o is involved in adultery must suffer the consequence of divorce. The husband who takes his wife in adultery must divorce her. Women were expected to be hidden from society that if a wife simply answered the door, she could suffer intense ridicule from the community. A woman had to be extremely careful outside the home because, saying she addresses those who pass on the street, or that she answers the door by herself, or that she talks with men, are all roughly equivalent to saying this house is simply a brothel. The scrutiny she would endure, as a result of doing something so nonchalant to modern society as opening her front door is very difficult for us to comprehend.The prostitutes and the state-owned brothels were an attractive part of Athens, usually run by slave women. Athenian Greeks developed a reputation among Romans and Western culture for having raised prostitution to a unique level of refinement. Not all prostitutes were slaves; some prostitutes were slave women who bought their freedom. Women could get a loan from a client and then pay it off with what she made as a free prostitute. Many free women in Athens would make their living this way, however they had to register and then be subjected to special taxes to keep their free prostitute title.The hetairai were the highest on the social scale of prostitutes, the word actually means, companions to men, which is ironic because they were not wives. Many of the hetairai were educated in many aspects such as the arts, had intellectual training, and most were very attractive. In many cases, these women became more entertaining companions to the men then their wives were. Pericles, the thirty-year political leader of Athens, fell in love with a hetairai, named Aspasia. It is no accident that the most famous woman in fifth-century Athens was the foreign-born Aspasia, who started as a hetairai and ended as a madam. Aspasia became controversial in history because she ma...
