Prostitution in ancient Rome was legal and licensed. Men of any social status were free to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval,[1] as long as they demonstrated self-control and moderation in the frequency and enjoyment of sex.[2] Brothels were part of the culture of ancient Rome, as popular places of entertainment for Roman men.[2]
Most prostitutes were female slaves or freedwomen. The balance of voluntary to forced prostitution can only be guessed at. Privately held slaves were considered property under Roman law, so it was legal for an owner to employ them as prostitutes. Pimping and prostitution were, however, considered disgraceful and dishonourable activities, and their practitioners were considered “infamous” (infames); for citizens, this meant loss of reputation and many of the rights and privileges attached to citizenship. Slave-owning patrons and investors may have sought to avoid loss of privilege by appointing slaves or freedmen to manage their clandestine investments.[3] Some large brothels in the 4th century, when Rome was becoming officially Christianized, seem to have been counted as tourist attractions and were possibly state-owned.[4]
Latin literature makes frequent reference to prostitutes. Historians such as Livy and Tacitus mention prostitutes who had acquired some degree of respectability through patriotic, law-abiding, or euergetic behavior. The high-class "call girl" (meretrix) is a stock character in Plautus's comedies, which were influenced by Greek models. The poems of Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Martial, and Juvenal, as well the Satyricon of Petronius, offer fictional or satiric glimpses of prostitutes. Real-world practices are documented by provisions of Roman law that regulate prostitution, and by inscriptions, especially graffiti from Pompeii. Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum from sites presumed to be brothels has also contributed to scholarly views on prostitution.[2]
Most scholarship on Roman prostitution implies a social hierarchy, whereby a meretrix ("woman who earns, paid woman"), is a free-born, higher-class registered prostitute, scortum (possibly from "hides, leather") is an impoverished low-class street-walker, and amica a purely euphemistic "lady-friend".[5] Witzke offers examples from Roman comedies to show that all these terms may be used to refer to the same individual, a hierarchy of politeness, with meretrix the most respectful, but equally used for a brothel slave worker and a high-class free prostitute. Scortum is an insult in some circumstances but affectionate banter in others, and amica is euphemistic, used in Roman comedies by naive adolescent clients to downplay the commercial basis of their relationship. There are no low-class street prostitutes in Roman comedies.[6]
In most modern scholarship, meretrix (plural: meretrices) is taken to be the standard term for a registered female prostitute, a higher class of sex worker — the more pejorative scortum can be used for prostitutes of either gender, with a distinctly condemnatory edge when used by Roman moralists. Unregistered or casual prostitutes fall under the broad category prostibulae, "lower class"; the relatively uncommon lupa, (from Lupus femina, "she-wolf") is rarely attested in the literature but was probably common among the lower social classes. To Adams, lupa suggests a particularly low, predatory prostitute who works from graveyards.[7]
Although both women and men might engage male or female prostitutes, female prostitutes far outnumbered males, and evidence for female prostitution is the more ample.[8] A stable legal definition of "prostitute" came late in Roman legal history. It defined a prostitute as someone sexually promiscuous, who received payment for sex. The greater emphasis in this legal couplet was on promiscuity, not payment. Prostitutes were thought to do what they did because they had an excessive appetite for sex, and pimps (lenones) through greed for money.[9]