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==Notes==
{{reflist|group=nb}}


==References==
==References==

Revision as of 08:44, 9 October 2015

For other uses, see Neaera.
Neaira
Born4th century BC
Died4th century BC
OccupationHetaera

Neaira (/nɪˈaɪrə/; Template:Lang-grc-gre), also Neaera (/nɪˈɪərə/), was a hetaera who lived in the 4th century BC in ancient Greece, though there are no reliable data about the exact dates of her birth and death. She was brought to trial in the mid-fourth century BC, probably between 343 and 340BC,[1] for marrying an Athenian citizen illegally and misrepresenting her daughter as an Athenian citizen. Although the claims submitted against Neaira are likely to be heavily biased and cannot be independently confirmed,[2] the speech provides more details than about any other prostitute of antiquity, and consequently a great deal of information about sex trade in the ancient Greek city-states (poleis).[3]

The main source of our knowledge about Neaira is the speech made against her by Apollodorus known as Apollodorus Against Neaira, which is preserved as Demosthenes' fifty-ninth speech. The speech is often attributed to the Pseudo-Demosthenes thought to have worked on many of the speeches concerning Apollodorus, who Trevett has identified with Apollodorus himself.[4] Grace Macurdy, for instance, describes the speech as characteristic of the "Pseudo-Demosthenic speeches composed for, and possibly by, an Athenian citizen called Apollodorus".[5]

A man and a hetaera (as shown by the money purse hanging on the wall) engaging in sexual intercourse. Interior painting of a red-figure kylix, ca. 480/470 BC attributed to the Wedding Painter. Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen.

Alleged biography

Most details of Neaira's biography come from a prosecution speech[6] from a trial brought on by adversaries of her partner Stephanus. Other details of the case, including the defense speech, do not survive. Court depositions in classical Athens were not bound by strict rules of evidence. Instead they attempted to convince the jury that the opposing side was immoderate and so capable of committing the offense by virtue of bad moral character. The prosecution testimony is thus not a likely source of reliable information on Neaira's biography, but on what the speechwriter thought adult male Athenian citizens would consider disgraceful, yet plausible.[7] Therefore, the primary value of the surviving court record is the insight it gives into prevailing customs and attitudes surrounding sex trade in classical Greece.[2]

Early years

Neaira was probably born around the year 400 B.C.[citation needed] Her heredity is uncertain; perhaps she was an abandoned child or from an outlying area of Greece, such as Thrace.[citation needed] Around 390 BC she was purchased by Nikarete, a madam from Corinth. Nikarete operated a brothel in Corinth, a city famous in antiquity for its flourishing prostitution trade, so much so that the ancient Greek verb korinthiazein, meaning "to fornicate", is derived from the name of the city.

Nikarete called Neaira and the other prostitutes who worked for her her "daughters" and provided for their training. Through this "parental" relationship Nikarete sought to increase the price her customers had to pay,[8] as it was usual for free women to demand higher prices for their services.[9] Neaira's work as a prostitute started young, twice being described by Apollodorus as having sex for money before she came of age, though Apollodorus implies that she was not yet a hetaera at this point, describing her as acting "as though she were a courtesan".[10][11] It is possible that the reason Neaera was not yet considered a hetaera was due to her age.[12]

Several girls of different ages lived in the brothel besides Neaira: Metaneira, Anteia, Stratola, Aristokleia, Phila, and Isthnias.[13] Several dramas were dedicated to Anteia at the time,[citation needed] and the poet Philetairos mentions three of Nikaretes's girls (Neaira, Phila, and Isthmias) in his work The Huntress. Customers belonged to the upper class, for the most part. Sometimes they came from beyond Corinth – the city owed its status as a commercial center to its location on an isthmus. Athenaeus lists various of Neaira's clients, including a poet, Xenoclides, and an actor, Hipparchus.[14]

The orator Lysias was a prominent guest in Nikarete's brothel and a regular customer of Metaneira, who Athenaeus describes as his mistress.[15] To show his appreciation to Nikarete and his mistress, Lysias paid for a trip to Eleusis in the mid-380s, where they were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries at his expense. Lysias and Metaneira were accompanied not only by Nikarete, but also by Neaira.[16] In 378 BC, Neaira again went to the city, this time to the Panathenaic Games, where she was in the company of her madam and regular customer Simos of Thessaly.[17] As the relationships of Metaneira to Lysias and Neaira to Simos show, Nikarete's hetaerai formed long-term relationships with some of their clients.

Between brothel and freedom

The most lucrative years for Nikarete's girls were the years between puberty and their third decade, after which their attractiveness to potential customers began to decline. Therefore, it was probably not inconvenient to Nikarete when Timanoridas of Corinth and Eukrates of Lefkada purchased Neaira in 376 BC on a journey to Athens. [18] They were probably both regular customers of Neaira, and found that it would be cheaper in the long term to buy Neaira outright, even if it should cost a large amount.

Nikarete demanded no less than 3,000 drachma (five to ten times the price of a skilled craftsman slave, and five to six times the annual income of a laborer). Although both were stretched to their financial limits,[citation needed] the transaction was completed. Neaira now had two owners who could deal with her as they pleased.[18] This practice was far from unusual and is cited in several sources of antiquity.[which?]

After about one or two years, one of the two (or both) wanted to marry. It was expensive to maintain a hetaera, so a solution had to be found. The three came to an agreement that Neaira could buy her freedom for 2,000 drachma, if she left Corinth forever. With the help of former customers, and above all a man named Phrynion, she raised the money and bought her freedom. She went with Phrynion to his hometown of Athens, where the couple lived together for some time.[19]

Phrynion was a playboy and regularly included Neaira in his debauchery, as Apollodorus describes. He is even said to have had sex with Neaira in public, which in ancient Greece was not the done thing. A banquet with the Athenian general Chabrias in the late summer of 374 B.C., which celebrated his victory in the Pythian Games, is described in great detail. During the celebration Neaira was said to have drunk herself into unconsciousness, so that in her drunken condition many of the guests and even slaves sexually assaulted her.[20] Due to her treatment by Phrynion, she left his household and moved to Megara.[21]

Life with Stephanus

After the Battle of Leuctra, which shifted the balance of power in Greece to Thebes over Sparta, the Athenian Stephanus came to Megara and remained as a houseguest of Neaira's, where the two began a relationship. Since the Battle of Leuctra the situation in Megara hadn't improved, so she went with Stephanus back to Athens. It is believed that Stephanus also acted as a guardian against Phrynion.[22]

Apollodorus says that Neaira brought three children with her: two sons, Proxenos and Ariston, and a daughter, Strybele, later known as Phano, who was, like Neaera, a hetaera. Allegedly, Neaira had to provide for Stephanus after moving to Athens as a hetaera. However these statements aren't very reliable,[citation needed] and Apollodorus doesn't offer proof for them.[23]

Next there was the problem of Phrynion. When he realized Neaira was in Athens, he tried to drag her away from Stephanus's house with the help of several of his friends. Such an action meant that he wanted to make his right and power clear as a master of a slave. Afterwards, Stephanus brought a suit against Phrynion, which was answered by a counter-suit. Thus the status of Neaira was to be clarified in court.[24]

Ultimately, however, the case never came to court. Both sides agreed to have the case decided by private arbitration. The result was, as in many such conciliation procedures, a compromise with which both Phrynion and Stephanus could live; Neaira had no choice in the matter anyway. It was stated that she wasn't a slave but a freedman. She had to return everything that she had taken from Phrynion's house except for the clothes, jewellery, and slaves which had been bought for her use. In addition, she would remain in the sexual domain of both men. In each case, the man with whom she lived would be responsible for her living costs.[25] How long this agreement was honored is unclear, because Phrynion isn't mentioned again in our sources.

Events surrounding Phano

As Apollodorus would later state, Phano was Neaira's daughter by blood. More than ten years after the aforementioned events, Phano would marry an Athenian named Phrastor.[26] Soon afterwards, while Phano was pregnant, Phrastor divorced her, according to Apollodorus because he had learnt that Phano was the daughter of Neaira, rather than Apollodorus by an Athenian woman.[27]

Stephanus proceeded to sue Phrastor for refusing to pay back Phano's 3,000 drachma dowry, which should have returned to him following the divorce.[28] Phrastor filed a counter-suit, in which he accused Stephanus of having given him in marriage a non-Athenian wife, the potential penalty for which was that "he shall lose his civic rights and his property shall be confiscated, and a third part of it shall belong to the one who secures his conviction".[29] Faced with the risk of his loss of citizenship, Stephanus agreed to withdraw his claim to Phano's dowry in exchange for Phrastor's withdrawing his accusation against him.[30]

Shortly after this episode, Phrastor became seriously ill, during which time Phano and Neaira cared for him. While sick, Phrastor recognized Phano's son as their legitimate child and legal heir, according to Apollodorus in order to avoid dying childless and allowing his estranged family to inherit his property.[31]

In the mid- or late-350 BCs Stephanus brought another affair before the court. He surprised a guest of the family – Epainetos of Andros, an alleged former client of Neaira's – while he was having sex with Phano. As the head and protector of those within the household, Stephanus had the right to punish Epainetos, even so far as to kill him. But he demanded only 3,000 drachmas in damages, and Epainetos was shrewd enough to deal for two conditions.[32]

As soon as he was free, Epainetos sued Stephanus for allegedly unjustified capture. In addition, he would be cleared as a moichos[nb 1]. He maintained that Phano was a prostitute and that Stephanus's house was a brothel, and that he was therefore falsely imprisoned by Stephanus.[34] All of these statements were pretty weak, since Epainetos could hardly have found witnesses to stand before the court and discredit Phano. Nevertheless, the jury possibly would have assumed that a girl in the house of the notorious Neaira must also be a hetaera.[citation needed]

Once again, Stephanus relinquished his right and thus the 3,000 drachma. If he had exercised his right and landed the affair before a court, where Phano's promiscuity could not be concealed, the chances of a second, respectable marriage for the young woman would have sunk considerably. In a conciliation procedure Stephanus was nevertheless awarded an amount of 1,000 drachmas.[35] Phano was briefly in a prestigious marriage a second time, but it did not go well.

The trials

Stephanus dealt with more than just marital problems: he was a politically active man and often involved himself in such proceedings. Apollodorus, one of the richest Athenians of this time, developed into one of Stephanus's greatest rivals. Stephanus had faced Apollodorus several times in court, and had dealt him some painful defeats.

Between 343 and 340 BC, Theomnestes produced a civil complaint (xenías graphs) on behalf of Apollodorus against Neaira, which involved Stephanus, though in fact almost all of the prosecution speech, with the exception of the opening passage, was given by Apollodorus. Neaira was accused of having illegally married Stephanus, and having tried to pass her daughter as an Athenian citizen when she was not. From the beginning it was openly stated that this really only concerned revenge against Stephanus. Complaints against third, indifferent parties such as Neaira were considered legitimate.

Apollodorus laid out Neaira's life history in detail and emphasized its alleged depravity, rather than attempting to give evidence against Stephanus.[36] Stephanus, Apollodorus claimed, had violated the law which forbade marriage to a non-Athenian woman.

Today only the prosecution's speech and not the result of the trial are known. Available sources report nothing of the final fate of the most important participants. Athenian law did not permit Neaira to speak in court,[37] even though her defeat would probably have resulted in renewed slavery. Besides that, the legal status of the children would have become uncertain.

Conclusion

The indictment of Neaira offers a key source to historians about Athenian social history and the history of women in Greece. Traditionally Apollodorus' speech against Neaira has been attributed to Demosthenes: the speech appears in the Demosthenic corpus as speech 59 Against Neaira, although Apollodorus is now accepted as the true author of the speech[citation needed].

The true nature of the hetaera can't be totally reconstructed from these sources; Neaira served several parties' interests during the trial and placed herself in the background. None of the authors – at the very least Apollodorus – are seriously interested in characterizing a woman of ill repute; and then only when something of note happens that will support the accusation, not for the purpose of objective representation.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ moicheia was the crime of having unauthorised sex with a woman of citizen status[33]

References

  1. ^ Macurdy, Grace H. (1942). "Apollodorus and the Speech Against Neaera (Pseudo-Demosthenes LIX)". The American Journal of Philology. 63 (3): 258.
  2. ^ a b McInerney, Jeremy (2004). "Lecture Five: Aspasia". The Age of Pericles. The Teaching Company.
  3. ^ Hamel, Debra (2003). Trying Neaira : the true story of a courtesan's scandalous life in ancient Greece. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10763-3.
  4. ^ Trevett, Jeremy (1990). "History in [Demosthenes] 59". The Classical Quarterly. 40 (2): 407–420. doi:10.1017/s0009838800042981.
  5. ^ Macurdy, Grace (1942). "Apollodorus and the Speech Against Neaera". American Journal of Philology. 63 (3): 257–271. doi:10.2307/290699.
  6. ^ Demosthenes. "Apollodorus against Neaera". Perseus Digital Library. Retrieved 2012-02-07.
  7. ^ McInerney, Jeremy (2004). "Lecture Seventeen: Athenian Courts and Justice". The Age of Pericles. The Teaching Company.
  8. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.18-19
  9. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.41
  10. ^ Miner, Jess (2003). "Courtesan, Concubine, Whore: Apollodorus' Deliberate Use of Terms for Prostitutes". The American Journal of Philology. 124 (1): 21–22. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  11. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.24
  12. ^ Miner, Jess (2003). "Courtesan, Concubine, Whore: Apollodorus' Deliberate Use of Terms for Prostitutes". The American Journal of Philology. 124 (1): 23. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  13. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.19
  14. ^ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.65
  15. ^ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.65
  16. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.22-23
  17. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.24
  18. ^ a b Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.30
  19. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.30–32
  20. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.33
  21. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes, 59.35
  22. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.37.
  23. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.38 & 119.
  24. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.40.
  25. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.46–48.
  26. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.50
  27. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.51
  28. ^ Pomeroy, Sarah B. (1994). Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. London: Pimlico. p. 63. ISBN 9780712660549.
  29. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.52
  30. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.53
  31. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.55–59
  32. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.64–66
  33. ^ Johnstone, Steven (2002). "Apology for the manuscript of Demosthenes 59.67". American Journal of Philology: 229.
  34. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.67
  35. ^ Pseudo-Demosthenes 59.69–71
  36. ^ Miner, Jess (2003). "Courtesan, Concubine, Whore: Apollodorus' Deliberate Use of Terms for Prostitutes". The American Journal of Philology. 124 (1): 21. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  37. ^ Goldhill, Simon (1994). "Representing Democracy: Women at the Great Dionysia". In Osborne, Robin; Hornblower, Simon (eds.). Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis. p. 357.

Sources

  • Athenaeus 13,593f.–594a
  • Pseudo-Demosthenes, or. 59
  • James N. Davidson: Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. London 1997.
  • Debra Hamel. (2003) Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10763-3.
  • Konstantinos A. Kapparis (1999). Apollodorus Against Neaira. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016390-X. (Text, English Translation, Commentary)

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