Tide of Traffick over Time

So….when did all this trafficking start?

Image from: www.athensdaytrips.com

It is well known that prostitution is one of the oldest and most celebrated occupations in humanity. During the Roman empire, the city port of Corinth was so wealthy that 1000 prostitutes/priestesses were paid to work at the temple of Aphrodite, and to ‘Corinthianize’ was to engage in extreme sexual promiscuity.¹ While prostitution and promiscuity has been evident throughout history, I was not sure how this related to the history of sex-slavery. So I decided to investigate a few different ancient cultures, particularly the Roman empire, in order to see how prevalent the sex trade was in other eras compared to the 21^st Century. What I found was quite astounding.

History of Polygyny (sex-wives)

Table 1, ² shows the extent to which polygyny was present throughout the ancient world, which had a strong relation to sex slavery.

Agents of the rich and powerful would ‘scour the empire’ and ‘procure as tributes’ women and girl sex slaves for their masters. It was clearly a brutal industry.

Image From: outre-monde.com

The Roman emperors, of whom most information has been recorded, were notoriously brutal to their slaves (or anyone who took their fancy). According to one historian of the time (Deo), when one father in imperial favour sent his beautiful daughter away to prevent her from being a forced sex slave of emperor Tiberius, both he and his daughter were killed. Other gruesome records of the emperors of Rome (Julius, Augustus, Caligula, Claudius and Nero) and their sex-slavery can be found in the article Roman polygyny ². This slavery did not just occur for the emperors of Rome however. In the Roman Empire, approximately half of the people were slaves, and the role of women slaves was primarily to produce more slaves, to wait on their women masters, or be sex slaves for their masters. Other historians of that time refer to higher prices being paid for women who were more physically attractive (thus being bought as masters sex-slaves).¹ It is therefore clear, looking at both Table 1, and focusing on the Roman Empire, that sex slavery was very much the norm in ancient civilization.

By - Josh Jeyaraj

 References

1) Swindoll, C. (2009). Insights on Romans. Zondervan. Retrieved from Google scholar.

2) Betzig, L. (1992). Roman polygyny. Ethology and Sociobiology, 13(5), 309-349. Accessed 30 March 2014.

For an interesting read, check out the abstract for [2], I've linked it here  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016230959290008R