Our Books

 

Our books provide in-depth, up-to-date and authoritative coverage regarding sex across Athens and related areas, making them valuable references for students, researchers and scientists in the industry. Our editors and authors are experts in their profession from across the globe.

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Athenian Prostitution: The Business of Sex

This is a pioneering study that examines the sale of sex in classical Athens from a commercial (rather than from a cultural or moral) perspective. Following the author’s earlier book on Athenian banking, this work analyzes erotic business at Athens in the context of the Athenian economy. For the Athenians, the social acceptability and moral standing of human labor was largely determined by the conditions under which work was performed. Pursued in a context characteristic of servile endeavor, prostitution–like all forms of slave labor–was contemptible. Pursued under conditions appropriate to non-servile endeavor, prostitution–like all forms of free labor–was not violative of Athenian work ethics. As a mercantile activity, however, prostitution was not untouched by Athenian antagonism toward commercial and manual pursuits; as the “business of sex,” prostitution further evoked negativity from segments of Greek opinion uncomfortable with any form of carnality. Yet ancient sources also adumbrate another view, in which the sale of sex, lawful and indeed pervasive at Athens, is presented alluringly.

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Sex and Sexuality in Classical Athens (Debates and Documents in Ancient History EUP) 1st Edition

From courtship and marriage to adultery and prostitution, Sex and Sexuality in Classical Athens takes a broad look at the sex lives and sexual beliefs of ancient Athenians. Chapters such as “same-sex relationships” and “sex and the law” explore both ancient accounts of sexual behaviour and the different ways in which modern scholars have understood them. This book also contains a wide selection of original sources, providing direct access to the ancient evidence. Through engaging with ancient documents and modern debates, readers are encouraged to reach their own conclusions about the scholarly controversies that still rage about this fascinating area of Greek life.

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Sex and Sexuality in Classical Athens

The Reign of the Phallus

At once daring and authoritative, this book offers a profusely illustrated history of sexual politics in ancient Athens. The phallus was pictured everywhere in ancient Athens: painted on vases, sculpted in marble, held aloft in gigantic form in public processions, and shown in stage comedies. This obsession with the phallus dominated almost every aspect of public life, influencing law, myth, and customs, affecting family life, the status of women, even foreign policy. This is the first book to draw together all the elements that made up the “reign of the phallus”—men’s blatant claim to general dominance, the myths of rape and conquest of women, and the reduction of sex to a game of dominance and submission, both of women by men and of men by men.

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