This is a historical overview of the lives of many who earned their livelihoods in the sex trade. I hope that if you notice an omission, you will bring it to my attention and we can include them too.
Valeria Messalina married the Roman Emperor Claudius. A powerful and influential woman with a reputation for promiscuity, she allegedly conspired against her husband and was executed on the discovery of the plot. Her notorious reputation arguably results from political bias, but works of art and literature have perpetuated it into modern times. Accusations of sexual excess were a tried and tested smear tactic and most accounts about Messalina come from Tacitus and Suetonius, some 70 years after the fact; but, two accounts especially have added to her notoriety.
Her husband eventually had to order the execution of Messalina and her lover, who had secretly marriage each other and planned to kill Claudius. The truth in such tales will never be known, but Messalina has gone down in history as a woman of spectacular power and sexual appetites. She is most famous for instigating the burning of Persepolis. It has been suggested that she may also have been Alexander's lover, on the basis of Athenaeus's statement that Alexander liked to "keep Thais with him", but this may simply mean he enjoyed her company.
She is said to have been very witty and entertaining. Phryne was a famous Greek hetaira. She is best known for her trial for impiety, where she was defended by the orator Hypereides. Yellow or not, Phryne was widely celebrated for her beauty, and was the model for several contemporary paintings and sculpture, including a statue of Aphrodite by her client Praxiteles.
Phryne was so successful at what she did hat she became so fabulously wealthy in her own right. Angered by her growing popularity, politicians conspired to have Phryne charged for blasphemy. Lais of Corinth was a famous courtesan of ancient Greece who was probably born in Corinth.
