This module explores the representation of hetairai in Greek literature and culture, focusing on two set texts that (re-)create and foreground the voices of historical and fictional hetairai: Lucian’s Dialogues of Courtesans and Alciphron’s Letters of Courtesans. Students examine the ways in which hetairai are portrayed in different sources (speeches, comedies, letters, and dialogues) and discuss the difficulties inherent in studying the lives of ancient female sex-workers through an exclusively male and a predominantly literary lens. Students read the core texts as part of a broader literary and rhetorical tradition, looking not only at the intertextual dialogues in which the authors engage (esp. New Comedy), but also at the ways in which they (re-)create the women’s voices within their own genres. As both primary texts fall under the umbrella of the so-called Second Sophistic, students also explore the cultural and literary markers of this movement within the Imperial Period.