Trying Neaira New in Paperback. A Prostitute's Life in Ancient Greece. The Sunday Telegraph Calls it a "Gripping Story of Politics, Sex and Sleaze in Ancient Athens...."

Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003) has just been released in paperback. The book uses the life story of the prostitute Neaira (pronounced Neh-EYE-ruh) as a prism through which to view Greek society--its legal system, sexual mores, the lives of women, etc. For more information visit http://www.tryingneaira.com.

(PRWEB) February 20, 2005 -- The book was written for the general reader and assumes no prior knowledge on the part of readers. It uses the life story of the prostitute Neaira (pronounced Neh-EYE-ruh) as a prism through which to view Greek society--its legal system, sexual mores, the lives of women, etc.

Web Site:
For more information about Trying Neaira, visit http://www.tryingneaira.com.

Reviews:
The Daily Telegraph: "It is an extraordinary tale, with more than an echo of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, and Hamel, unusually for a classicist, is not afraid of a good narrative. Nor of racy detail: from street-walkers imprinting come-hither messages in the dust with their sandals, to outraged cuckolds shoving radishes up adulterers' bottoms, there is plenty here to delight the most prurient reader."

Journal of the History of Sexuality: "While the book is written in a fluent, simple style that makes it accessible to the student and the layperson, behind it lies a wealth of scholarship and learning."

The New Republic: "Hamel's treatment of this complicated story is outstanding not only for its comprehensive (yet remarkably concise) presentation of the social and historical context of fourth-century Athens, but also, perhaps supremely, for its tact. By presenting sex and the ancient Greek sex trade forthrightly, she puts to shame the ponderous cuteness and leering euphemism that writing about Neaira's case has aroused in many classicists over the centuries. She brings out both the sordid exploitation of Neaira's circumstances and the genuine strength of the bond that linked this former prostitute with Stephanos and his family, piecing together a plausible account from what is often minimal evidence, managing to explore her human characters without idealizing them, and judiciously staying just shy of a historical novel."

Visit http://www.tryingneaira.com to read more reviews of Trying Neaira.

An Excerpt:
"A man who was interested in engaging the services of a female prostitute in ancient Greece had a wide range of girls to choose from. (Male prostitutes were also readily available.) Prostitution itself, moreover, was perfectly legal. Indeed, prostitutes were taxed by the state in Athens, so little interest did the polis have in suppressing the industry. Buying sex from prostitutes, then, was sanctioned by law. It was also, on the whole, sanctioned by popular opinion. A man who visited prostitutes too frequently and squandered his inheritance on his pursuit of physical pleasures might be despised for his lack of self control. But a Greek male need not have been ashamed of his judicious patronage of prostitutes. Where else, after all, was he to turn?

"Far more than in modern societies, where sexually liberated women regularly copulate with men to whom they are not married, prostitutes in ancient Greece provided a necessary service. Men who were in the mood to fornicate had a few options available to them. They could engage in homosexual sex with a male lover. They could seek gratification from one of the slaves of their household, male or female (an option which, however, may not always have been attractive, given that the slaves a man bedded would continue in his home indefinitely, rubbing elbows with his female relatives). Or they could buy sex from a male or female prostitute. Having sex with a respectable woman, for all but the most daring of Lotharios, was simply out of the question. Holding hands with a proper woman who was not a relative, for that matter, was hardly to be hoped for.

"The first problem the would-be lover of a respectable woman faced was an elementary one: how to get close enough to a potential paramour to make one's move. Free women who were not prostitutes were not easily approached on the street or in the marketplace. The women of ancient Greece were expected, ideally, to remain in their homes, spinning wool, overseeing the work of the household slaves, and in general attending to the many chores that needed doing in a pre-Industrial Revolution home. (These generalizations do not apply, however, to Spartan women, whose society differed markedly from that of other Greek poleis, and who enjoyed far more freedoms than their counterparts elsewhere in Greece.) Even within the home, women were expected to have as little contact as possible with men who were not their relatives. If unrelated men were present in their house as dinner guests, for example, the women were expected to keep to the women's quarters of the house for the duration of the visit."

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