pallake
{{Short description|Concubine in ancient Greece}}
File:Antakya Archaeological Museum Menander plays Perikeiromene in 2019 01.jpg depicting a scene from the play Perikeiromene. The woman to the left is identified as Glykera, the pallake of the man in the middle, Polemon. The man to the right is a household slave, Sosias.]]
Pallakae or pallakai ({{langx|grc|παλλακαί}}; singular pallake (παλλακή)) was the general name given to a concubine in ancient Greece.{{cite book|title=The Encyclopedia of Ancient History|publisher=Wiley|year=2012|isbn=9781444338386|chapter=Pallake|doi=10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah22216|editor1-last=Kaffarnik|editor1-first=Julia}}{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Brill's New Pauly|year=2006|title=Pallake|last=Hartmann|first=Elke|url=http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/pallake-e904670}}
Etymology
The word pallake, "concubine" is of uncertain etymology. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin and a connection with Latin paelex, "mistress," which is also a loanword from a non-Indo-European Mediterranean language.{{cite book|last=Beekes|first=R. S. P.|title=Etymological Dictionary of Greek|publisher=Brill|year=2009|page=1147}}
Status
The status of a pallake could be both free and a slave. A free concubine was often a former hetaira, a freedwoman or a woman from a poor family, and almost always a foreigner, not a member of the city state she lived in.Blundell, Sue; Blundell, Susan (1995). Women in Ancient Greece. Harvard University Press. pp. 124–. ISBN 978-0-674-95473-1.
An enslaved pallake was usually captured in war and brought back to Greece, either for the use of their captor, or to be sold. These women were allowed to be bought or sold just as any other slave in the Greek world.
One such account of this appears with Cassandra in Aeschylus' play, where she is brought to Agamemnon's palace as a mistress. She is later killed by Clytemnestra, alongside Agamemnon.
Social acceptability
The pallakai were accepted as part of Greek society. In the speech "Against Neaera", it is said:
We have hetairai [prostitutes] for pleasure, pallakai for the body's daily needs, and gynaekes [wives] for the bearing of legitimate children and for the guardianship of our houses.
Literature
There are many examples of pallakai in literature and drama.
The most lengthy is the "Against Neaera" speech, in which a woman called Neaera and her husband are prosecuted for claiming citizen rights falsely for her and the children she bore to her husband. This was considered a very serious crime, especially in Athens, where citizenship was restricted to those with a citizen mother and father. The case made against her alleges that she was a pallake in Corinth and other cities, before coming to Athens. The defense speech, however, does not survive, but one such possible defense may have been that she was a mistress rather than a prostitute, which was a normal social practice.
Another such example occurs in the text "Against the Stepmother for Poisoning", a speech by Antiphon. In this speech for the prosecution, it is alleged that a woman persuaded a pallake to poison her husband.
See also
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0224;layout=;loc=0;query=card%3D%232- Text of the Agamemnon]
- [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0079%3Aspeech%3D59 Text of the Oration Against Neaera] in Greek and English Athenaze, Balme and Lawall, OUP Publishing, USA, 1995
Category:Sexuality in ancient Greece