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Gnathaena
Gnathaena ( grc, Γνάθαινα) was an Athenian ''hetaira'' (plural: ''hetairai''), a class of ancient Greek prostitutes who were companions to wealthy men. Though there is no source for either her date of birth or date of death, Gnathaena is known to have lived during the 4th century BCE due to her affiliations with various men of the era. Her most notable lover was Diphilus, an Athenian New Comedy playwright. According to Athenaeus, Gnathaena was famous for her lavish parties and witty repartee, and even wrote a treatise on proper conduct at her symposiums entitled, "Rules for Dining in Company". Life as a ''hetaira'' Gnathaena was one of many fourth-century women in the class of prostitutes known as a ''hetaira'', or "companion". The ''hetairai'' were a class of courtesans in ancient Greece that were distinct from ''pornai,'' another type of prostitute, as ''hetairai'' were thought to be women who consorted exclusively in aristocratic circles and with only a few men as op ...
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Diphilus
Diphilus (Greek: Δίφιλος), of Sinope, was a poet of the new Attic comedy and a contemporary of Menander (342–291 BC). He is frequently listed together with Menander and Philemon, considered the three greatest poets of New Comedy. He was victorious at least three times at the Lenaia, placing him third before Philemon and Menander. Although most of his plays were written and acted at Athens he died at Smyrna. His body was returned and buried in Athens. According to Athenaeus, he was on intimate terms with the famous courtesan Gnathaena. Athenaeus quotes the comic poet Machon in support of this claim. Machon is also the source for the claim that Diphilus acted in his own plays. An anonymous essay on comedy from antiquity reports that Diphilus wrote 100 plays. Of these 100 plays, 59 titles, and 137 fragments (or quotations) survive. From the extant fragments, Diphilus' plays seem to have featured many of the stock characters now primarily associated with the comedies of ...
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Hetaira Playing Kottabos - Greek Getty Villa Collection
Hetaira (plural hetairai (), also hetaera (plural hetaerae ), ( grc, ἑταίρα, "companion", pl. , la, hetaera, pl. ) was a type of prostitute in ancient Greece, who served as an artist, entertainer and conversationalist in addition to providing sexual service. Unlike the rule for ancient Greek women, hetairas would be highly educated and were allowed in the symposium. Summary Traditionally, historians of ancient Greece have distinguished between ''hetairai'' and '' pornai'', another class of prostitute in ancient Greece. In contrast to pornai, who provided sex for numerous clients in brothels or on the street, hetairai were thought to have had only a few men as clients at any one time, to have had long-term relationships with them, and to have provided companionship and intellectual stimulation as well as sex. For instance, Charles Seltman wrote in 1953 that "hetaeras were certainly in a very different class, often highly educated women". More recently, however, histor ...
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Hetaira
Hetaira (plural hetairai (), also hetaera (plural hetaerae ), ( grc, ἑταίρα, "companion", pl. , la, hetaera, pl. ) was a type of prostitute in ancient Greece, who served as an artist, entertainer and conversationalist in addition to providing sexual service. Unlike the rule for ancient Greek women, hetairas would be highly educated and were allowed in the symposium. Summary Traditionally, historians of ancient Greece have distinguished between ''hetairai'' and '' pornai'', another class of prostitute in ancient Greece. In contrast to pornai, who provided sex for numerous clients in brothels or on the street, hetairai were thought to have had only a few men as clients at any one time, to have had long-term relationships with them, and to have provided companionship and intellectual stimulation as well as sex. For instance, Charles Seltman wrote in 1953 that "hetaeras were certainly in a very different class, often highly educated women". More recently, however, histor ...
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New Comedy
Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and the satyr play). Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods: Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes; Middle Comedy is largely lost, i.e. preserved only in relatively short fragments by authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis; and New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his ''Poetics'' (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster. C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world. Periods The Alexandrine grammarians, and most likely Aristophanes of Byzantium in particular, seem to have been the first to ...
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Athenaeus
Athenaeus of Naucratis (; grc, Ἀθήναιος ὁ Nαυκρατίτης or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; la, Athenaeus Naucratita) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD. The '' Suda'' says only that he lived in the times of Marcus Aurelius, but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus, who died in 192, shows that he survived that emperor. He was a contemporary of Adrantus. Several of his publications are lost, but the fifteen-volume '' Deipnosophistae'' mostly survives. Publications Athenaeus himself states that he was the author of a treatise on the ''thratta'', a kind of fish mentioned by Archippus and other comic poets, and of a history of the Syrian kings. Both works are lost. The ''Deipnosophistae'' The '' Deipnosophistae'', which means "dinner-table philosophers", survives in fifteen books. The first two books, and parts of the third, eleventh a ...
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Pornai
Prostitution was a common aspect of ancient Greece.This article was originally translated from the French Wikipedia article '' Prostitution en Grèce antique'' 22 May 2006. In the more important cities, and particularly the many ports, it employed a significant number of people and represented a notable part of economic activity. It was far from being clandestine; cities did not condemn brothels, but rather only instituted regulations on them. In Athens, the legendary lawmaker Solon is credited with having created state brothels with regulated prices. Prostitution involved both sexes differently; women of all ages and young men were prostitutes, for a predominantly male clientele. Simultaneously, extramarital relations with a free woman were severely dealt with. In the case of adultery, the cuckold had the legal right to kill the offender if caught in the act; the same went for rape. Female adulterers, and by extension prostitutes, were forbidden to marry or take part in pu ...
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Apollodorus Of Acharnae
Apollodorus ( grc-gre, Ἀπολλόδωρος, Apollodōros; 394 – after 343 BCE) of Acharnae in Attica was an Athenian politician known from several ancient forensic speeches which were preserved as part of the Demosthenic corpus. He was the son of Pasion, a wealthy banker who had been granted Athenian citizenship in thanks for the gifts he had made to the city of Athens. Life Apollodorus was the son of the banker Pasion, and was born when his father was not yet an Athenian citizen. His mother was called Archippe. Some time between the birth of Apollodorus and 376 BCE, Pasion was made an Athenian citizen, along with his sons. In 370 BCE, when Apollodorus was 24, his father died, leaving part of his property in the hands of his bank manager Phormion. Following the death of Pasion, Apollodorus' mother remarried to Phormion, a non-Greek who was the ex-slave of Pasion. Due to the wealth he had inherited from Pasion, Apollodoros was responsible for a number of liturgies. ...
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Against Neaera
"Against Neaera" was a prosecution speech delivered by Apollodorus of Acharnae, Apollodoros of Acharnae against the freedman, freedwoman Neaera. It was preserved as part of the Works of Demosthenes, Demosthenic corpus, though it is widely considered to be pseudo-Demosthenes, pseudo-Demosthenic, possibly written by Apollodoros himself. The speech was part of the prosecution of Neaira (hetaera), Neaera, a hetaera who was accused of unlawfully marrying an Athenian citizen. Though the speech claims that the case was brought for personal reasons, the date of the prosecution has led scholars to believe that it was in fact politically motivated. In common with most legal cases from ancient Athens, the outcome is unknown. The speech is important to modern scholars as the best extant biography of a woman from the classical period of ancient Greece, the most extensive surviving source on prostitution in ancient Greece, and the source of Athenian laws on adultery and citizenship which do ...
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Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium ( grc-gre, συμπόσιον ''symposion'' or ''symposio'', from συμπίνειν ''sympinein'', "to drink together") was a part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation.Peter Garnsey, ''Food and Society in Classical Antiquity'' (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 13online Sara Elise Phang, ''Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 263–264. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's '' Symposium'' and Xenophon's '' Symposium'', as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara. Symposia are depicted in Greek and Etruscan art that shows similar scenes. In modern usage, it has come to mean an academic conference or meeting such as a scientific conference. The equivalent ...
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Thesmophoria
The Thesmophoria ( grc, Θεσμοφόρια) was an ancient Greek religious festival, held in honor of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. It was held annually, mostly around the time that seeds were sown in late autumn – though in some places it was associated with the harvest instead – and celebrated human and agricultural fertility. The festival was one of the most widely-celebrated in the Greek world. It was restricted to adult women, and the rites practised during the festival were kept secret. The most extensive sources on the festival are a comment in a scholion on Lucian, explaining the festival, and Aristophanes' play ''Thesmophoriazusae'', which parodies the festival. Festival The Thesmophoria was one of the most widespread ancient Greek festivals. The fact that it was celebrated across the Greek world suggests that it dates back to before the Greek settlement in Ionia in the eleventh century BCE. The best evidence for the Thesmophoria concern its ...
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Deipnosophistae
The ''Deipnosophistae'' is an early 3rd-century AD Greek work ( grc, Δειπνοσοφισταί, ''Deipnosophistaí'', lit. "The Dinner Sophists/Philosophers/Experts") by the Greek author Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of literary, historical, and antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist for an assembly of grammarians, lexicographers, jurists, musicians, and hangers-on. Title The Greek title ''Deipnosophistaí'' () derives from the combination of ' (, "dinner") and ''sophistḗs'' (, "expert, one knowledgeable in the arts of ~"). It and its English derivative ''s'' thus describe people who are skilled at dining, particularly the refined conversation expected to accompany Greek symposia. However, the term is shaded by the harsh treatment accorded to professional teachers in Plato's Socratic dialogues, which made the English term ' into a pejorative. In English, Athenaeus's work usually known by its Latin form ' ...
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Prostitution In Ancient Greece
Prostitution was a common aspect of ancient Greece.This article was originally translated from the French Wikipedia article '' Prostitution en Grèce antique'' 22 May 2006. In the more important cities, and particularly the many ports, it employed a significant number of people and represented a notable part of economic activity. It was far from being clandestine; cities did not condemn brothels, but rather only instituted regulations on them. In Athens, the legendary lawmaker Solon is credited with having created state brothels with regulated prices. Prostitution involved both sexes differently; women of all ages and young men were prostitutes, for a predominantly male clientele. Simultaneously, extramarital relations with a free woman were severely dealt with. In the case of adultery, the cuckold had the legal right to kill the offender if caught in the act; the same went for rape. Female adulterers, and by extension prostitutes, were forbidden to marry or take part in public ...
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