use of honey was still being advocated by Marie Stopes [6] in 1931.

• Holding your breath at ejaculation, or post-coitally to squat, sneeze and drink something cold. Lucretius recommended that prostitutes, but not wives, should wriggle their hips and “so divert the plow and the seed”.

Commentators thought conception was unlikely to occur when women did not have a desire for intercourse. By contrast, Roman medical writers believed the most fertile time was just as menstruation ended, that is, when the appetite for sex was said to be strongest. In the absence of modern methods of contraception, such views made the “rhythm method” largely ineffective.

Despite the risks, and prostitution being a part of everyday life, prostitutes were infames as mentioned above. In a strictly hierarchical Roman society, where status and social standing were paramount, prostitutes had to be distinctive. It was common, therefore, for prostitutes throughout Rome to dress differently than citizens. Such women were forbidden to wear the stola, the dress of respectable adult freeborn women and Roman matrons. Instead, from the late Republican or early Imperial era onwards, meretices may have worn the man’s toga when in public. Whether the wearing of the formal attire of citizen men was through compulsion or choice is uncertain. This crossing of gender boundaries remains the subject of modern scholarly speculation. At the very least wearing a toga would visibly set the meretrix apart from respectable women while suggesting the former’s sexual availability.

While “shocking” to staid Romans this was not the only way to distinguish sex workers. Bright colours (colores meretricii) and jewelled anklets also marked them out from respectable women. So, for example, Dr Lindsay Allason-Jones notes that prostitutes in Italy were often of Syrian or Egyptian origin and clearly identifiable by their heavy make-up, the lack of bands in their hair, their short tunics and brightly coloured togas. Apparently, they also wore long gold chains that went down to their waist, and even went so far as to gild their breasts. In a similar vein, Sarah Pomeroy [7] points to prostitutes wearing saffron-dyed material of gauzelike transparency. While clearly distinctive, and perhaps best described as “advertising their wares”, we cannot be certain that these popular depictions are anything more than merely salacious.

Roman poets, such as Horatius and Seneca for example, were keen to draw attention to the more scandalous fashions. In one poem by the latter, we learn: “There I see silken clothes, if they can be called clothes, which protect neither a women’s body nor her modesty, and in which she cannot truthfully declare that she is not naked. These are bought for huge sums from nations unknown to us in the ordinary course of trade - and why?” Unfortunately, we cannot be certain if Seneca was describing the distinctive apparel worn by prostitutes or whether he was moralising on the clothing choices of more respectable women. Either way, the garments of airy delicacy described by Seneca are named “Coan” by Horatius because they were imported from Cos into Greece and Rome [8].

In his work of natural philosophy, written around AD 65, Seneca gives us further clues: “women wear the colours used by prostitutes, in which respectable married women would not be seen” [9]. The problem is we do not know if he was talking about the bright togas or the colour purple, as in earlier times, since respectable matrons claimed the right to wear purple following a dispute after the annulment of the lex Oppia in 195 BC [10].

To confuse things further, perhaps it was not the colour of clothing that was the most distinguishing feature. Ovid, for example, draws attention to the common fashion of dyeing hair and the use of wigs: “Ever since the auburn hair of German women had become known in Rome, Roman ladies were wildly eager to have such hair instead of their own black locks”. It was perhaps fashionable to wear wigs made of red or fair hair cut from the heads of German girls [11]. Ovid also records that freedwomen chose to don bright colours to harmonise or contrast with their hair [12]. In his satirical “The Ways of Women”, Juvenal’s [13] exposes to ridicule the night-time activities of the Emperor Claudius’ wife, Messalina. He claims the Empress would sneak out to a brothel to satisfy her carnal lusts where, under the feigned name of Lycisca [14], “she graciously received all comers”. Significantly, Juvenal’s description provides evidence for prostitutes assuming a pseudonym, the gilding of breasts (cf. Allason-Jones above), and that Messalina disguised her black hair beneath a blond wig.

To conclude, prostitution in the Roman world was, as today, a fact of life. The Romans both accepted the practice while denigrating those who practised it. For some, it was the only recourse in their attempt to escape extreme poverty. Others might have become wealthy and, for high-class courtesans, influential. Matters are further complicated when slavery is taken into account and one considers the effects it had on those forced into sex work. What we can conclude is that, like slaves, prostitutes were of the lowest social order. For any respectable Roman matron wearing brightly coloured or diaphanous clothing, a toga or a wig risks her reputation being irrevocably tarnished.

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Endnotes:

1. Dillon, M. & Garland, L., (2005), Ancient Rome: From the Early Republic to the Assassination of Julius Caesar, Taylor & Francis. ▲

2. McGinn, T.A., (2004), The economy of prostitution in the Roman world: a study of social history & the brothel, University of Michigan Press. ▲

3. Unlike most ancient Greek women, hetairai would be highly educated and were allowed in a male-only symposium, the part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation. In contrast to pornai, who provided sex for numerous clients in brothels or on the street, hetairai were thought to have had only a few men as clients at any one time, to have had long-term relationships with them, and to have provided companionship and intellectual stimulation as well as sex. ▲

4. The Roman word for brothel was lupanar, meaning a wolf den, and thus a prostitute was called a lupa (she-wolf). The lupanar in Pompeii is famous for the erotic paintings on its walls. ▲

5. Soranus was a Greek physician in the 1st-/2nd-century AD. He was born in Ephesus but practiced in Alexandria and subsequently in Rome. Soranus was one of the chief representatives of the Methodic school of medicine. Several of his writings still survive, most notably his four-volume treatise on gynaecology, and a Latin translation of his On Acute and Chronic Diseases. ▲

6. Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (October 15th, 1880 to October 2nd, 1958) was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for eugenics and women's rights. Stopes founded the first birth control clinic in Britain and her book Married Love (1918) was both controversial and influential, bringing the subject of birth control into wide public discourse. ▲

7. Pomeroy, S.B., (1975), Goddesses, Whores, Wives & Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity, Schocken Books, New York. ▲

8. Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder), Naturalis Historia (“Natural Histories”), XI, 22, 26. ▲

9. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), Naturales Quaestiones, VII, 31,2. ▲

10. Instituted by Marcus Oppius, the Lex Oppia was a law established in 215 BC, at the height of the Second Punic War during the days of national catastrophe after the Battle of Cannae. It was the first of a series of sumptuary laws restricting not only a woman's wealth, but also her display of wealth. Specifically, it forbade any woman to possess more than half an ounce of gold, to wear a multi-coloured garment (particularly those trimmed in purple), or to ride in an animal-drawn vehicle in the city or any town or within a mile thereof, except in the case of public religious festivals. ▲

11. Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), Amores (“The Loves”), I, 14, 45. ▲

12. Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), Ars Amatoria (“The Art of Love”), III, 162. ▲

13. Juvenal, Saturae (“Satires”), II, VI, 120. ▲

14. “Lycisca” appears to be the Greek form of Latin lupa meaning “she-wolf”. In the Roman foundation myth, it was a female wolf, or lupa, that nursed and sheltered the twins Romulus and Remus after they were abandoned in the wild by order of King Amulius of Alba Longa. The she-wolf cared for the infants at her den, a cave known as the Lupercal. One might speculate the mythical she-wolf conveniently conceals that the twins may have been raised by a prostitute. ▲