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Sent: Fri 5/9/2008 4:46 PM Thanks to David Greenberg (hereafter "DG") for his further reply. He writes: : In the message quoted below, Terrence Lockyer : asks about the passage in Strabo that says that : the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth possessed : hetaira (prostitutes, or courtessans), not just : hierodules. The plural of "hetaira" is "hetairai", and in Strabo's Greek the nouns "hierodolous" and "hetairas", both accusative plurals, are grammatically in apposition; that is, the most natural interpretation is that Strabo means to say that the sanctuary had a thousand "hierodouloi" (feminine plural, despite the masculine form, because "hierodoulos" declines as a second declension masculine noun when referring to either sex or both, the feminine gender being indicated either by the article, or as in this case by context), who were "hetairai" (or vice versa) - the two words either side of the verb of possession (ekekthto) refer to the same people. DG writes further: : As I noted previously, Budin notes that the : passage is written in the past tense. Strabo is : referring to something that he believes existed : at an earlier point in the history of Corinth. : When he describes the temple as he observed it he : says nothing about this. Budin thinks that this is a : confused reference to a practice for which she : suppoies documentation: slave owners manumitting : their slaves by bringing them to the temple, in a : process by which they were "sold to the god." Some : did not stay at the temple, but led free lives, : married, etc. You may or may not find this : explanation persuasive, but you should read : the supporting evidence Budin marshalls in : support of it before deciding. I do not know on what basis DG wishes to presume that I would not do this, and indeed, this (i. e., look at Budin) is precisely what I also quite explicitly said that I would have to do, and I shall; however, I did acknowledge in my post the key criticism relating to relative date, and I mentioned some thoughts about that, including the fact that Pindar's text, a contemporary source, needs to be taken into account (including its sexual elements); and the fact that, if we dismiss Strabo's evidence on the basis of dating, then we cannot rely on his specific vocabulary for any part of our argument. That Strabo did not personally witness the practice in his day is not really that significant, however: quite apart from the distance of time, between the height of its wealth and power, and Strabo's day, the city of Korinth had suffered several setbacks, including destruction at the hands of a Roman army, so that the settlement (really a Roman re-foundation, as archaeological evidence of the layout also apparently makes clear) of Strabo's period was a very different place from the Korinth of Pindar's Xenophon four centuries earlier, and it would be more surprising if there were continuity at the site, than that there was not. Strabo IS, however, generally seen as an important document, precisely because he preserves information from important sources no longer extant. Naturally, like anyone, he could make mistakes, but unless we can show that he has made a mistake - and perhaps when I look at Budin I shall find that she does show that - the presumption has to be that he has good reason for his statements. I was aware (as my other post today shows) of the practice of manumission by fictive sale or transfer to a god; however, it is clear that not all cases of dedication of individuals to a sanctury represent this practice, and in order to be convinced, I at least would need to see evidence (which Budin may supply) that this practice is significantly more likely for this specific cult and site than what the ancient writers believed was actually the case, presumably on the basis of the sources to which they had access, but to which we no longer do. I can say, on the basis solely of what I do have before me, that I shall be very interested to see what Budin says, because there are elements in Strabo and other texts mentioning the Korinthian case that are extremely difficult to explain except in terms of some kind of sexual commerce (and the fact, if supported by evidence relevant to this particular site, that some women did not remain at the temple, and even married, would not in itself consitute decisive evidence that [a] there were no hetairai in the conventional sense associated in any way with the site, or [b] that the women who left did not operate as hetairai in the conventional sense while at the site). I can also say that the interpretation of the texts as evidence of sexual commerce is not wholly a modern one, and that it demonstrates at the very least that the contemporaries of Strabo, Diodoros, and Athenaios believed in the existence of "hetairai" belonging to the Korinthian cult of Aphrodite (though NOT, which I for one have never claimed, that there was in fact a ritual practice of "sacred prostitution"). That says something about some ancient perceptions of sexual commerce and its possible relation to religious sites, even if it does not get us to the truth of the matter at Korinth. Finally, DG writes: : I will add my own thought here. Let us suppose : for the sake of argument that Budin is mistaken : here, and that the temple really did have : prostitutes that were given to it by their slave- : owners. Let us also suppose that they actually : engaged in prostitution. This could mena only that : the temple was acting as the owner of a brothel. It : wouldn't mean that the prostitutes were priestesses, : or that their sexual activity with customers had any : religious significance. Modern temples and churches : have janitors, secretaries, etc. as employees, but : this doesn't mean that their activities have any : cultic significance. They are just doing a job. So : even if there were prostitutes, it wouldn't : establish the existence of what is variously : referred to as "cult prostitution," or "sacred : prostitution." My apologies for quoting the above in full, but I am somewhat puzzled by it, or rather by DG's feeling the need to state it as if in contradiction of my position, because, in fact, what DG writes here is more or less exactly what I have been arguing from the start of this thread: that the evidence is not sufficient to support the reading that some form of "prostitution" was practised that had ritual or "cult" significance; that there is no basis whatsoever in the texts for saying that the prostitutes or "hetairai" those texts describe were priestesses (a claim presumably deriving from a mistaken reading of Pindar fr 122 and / or the text in which it is preserved at Athenaios 13.33: the latter has them participating with Xenophon at the dedication, and the former associates them with Aphrodite, but neither detail, if true, would make them priestesses, any more than would the fact that numerous historical and legendary Greeks performed sacrifices and participated in religious behaviour, according to our sources, make them priests or priestesses); and that, on the face of it, all that the ancient texts tell us, and what their authors at least appear to have believed, is that there were once hetairai in the common sense at the Korinthian sanctuary of Aphrodite, and that at least some of these were women dedicated by Xenophon of Korinth and other men and women. As I have said already in this thread, and as DG appears to agree, this would - if the evidence on which it is based is accepted at face value - not amount to "sacred prostitution" or "cult prostitution" (= "prostitution with a ritual significance performed as part of a religious duty or observance"), but only to some form of sexual commerce engaged in by women associated with a cult site, or (some of) whose earnings contributed to it. A further possibility, that would also accord with the evidence I have seen, is that women might be manumitted through fictive transfer of ownership to the god, and then become or work as "hetairai" / prostitutes, who contributed earnings to the sanctuary as a form of thanks for their freedom. Sex work would, I imagine, be a possible route for at least some freed slaves, even if they had not actually or effectively been used as prostitutes by their owners; and some such procedure would also account for a dedication like Xenophon's (in Pindar) being so worthy of note, because it would involve relinquishing of assets of considerable monetary value to the former slave-owner. Terrence Lockyer Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: lockyert [at] mweb.co.za
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