A Drop of History 125

Prostitution (2)
When brothels were next door to churches

When Christianity prevailed in the Roman world, a solution to the widespread phenomenon of prostitution had to be found. Theoretically, its prohibition and condemnation were absolute. Besides, the fact that many pagan temples doubled up as brothels was one of the main arguments of the Christian theologians against older religions. But is it possible to eradicate prostitution from human society? Probably not.

Consequently, church officials decided to condemn the sin, but practically to look the other way. “We cast prostitution away from us,” they said, “in the margins of society, and whoever cares can repent afterwards.” Even special convents were created for prostitutes who wanted to get back on the straight and narrow. But despite the condemnation of sin and the glorification of virginity, there have been church fathers who, in moments of candour, were forced to admit the social utility of love for sale. Saint Anthony said: “Ban prostitution, and then immorality will sweep away everything.” Thomas Aquinas was more refined: “Prostitution in a city is like the cesspool in a palace. If the cesspool is removed, the palace will be choked by filth and stench.”

The most inventive of all was, later, King Louis XIII of France. In order to be on the good side of both the church and his lascivious subjects, he imposed the following incredible law: “All brothels must be situated at a distance of no more than 300 metres from a church, so those who leave the brothel can easily reach a church for purification.” I suppose that, when he drafted this hypocritical piece of legislation, all his political and ecclesiastical advisors exclaimed, “A brilliant idea, Majesty.” The Louises in general had a tradition of such brilliant ideas. Louis IX forbade his crusaders who marched on the Holy Land from taking prostitutes with them, because that was a grave sin, but he allowed them to consort with Arab prostitutes, because they were not Christian and therefore not subject to the prohibition.

The first municipal brothels appeared in the 13th century, especially in cities that were trade centres, where merchant caravans often passed through. Against the fear of wealthy strangers seducing local men’s wives, the communities themselves opened brothels, securing both their peace of mind and some extra income for the community coffers. In Florence and Venice, on the other hand, between 1360 and 1400, there were dozens of state-run brothels with a very specific mission. As diseases, especially the Black Death, had decimated the local population, the city authorities decided to offer prostitutes to young men, for a very low price, so they would get to know and enjoy sex and subsequently resort to marriage, which was a necessary step for the population to increase. It was a kind of state-subsidised prostitution.

In addition, it was common practice in the Middle Ages (tacitly condoned by the church) to encourage young men to go to brothels, preferring them to contra naturam practices like sodomy and masturbation. The Roman Catholic Church has officially admitted several times that it considers relations with common women a lesser sin than reviled homosexuality. The Middle Ages, as well, were the heyday of fair prostitutes, women who went from one local fair to another in wagons, in which they offered their services to the people gathered there.

Finally, there were the infamous camp followers, who were the worst of their kind. They followed the kings’ and nobles’ mercenary troops on their wars and raids and were responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other epidemics. The lowest of the low, they were ragged, filthy, and utterly ruthless. They looted the areas that the troops had raided, and they encouraged the mercenaries to rape and kill the women of the cities they took: camp followers hated decent women for their good luck to have homes and families.

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 124

Prostitution (1)
When the state lived on brothel taxes

The first state brothels to be found in world history were established here in Greece, under the famous legislation of Solon the Athenian. In his legislative reformation, in the 6th century BCE, the father of democracy makes a distinction between hetairai (sophisticated courtesans) and common prostitutes, and forces the latter to ply their trade in houses under state regulation, which would provide the state with income through taxation.

Of course, prostitution itself, in all its forms, is much older; only nobody had thought of putting it under state regulation before. Serious scholars discredit the famous saying that considers prostitution the oldest profession. Elias Petropoulos, for instance, claims that theft and banditry are definitely older trades, since they originate in the first formation of human societies, while systematic prostitution appeared much later, at the time of permanent settlements and the establishment of the family as an institution. As long as humans were hunting nomads, sexual relationships were unrestricted and guilt-free.

The first form of prostitution was sacred. The union of a priestess with a man, in the presence of the faithful and in an environment of group spiritual elevation, was a symbolic act of fertility in Ishtar’s temples in Babylon. The even older tradition of a virgin’s defloration by a priest in the ancient Persian temples had the same meaning. In Ishtar’s temples, according to Herodotus, all the women of the country were required to prostitute themselves once in their life, as a sacrifice to the goddess. They would go to the temple, wait until a stranger dropped a silver coin at their feet, and have sex with him. According to the great Greek historian, beautiful and noble women were soon done with their obligation, but there were some unfortunate ones, ugly or disfigured, who waited in the temple for three or four years until someone would deign to choose them.

In ancient Egypt, female prisoners of war were sent to prostitute themselves in Ammon’s temples. The Old Testament, in the Book of Hosea, mentions that strangers in Canaan lodged in the houses of common women. In ancient Corinth, the brothels dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite were famous. In classical Athens and Rome, as well, prostitution was quite widespread. Wealthy Hellenes had their hetairai, women of superior education and sophistication, who included sexual satisfaction in their companionship, while affluent Romans had their respective refined meretrices. Additionally, in both states, slave women engaged in legitimate prostitution in their masters’ households. But for the poor, the strangers, the soldiers and sailors, there were houses of ill repute and common women.

The one thing that was unthinkable in classical times, both in Greece and Rome, is what we take for granted today: the fact that a man marries in order to be sexually satisfied by his wife. For the poor, that was the case de facto, since with marriage they had a woman for free, but for the upper classes such a notion was borderline immoral. Marriage was a legal bond that provided heirs to the family property, and married women had the obligation to bear children and manage the household where those children would be raised. The exclusion of married women from society and the restrictions imposed on their lives had to do primarily with ensuring the legitimacy of their children and only secondarily with morals.

For sexual satisfaction, Romans would turn to prostitutes, not their wives. The words of Cato the Elder, who was an extreme conservative Roman, opposing any change and reformation and supporting extreme adherence to ancestral tradition, are famous. He is credited with saying to a friend whom he met coming out of a brothel, “Well done, young man. This is where a man should satisfy his urges, not soliciting married women.”

However, during the times of Rome’s absolute dominion, the situation grew out of all control and several emperors started establishing laws to restrict the phenomenon. Domitian prohibited the buying and selling of young boys, while later Constantine and Theodosius imposed crushing taxes on brothels, in an effort to limit them. Justinian too was a dedicated enemy of prostitution and persecuted procurers relentlessly. It is not known what opinion was held on the subject by his wife Theodora, who, before becoming empress, had been one of the most notorious common prostitutes in the empire.

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 118

The Victorian Age
The incredible quirks of a kooky queen

The famous Victorian Age of Great Britain has gone down in history as a historical synonym of conservatism, rigidity, and one-sidedness. Old Queen Victoria, a maniacal woman who had been reigning for half a century as absolute monarch, had imposed iron discipline in Buckingham Palace, but also all over the country. The climate in the palace was for years so cold and tedious that lively people invariably decamped away from it. Palace protocol was dictated by the kooky queen herself, and the more years went by, the stricter and more complex it grew.

Laughter in the huge royal complex was effectively forbidden. Nobody sat in the queen’s presence. Diplomats would kneel. Ladies, on approaching the queen, had to let down the trains of their gowns (which were mandatorily three and a half metres long), to be held up by servants with sticks. Ladies’ décolletages were of a specific width as well. Anything cut lower than what the queen had determined was expressly forbidden, but even for something cut higher, the chief chamberlain’s permission was required. There were different hairstyles specified for married and unmarried women, but all without exception had to wear three ostrich feathers on their brow. Whoever addressed the queen was required to agree with her, whatever she said.

The tasks of the staff were so strictly predermined that the entire palace was bogged down in an unstirrable stillness. All initiative was forbidden. Charles Greville mentions an incredible incident in his memoirs: A wooden door in the palace kitchen was damaged. The head cook drafted a memo on the need of replacing it. The memo was forwarded to the kitchen supervisor, then to the housekeeper, then to the chief chamberlain, then to the works overseer, who was an employee of the department of royal forests and roads, since no ordinary wood would make it to the palace – only that from royal forests. The door took two years to be fixed.

The staff’s wages were so low that, in such a conservative climate, the employees engaged in barefaced – and legal – thievery. Based on an old law, candle stubs and used brooms belonged to the staff. The result was that candles were lit just on one occasion and brooms used for just one sweeping, and the staff supplemented their income by selling those objects. Tons of candles and thousands of brooms were bought for the palace every year, but none dared touch the subject, in the general climate of preserving tradition on all levels.

Victoria, naturally, not only abhorred smoking and prohibited it everywhere in the palace, but also considered it a grave sin. Nobody dared smoke, not even in the remotest rooms of the huge building. There is an anecdote about a certain prime minister who walked out of a session of the Cabinet and shortly afterwards was discovered in another room, lying on the floor with his head in the fireplace, blowing his cigar smoke up into the chimney, so that the queen would not smell it.

This rigid protocol was often broken by foreign visitors, who either did not fear the queen’s eccentricities or their characters could not conform to the stifling Victorian way. Of course, all different behaviour was noted in the British press as an awful scandal that shocked the queen. One of those was the visit of Vittorio Emanuele II, King of Sardinia, a flashy and noisy Italian. During the formal ceremony of awarding membership to the Order of the Garter, Vittorio Emanuele jokingly stretched out his leg for the queen to put the garter on, which naturally was branded a supreme offence.

Another scandal took place during the formal dinner that the queen gave in honour of the Shah of Persia, who was not much different from his Oriental subjects. Victoria nearly fainted on seeing the Shah ignore the silverware, take the food out of the china plates with his hands, chew it, spit it out into his hand again, examine it suspiciously, and finally, deciding that he did not like it, throwing it on the floor under the table, at the guests’ feet.

When Queen Victoria died, Britain heaved a collective sigh of relief. Tired of her conservatism, her subjects swung straight to the opposite extreme. It was telling that, at the maniacal old woman’s funeral itself, despite strict protocol, most attendees puffed on their cigars in the palace, waiting for the funeral procession to get on its way.

The queen was unlucky on her last journey…

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved