Review of A. K. Strong, Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World (original) (raw)

Prostitution in antiquity has long interested scholars (R. Flemming, JRS 89 (1999), 38-61; A. Glazebrook and M. M. Henry, Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean (2011); T. A. J. McGinn, The Economy of Prostitution ). The 'world's oldest profession' continues to inspire new frameworks conceiving of sex labour, people who practised it, those who promoted it and the clients who patronised it, most recently Anise K. Strong's monograph on 'the uidity and mutability of roles of "whore" and "wife" in the Roman world' (1). S., who has worked on reception of Roman sexuality in TV and lm, analyses the complex relationship between meretrices and matronae in literature, epigraphy and material culture from republican Rome (second century B.C.E.) to the High Empire (third century C.E.), primarily, but not exclusively, in Italy.