Talk:Lupanar

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One out of every five prostitutes was a slave.

Does anyone have a source for this comment? It seems like a bold claim to make. Most ancient literature references prostitutes as slaves, though this obviously doesn't necessarily mean that most prostitutes were in fact slaves it does mean I'm surprised to see a number like "1 in 5 were slaves" put up with no explanation or source. As far as I know there's not really a way that number could be easily estimated and it seems very generous to estimate that most were non-slaves. McGinn says "as in the case of prostitutes, most of the working women attested to in the sources were slaves or freedwomen," which honestly doesnt tell us much. As he is one of the foremost scholars in this area I'd think it would be better to quote him rather than use the 1 in 5 number, unless it is sourced.

Caligulady (talk) Caligulady (talk) 12:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've found one, https://www.academia.edu/download/46504792/MA_Thesis.pdf

thanks, Daisytheduck (talk) 02:34, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have also archived the link it can be found here:Wayback Machine (archive.org) Daisytheduck (talk) 02:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Given the substantial body of peer-reviewed scholarship by career classicists, a thesis is not the best source. Could you give a page number? I searched the word "five" and none of the results have to do with this statistic. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:43, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So I don't want to claim to have read this thesis for word, but I have been checking passages with keywords, and pages 34–35 actually seem to contradict this statement, indicating that most prostitutes in a brothel were slaves, and others mostly libertae (which is scholarly consensus, afaik), without giving a precise proportion. The thesis cited makes the standard distinction that brothel workers are more likely to be enslaved because of the investment required to build and operate a facility, which you would have to keep staffed consistently to get ROI—the traffic to the cellae would need to produce profit after you cover operational and labor costs, whether that's wages or the initial investment in the "asset" (the enslaved woman—sorry, but that's capitalism). Amy Richlin has some very clear-eyed things to say about brothels as a way, to put it bluntly, to use up excess enslaved women, since more men were needed in the Roman labor force. Free women, either freeborn women of the working classes or freedwomen who were neglected by or lost their patrons through misfortunes, were more likely to be independent sex workers – from streetwalkers giving blowjobs in alleys (per Catullus) to what we might think of as call girls (puellae) or escorts/entertainers (infames) with a select upper-class clientele – because they might start bartering or seeking fees for sex to supplement their income, just working from home or upstairs at the pub. And the gist of the thesis seems to be how brothels are identified in the archaeological record. It has data and tons of illustrations, but not about the relative proportions of status among the women that I can see. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:12, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

interesting Daisytheduck (talk) 22:58, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]