A different form of “sacred prostitution” involving temporary service to Aphrodite is attributed to the people of Cyprus, Lydia, and Lokroi Epizephyrioi by late authors including Clearchus of Cyprus, who says that parents prostituted their freeborn daughters.23 The case for prostitution in connection with Aphrodite at Lokroi is considerably less credible than that at Korinth, for the sources are not considered reliable and the practice described by Clearchus would have been shocking to standard Greek sensibilities. He may have in mind the story that when the Lokrians were under attack from the rival city of Rhegion in the fifth century, they vowed to prostitute their virgins during the festival of Aphrodite if they were victorious. Hieron of Syracuse intervened on their behalf, and the city was saved; it is unclear whether the promised offering of virgins actually took place.24
The gift of female sexual services in fulfillment of a vow evokes the customs of Korinth, and it is at least possible that the vow was made in a similar context, where prostitutes were a standard offering to Aphrodite. On this hypothesis, the exigencies of war drove the Lokrians to vow not merely slaves but their own daughters to the goddess, just as the Lokrians of mainland Greece devoted citizen maidens to the temple service of Athena. The famous Ludovisi throne, a ritual object of unknown function which originally stood in a Lokrian temple of Aphrodite, is carved with reliefs showing a nude courtesan playing the double flute on one side and a matron burning incense on the other: a reference to the vow, or perhaps to the different modes by which married women and (non-sacred) prostitutes served the goddess.25
There is no question that Aphrodite’s worship at Lokroi was anomalous in some ways. The oldest known structure at Lokroi is a dining complex near the seashore dating to the seventh century, not long after the initial founding of the colony (later, in the sixth century, a three-room temple was added). The U-Shaped Stoa, as it is known, enclosed three hundred and seventy-one separate pits, each with the buried remains of one or more ritual banquets, including pottery inscribed with Aphrodite’s name. The contents of the pits were laid down from the mid-sixth to the fourth century. While dining facilities are not unusual in sanctuaries, this example is particularly early and the careful deposition of the debris - with each pot and figurine deliberately broken - is unparalleled. Whatever the function of the ritual, the early date of the stoa shows that Aphrodite’s cult was of crucial importance to the colonists.26
At Lokroi, Aphrodite’s cult was closely intertwined with that of the most important goddess of Magna Graecia, Persephone. The large collection of fifth-century terracotta pinakes from the Persephone sanctuary at Mannella contain a significant number illustrating mythic and cultic scenes involving Aphrodite, including her birth from the sea. Three pinax types show Aphrodite with her cult partner Hermes, while Eros too seems to have played a role in her worship here. In one type, she stands in a chariot drawn by a winged boy and girl as Hermes steps up beside her; in another she presents Hermes with a flower as Eros sits on her arm. A third shows cult statues of the pair standing in a temple while a young couple pours libations upon an altar decorated with a copulating satyr and deer. The general impression is that while Persephone’s cult focused on pre-nuptial rites and the protection of young children, Aphrodite’s cult had to do with women’s sexual experience, including that of brides.27
Figure 9.2 The birth of Aphrodite on the Ludovisi “Throne,” probably from the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Lokroi Epizephyrioi, 460-50. Museo Nazionale Romano. Art Resource.
World History
