Matthew Dillon

Ancient Greece : social and historical documents from archaic times to the death of Socrates (c. 800-399 BC)

This book presents a wide range of documents on Greek social and political history from 800 to 399 BC (the archaic period to the death of Socrates), from all over the Greek world. Evidence for developments within Greece during this period, in areas which include tyranny, the position of women, slavery, colonisation, the city-state, and religion, is taken not only from historical sources, but from inscriptions, graffiti, law codes, epitaphs, decrees, drama, and poetry, and each section covers sources not only from the Greek mainland but from Greek settlements as far apart as Sicily and Italy, Cyrene, Egypt, Thrace, Asia Minor and the Black Sea. Translations have been kept as close as possible to the original, particularly those from poetry and epigraphy. All are accompanied by detailed and succinct comments putting them into their social and historical context. Relevant and up-to-date bibliographies for each document are provided. Many passages appear here translated for the first time into English or any modern language. The work presents a lively and innovative look at the Greek world as a whole, with its emphasis on a wide range of evidence for Greek culture clearly proving that Ancient Greece consisted of far more than just Athens and Sparta.

The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity. By Stephanie Budin

Pindar in the fifth century BC describes the temple prostitutes (sacred prostitutes) in ancient Corinth: before competing in the Olympic festival Xenophon of Corinth vowed that if victorious he would dedicate prostitutes (hetairai) to Aphrodite. He won the competition and dedicated the prostitutes to the goddess, as was the custom of his city (Fragment 122, quoted by Athenaeus and the ancient commentator [scholiast] on Pindar). There were clearly temple slaves who were dedicated to the service of Aphrodite’s temple in Corinth. These slaves met the needs of clients, with the financial proceeds going to the temple. Greek deities not only owned sanctuaries and their attached lands but slaves, flocks of livestock, and impressive collections of dedications of gold and silver. This—and similar ‘‘cast-iron’’ evidence from Sicily and Asia Minor guaranteeing the existence of sacred prostitutes in the ancient world (see especially pp. 112–209)—is rather inconvenient evidence for Stephanie Budin, who needlessly wants to argue away the existence of sacred prostitutes in the ancient world. Like a dogged undergraduate, Budin does not present the reader with an interesting sociological methodology but adopts the time honoured lecture handout tradition of the ‘‘blow by blow’’ approach to the relevant ancient sources, taking individual pieces of evidence one by one and refuting their value for proving the existence of sacred prostitution. For the Near East, she provides an overview of some current scholarship and seems to be on firm ground in reiterating recent work. Perhaps she would fare better in the classical material where she could develop her own ideas. But her use of translations of the ancient texts from the Web does little to inspire confidence in her research. Much, however, about the pitfalls of research is to be learned from this book. Ancient sources are just that—sources—and while it is important to scrutinise them carefully, they rather than an individual scholar’s viewpoint are what, in the final analysis, counts. Budin is correct that some evidence cited for sacred prostitution might not stand up to vigorous scrutiny. But this does not invalidate all the material. There is very little bibliography cited in the footnotes, and the level of research is very shallow. There are two very badly produced line drawings of vases illustrating homoerotic themes of no relevance (206–7), but no representative illustration of the voluminous artistic evidence for Greek prostitution. But this book at least is a slight improvement on Budin’s The Ancient Greeks: New Perspectives (2004), which contained numerous incorrect spellings of Greek terms, no scholarly knowledge of the period it attempted to cover, and non-scholarly colloquialisms (which also mar the present book). The Myth of Sacred Prostitution does not represent the reality of sacred prostitution in the Near East and ancient Greece. There were sacred prostitutes in the ancient world; Pindar and Strabo provide irrefutable proof that only those who squirm at what they view as ‘‘unpalatable’’ features of ancient Greek culture can deny. Perhaps instead of sacred prostitution the phrase ‘‘temple prostitutes’’ could be adopted: Aphrodite owned slave women whose services brought a profit to her. These were no different from ordinary prostitutes except that they were not owned by a brothel owner (a pornoboskos), but by the goddess herself.