To look at the modern market of paid companionship without understanding the past is to see merely the surface of one of humanity’s oldest dynamics. Since antiquity, the woman who commercialises access to her body and her time has assumed various institutional roles, orbiting power, religion, and culture. In Ancient Mesopotamia, for instance, sacred prostitution took place within temples dedicated to goddesses such as Ishtar; the sexual act was viewed as a ritual of communion with the divine and a celebration of fertility, entirely removed from the moral stigma we know today. Centuries later, in Ancient Greece, the hetairai (or heteras) emerged, occupying the highest echelon of the sexual commerce hierarchy. Unlike married women, who lived secluded in the domestic sphere, the hetairai were educated in the arts, philosophy, and politics. They were the only women permitted to attend male banquets, offering an intellectual sophistication that men could not find within their own families.
With the transition to the Middle Ages, the landscape shifted dramatically under the influence of Christianity, yet the practice did not disappear; rather, it was integrated into the public system. Medieval brothels were regulated and, in many cases, authorised by the Catholic Church and local crowns, who justified this tolerance as a “necessary evil” to prevent greater sins, such as the assault of virtuous women. These institutions paid heavy taxes to the clergy and rulers, generating significant revenue for municipal coffers. By the Renaissance, this figure took on new dimensions with the Venetian courtesans. In Venice, they were divided between the cortigiane di lume (of lower social classes) and the cortigiane oneste (the honest or honoured courtesans). The latter inhabited palaces, dressed as nobility, and were poets, musicians, and confidantes to doges, diplomats, and clergymen, relying on the patronage of this elite to secure legal and financial protection in a society that denied women legal independence.
This backdrop of tolerance and institutional integration faced a severe rupture during the Victorian Era in the nineteenth century. Beneath a facade of extreme moral repression and puritanism, prostitution exploded across industrial British urban centres, driven by destitute poverty and a lack of employment for women. The period was defined by profound social hypocrisy: whilst society demanded absolute purity from the “respectable family woman”, the brothels and streets of London were frequented by men of all social classes. This resulted in harsh regulatory legislation—such as the Contagious Diseases Acts—which penalised and criminalised the women whilst completely absolving the clients.
What history demonstrates, therefore, is that the transition of these figures into the contemporary escort reflects the shifting tides of tolerance, repression, and economic utility that each era imposed upon women. The common thread through the centuries is not a linear evolution of rights, but rather the constant adaptation of a social function that survived Mesopotamian sacredness, Greek intellectuality, medieval taxation, Renaissance opulence, and Victorian hypocrisy. In today’s world, the profession is no longer governed by temples or royal decrees; instead, it operates within the market logic of a hyper-individualistic society, where the pursuit of human connection and bespoke companionship replaces the ancient rituals and salons of the past.