What do you think?
Rate this book
Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome
This is a study of the legal rules affecting the practice of female prostitution at Rome approximately from 200 B.C. to A.D. 250. It examines the formation and precise content of the legal norms developed for prostitution and those engaged in this profession, with close attention to their social context. McGinn's unique study explores the "fit" between the law-system and the socio-economic reality while shedding light on important questions concerning marginal groups, marriage, sexual behavior, the family, slavery, and citizen status, particularly that of women.
436 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 1998
3 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 12, 2018
McGinn's book is a good source to draw on studying prostitution, sex industry, and the broader perception of sexuality in Ancient Rome with consideration of Roman legislations. My primary focus while reading the book was to determine the official attitude (if it even existed) towards prostitution, and to that goal I've mostly fulfilled. Though prostitution undoubtedly constituted considerable amounts of state revenues, regulation of its practices was anything but organized. Perhaps due to obvious moral contradictions of capitalizing on prostitution, as well as the Roman state's inability to enforce its regulatory policies beyond the walls of a handful of big urban centers. The often-dramatized image of Roman brothels (often based on places like the Lupanarium of Pompeii) is hardly representative of Roman sex industry as a whole, nor does it capture the reception of prostitution by the broader society. McGinn's book is good on dispelling several common misconceptions concerning Roman sexual practices, although I'd admit that I was slightly disappointed that there weren't more detailed discussions on decrees themselves.
November 8, 2022
a good text, though struggles in terms of introducing the topic, that being said, McGinn at no point states that the monograph is that. McGinn also relies heavily on the Honour/shame system
Want to read
August 30, 2024___________________________________
FROM BOOK: Vendere e comprare sesso (Giulia Garofalo Geymonat)
FROM BOOK: Vendere e comprare sesso (Giulia Garofalo Geymonat)
August 27, 2010
History of Orgasm Industry
In his admirably controlled and detailed analysis of the laws themselves, McGinn has provided an invaluable guide to what they do and do not say -- reliable readings that represent the best current analysis of the Augustan laws that attempted to govern the marriage and sexual mores of the Roman elite. In the light of McGinn's own detailed analysis of the evidence, however, it might well be argued that the Roman state had nothing reasonably describable as "a policy" towards prostitutes or prostitution. Indeed, the state and its legal apparatuses seemed not to care very much about the persons or the moral status of the commerce. As with the parallel field of the study of slavery, masses of potential comparative historical data produced in recent decades are therefore rendered all but useless for the modern-day Roman historian.11 Whereas the modern states of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries did assume a specific interest in controlling and regulating prostitutes, and they have been willing to use the medical, moral, legal, social-work, and policing apparatuses to this end, the practice of prostitution in Roman society seems to have exhibited rather the opposite of this social and moral position, as did the Roman state itself. The Roman government had two types of interest. The first was in defining and protecting the symbolic orders of "honest" persons that constituted the citizen body, extending from the ordinary "model" free citizen to persons of senatorial status. The other was a simple economic interest: prostitution as a potential source of tribute, of more tax revenues. But this is hardly properly describable as a "legal" interest in the same fashion as the Augustan legislation and juristic law studied by the author. It is therefore difficult to accept McGinn's claim that one of the purposes and conscious designs of the Augustan laws was to marginalize prostitutes and pimps. This is a complex objection to sustain, since an automatic result of laws defining "the good" is by default to delimit "the bad." The contrast, however, is precisely between the determination of the modern state to regulate and to define its "under classes" and the main concern the Roman state had with the condition of its social and political elite because it could assume that "others" did not count. The laws could therefore draw their strength from the already established marginality of prostitutes in order to use them as a sign.
Given the very few studies of actual working prostitutes that historians have produced, by contrast with the more abundant and convincing social work studies on this spectrum of sex work, it seems, indeed, that the law might be a rather bad guide to actual practice. In the end, therefore, the reader is likely to be persuaded by McGinn's conclusion that, more than anything else, the Roman law made a fundamental contribution to the construction of a moral ideology (p. 84). Perhaps the real story about Roman "sexuality" that his analysis reveals is that in its legal guise (and others) it was very much perceived, and acted upon, by the social elites as a matter of class. As historians, we are therefore still left some distance short even of the fictive imagination of Lizzie Borden's Working Girls, a cinematic exploration that plays with the dynamics and potentialities of moral "deviance" and space suggested by the marginality of sex work and, at the same time, drives home the sheer drudgery, boredom, and exhaustion of the daily labor involved.
In his admirably controlled and detailed analysis of the laws themselves, McGinn has provided an invaluable guide to what they do and do not say -- reliable readings that represent the best current analysis of the Augustan laws that attempted to govern the marriage and sexual mores of the Roman elite. In the light of McGinn's own detailed analysis of the evidence, however, it might well be argued that the Roman state had nothing reasonably describable as "a policy" towards prostitutes or prostitution. Indeed, the state and its legal apparatuses seemed not to care very much about the persons or the moral status of the commerce. As with the parallel field of the study of slavery, masses of potential comparative historical data produced in recent decades are therefore rendered all but useless for the modern-day Roman historian.11 Whereas the modern states of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries did assume a specific interest in controlling and regulating prostitutes, and they have been willing to use the medical, moral, legal, social-work, and policing apparatuses to this end, the practice of prostitution in Roman society seems to have exhibited rather the opposite of this social and moral position, as did the Roman state itself. The Roman government had two types of interest. The first was in defining and protecting the symbolic orders of "honest" persons that constituted the citizen body, extending from the ordinary "model" free citizen to persons of senatorial status. The other was a simple economic interest: prostitution as a potential source of tribute, of more tax revenues. But this is hardly properly describable as a "legal" interest in the same fashion as the Augustan legislation and juristic law studied by the author. It is therefore difficult to accept McGinn's claim that one of the purposes and conscious designs of the Augustan laws was to marginalize prostitutes and pimps. This is a complex objection to sustain, since an automatic result of laws defining "the good" is by default to delimit "the bad." The contrast, however, is precisely between the determination of the modern state to regulate and to define its "under classes" and the main concern the Roman state had with the condition of its social and political elite because it could assume that "others" did not count. The laws could therefore draw their strength from the already established marginality of prostitutes in order to use them as a sign.
Given the very few studies of actual working prostitutes that historians have produced, by contrast with the more abundant and convincing social work studies on this spectrum of sex work, it seems, indeed, that the law might be a rather bad guide to actual practice. In the end, therefore, the reader is likely to be persuaded by McGinn's conclusion that, more than anything else, the Roman law made a fundamental contribution to the construction of a moral ideology (p. 84). Perhaps the real story about Roman "sexuality" that his analysis reveals is that in its legal guise (and others) it was very much perceived, and acted upon, by the social elites as a matter of class. As historians, we are therefore still left some distance short even of the fictive imagination of Lizzie Borden's Working Girls, a cinematic exploration that plays with the dynamics and potentialities of moral "deviance" and space suggested by the marginality of sex work and, at the same time, drives home the sheer drudgery, boredom, and exhaustion of the daily labor involved.
February 28, 2013
Interesting, takes a larger and more in-depth look at the laws and how they address society, both in regards to the prostates and to the 'respectable matrona'. Again, McGinn assumes a lot of Latin knowledge on the part of the reader; this is made less egregious due to the fact that the topic is specialized, and not likely to be a book for the casual reader only attempting to get a vague sense of Roman society and laws regarding sexual practices.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews