Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 78 (2010) 183-197 Revue d’Histoire du Droit 78 (2010) 183-197 he Legal History Review 78 (2010) 183-197 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157181910X487369 Deining prostitution in Athenian legal rhetorics Maria Nowak* , ** Summary he purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the deinition of prostitution in Athenian law. Such an attempt is risky, because there is no actual citation of any law dealing with this problem in the source evidence we deal with and we cannot be sure, if the problem was regulated with one act only. However, as earning a living through prostitution caused severe consequences for Athenians doing so, the supposition that such a deinition existed seems plausible. he purpose of this article is rather the extraction of the singular elements than the reconstruction of the entire deinition. Keywords Prostitution, Greek law, hetaira, Athenian legal rhetorics, Ancient sexuality 1. – Introduction A single legal deinition of prostitution 1 is not extant in the Athenian sources, its reconstruction is obviously risky: the texts are ambiguous, no actual citation of any law dealing with the problem has survived, we even may not be certain if the issue was speciically regulated by one legal enactment. Yet a supposition that such a deinition existed (even if scattered among various legal acts) seems plausible: it is based on the fact that earning a living through providing of sexual services caused negative consequences for a person involved in the community. Both prostituted men and women were to loose rights constituting their civil status. In Against Timarchos Aeschines informs us how male prostitutes were restricted in the citizen community. He also recalls to the audience which rights exactly they would loose. According to the orator a male prostitute could not hold any oices – either illed by lot or by election, he was excluded from any priesthood and other functions in the polis itself and abroad. Furthermore, he could not take any legal actions in court, nor could he be a herald or an ambassador. Finally, he was prohibited * Chair of Roman and Antique Law, Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przemieście 26/28, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland; maria.b.nowak@gmail.com. ** I would like to express my thanks to Jakub Urbanik, who has commented on the draft of this paper, and also to Tomasz Derda and Aleksander Wolicki for their valuable suggestions. 1 Even if the scholarship has insisted on diferentiating two types of prostitutes, porne and pornos on one side and hetaira / hetareseos on the other, there does not seem to be a legally signiicant diference between both terms in their respective legal statues, hence throughout this article I will use sources mentioning porne / hetaira without discrimination. Cf. E. Cantarella, L’omosessualità nel diritto ateniense, in: Symposion 1985, p. 153–175 at p. 159.