Licences to follow the calling were granted to the whore-masters, and also the women, on payment of a fixed duty, called “prostitute tax” (τέλος πορνικόν)[139], which was leased out yearly by the Magistracy, and collected by professional _farmers of the prostitution-tax_ or Collectors, known as πορνοτελώναι, who kept a complete list, in which were included even the “Pathici” (pathic sodomites), of all liable to the impost. From the proceeds of this prostitution-tax _Solon_ would seem to have built a temple at Athens to Aphrodité Pandemos[140]. From this an idea may be formed, even if nothing more than a sort of brothel is to be understood by the term, of the large number of women of this character and of the considerable revenue of the city.
The public women were either such as lived in the brothels (πόρναι, αἱ προστᾶσαι τῶν οἰκημάτων,—harlots, prostitutes of the “houses”), where they used to stand at the doors, and that in rows (ἐπὶ κέρως τεταγμένας,—drawn up in column) more or less stripped, in almost transparent dresses (γυμναὶ, ἐν λεπτοπήνοις ὑμέσιν,—stripped, in fine-woven robes)[141], or else they were kept partly as ἑταῖραι μουσικαί—“musical” hetaerae, like the harp-girls in German beer-halls, or with procurers (μαστροπός, προαγωγός,—bawds, procurers) in their taverns (προαγωγεῖα, μαστρόπιον, ματρύλλεια,—procurer’s house, bawdy-house, brothel). Or again they followed their trade in the Port-Market (the δεῖγμα) as δεικτηριάδες (Market-girls)[142], in the στοὰ μακρὰ, (Long Portico), and generally in the Lanes of that neighbourhood (χαμαιτύπαι[143], χαμαιευνάδες, χαμαιεύνης, χαμαιτηρίς, χαμεύνης,—all nick-names for common strumpets, “ground-thumpers,” “sleepers on the ground”), where they either surrendered themselves on the spot or hied to recognised harlots’ dens (χαμαιτυπεῖον) or houses of accommodation (τέγος)[144].
The place of their abode shows at once what class of men frequented “filles de joye” of the sort. It was foreign sailors[145] in particular who here indemnified themselves for their compulsory continence at sea. Of Greeks only the dregs of the people and debauchees who had lost all self-respect came here; and even these used by preference the taverns[146], where procuration was carried on as well[147],—for which reason they had fallen into general disrepute. For as late as Aristophanes’[148] time the lower class of citizens felt no hesitation about taking their pleasure along with their wives in inns. On the other hand persons of repute, prominent by office and dignities, were actually forbidden by law to visit such places. “Were an Areopagite to have been seen but once in an Inn,” says _Hyperides_[149], “his colleagues would no longer have tolerated him as a member of the Areopagus.” Later, matters changed, for the moralizing _Isocrates_[150] says, “Nay! no well-conducted slave dares even eat or drink anything in an Inn”; and _Theophrastus_, portraying the character of a madman quite devoid of shame gives this as a trait,—he would be quite capable of keeping an Inn!