Many of the works of the French author Pierre Louys are set in the ancient classical world of Greece and Hellenistic Egypt. Slavery features in these novels and stories as a matter of course; the enslavement of captives and defeated peoples were part of the economy of Greece and Rome, without which their societies would not have functioned. However, Louys makes a particular use of slavery, employing it to represent certain views of the world.
An important text for this discussion is the author’s short story The Wearer of Purple (L’Homme de pourpre) which is part of the collection of stories titled Sanguines, published in 1903. It tells of the Athenian artist Parrhasius (a real person) and how he created a famed picture of Prometheus. The tale begins in Chalcis, where the entire population of Olynthus is being sold off into slavery by Philip of Macedon after he has defeated and destroyed the city. The narrator, the sculptor Bryaxis (another real historical figure), here meets with Parrhasius; and two men then tour the vast slave market. Prices have collapsed because so many healthy and young people are for sale. Parrhasius buys a young noble woman of eighteen called Artemidora, admitting to Bryaxis that he has no intention of rescuing her- “she will serve me as model for certain small pictures dealing with sexual subjects, with which I relieve the tension of my mind in my hours of leisure.” Parrhasius then finds the ideal model for his Prometheus, a mature man called Nicostratus who is a skilled physician. The purchaser doesn’t care for this slave’s medical ability, though, saying dismissively that “[if] I have a cold, I do not make use of any other plaster than a fair warm-breasted girl to recline on my bosom.” He is only concerned with the captive’s physique.
Bryaxis and Parrhasius then return home to Athens. The narrator visits the artist one day, to find him ‘relaxing’ before starting work on his picture of Prometheus. He is doing this by painting a picture of a nymph being molested by two satyrs- this involves Artemidora being assaulted by two male slaves. Parrhasius then turns his attention to his major work. Prometheus was punished by the Olympian gods for having given fire to humans; he was bound to a rock and his liver was devoured daily by an eagle. To achieve a realistic result, Parrhasius tortures Nicostratus to death. At first people are outraged, but the great artist is forgiven because the painting he has created is such a prodigy. The story is told, by Seneca, of how the real Parrhasius bought a slave from Olynthus and tortured him to death in order to achieve the most authentic looking picture- most scholars reject this as a fiction, though.
The Wearer of Purple summarises the position of slaves in the classical world recreated by Louys. They are, of course, property, to be used for pleasure or destroyed however the owner chooses. We see very similar individuals in his other stories of ancient Greece. In Les Chansons de Bilitis (1894), on the island of Cyprus, we encounter a ‘merchant of women’ who sells young girls to brothels, although an incident in which a little rose seller is prepared to offer herself and her younger sister to some men, in order to secure the sale of some flowers, is barely to be distinguished from the plight of those sold expressly into prostitution.
We see the same conditions and treatment in Aphrodite (1896). Highly indicative of slave status is the miserable fate of the girl Aphrodisia, who is property of a courtesan called Bacchis. The girl and her six half-sisters were all the daughters of a single African slave, whom her owner had ‘bred’ with selected men so as to provide herself with a proper complement of staff. Three boys were born but were killed; the girls were raised to serve in their owner’s home. As Aphrodisia is the favourite amongst Bacchis’ seven slaves, the decision has been taken to free her, in celebration of which a party is held. During this orgy Aphrodisia gives herself to three lovers at once for, “according to the law of slaves who were to become courtesans, she had to prove by incessant zeal that her new dignity was in nowise usurped.” Sadly, during the evening, Bacchis discovers that a precious mirror is missing. Aphrodisia is wrongly accused of this by her sisters and is crucified on the spot, in the midst of the party.
Once again, we see that slaves are expendable; they may be enjoyed, but they may just as lightly be thrown away- and in the cruellest of manners. Yet, at the very same time, the position of others is scarcely better than that of the plainly enslaved. The party has entertainment from musicians and dancers, who perform erotic and gymnastic steps, losing their clothes in the process. An acrobat walks on her hands, naked amidst sword blades. As the drinking continues “the twelve naked dancers [prove] an easy prey” for the guests. One of them, Theano, imitates Danae for the party, letting the guests throw coins at her. “The saucy impiety of the posing child amused all the feasters,” until one man clumsily injures her and she starts to cry. To cheer her up, the guests then decide to dip her head first into a krater full of wine, the source of much laughter all round. This appears to be typical of such events: earlier in the same book, we meet the flute players Rhodis and Myrtocleia making their way home after another engagement. They complain of the “debauched people” who had treated them like prostitutes; Myrtocleia had to defend Rhodis against an assault; the latter’s sister, Theano, was taken into another room and raped.
To be sure, there are mutual high spirits here but -in reality- the entertainers are barely distinguishable from the slaves in terms of what it is assumed they will do and tolerate. They are regarded as property and playthings more than individuals with rights and choices. The fact that they are female- and young- is plainly a major contributing factor. They have neither the status nor the power to resist.
The position of female slaves in the ancient world was depicted by Louys as being predictably bleak. They are liable to sexual exploitation and abuse and of course, they have no means of resisting this: it is just part of their lot. Turning to the modern world, it does not seem to me that Pierre Louys necessarily saw circumstances being any better for certain women. In his record of his own dealings with prostitutes, as well as in his fiction, the author depicted circumstances and treatment just as poor as anything he imagined in ancient times. He described (and, it seems, used) sex workers who were so poor and desperate that they would consent to clients doing whatever they liked to them in order to get paid.
Louys seemed to like to believe that sex workers relished their position: in his novella Trois Filles de leur mere it is claimed that “the brothel girl needs slavery… [she] threw herself into servitude, preferring to obey the whims of others- chains that she herself forges all the days of her life.” This may only have been a way of reconciling himself to some of his more exploitative actions. Nonetheless, Louys’ contemptuous attitude towards sex workers seems to have extended more broadly to all poor, working class females. As I described before in respect of his attitude towards trottins and arpetes (errand girls and apprentices), we see the same sense of sexist entitlement manifested by Louys towards poor working girls in Paris: they were treated as being readily available and amenable to providing sexual favours.
To conclude, for Pierre Louys slavery in Greece and Rome was seen as providing a convenient pool of young females who were available for male entertainment. This fictional world might be regarded as, to some degree, a criticism of this aspect of classical culture, but the author’s own conduct and his personal attitudes, as unconsciously betrayed in his other writing, reveal that, at one level at least, he did not object to the existence of women whose social and economic circumstances obliged them to sell themselves to bourgeois and aristocratic men. They were not enslaved, but they were still the slaves to money.
A full, annotated version of this essay can be downloaded from my Academia page.
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