Prostitution in ancient Rome was legal and licensed. In ancient Rome , even Roman men of the highest social status were free to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval, [1] as long as they demonstrated self-control and moderation in the frequency and enjoyment of sex. At the same time, the prostitutes themselves were considered shameful: most were either slaves or former slaves, or if free by birth relegated to the infames , people utterly lacking in social standing and deprived of most protections accorded to citizens under Roman law , a status they shared with actors and gladiators , all of whom, however, exerted sexual allure.
Most prostitutes were slaves or freedwomen, and it is difficult to determine the balance of voluntary to forced prostitution. Because slaves were considered property under Roman law, it was legal for an owner to employ them as prostitutes. Although rape was a crime in ancient Rome, the law only punished the rape of a slave if it "damaged the goods", since a slave had no legal standing as a person.
The penalty was aimed at providing the owner compensation for the "damage" of his property. Sometimes the seller of a female slave attached a ne serva clause to the ownership papers to prevent her from being prostituted. The ne serva clause meant that if the new owner or any owner afterwards used the slave as a prostitute she would be free.
A law of Augustus allowed that women guilty of adultery could be sentenced to forced prostitution in brothels. The law was abolished in Latin literature makes frequent reference to prostitutes.
Historians such as Livy and Tacitus mention prostitutes who had acquired some degree of respectability through patriotic, law-biding, or euergetic behavior. The high-class " call girl " meretrix is a stock character in Plautus 's comedies , which were influenced by Greek models. The poems of Catullus , Horace , Ovid , Martial , and Juvenal , as well the Satyricon of Petronius , offer fictional or satiric glimpses of prostitutes.
