Mirror Cover with Eros and erotic scene originally from Corinth More expensive and exclusive prostitutes were known as hetaerae, which means "companion". Hetaerae, unlike pornai, engaged in long- term relationships with individual clients, and provided companionship as well as sex. Unlike pornai, hetaerae seem to have been paid for their company over a period of time, rather than for each individual sex act. Hetaerae were often educated, and free hetaerae were able to control their own finances.
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Jean-Léon Gérôme's painting Phryne Revealed Before the Areopagus depicts the hetaira Phryne on trial. The sight of her nude body, according to legend, persuaded the jurors to acquit her. Hetaira (plural hetairai (), also hetaera (plural hetaerae ), (, "companion", pl. , , pl.
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14, d. Some scholars believe her to have belonged to the hetaerae class. She attributed the invention of ball games to Nausicaa, one of her countrywomen, and most later writers took her bias in this matter as self- evident. Her writings are no longer extant.
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Phintias' repertoire, however, is rich. He drew everyday scenes such as hetaerae, symposia and music lessons, but also mythological scenes. Like the other major members of the Pioneer group, he frequently wrote on his vases, and depicted some of his "colleagues".Wehgartner, p. 904.
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Glycera () (the sweet one) was a popular name often used for Hellenistic hetaerae, held by: #The daughter of Thalassis and the mistress of Harpalus and Menander. (Athen. xiii. pp. 586, 595, 605, &c.;) #The mistress of Pausias, born in Sicyon. #A favourite of Horace(?). (Hor. Carm. i. 19. 30. iii.
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Glycera () (the sweet one) was a popular name often used for Hellenistic hetaerae, held by: #The daughter of Thalassis and the mistress of Harpalus and Menander. (Athen. xiii. pp. 586, 595, 605, &c.;) #The mistress of Pausias, born in Sicyon. #A favourite of Horace(?). (Hor. Carm. i. 19. 30. iii.
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She was said to have been a hetaera – a courtesan or prostitute.Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, xiii. 588, 593 This might be misogynistic or anti-Epicurean slander – though there is no evidence for such a claim. On the other hand, hetaerae often enjoyed an independence denied to most other women in the male-dominated society of ancient Greece.
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In some cultures, prostitution has been an element of religious practices. Religious prostitution is well documented in the ancient cultures of the near East, such as Sumer, Babylon, ancient Greece and Israel, where prostitutes appear in the Bible. In Greece the hetaerae were often women of high social class, whereas in Rome the meretrices were of lower social order. The Devadasi, prostitutes of Hindu temples in south India, were made illegal by the Indian government in 1988.
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The Minoans portrayed saffron in their palace frescoes by 1600–1500 BC; they hint at its possible use as a therapeutic drug. Ancient Greek legends told of sea voyages to Cilicia, where adventurers sought what they believed were the world's most valuable threads. Another legend tells of Crocus and Smilax, whereby Crocus is bewitched and transformed into the first saffron crocus. Ancient perfumers in Egypt, physicians in Gaza, townspeople in Rhodes, and the Greek hetaerae courtesans used saffron in their scented waters, perfumes and potpourris, mascaras and ointments, divine offerings, and medical treatments.
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The titan Prometheus, who has been placed in Scythian iron chains because of his alleged fire robbery, does not want to reveal to the Olympic ruler Zeus a secret knowledge that he claims to possess. Hermes asks Prometheus one last time to finally name the hetaerae who would cost Zeus and his followers their eternal rule. When Prometheus refuses, he is struck by lightning and thunder from an earthquake which throws him into the shadowy realm of the Hades. Kratos (Greek: "Power") and Bia (Greek: "Violence"), the servants of Zeus, drag Prometheus to the Caucasus mountains, where, at Zeus' command, the reluctant Hephaistos chains Prometheus to a rock of the Caucasus.
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We possess under the name of Alciphron 116 fictional letters, in 3 books, the object of which is to delineate the characters of certain classes of men by introducing them as expressing their peculiar sentiments and opinions upon subjects with which they were familiar. The classes of persons which Alciphron chose for this purpose are fishermen, country people, parasites, and hetaerae or Athenian courtesans. All are made to express their sentiments in the most graceful and elegant language, even where the subjects are of a low or obscene kind. The characters are thus somewhat raised above their common standard, without any great violation of the truth of reality.
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Neaira was probably born in the first decade of the fourth century BC. Her place of birth is unknown, and the earliest event in her life that we know of is her purchase when she was a young girl by Nikarete.Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.18 Nikarete trained the girls she purchased to be hetaerae, calling them her daughters in order to increase the price her customers would pay,Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.19 and lived with them in Corinth.Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.23 Neaira's work as a prostitute started before she reached puberty. She is twice described by Apollodorus as having sex for money before she came of age, though possibly due to her age he implies that she was not yet a hetaera.
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Around 376 BC, Timanoridas of Corinth and Eukrates of Lefkada paid thirty minae to purchase Neaira from Nikarete, at the high end of prices for hetaerae. When the men married, they agreed to let Neaira buy her freedom for twenty minae, which, with the aid of gifts and loans from her former customers, she did.Pseudo- Demosthenes 59.30-32 As part of this deal, Neaira agreed to no longer work as a prostitute in Corinth, and so left the city for Athens with Phrynion, who had helped her buy her freedom.Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.32 Neaira was certainly living with Phrynion in Athens by 373 BC, when he took her to a feast given by the general Chabrias to celebrate his victory in the Pythian Games.
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Their customers ranged from the perfumers of Rosetta, in Egypt, to physicians in Gaza to townsfolk in Rhodes, who wore pouches of saffron in order to mask the presence of malodorous fellow citizens during outings to the theatre. For the Greeks, saffron was widely associated with professional courtesans and retainers known as the hetaerae. Large dye works operating in Sidon and Tyre used saffron baths as a substitute; there, royal robes were triple-dipped in deep purple dyes; for the robes of royal pretenders and commoners, the last two dips were replaced with a saffron dip, which gave a less intense purple hue. The ancient Greeks and Romans prized saffron as a perfume or deodoriser and scattered it about their public spaces: royal halls, courts, and amphitheatres alike.
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When these children reached the age of girlhood, their mother put them on the local stage, for they were fair to look upon; she sent them forth, however, not all at the same time, but as each one seemed to her to have reached a suitable age. Comito, indeed, had already become one of the leading hetaerae [high class prostitutes] of the day." Evans notes that Theodora would later favor the Blues as an empress, which could point to them having earned her loyalty through saving her family from the threat of unemployment and poverty. "Theodora, the second sister, dressed in a little tunic with sleeves, like a slave girl, waited on Comito and used to follow her about carrying on her shoulders the bench on which her favored sister was wont to sit at public gatherings.
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Greek courtesans, or hetaerae, are said to have frequently practiced male-female anal intercourse as a means of preventing pregnancy. A male citizen taking the passive (or receptive) role in anal intercourse (paedicatio in Latin) was condemned in Rome as an act of impudicitia (immodesty or unchastity); free men, however, could take the active role with a young male slave, known as a catamite or puer delicatus. The latter was allowed because anal intercourse was considered equivalent to vaginal intercourse in this way; men were said to "take it like a woman" (muliebria pati, "to undergo womanly things") when they were anally penetrated, but when a man performed anal sex on a woman, she was thought of as playing the boy's role. Likewise, women were believed to only be capable of anal sex or other sex acts with women if they possessed an exceptionally large clitoris or a dildo.
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