Plato, Aristotle, and Women Musicians

Abstract

Plato and Aristotle allude to women musicians available for hire for services renderable at symposia (the drinking parties that followed banquets). These allusions have been misunderstood in recent scholarship, culminating in the incorrect assertion that 'Plato and Aristotle differentiated respectable domestic female musicians from entertainer- musicians' (New Grove II, 'Women in music'). The same scholarship tends to refer to such persons, furthermore, as 'flute-girls' and the like; auletris would be a philologically and politically correct alternative.