ABSTRACT
Youthfulness in women, to be sure, was also prized for its sexual appeal to adult men. Ancient authors preserve no lack of malicious gossip about the miserable and impoverished old age of once-glamorous courtesans who, half-starved and unable to command high prices, can no longer afford to be choosy about their dwindling customers,7 and many ancient texts describe the elaborate artifices-ranging f rom wigs8 to hair-dye9 to elevator heels10
to a facial powder made f rom white lead11-by which female prostitutes as well as other women typically attempt to conceal their age and to disguise assorted physical shortcomings.12 But mature age did not necessarily prohibit a woman f rom earning a living as a prostitute: male tastes varied13 (two Hellenistic epigrams portray female prostitutes dedicating, severally, a purple horsewhip, reins, and a golden spur to Aphrodite),14 and they seem to have included a liking for older women.1 5 As one might expect, then, a sexual market for mature women is indeed attested in ancient sources (or, at least, it is treated by them as a plausible possibility).16 Males, by contrast, were desirable to other males only between the onset of puberty and the arrival of the beard.17 In particular, the hôra (or youthful "prime") of malesa slender zone between boyhood and manhood comprising what we now call late adolescence and corresponding roughly to the life-stage of American undergraduates-represented the peak of a male's sexual attractiveness and exercised, while it lasted, an apparently irresistible charm on older residents of classical Athens, both male and female,18 free and slave. Once the frontier between youth and manhood had been crossed, however, a male became visibly exôros ("past his prime")19-as many an ancient lover remarks with alternating bitterness and relief20-and, in Aeschines's words, "no one will give him anything for it any more" (1.95). An older male who wished, for whatever reason, to attract either men or women had to do his best to look young,21 and any adult male who actually did (or, what was worse, tried to) look younger than his years was liable to be suspected of pathic desires22 or adulterous intentions.23 Male prostitution in classical Athens was largely the province of those below the age of majority.24
