Review: Prostitution in the Roman World

Reviewed Work(s): The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World. A Study of Social
History and the Brothel by T. A. J. McGinn
Review by: Sandra R. Joshel
Source: The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Apr., 2006), pp. 183-185
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3873582
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 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 183
if we also investigate the likely effects of various property arrangements on the
economic incentives affecting the behaviour of the key actors within it.

Tulane University/Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton DENNIS P. KEHOE

kehoe@tulane.edu

PROSTITUTION IN THE ROMAN WORLD

MCGINN (T.A.J.) The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World.
A Study of Social History and the Brothel. Pp. xvi + 359, pls. Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004. Cased, US$65,
?40.50. ISBN: 0-472-11362-3.
doi: 10. 1017/S0009840X05000958

McGinn's book explores the 'business of female prostitution' at Rome from the
second century B.C. to the third century A.D. (p. 2) and makes an excellent companion
to his 1998 Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome. In the current volume,
M. is especially concerned with how and where sex was sold, focussing in particular,
though not exclusively, on Roman brothels. He argues that there were more brothels
and venues for the sale of sex in Pompeii and that their locations 'were more widely
distributed, than most scholars have believed in recent years' (p. 2). His observations
lead him to 'the main thesis of this book': 'the Romans did not know moral zoning' (p.
207). Along the path of his central argument are insightful discussions of the workings
of patriarchy in the Roman economy, the interrelations of gender and slavery,
lower-class life in the city, and urban topography, especially at Pompeii.
After an introduction that maps his project, M. charts the 'basic economics' of
Roman prostitution. He surveys the evidence for the wide variety of settings of
prostitution (brothels, taverns, restaurants, inns, baths, theatres, amphitheatres, and
circuses) and its association with lower-class housing. He explores the ownership and
management of brothels and figures the potential earnings of prostitutes by looking
at prices and possible numbers of sex acts. Comparison with the wages of labourers
and soldiers introduces two significant points. First, 'venal sex was accessible to many
low-status males' (p. 54). Second, 'even low-priced prostitutes earned more than two
or three times the wages of unskilled male urban laborers' (p. 51). Thus, prostitution
was not only a 'major service industry' (p. 29) that crossed social classes; it was also a
profitable source of investment for pimps, masters and landlords (pp. 52-3) even as it
served the elite symbolic economy that reversed social reality to see the prostitute
herself as voracious (pp. 53-4).
Next, M. takes on the arguments of Andrew Wallace-Hadrill ('Public honour and
private shame: the urban texture of Pompeii,' Urban Society in Roman Italy, ed.
T. Cornell and K. Lomas, pp. 39-62, [New York, 1995]) and Ray Laurence (Roman
Pompeii [London and New York, 1994], pp. 70-87) that the sale of sex was restricted
to certain areas of Pompeii and disappeared from the view of elite children, women,
and men unless the latter sought it out (pp. 78ff.). M. finds a 'complete absence of any
evidence for such moral zoning' - a finding that depends not only on the identification
and location of brothels, but also on prostitutes per se who solicited clients outside the
brothel. His observations are supported by the more detailed discussions in Chapter
6, which estimates how many brothels and prostitutes Pompeii or Rome might
support, and Chapters 7-8 which, with the appendices, survey the archaeological
evidence for brothels in Rome, Pompeii and other cities in the empire. In M.'s view, a

The Classical Review vol. 56 no. 1 ? The Classical Association 2006; all rights reserved

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184 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW
pattern of 'modest clustering, as opposed to rigid segregation' was shaped by 'the
right mix of residential and commercial elements, especially a good share of
lower-class housing, in what we might describe as the "Subura-effect"' (pp. 80-1).
Beyond the matter of counting brothels, these chapters (and the next) challenge us to
think about the sexualised shape of Roman society and the material conditions of the
ancient city.
The number and distribution of venues for venal sex lead M. to consider erotic
representation and Roman public policy. To understand the 'Roman elite's sufferance
of brothels in their midst' (p. 112), M. turns to the pervasiveness of erotic art in
Roman material culture and the normal presence of obscenity in the lives of women
and children. His discussion also locates representation in the selling of sex: 'the
lower-class idea of elite sex ... meets its mirror image in upper-class fantasies of the
brothel ...' (p. 117). His interesting observations about erotic images, however, would
be enriched by a clearer distinction between the erotic, pornographic and apotropaic
aspects of representation.
M. carefully explores the notion of a public policy per se, and a Roman one that
would produce zoning. According to M., despite the requirements of dress,
registration (till A.D. 19) and tax payments, state officials, especially the aediles,
regulated prostitutes and brothels as part of their oversight of commerce, public order
and the use of public resources like the water supply. As in his earlier book, M.
stresses the dual trends of 'tolerance and degradation': the 'absence of a program of
moral zoning served both ends by helping to ensure the ready accessibility and the
open humiliation of prostitutes' (p. 261; cf. p. 252; 1998: pp. 338-48).
This review cannot do justice to all the diverse observations in this complex book. I
comment on only one discussion that, though less central to the question of moral
zoning, is especially compelling for social historians, and particularly important for
Roman prostitutes themselves. Prostitution's association with lower-class housing, the
low prices of sex acts that made venal sex easily available to poor men and slaves, and
the association of the prostitute and the slave firmly locate prostitution in a
lower-class milieu - which served both a patriarchal economy and a moral symbolic
system that contrasted matrona and prostitute to define the role and status of women.
M. is clear about the implications for prostitutes: regardless of legal status, they
became 'goods' rather than 'sex workers' (p. 74; cf. R. Flemming JRS 89 [1999], p. 57).
In large part, their legal status as slaves, their social status as poor, and their gender
intersect to explain their exploitation. Slavery deprived male slaves of connubial
partners and, at the same time, supplied them with prostitutes whose earnings profited
their masters. Poor free women who earned their living as prostitutes or supplemented
their family's income with prostitution accrued profits less for themselves than for the
middlemen who managed brothels or the investors who owned the real estate in which
brothels or 'cribs' were located. In my opinion, M.'s reliance on the relatively small
number of occupational titles for women to argue for the recruitment of lower-class
women as prostitutes ignores the fact that such titles are rare in Roman epitaphs as a
whole. When they appear, they are most often used by slaves and freedmen, and,
generally, in specific circumstances that condition their use. Even without these
calculations, his general observation stands: 'female prostitution at Rome involved
relationships characterized by sheer dependency' (p. 73). 'Oriented toward maximum
exploitation and therefore maximum profits', Roman prostitution then may appear
'economic' to us, 'but only if one absolutely refuses to view it from the perspective of
the woman herself, whose choice of profession was very likely to have been forced on
her' (p. 75).

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 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 185
Although M.'s book engages a set of particular arguments about urban
topography, Pompeii, brothel identification, and erotic art, it will be of great interest
to scholars of Roman society, sexuality, women, and gender. Further, the book is
informed by a deep knowledge of contemporary work on prostitution in European
and American history - work that he uses judiciously and cautiously. His observations
on Roman prostitution, especially its close association with slavery, should engage
scholars of early modern and modern prostitution. In particular, the 'economic'
conditions described by M. will have disturbing relevance for the current inter-
national phenomenon of the trafficking in persons. 80% of the estimated 600,000 to
800,000 are women, 50% children, and their sexual exploitation can only be called
'modern-day slavery' (Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State,
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/38790.htm).

University of Washington SANDRA R. JOSHEL

sjoshel@u.washington.edu

EUNUCHS IN ANTIQUITY
TOUGHER (S.) (ed.) Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond. Pp. xiv + 269,
ills. Swansea and London: The Classical Press of Wales and
Duckworth, 2002. Cased. ISBN: 0-7156-3129-2.
doi: 10. 1017/S0009840X0500096X

This collection of articles, based on a conference entitled ' "Neither Woman nor
Man": Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond' (Cardiff, 1999), consists of an intro-
ductory note by the Editor with thirteen contributions (separate bibliography follows
each article) and a general index.
The geographical, chronological and inter-disciplinary range of the selection is
immediately striking. We discover the metaphorical and literal roles eunuchs
inhabited from Classical Greece and Byzantium to Achaemenid Persia and Imperial
China.
Vern Bullough attempts to bind together this diversity in 'Eunuchs in history and
society'. He does not refer directly to the other articles but provides a panoramic
overview of forms of castration and its repercussions, focussing on case studies from
Pharaonic Egypt and Ancient Greece. We also read of the pickling of genitals
(nineteenth-century China), sects where the organs are buried under a tree (the Indian
hijras male cult), the cauterisation of the scrotum (Arabic practice) and various
anecdotes such as the smell of stale urine said to accompany a eunuch. The issues are
brought up to date with short paragraphs on trans-sexuality and instances of children
categorised as 'intersex'.
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones examines the role of the eunuch in the royal harem in
Achaemenid Persia (559-331 B.C.). In this detailed article, he provides a vast amount
of information on the harem but not much on eunuchs, whose role seems, as one
might expect, to have been to guard the queen and other female royalty. The lack of
primary evidence is a severe limitation, but what we do learn is that the lack of
genitalia allied the eunuchs to women, that they were sexually available for their
masters and that a hierarchy existed amongst the eunuch slaves (p. 36). An interesting
discussion of the vocabulary of female space - enclosed space - is included.
Ruth Bardel's 'Clytemnestra, Agamemnon and "maschalismos"' is one of the best
articles in the collection. B. queries Clytemnestra's treatment of Agamemnon's corpse
described by the 'ambiguous' maschalismos, the practice of 'lopping off the

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