Prostitution in Ancient Rome - Forced Prostitution

Forced Prostitution

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. The 1st-century historian Valerius Maximus presents a story of complicated sexual psychology in which a freedman had been forced by his owner to prostitute himself during his time as a slave; the freedman kills his own young daughter when she loses her virginity to her tutor.

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. There is some evidence that slave prostitutes could benefit from their labor; in general, slaves could earn their own money by hiring out their skills or taking a profit from conducting their owner's business.

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 389.