Peter Jones

What the ancients would have made of Virginia Giuffre

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issue 26 February 2022

Virginia Giuffre may well be a heroine among all those abused in their youth. Ancient reactions compare interestingly with ours.

It would have been one thing had she been a high-class courtesan (hetaira), who was her own woman, dealing in ‘gifts’ from ‘friends’ who wanted to ‘benefit’ her, with no going rate of exchange. Fickle in granting her favours, she would have made herself available on her terms, to the fury of the males besieging her doors. The point is that she was in full control, and that was something that ancient males admired. Such women became rich and famous. The courtesan Nossis composed an epigram about Polyarchis who built a temple to Aphrodite on the proceeds of her ‘dazzling body’.

Giuffre, being pimped by Epstein and passed around ‘like a fruit platter’, was effectively a pornê (‘for sale’).

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