Athens Taxed Its Brothels to Pay for a Temple

Ask most people about Solon and you get the school version: the Athenian lawgiver who cancelled debts and laid groundwork for democracy. Ancient writers tell another story about him.

Athens drew crowds of young, single sailors, and men there usually married after 30. Ancient writers say Solon saw a demand and a way to manage it, around the sixth century BCE.

According to those accounts, he set up brothels run under city rules, and the policy continued into the Classical Period. Prostitution in Athens was not hidden. It was a regulated trade.

The price was reportedly one obol per session. Six obols made a drachma, roughly a laborer's day wage, though some scholars think one obol was a proverbially low figure, not a literal rate.

Brothels and independent prostitutes also paid a tax. That income tax reportedly helped fund public buildings, monuments and road repairs, so the trade quietly supported Athens' civic life.

Nicander of Colophon, quoted by the writer Athenaeus, goes further. He says Solon used the earnings to build a temple to Aphrodite Pandemos, meaning "Aphrodite of all the people."

One caution: this story rests on late sources, and the comic poet Philemon is nearly the only early voice. So ancient writers credit Solon, and historians still debate how much of it is true.