Courtesans at Table

Download or read book Courtesans at Table written by Laura McClure and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witty nicknames, crude jokes, public nudity and lavish monuments, all of these things distinguished Greek courtesans from respectable citizen women in ancient Greece. Although prostitutes appear as early as archaic Greek lyric poetry, our fullest accounts come from the late second century CE. Drawing on Book 13 of the Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae--which contains almost all known references to hetaeras from all periods of Greek literature--Laura K. McClure has created a window onto the ways ancient Greeks perceived the courtesan and the role of the courtesan in Greek life.