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Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome (review)

harsh environments in which they found themselves, the fact that they were so influential both as a class and individually is testimony to their fortitude. The old tales of prostitutes with a heart of gold are not always canards to be dismissed as retrospective romanticism. There were indeed those who bequeathed legacies that benefited education, medicine, civic development, and even religious institutions. Whether benefactresses of their communities, grifters, addicts, cutthroats (and there were many who were some or all of these things), or merely women trying their best to get by in life, the prostitutes of the Rocky Mountain frontier are treated with equal thoroughness. MacKell states: “Each and every one of the ladies I have discovered . . . has an amazing story to tell. No matter how much or how little information is available, whether they were wonderful women or slovenly wenches you would not want to pass on the street today, all of them dared to do something incredibly outrageous and totally against social norms: they sold, traded, and gave their bodies for sex” (xv). Prostitution is an area in the history of the American West that is frequently touched upon in histories, popular fiction, and drama, yet for all its importance in shaping the West and our views thereof, it is but little dealt with in academic works. Like the prostitutes themselves and their role in the society in which they lived and operated, their legacy, important as it is, continues to dance along the margins of respectability. The work of Jan MacKell does much to shine an academic light upon them even while presenting the discussion in a format that both academic and nonacademic audiences will find highly readable.