Prostitution in ancient Rome

• 1. Introduction

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  Prostitution in ancient Rome was not a secret vice but a licensed, regulated institution woven into the fabric of daily life. It occupied streets, bathhouses, taverns, grain mills, the arches beneath the circus, and the lanes between the homes of respectable families. The Roman state collected taxes on it. Festivals honoured the gods who presided over it. And the Latin language developed an elaborate vocabulary to describe its many tiers, from the high-class meretrix down to the lupa, the "she-wolf" who worked from graveyards.

  What made Roman prostitution so striking was the set of contradictions that surrounded it. Men of any social rank could hire prostitutes of either sex with no moral stigma, provided they showed restraint. Yet the prostitute herself was stripped of nearly every legal right she had. Pimps who profited from her labour were ranked among the most disgraced figures in Roman society, alongside actors and gladiators and executioners. And the wealth of the dictator Sulla is said to have been founded on a high-class prostitute's bequest.

  How did a society regulate something it simultaneously depended on and despised? What laws shaped the lives of the women and men who sold sex? And what can the graffiti of Pompeii, the poems of Catullus and Ovid, and the surviving stone cells of the Lupanar tell us about the reality behind the rhetoric? Those are the questions this documentary will pursue.

• 2. A Vocabulary of Status

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  Latin offered Romans several words for a prostitute, and the differences between them carried real social weight. Meretrix, literally "woman who earns" or "paid woman," was the most respectful term, used in Roman comedies even for brothel slave workers and high-class free prostitutes alike. Scortum, possibly derived from the word for hides or leather, could function as a scathing insult from a Roman moralist or as affectionate banter between friends, depending entirely on context. Amica, meaning "lady-friend," was pure euphemism: the term used by naive adolescent characters in comedies to avoid acknowledging the commercial nature of their relationships.

  Scholar Witzke has shown that all three terms could refer to the same individual, forming a hierarchy of politeness rather than a fixed social taxonomy. Below these came prostibulae, a broad category for unregistered or casual sex workers, and lupa, "she-wolf," a term so rare in literature that it was probably more common in everyday speech than in formal writing. To the scholar Adams, lupa conjured a particularly low figure, someone who worked from graveyards.

  The legal definition of a prostitute arrived late in Roman legal history, and when it finally came, it placed greater emphasis on promiscuity than on payment. Romans believed that prostitutes engaged in sex because of an excessive appetite for it, and that pimps, known as lenones, did so out of greed. This moral framing shaped everything about how Roman law treated the women it also depended on, because a registered meretrix had to walk to the office of the urban magistrates, the aediles, and put her name on a list that would follow her for the rest of her life.

• 3. Infamia and the Law

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  Infamia was the Roman legal condition of social disgrace, and prostitutes were classified as infames from the moment they registered. They could be subjected to physical punishment. They could not give evidence in court. Freeborn Roman men and women were legally forbidden to marry them. Because loss of chastity was considered irreparable, the infamia of a prostitute was permanent, attached to her for life.

  The same brand of disgrace was shared by pimps and madams, by actors and gladiators, by butchers, gravediggers, and executioners. Romans assumed that gladiators and dancers were available to provide paid sexual services, and courtesans named in the historical record are sometimes impossible to distinguish from actresses and other performers. The distinction was not always important to those making it.

  The several Leges Juliae, a set of laws issued by rulers of the Julian dynasty, tried to shore up the social hierarchy after the disruption of civil wars. They penalised celibacy, promoted marriage, rewarded couples who produced many children, and punished adultery with degradation and exile. Augustus used these laws to exile his own daughter Julia for what he called blatant disobedience, treason, and serial adulteries. An elite woman convicted of adultery could be stripped of her status as matrona, lose a portion of her dowry, and be reclassified as a meretrix. Her husband, if he failed to divorce her upon proof of adultery, was treated by law as having profited from her behaviour in the manner of a pimp, and shared her disgrace.

  The Larinum decree of Tiberius went further still, forbidding members of the aristocracy and their relatives to the third generation from "prostituting" themselves on stage, at the arena, or at the circus for applause or money. The concern was not morality alone but the preservation of the dignitas of Rome's ruling class, which required that bodies not be exposed for hire or for public spectacle.

• 4. Tax, Registration, and Money

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  Starting in the reign of Caligula, every prostitute in the Roman Empire was liable to pay a tax equal to the charge she made for a single client. The tax applied whether she was actively working or retired. In some cases it fell on the prostitute herself; in others, on the brothel-owner or the pimp. At first, professional tax collectors known as publicani gathered it, but responsibility soon passed to the military, and in Rome itself that meant the Praetorian Guard.

  Permits were also issued to prostitutes, possibly in exchange for an additional payment, allowing them to ply their trade openly on specific festival days. The money raised was considered ritually polluted. The emperor Severus Alexander eventually redirected it away from the general state fund and toward the upkeep of public buildings, administered by the aediles. The tax was finally abolished in the 4th century under the Christian emperor Theodosius.

  In Pompeii, recorded prices ranged from 2 to 20 asses per client. For comparison, a Roman legionary soldier earned around 10 asses per day, the equivalent of 225 denarii per year, and a single as could purchase around 324 grams of bread. Across the Empire, prices ranged more broadly, between 1 and 25 asses, yielding an average daily income of around 10 asses before any fees owed to a pimp or brothel. That was roughly twice what a male day-labourer earned, though most of the money passed upward to pimps and owners.

  The writer Lucilius recorded that the lowest payment for an unspecified service was a single as. At the other end of the scale, no upper limit is apparent. Wealthy courtesans could accumulate enough to make significant bequests, and some were counted among Rome's most influential women. Acca Larentia, in Rome's foundation myth, gifted land to the Roman people from wealth earned during her years as a meretrix.

• 5. Dress, Display, and the Toga

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  Roman clothing was a legible social code, and prostitutes occupied an ambiguous position within it. The stola, a long body-concealing garment worn over a foot-length tunic, marked out respectable adult freeborn women and matronae on formal occasions. It was explicitly forbidden to prostitutes and adulteresses, who were barred from displaying that symbol of domestic virtue.

  Some modern scholars have argued that meretrices instead wore the toga, normally the formal attire of male citizens, either by compulsion or by choice. The legal theorist McGinn reads this as an assimilation of the adulterous female citizen to the prostitute, since both wore the toga. Edwards argues that the toga, when worn by a meretrix, separated her visually from respectable women and signalled her sexual availability. But the scholar Radicke, writing in 2002, contends that most of these modern interpretations are attempts to rationalise misunderstandings passed down by Late Antique scholiasts, and that only enslaved prostitutes could be compelled to wear any particular garment by their owners or pimps.

  Radicke speculates that the "woman's toga" referred to in ancient sources may have been a toga exigua, a skimpy version that would have exposed the lower leg and parts of the torso; no respectable woman, he argues, would have worn such a garment. Free prostitutes and adulteresses, by contrast, could wear what they wished.

  Higher-end courtesans wore bright colours described by Latin authors as colores meretricii, and decorated themselves with jewelled anklets. Expensive courtesans wore garments of transparent silk. Several Roman authors describe prostitutes displaying themselves in the nude at the entrances to their cells, though the adjective nudus could also mean simply "stripped of one's outer clothing." The erotic wall paintings of Pompeii and Herculaneum show women presumed to be prostitutes wearing what amounts to a Roman equivalent of a bra even during sex acts, which complicates the literary accounts.

• 6. The Lupanar and Its World

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  Roman brothels went by several names. The most common was lupanar or lupanarium, from lupa, "she-wolf." Another term was fornix, meaning a vaulted space or cellar, a word that passed through Latin into the English "fornication." The regionary lists for the city of Rome placed lupanaria in concentrations in Regio II: the Caelian Hill, the Suburra neighbourhood along the city walls, and the valley between the Caelian and Esquiline Hills. That district also housed the Great Market, cook-shops, barber shops, the office of the public executioner, and barracks for foreign soldiers. It was among the busiest and most densely populated areas in the city.

  Seneca described the smell of a regular brothel as a mixture of characteristic odors in poorly ventilated spaces and the smoke from burning lamps: "you reek still of the soot of the brothel," he wrote accusingly. The only surviving identified brothel in Pompeii, the Lupanar, shows how poor the working conditions were for the prostitutes who lived there.

  The better establishments offered hair-dressers to repair damage done during sexual encounters, and water boys, called aquarioli, who waited at the door with bowls for washing. Over the entrance to each cubicle hung a small tablet, called a titulus, bearing the occupant's name and her price. When she was with a client, the tablet was turned to show the reverse side, marked occupata, meaning "occupied" or "in service." Plautus refers to this system in his comedies.

  The cubicles themselves typically contained a bronze lamp, or in the cheaper establishments a clay one, and a cot or pallet covered with a blanket or patchwork quilt. Some brothels may have operated their own internal coin systems, called spintria. Rent from a brothel was considered a legitimate source of income under Roman law. Some large brothels in the 4th century, by then in a Rome that was becoming officially Christianised, appear to have been counted as tourist attractions and may have been state-owned.

• 7. Courtesans, Power, and Influence

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  Cytheris, a former slave who had worked as an actress before becoming a courtesan, was scandalising Rome by 49 BC. In that year, Cicero was appalled to find that Pompey, despite being married, had allowed Cytheris to occupy the seat of honour at a dinner normally reserved for the family materfamilias. The scholar Richard Frank, writing in the context of Augustan poetry, sees Cytheris as an example of the charming, educated, and artistically accomplished women who contributed to a new romantic ideal that Ovid and others developed in their erotic elegies; she was a welcome guest at the highest levels of Roman society.

  Roughly a hundred and twenty years later, Suetonius records a story about Antonia Caenis, the mistress of the emperor Vespasian. Caenis had been a former slave and freedwoman, described by Suetonius as capable and talented. When she offered familial kisses of greeting to Vespasian's sons, the elder son Titus accepted them courteously. The younger, Domitian, refused and offered his hand instead. Suetonius presents this moment not as a commentary on Caenis but as evidence of Domitian's insufferable arrogance.

  The 1st-century historian Valerius Maximus records a story that illuminates the psychological complexity of forced male prostitution. A freedman had been compelled by his former owner to prostitute himself during his time as a slave. When his own young daughter lost her virginity to her tutor, the freedman killed her. Valerius presents this as a case study in sexual psychology, though it also reveals the lasting damage inflicted by coerced sexual labour. The ne serva prostituatur clause, a provision sometimes attached to the sale papers of female slaves, gives a different angle on the same problem: a seller could stipulate that the slave must not be used as a prostitute after the sale, and if any subsequent owner violated this, she would be automatically freed.

• 8. Religion, Festivals, and Flora

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  April was sacred to Venus, the divine patron of sex, love, and prostitutes. On the first of the month, women gathered to worship Fortuna Virilis and Venus Verticordia together at the Veneralia festival. Venus Verticordia, whose cult had been introduced by the Roman elite to encourage traditional moral values among women of the middle and upper classes, was honoured alongside a goddess of manly good fortune. Ovid records that at this festival, prostitutes and respectable matronae together participated in the ritual cleansing and reclothing of the cult statue of Fortuna Virilis.

  On the 23rd of April, prostitutes and what the sources call "common girls" gave cult to Venus Erycina, whose temple stood just outside Rome's ritual boundary. Venus Erycina had Carthaginian origins and was considered a respectable but not entirely reputable aspect of Venus. Her festival coincided with the Vinalia, which celebrated the everyday wine of Venus and the sacred vintage reserved for Jupiter and the Roman elite. Two days later, on the 25th of April, pimped-out boys, described in the sources as pueri lenonii, had their own festival day, which also coincided with the Robigalia, a festival protecting grain crops from fungal disease.

  The Floralia, held from the 27th of April and continuing for six days of games during the Imperial period, honoured Flora, goddess of fertility and flowers. Juvenal and Lactantius both describe the festival as typically plebeian in character: disinhibited, colourful, and licentious. According to their accounts, it featured erotic dancing and stripping by prostitutes, instigated by the crowd. Juvenal also refers to nude dancing and possibly to prostitutes fighting in mock gladiatorial contests. The Vestals, at the opposite extreme of the Roman moral spectrum, were considered models of perfect chastity, protected when going about their public duties by lictors empowered to remove any "impure persons" not merely from the priestess's path but from her line of sight, by force if necessary.