The History of Prostitution Part 2

HISTORY OF PROSt.i.tUTION.

[If the reader has not already perused the Introduction to this volume, he is advised to do so at once, as therein are stated the reasons which have called it forth, and extended it to the present dimensions.]

CHAPTER I.

THE JEWS.

Prost.i.tution coeval with Society.--Prost.i.tutes in the Eighteenth Century B.C.--Tamar and Judah.--Legislation of Moses.--Syrian Women.--Rites of Moloch.--Groves.--Social Condition of Jewish Harlots.--Description by Solomon.--The Jews of Babylon.

Our earliest acquaintance with the human race discloses some sort of society established. It also reveals the existence of a marriage tie, varying in stringency and incidental effects according to climate, morals, religion, or accident, but every where essentially subversive of a system of promiscuous intercourse. No nation, it is believed, has ever been reported by a trustworthy traveler, on sufficient evidence, to have held its women generally in common. Still there appear to have been in every age men who did not avail themselves of the marriage covenant, or who could not be bound by its stipulations, and their appet.i.tes created a demand for illegitimate pleasures, which female weakness supplied. This may be a.s.sumed to be the real origin of prost.i.tution throughout the world, though in particular localities this first cause has been a.s.sisted by female avarice or pa.s.sion, religious superst.i.tion, or a mistaken sense of hospitality.

Accordingly, prost.i.tution is coeval with society. It stains the earliest mythological records. It is constantly a.s.sumed as an existing fact in Biblical history. We can trace it from the earliest twilight in which history dawns to the clear daylight of to-day, without a pause or a moment of obscurity.

Our most ancient historical record is believed to be the Books of Moses.

According to them, it must be admitted that prost.i.tutes were common among the Jews in the eighteenth century before Christ. When Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, desired to defeat the cruel Jewish custom, and to bear children, notwithstanding her widowhood, she "put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place.... When Judah saw her he thought her a harlot, for she had covered her face."[7] The Genesiacal account thus shows that prost.i.tutes, with covered faces, must have been common at the time. It is the more valuable, as it furnishes the particulars of the transaction. To keep up her disguise, Tamar demands a kid as her recompense. Judah agrees, and leaves his "signet, and his bracelets, and his staff" as a pledge for the kid. It appears to have been regarded as no dishonor to have commerce with a prost.i.tute, for Judah sends his friend the Adullamite, a man of standing, to deliver the kid; but to defraud the unfortunate woman of her ill-gotten gain must have been considered shameful, for, when Judah learns that she has disappeared, he expresses alarm "lest we be shamed" for not having paid the stipulated price. It may also be noticed, as an ill.u.s.tration of the connection between prost.i.tution and pure domestic morals, that when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he instantly orders her to be burned for having "played the harlot."

Four centuries afterward it fell to the lot of Moses to legislate on the Jewish morals, no doubt sadly corrupted by their sojourn in Egypt. His command is formal and emphatic: "Do not prost.i.tute thy daughter, lest the land fall to wh.o.r.edom.... There shall be no wh.o.r.e of the daughters of Israel."[8] He was equally decided in his condemnation of worse practices, to which it would appear the Jews were much addicted.[9] He laid penalties on uncleanness of every kind, and on fornication; but it would appear that he rather confirmed than abrogated the customary right of a Jewish father to sell his daughter as a concubine.[10] With the practical view of improving the physical condition of the race, Moses guarded, by elaborate laws, against improper and corrupt unions. Adultery and rape he punished with death. The bride was bound, under pain of death by stoning, to prove to the satisfaction not only of her husband, but of the tribe, that she had been chaste to the day of her marriage.[11] A long list of relatives were specified among whom it was illegal to intermarry. Furthermore, Moses endeavored, with marked zeal, to check the progress of disease among both s.e.xes. Whether the maladies mentioned in Leviticus[12] were syphilitic in their nature, it were difficult to say. Modern medical science admits that, in hot climates, want of cleanliness and frequent amorous indulgence will generate phenomena similar to the "issue" so frequently mentioned by Moses. However this be, it is certain that both Jews and Jewesses were subject to diseases apparently similar to the common gonorrhoea; that these diseases were infectious; and that Moses, in reiterated injunctions, forbade all s.e.xual intercourse, and almost all a.s.sociation, with persons thus afflicted. So earnest was his desire to eradicate the evil from the people, that he extended his prohibition to women during the period of their menstrual visitation.

Having done this much for the Jews, Moses appears to have connived at the intercourse of their young men with foreign prost.i.tutes. He took an Ethiopian concubine himself. Syrian women, Moabites, Midianites, and other neighbors of the Jews--many of them, as it appears, young and lovely, but with debauched and vicious principles--established themselves as prost.i.tutes in the land of Israel. For many years, until the time of Solomon, they were excluded from Jerusalem and the large cities. Driven to the highways for refuge, they lived in booths and tents, where they combined the trade of a peddler with the calling of a harlot. Unlike Tamar, they did not veil the face. Reclining within the tent, with no more clothing than the heat of the climate suggested, these dissolute girls invited the complaisance of pa.s.sengers who stopped to refresh their thirst or replenish their wardrobe at their booth. So long as their practices violated no law of nature, the prudent legislator pursued a tolerant policy. Before long, however, abominable rites in honor of Moloch, Baal, or Belphegor, were formally established by the "strange women" and their male accomplices. Moloch, whose disgusting exactions we find in Phoenicia, and at Carthage also, demanded male wors.h.i.+p. The belly of the G.o.d's statue was a furnace, in which a fierce fire was kindled and fed with animal sacrifice; around it the priests and their proselytes danced to the sound of music, sang wild songs, and debased themselves by practices of a disgusting and unnatural character. Nor was the wors.h.i.+p of Baal less revolting. He too had his statues, in forms eminently calculated to excite the animal pa.s.sions, and surrounded by cool groves in which the most shameless prost.i.tution was carried on by all who would deposit an offering on the altars of the idol. It would even seem, from several pa.s.sages in the Bible,[13] that the partic.i.p.ators in these infamies were not invariably human beings. Against such enormities the wrath of Moses and his successors was aroused, on hygienic as well as moral and religious grounds. Partic.i.p.ation in the rites of Moloch was punished with death.[14]

Aaron's grandson did not hesitate to commit a double homicide to mark the Divine abhorrence of the daughters of Midian; and Moses himself, warned by the frightful progress of disease among the male Jews, struck at its roots by exterminating every female Midianite among his captives, save the virgins only.

An express command forbade the establishment of groves near the Jewish temples, evidently on account of the convenience such shady retreats afforded to prost.i.tutes. Yet on various occasions in the history of Israel we find accounts of the destruction of such groves, and of the statues of the G.o.ds in whose honor human nature was defiled.[15] Solomon, whose wisdom was singularly alloyed with sensuality, not only set the example of inordinate l.u.s.t, keeping, it is said, seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, but repealed the wise restrictions of his predecessors in regard to prost.i.tutes, allowing them to exercise their calling within the city of Jerusalem. They multiplied so fast that the prophets speak of them wandering on all the hills, and prost.i.tuting themselves under every tree, and at a later date they even invaded the Temple, and established their hideous rites in its courts. That n.o.ble edifice had become, in the time of Maccabees, a mere brothel _plenum scortantium c.u.m meretricibus_.[16]

It is, however, apparent, notwithstanding the severe ordinances of the Jewish legislators, that prost.i.tutes were a recognized cla.s.s, laboring under no hopeless ban. Jephtha, the son of a prost.i.tute, became none the less chief of Israel; and some commentators have contended that the retreat to which he condemned his daughter was simply the calling of her grandmother. Joshua's spies slept openly in the house of the harlot Rahab, whose service to Israel was faithfully requited by the amnesty granted to her family, and the honorable residence allotted to her in Judaea. Samson chose the house of a harlot to be his residence at Gaza; his fatal acquaintance with another harlot, Delilah, is the leading trait of his story. Even Solomon did not disdain to hear the rival wranglings of a pair of harlots, and to adjudicate between them. Prost.i.tution was in fact legally domiciled in Judaea at a very early period, and never lost the foothold it had gained. Of the manner in which it was carried on, an idea may be formed from the very vivid picture in Proverbs:[17]

"For at the window of my house, I looked through my cas.e.m.e.nt, And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, A young man void of understanding, Pa.s.sing through the streets near her (the strange woman's) corner; And he went the way to her house, In the twilight, in the evening, In the black and dark night; And, behold, there met him a woman With the attire of a harlot, and subtile of heart.

She is loud and stubborn; Her feet abide not in her house: Now she is without, now in the streets, And lieth in wait at every corner.

So she caught him, and kissed him, And with an impudent face said unto him, I have peace-offerings with me; This day have I paid my vows.

Therefore came I forth to meet thee, Diligently to seek thy face, And I have found thee.

I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, With carved works, with linen of Egypt.

I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, Aloes, and cinnamon.

Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: Let us solace ourselves with loves. * * *

With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, With the flattering of her lips she forced him.

He goeth after her straightway, As an ox goeth to the slaughter, Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks."

That prost.i.tution continued to be practiced generally and openly until the destruction of the old Jewish nation, the language of the Biblical prophets does not permit us to doubt. It may be questioned whether it ever a.s.sumed more revoltingly public forms in any other country. The Babylonish conquest must have changed the parts, without altering the performance. At Babylon, the Jewish maidens, whose large, expressive eyes, voluptuous mouth, slender and graceful figure, with well-developed bust and limbs, were frequently the theme of ancient poets, peopled the houses of prost.i.tution, and ministered to the l.u.s.ts of the n.o.bles. Nor even after the return to Jerusalem was the evil extirpated. It was to a prost.i.tute that Christ uttered the memorable sentence, "Her sins are forgiven because she loved much."

CHAPTER II.

EGYPT, SYRIA, AND ASIA MINOR.

Egyptian Courtesans.--Festival of Bubastis.--Morals in Egypt.-- Religious Prost.i.tution in Chaldaea.--Babylonian Banquets.-- Compulsory Prost.i.tution in Phoenicia.--Persian Banquets.

Before pa.s.sing to the subject of prost.i.tution in Greece, a glance at Egypt, and those nations of Asia which seem to have preceded Greece in civilization, may not be out of place.

Egypt was famous for her courtesans before the time of Herodotus. Egyptian blood runs warm; girls are nubile at ten. Under the Pharaohs, if ancient writers are to be believed, there existed a general laxity of moral principle, especially among young females.[18] Their religion was only too suggestive. The deities Isis and Osiris were the types of the s.e.xes. A statue of the latter, a male image, made of gold, was carried by the maidens at festivals, and wors.h.i.+ped by the whole people. Nor were the rites of Isis more modest. "At the festival at Bubastis," says Herodotus, "men and women go thither in boats on the Nile, and when the boats approach a city they are run close to the sh.o.r.e. A frantic contest then begins between the women of the city and those in the boats, each abusing the other in the most opprobrious language, and the women in the boats conclude the performance by lascivious dances, in the most undisguised manner, in sight of the people, and to the sound of flutes and other musical instruments."[19] There is little reason to doubt that the temples, like those of Baal, were houses of prost.i.tution on an extensive scale. Herodotus remarks significantly that a law in Egypt forbade s.e.xual intercourse within the walls of a temple, and exacted of both s.e.xes that intercourse should be followed by ablution before the temple was entered.[20]

Where piety required such sacrifices, it is not surprising that public morals were loose. It was not considered wholly shameful for an Egyptian to make his living by the hire of his daughter's person, and a king is mentioned who resorted to this plan in order to discover a thief. Such was the astonis.h.i.+ng appet.i.te of the men, that young and beautiful women were never delivered to the embalmer until they had been dead some days, a miserable wretch having been detected in the act of defiling a recently-deceased virgin![21] Of course, in such a society, there was no disgrace in being a prost.i.tute. The city of Naucratis owed its wealth and fame to the beauty of its courtesans, whose reputation spread throughout Europe, and was much celebrated in Greece. Rhadopis, a Thracian by birth, led the life of a prost.i.tute in Egypt with such success, that she not only bought her own freedom from the slave-dealer who had taken her there on speculation, but, if the Egyptians are to be believed, built a pyramid with her savings. A large portion of her story is doubtless mythical, but enough remains to warrant the opinion that she was, though a prost.i.tute, a wealthy and highly considered person.

In Chaldaea, too, religion at first connived at, and then commanded prost.i.tution. Every Babylonian female was obliged by law to prost.i.tute herself once in her life in the temple of the Chaldaean Venus, whose name was Mylitta.[22] Herodotus appears to have seen the park and grounds in which this singular sacrifice was made. They were constantly filled with women with strings bound round their hair. Once inside the place, no woman could leave it until she had paid her debt, and had deposited on the altar of the G.o.ddess the fee received from her lover. Some, who were plain, remained there as long as three years; but, as the grounds were always filled with a troop of voluptuaries in search of pleasure, the young, the beautiful, the high-born seldom needed to remain over a few minutes. This strange custom is mentioned by the prophet Baruch, who introduces one of the women reproaching her neighbor that she had not been deemed worthy of having her girdle of cord burst asunder by any man.[23] Similar statements are made by Strabo and other ancient writers. At the time of Alexander the Great the demoralization had reached a climax. Babylonian banquets were scenes of unheard-of infamies. When the meal began, the women sat modestly enough in presence of their fathers and husbands; but, as the wine went round, they lost all restraint, threw off one garment after another, and enacted scenes of glaring immodesty. And these were the ladies of the best families.[24]

The Mylitta of Chaldaea became Astarte in Phoenicia, at Carthage, and in Syria. Nothing was changed but the name; the voluptuous rites were identical. In addition to the forced prost.i.tution in the temples, however, the Phoenicians and most of their colonies maintained for many years the practice of requiring their maidens to bestow their favors on any strangers who visited the country. Commercial interest, no doubt, had some share in promoting so scandalous a custom. On the high sh.o.r.es of Phoenicia, as at Carthage and in the island of Cyprus, the traveler sailing past in his boat could see beautiful girls, arrayed in light garments, stretching inviting arms to him.

Originally the sum paid by the lover was offered to the G.o.ddess, but latterly the girls kept it, and it served to enhance their value in the matrimonial market. In some places the girl was free if she chose to abandon her hair to the G.o.ddess, but Lucian notes that this was an uncommonly rare occurrence.

Very similar were the customs of the Lydians and their successors in empire, the early Persians. Their Venus was named Mithra, in honor of whom festivals were given at which human nature was horribly outraged. Fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, husbands and wives sat together at the table, while voluptuous dances and music inflamed their senses, and when the wine had done its work, a promiscuous combat of sensuality began which lasted all night. Details of such scenes must be left to other works, and veiled in a learned tongue.[25]

CHAPTER III.

GREECE.

Mythology.--Solonian Legislation.--Dicteria.--Pisistratidae.--Lycurgus and Sparta.--Laws on Prost.i.tution.--Case of Phryne.--Cla.s.ses of Prost.i.tutes.--p.o.r.nikon Telos.--Dress.--Hair of Prost.i.tutes.--The Dicteriades of Athens.--Abode and Manners.--Appearance of Dicteria.-- Laws regulating Dicteria.--Schools of Prost.i.tution.--Loose Prost.i.tutes.--Old Prost.i.tutes.--Auletrides, or Flute-players.-- Origin.--How hired.--Performances.--Anecdote of Arcadians.--Price of Flute-players.--Festival of Venus Periboa.--Venus Callipyge.--Lesbian Love.--Lamia.--Hetairae.--Social Standing.--Venus and her Temples.-- Charms of Hetairae.--Thargelia.--Aspasia.--Hipparchia.--Bacchis.-- Guathena and Guathenion.--Lais.--Phryne.--Pythionice.--Glycera.-- Leontium.--Other Hetairae.--Biographers of Prost.i.tutes.--Philtres.

The Greek mythology supposes obviously a relaxed state of public morals.

What period in the history of the nation it may be a.s.sumed to reflect is, however, by no means certain. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Homeric poems were composed for immodest audiences, and it would perhaps be fairer to lay the blame of the mythological indecencies at the door of the age which polished and improved upon them, rather than of that which is ent.i.tled to the credit of their conception in the rough.

Our first reliable information regarding the morals of the Greek women, pa.s.sing over, for the present, the legislation ascribed to Lycurgus, is found in the ordinances of Solon. Draco is supposed to have affixed the penalty of death indiscriminately to rape, seduction, and adultery. It has been conjectured that the safety-valve used at that time, ordinary prost.i.tution being unknown, was a system of religious prost.i.tution in the temples, borrowed from and a.n.a.logous to the plan already described. This, however, is mere conjecture. Solon, while softening the rigors of the Draconian code, by law formally established houses of prost.i.tution at Athens, and filled them with female slaves. They were called _Dicteria_, and the female tenants _Dicteriades_. Bought with the public money, and bound by law to satisfy the demands of all who visited them, they were in fact public servants, and their wretched gains were a legitimate source of revenue to the state. Prost.i.tution became a state monopoly, and so profitable that, even in Solon's lifetime, a superb temple, dedicated to Venus the courtesan, was built out of the fund accruing from this source.

The fee charged, however, appears to have been small.[26] In Solon's time, the Dicteriades were kept widely apart from the Athenian women of repute.

They were not allowed to mix in religious ceremonies or to enter the temples. When they appeared in the streets they were obliged to wear a particular costume as a badge of infamy. They forfeited what rights of citizens.h.i.+p they may have possessed in virtue of their birth. A procurer or procuress who had been instrumental in introducing a free-born Athenian girl to the Dicterion incurred the penalty of death. Nor was the law content with branding with infamy prost.i.tutes and their accomplices alone.

Their children were b.a.s.t.a.r.ds; that is to say, they could not inherit property, they could not a.s.sociate with other youths, they could not acquire the right of citizens.h.i.+p without performing some signal act of bravery, they could not address the people in the public a.s.semblies.

Finally, to complete their ignominy, they were exempt from the sacred duty of maintaining their parents in old age.[27]

These regulations, for which Solon obtained the praise of Athenian philosophers,[28] were not long maintained in force. Tradition imputed to the profligacy of the Pisistratidae a relaxation of the laws concerning prost.i.tutes. It was believed that the sons of Pisistratus not only gave to the Dicteriades the freedom of the city, but allotted to them seats at banquets beside the most respectable matrons, and, on certain days each year, turned them into their father's beautiful gardens, and let loose upon them the whole petulance of the Athenian youth.[29] The law against procuresses was modified, a fine being subst.i.tuted for death. "About the same time," says the scandalous Greek chronicle, "the death-penalty for adultery was also commuted for scourging."

Still, notwithstanding this falling off, it would appear that Athens was more moral than her neighbors, Corinth and Sparta. The former, then the most flouris.h.i.+ng sea-port of Greece, was filled with a very low cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes. No laws regulated the subject. Any female who chose could open house for the accommodation of travelers and seamen, and, though Corinth was yet far from the proverbial celebrity it afterward obtained for its prost.i.tutes, there is no doubt they bore a fearful proportion to the aggregate population of the port. At Sparta the case was different. In the system of legislation which bears the name of Lycurgus, the individual was sacrificed to the state; the female to the male. Women were educated for the sole purpose of bearing robust children. Virgins were allowed to wrestle publicly with men. Girls were habited in a robe open at the skirts, which only partially concealed the person in walking, whence the Spartan women acquired an uncomplimentary name.[30] A Spartan husband was authorized to lend his wife to any handsome man for the purpose of begetting children. That these laws, the skillfully contrived appeals to the sensual appet.i.tes, and the constant spectacle of nude charms, must have led to a general profligacy among the female s.e.x, is quite obvious.

Aristotle affirms positively that the Spartan women openly committed the grossest acts of debauchery.[31] Hence it may be inferred that prost.i.tutes by profession were unnecessary at Sparta, at all events until a late period of its history.

After the Persian wars, the subject of Athenian prost.i.tution is revealed in a clearer light. As a reaction from the looseness of the age of the Pisistratidae, the Solonian laws were reaffirmed and their severity heightened. It has been imagined, from certain obscure pa.s.sages in Greek authors, that the courtesans formed several corporations, each of which was responsible for the acts of all its members. They were liable to vexatious prosecutions for such acts as inciting men to commit crime, ruining thoughtless youths, fomenting treason against the state, or committing impiety. Against such charges it was rarely possible to establish a sound defense. If the accuser was positive, the Areopagus, notoriously biased against courtesans, unhesitatingly condemned the culprit to death, or imposed on her corporation a heavy fine. In this way, says an old author, the state frequently contrived to get back from these women the money they obtained from their lovers. Before the famous case of Phryne, they were wholly at the mercy of their profligate a.s.sociates. A man only needed to threaten an accusation of impiety or the like to obtain a receipt in full. Phryne, so long the favorite of the Athenians, was thus accused of various vague offenses by a common informer named Euthias. Her friend Bacchis fortunately persuaded Hyperides, the orator, to undertake her case, and he softened the judges by exhibiting her marvelous beauty in a moment of affected pa.s.sion. "Henceforth," says the hetaira Bacchis to Myrrhina, "our profits are secured by law."[32]

At this time, that is to say, at the height of Athenian prosperity, there were four cla.s.ses of women who led dissolute lives at Athens. The highest in rank and repute were the _Hetairae_, or kept women, who lived in the best part of the city, and exercised no small influence over the manners and even the politics of the state. Next came the _Auletrides_, or flute-players, who were dancers as well. They were usually foreigners, bearing some resemblance to the opera-dancers of the last century, and they combined the most unblus.h.i.+ng debauchery with their special calling.

The lowest cla.s.s of prost.i.tutes were the _Dicteriades_, already mentioned.

They were originally bound to reside at the Piraeus, the sea-port of Athens, some four miles from the city, and were forbidden to walk out by day, or to offend the eyes of the public by open indecency. Lastly came the _Concubines_, who were slaves owned by rich men with the knowledge and consent of their wives, serving equally the pa.s.sions of their master and the caprices of their mistress. These all paid a tax to the state, called _p.o.r.nikon Telos_, which was farmed out to speculators, who levied it with proverbial harshness upon the unfortunate women. In the time of Pericles the revenue from this source was large.

All cla.s.ses, too, wore garments of many colors. The law originally specified "flowered robes" as the costume of courtesans; but this leading to difficulties, a farther enactment prohibited prost.i.tutes from wearing precious stuffs, such as scarlet or purple, or jewels. Thenceforth the custom, which appears to have been general throughout the Greek cities and colonies, prescribed cheap robes, with flowers or stripes of many colors embroidered or painted on them. To this a part of the women added garlands of roses. It was lawful in some cities for courtesans to wear light, transparent garments; but at Sparta, as may be imagined, the reverse was the rule, semi-nudity being the badge of virtuous women.[33]

Perhaps the most singular of the marks by which a Greek courtesan was known was her hair. It is said that no law prescribed the habit; if so, it must have been a sort of _esprit de corps_ which led all courtesans to dye their hair of a flaxen or blonde color. Allusions to this custom abound in the light literature of Greece. Frequently a flaxen wig was subst.i.tuted for the dyed locks. At a very late period in the history of Greece, modest women followed the fas.h.i.+on of sporting golden hair. This forms one of the subjects of reprimand addressed to the women of Greece by the early Christian preachers.[34]