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, Athenian Prostitution analyzes erotic business at Athens not anachronistically, but 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. In Athenian Prostitution, Edward E. Cohen explores the high compensation earned by female sexual entrepreneurs who often controlled prostitutional businesses that were perpetuated from generation to generation on a matrilineal basis, and that benefitted from legislative restrictions on pimping. The author juxtaposes the widespread practice of "prostitution pursuant to written contract" with legislation targeting male prostitutes functioning as governmental leaders, and explores the seemingly contradictory phenomena of extensive sexual exploitation of slave prostitutes (male and female) coexisting with Athenian society's pride in its legislative protection of slaves and minors against sexual outrage.

Classicists and lawyers alike will find this a fascinating study that shows how certain principles of Athenian maritime law are still imbedded in the modern international law of maritime commerce. Cohen has made a unique and substantial contribution to our understanding of the Athens of Plato, Aristotle and Demosthenes. Athens was the dominant maritime power in the West from the eighth to fourth centuries BCE. Athenian preeminence insured that its maritime law was accepted throughout the Mediterranean world. Indeed, its influence outlasted Athens and is the only area of classical Greek law that wasn't replaced entirely by Roman models. Codified during the Roman period in the Rhodian Sea laws, it went on to influence the subsequent development of European commercial and maritime law. Using both ancient and secondary sources, Cohen explores the development of Athenian maritime law, the jurisdiction and procedure of the courts and the Athenian principles that have endured to the present day. He successfully treats the much-discussed problem of why they were termed "monthly" and describes how "supranationality" was a feature of all Hellenic maritime law. He goes on to show how their jurisdiction was limited ratione rerum, not ratione personarum, because a legally defined "commercial class" did not exist in Athens at this time. Edward E. Cohen, an attorney with a Ph.D. in Classics, is both distinguished historian of Classical Greece, Professor of Ancient History (adjunct) at the University of Pennsylvania and the Chief Executive Officer of Atlas America, a producer and processor of natural gas. His other books include Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective (1992) and The Athenian Nation (2000). "Cohen's competence in the history of law, his own experience as a practicising lawyer with a Ph.D. in Classics, and his belief that in the principles of Greek maritime commerce reside "the germinal cells of the complex modern international law of maritime commerce" (p. 5), ought to have won for this book a much wider audience than it is likely to have. (...) As the most detailed treatment of Athenian maritime law Cohen's valuable book must be given a place beside the important contributions of his predecessors, Paoli, Calhoun, and Gernet.": Ronald S. Stroud, American Journal of Legal History 19 (1975) 71. " A] learned and precise examination of certain terms and procedures associated in the fourth century B.C. with lawsuits that arose out of Athenian maritime commerce. (...) Argumentation throughout is responsible. Cohen knows the sources and has read critically in a wide range of secondary material. The book is a valuable addition to our understanding of a comparatively little known area of Athenian law.": Alan L. Boegehold, The Classical World 69, No. 3 (Nov., 1975) 214.

Full Contributors:
Susan E. Alcock, Jean Andreau, Paul Carledge, Edward E. Cohen, John K. Davies, Lin Foxhall, Edward M. Harris, Michael H. Jameson, Julie Velissaropoulos-Karakostas, H. S. Kim, Dimitris J. Kyrtatas, Ian Morris, Sitta von Reden and Walter Scheidel

The cultural wealth of the classical Greek world was matched by its material wealth, and there is abundant textual and archaeological evidence for both. However, radically different theoretical and methodological approaches have been used to interpret this evidence, and conflicts continue to rage as these different starting points produce clashing views on the significance and distribution of money, labour and land. Money, Labour and Land reflects the current explosion in ideas and research by assembling case-studies from an international selection of renowned US, British and European scholars. Drawing on comparative historical and anthropological approaches, sociological, economic and cultural theory, and developments in epigraphy, legal history, numismatics and spatial archaeology, this volume will be of interest to all students and scholars of ancient economies.

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. In a book that will be of interest to all students of sex and gender, to economic, legal and social historians, and to classicists, the author explores the high compensation earned by female sexual entrepreneurs who often controlled prostitutional businesses that were perpetuated from generation to generation on a matrilineal basis, and that benefitted from legislative restrictions on pimping. The author juxtaposes the widespread practice of "prostitution pursuant to written contract" with legislation targeting male prostitutes functioning as governmental leaders, and explores the seemingly contradictory phenomena of extensive sexual exploitation of slave prostitutes (male and female) coexisting with Athenian society's pride in its legislative protection of slaves and minors against sexual outrage.

Roman Inequality explores how in Rome in the first and second centuries CE a number of male and female slaves, and some free women, prospered in business amidst a population of generally impoverished free inhabitants and of impecunious enslaved residents. Edward E. Cohen focuses on two anomalies to which only minimal academic attention has been previously directed: (1) the paradox of a Roman economy dependent on enslaved entrepreneurs who functioned, and often achieved considerable personal affluence, within a legal system that supposedly deprived unfree persons of all legal capacity and human rights; (2) the incongruity of the importance and accomplishments of Roman businesswomen, both free and slave, successfully operating under legal rules that in many aspects discriminated against women, but in commercial matters were in principle gender-blind and in practice generated egalitarian juridical conditions that often trumped gender-discriminatory customs. This book also examines the casuistry through which Roman jurists created "legal fictions" facilitating a commercial reality utterly incompatible with the fundamental precepts—inherently discriminatory against women and slaves—-that Roman legal experts ("jurisprudents") continued explicitly to insist upon. Moreover, slaves' acquisition of wealth was actually aided by a surprising preferential orientation of the legal system: Roman law—to modern Western eyes counter-intuitively—in reality privileged servile enterprise, to the detriment of free enterprise. Beyond its anticipated audience of economic historians and students and scholars of classical antiquity, especially of Roman history and law, Roman Inequality will appeal to all persons working on or interested in gender and liberation issues.