Picture this - you're cruising into the magnificent port of Corinth, the kickback zone of the ancient Greek world, equivalent to the laid-back vibes of today's Amsterdam. Welcome to the land of sacred ladies of the night, setting the hearts of classical scholars racing like a turbocharged sports car! 🚗💨🏛️
Once you dock, it's time to catch your breath as you ascend nearly a thousand steps up a jaw-dropping crag named Acrocorinth. The view? A 360-degree panorama of the dazzling Mediterranean. 😍🌅
Divine Love in the Temple of Aphrodite 🏛️❤️
At the peak, you'll find yourself standing amidst the elegant marble columns of the Temple of Aphrodite, goddess of Beauty and Love. In its candle-lit confines wafting with incense, it's believed that a thousand charming ladies tirelessly worked, raising funds for their divine patron. Since the Renaissance, scholars have been hooked by this image, painting a vivid picture of uninhibited interactions with Aphrodite's servants that promised a spiritual union with the goddess herself - an intense rave in the perpetual twilight of the temple.
The Origination of the Corinthian Myth 💭💡
All this tantalizing vision of Corinth springs from a mere three-line account by the Greek geographer Strabo around 20 AD. He wrote:
"The temple of Aphrodite was once so rich that it had acquired more than a thousand prostitutes, donated by both men and women to the service of the goddess. And because of them, the city used to be jam-packed and became wealthy. The ship-captains would spend fortunes there, and so the proverb says: “The voyage to Corinth isn’t for just any man.”
Decoding the Reality 🕵️🧐
Modern historians, however, suggest we should pump the brakes on this hedonistic free-for-all image of Corinth. As much as it may fuel the desire and longing of our collective imagination, it calls for some serious fact-checking. Mary Beard and John Henderson have called out historians' fevered versions of these accounts.
Contrary to the exotic stories, Aphrodite's servants, whose attractiveness remains debatable, were not exactly volunteers living the dream. They were actually slaves, bought by affluent Greeks and donated to the temple as a religious offering. In one case, a victorious athlete even donated 100 women at once as a grand gesture to the goddess. 🏆💃
Recent digs at the Corinth fortress suggest that the temple could not have accommodated 100 women, let alone 1,000. The evidence implies that intimate encounters were likely happening in charmless brothels around the temple, on lumpy straw mattresses, in small, dark, suffocating booths, akin to those preserved in Pompeii.
Greek men, known for their chauvinistic behavior, viewed women as objects, apt only for child-rearing, and sought "pleasurable sex" with prostitutes and young boys. Not all Greek men, however, endorsed this. For instance, the philosopher Diogenes, famously found the practice of paying for love ludicrous. He once proclaimed that he encountered the goddess Aphrodite everywhere and at no cost, humorously demonstrating his point by pretending to self-pleasure under his tunic. 🤭👏
Inspiration for a Free Love Movement 🌈💕
Ever since Strabo's spicy account was unearthed in the Renaissance, free-love advocates have cited Corinth's temples as the ultimate example of socially-accepted prostitution - essentially, church-run brothels. Back in 1826, women's rights activist Richard Carlisle even proposed in his work "Every Woman's Book or What is Love?" that the government should open modern Temples of Aphrodite throughout Britain. His goal? To provide practical sex education to inexperienced young men, thus sparing British women from lives of sexual dissatisfaction.
Carlisle held the view that lack of sexual gratification was a grave health issue for women. He believed if men knew what they were doing, we wouldn't see "every third female sickly, consumptive, or wretched for want of sexual commerce." The proposition sparked outrage and fiery press debates, with cover images of a naked Adam and Eve, and the Cross portrayed as a phallic symbol only adding fuel to the fire. Despite this, "What is Love?" hit the bestseller list and remained in print for over 65 years. Talk about a plot twist! 📚🔥
For more juicy details, check out: Beard, Mary and Henderson, John, “With this Body I Thee Worship: Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity,” Gender and History, vol. 9, 1997, 480-503.