References for "Meretrix and Maia" chapter of Soul Calibur IV: Create-A-Slut

[salarta]

I was told to make a thread for this on the forum and that I can't have a separate chapter entry for this purpose on the story itself, so here's the thread!

The ancient Greece prostitute used a less permanent way, to get customers attention. Those liberated greek women wore shoes, or clothing, imprinted with messages. Some prostitutes wore sandals that had the words follow me, with small metal studs, inscribed on the bottom of the shoes.These sandals left impressions in the unpaved earth and soon prostitutes became known as Streetwalkers.greek-prostitute

The Greek writer Ascepiades writes of a prostitute named Hermione who wore a girdle embroidered with, "Love me always, but do not be jealous if others do as you do.” (Vern38) In Athens, prostitutes used temporary body modifications to enhance their facial and body features, as in stuffing their shoes with cork to appear taller, or use bustles to increase the size of their hips and breasts.

Ancient prostitutes used make-up quite a lot, layers of white lead, a lot of rouge, and soot to emphasize eyebrows. The effect was that prostitutes were easier to spot due to the fact that respectable Greek woman refused to paint their faces, because they promoted a more natural looking face.(Sherrow250) There, where not many sumptuary laws in ancient Greece, and the few the greeks had, were not enforced. One of those restrictions, prostitutes had to dye their hair blond, which they did anyway, to distinguish themselves further from borinh housewifes.

Independent prostitutes who worked the street were on the next higher level. Besides directly displaying their charms to potential clients they had recourse to publicity; sandals with marked soles have been found which left an imprint that stated ΑΚΟΛΟΥΘΙ / AKOLOUTHI ("Follow me") on the ground. They also used makeup, apparently quite outrageously. Eubulus, a comic author, offers these courtesans derision:

"plastered over with layers of white lead, … jowls smeared with mulberry juice. And if you go out on a summer's day, two rills of inky water flow from your eyes, and the sweat rolling from your cheeks upon your throat makes a vermilion furrow, while the hairs blown about on your faces look grey, they are so full of white lead."

Amber jewelry, the most widespread, was only worn by women of the lower classes. By the higher classes it was regarded as vulgar, and the women of higher standing wore only gold and precious stones. Though, when in public, it was considered elegant to hold a small ball of amber in one hand and to rub it occasionally to smell its delicate fragrance in order to try and disguise any fowl smells which she might encounter.

One of their practices involved braiding pieces of gold jewelry into their hair, an artistic touch that more wealthy matrons be­gan to imitate. It may seem strange that respectable women would follow the styles of courtesans, but in Rome, where pros­titutes were required by law to make their hair yellow, it became a fad among married women to peroxide their hair or else to wear blond wigs!

They were attested to have worn gaudy dresses made from transparent silk. They were also distinguished for wearing a toga, the characteristic garment for a male Roman citizen, not otherwise worn by women. Therefore it has been claimed that the female prostitute was antithetical to the male Roman citizen.[24] Prostitutes as public figures often represented the depths of impurity. Roman writers often associated prostititues with dirt, which even further reflected their lowly status.

The first written Greek law code (Locrian code), by Zaleucus in the 7th century BC, stipulated that "no free woman should be allowed any more than one maid to follow her, unless she was drunk: nor was to stir out of the city by night, wear jewels of gold about her, or go in an embroidered robe, unless she was a professed and public prostitute; that, bravos excepted, no man was to wear a gold ring, nor be seen in one of those effeminate robes woven in the city of Miletus."

Prostitutes were forbidden by law from wearing the stola, which was the usual dress of freeborn women. Shoes, purple robes, jewelry, and the vitta that Roman women used to tie back they hair were also forbidden. Prostitutes were required by law to wear togas like men, which were supposed to be floral patterned, and sandals. They were also supposed to dye their hair yellow, red, or blue (Sanger 74). But these rules were seldom enforced. Many prostitutes wore prohibited clothing. Others proudly wore their togas in green shades or other outrageously bright colors, while others wore nearly transparent robes of silk and gauze. Still others chose to wear no clothing and to sit outside of their brothel, waiting for customers (Sanger 76).

The Vitta was not worn by libertinae even of fair character (Tibull. I.6.67), much less by meretrices; hence it was looked upon as an insigne pudoris, and, together with the stola and instita, served to point out at first sight the freeborn matron (Ovid. A. A. I.31, R.A. 386, Trist. II.247, Ep. ex Pont. III.3.51).

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Vitta.html

Although we cannot speak of Greek women in antiquity as a unified group, legal and historical sources attest to the exclusion of women throughout Greece from the public domain, and to their devotion solely to reproduction. Indeed, even Spartan women - who were considered to be different and more visible than other Greek women in the public sphere because of their involvement in many athletic events - engaged in such activities with the main goal of bracing their bodies for delivering children for the city.

Women gave birth at home with the assistance of female relatives and neighbours and/or a midwife.

"Whether this was the same worn by men, we do not know, but what we can say is that it openly denied her the status of Roman matron. It was to deny her her femininity by denying her the dress which in Roman rhetoric defined her as female."

"Horace's togata, again, wears transparent Coan silk and shows her body off to viewers"

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kxOLn0IoGhAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA252&dq=meretrix+prostitution+greece&ots=5EjNvPvIpy&sig=rLPftHFsf971zdpb9MVjUILzvx8#v=snippet&q=adultery&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=rTfBtcdjbuoC&pg=PA38&dq=toga+prostitution&hl=en&ei=6S_bTbK_NtG2tgfxxoikDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC4Q6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=toga&f=false