Concubinage - Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

In Ancient Greece, the practice of keeping a slave concubine (Greek "pallakis") was little recorded but appears throughout Athenian history. Law prescribed that a man could kill another man caught with his concubine for the production of free children (thereby implying that concubines' children were not granted citizenship). While references to the sexual exploitation of maidservants appear in literature, it was considered disgraceful for a man to keep such women under the same roof as his wife. Some interpretations of hetaera have held they were concubines when one had a permanent relationship with a single man.

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