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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2019
In her book The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008), Stephanie Budin compiles and analyses an impressive array of literary sources which describe, or have been interpreted as describing, several practices that modern scholars have collectively and variously called sacred, ritual, cultic or temple prostitution. In general, as Budin explains, ‘[s]acred prostitution is the sale of a person's body for sexual purposes where some portion (if not all) of the money or goods received for this transaction belongs to a deity … usually Aphrodite’. Three major subtypes include ‘once-in-a-lifetime prostitution and/or sale of virginity in honor of a goddess’, activity that ‘involves women (and men?) who are professional prostitutes and who are owned by a deity or a deity's sanctuary’, and ‘a temporary type of sacred prostitution, where the women (and men?) are either prostitutes for a limited period of time before being married, or only prostitute themselves during certain rituals’.
I wish to thank Jeffrey Beneker, Joshua D. Sosin, A.D. Morrison and the anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments.
1 Budin, S., The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity (Cambridge, 2008), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Budin's book is an excellent guide to previous scholarship on the subject. For a recent concise overview, see also S.G. Pembroke, ‘Prostitution, sacred’, in OCD 4.
2 Budin (n. 1), 12.
3 Budin (n. 1), 1.
4 Budin (n. 1), 270–86.
5 Lib. Ēthopoeia 18 (= Progymnasmata 11.18). Greek text: Foerster, R., Libanii Opera, vol. 8 (Leipzig, 1915), 414–16Google Scholar. Authorship: Norman, A.F., Libanius: Selected Orations, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)Google Scholar, xlix rejects the exercise as spurious, and Foerster, R. and Münscher, K., ‘Libanios’, RE 12 (1925)Google Scholar, 2522 attribute it to Nicolaus (now generally called Ps.-Nicolaus), a late antique rhetorician whose exercises were included in manuscripts of Libanius’ Progymnasmata. See also n. 10 below.
6 Budin (n. 1), 3.
7 For sources and discussion, see Budin (n. 1), 270–6; Lightfoot, J.L., Lucian: On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford, 2003), 328–31Google Scholar (note the reservations at 329: ‘Perhaps predictably, [Aphaca] was supposed, like Byblos and Heliopolis, to have featured sacred prostitution, of which we hear, perhaps no less predictably, only when Constantine closed it down’) and cf. 323–5 for discussion of sacred/ritual prostitution more generally; Cameron, A. and Hall, S.G., Eusebius: Life of Constantine (Oxford, 1999), 303Google Scholar (Aphaca as a site of ‘sacred prostitution’); Millar, F., The Roman Near East: 31 b.c. – a.d. 337 (Cambridge, 1993), 217Google Scholar (Aphaca as a site of ‘ritual prostitution’).
8 Transl. Cameron and Hall (n. 7), 144–5.
9 Adapted from Gibson, C.A., Libanius's Progymnasmata: Model Exercises in Greek Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Atlanta, 2008), 403–5Google Scholar.
10 Similar concerns are raised by Socrates, Hist. eccl. 1.18.7 with regard to sexual practices at Phoenician Heliopolis, where wives (he alleges) were held in common by law, and ‘for this reason their offspring were in doubt, for there was no distinction between parents and offspring’ (διὰ τοῦτο ἀμφίβολα μὲν ἦν τὰ τικτόμενα παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς, γονέων γὰρ καὶ τέκνων οὐδεμία διάκρισις ἦν …). Cf. also the ‘Introduction of a Law’ exercise by Ps.-Nicolaus (it is not by Libanius, according to Norman [n. 5], xlix, and it is attributed to Nicolaus by Foerster and Münscher [n. 5], 2522; Greek text in Foerster [n. 5], 568–71; translation in Gibson [n. 9], 529): ‘All races of creatures that actually exist naturally originate in marriage alike, but nevertheless are joined by marriages not alike; for the unreasoning animal's way of life, naturally robbed of the power of discretion, mixes everyone together in marriages, and allows everyone to mate with one another. By this, a male child is also joined with the female from whom he came, and he becomes a father by intercourse with her with whom he has mated, and this prevents each from learning what is born as a result of his intercourse. And the idea of “child” and “father” is unclear among them, all those who decide to join in marriage.’
11 For the expression ‘bitter workshop’, cf. ‘the bitter workshop of Satan’ (τὸ πικρὸν τοῦ Σατανᾶ ἐργαστήριον) in the tenth-century Vitae Sancti Basilii Junioris 1.52. Greek text in McGrath, S., Sullivan, D.F. and Talbot, A.-M. M., The Life of Saint Basil the Younger: Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Moscow Version (Washington, D.C., 2014)Google Scholar.
12 Budin (n. 1), 3.
13 It is unclear whether the speaker is free or a slave. The word ‘whore’ (πόρνη) in the title, and the fact that her clients are brought to her by pimps (προαγωγῶν), may suggest slave status. The word ‘courtesan’ in the text (ἑταιρῶν), and the fact that she is able to read and write, may instead suggest free status. Less certain is the significance of two silences in the text: the speaker gives the impression that it is her choice to leave her profession (a slave would have no choice), and there is no mention of the consequences of doing so, such as being pursued as a runaway or punished by the pimps. The author may have felt that addressing these complications would detract from his delineation of the woman's character (ēthos) and emotional state (pathos) at this powerful moment—the rhetorical goal of every ēthopoeia.
14 Budin (n. 1), 260–1.
15 See Budin (n. 1), 265–70 on Cyprian Aphrodite/Venus as whore in Christian apologetic.
16 Russell, D.A., Greek Declamation (Cambridge, 1983), 21–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.