meretrix

plural meretrices

1. A prostitute in Ancient Rome.

   Hands grasped me like a doll, and as I dandled thus between the meretrices of Abaia, I was lifted from my broad-armed chair in the inn of Saltus; yet still, for perhaps a hundred heartbeats more, I could not rid my mind of the sea and its green-haired women.

   1981, Gene Wolfe, chapter VIII, in The Claw of the Conciliator (The Book of the New Sun; 2), New York: Timescape, →ISBN, page 72

   2 more examples

   Nomus Marcellus has pointed out the difference between this class of prostitutes and the prostibula. "This is the difference between a meretrix (harlot) and a prostibula (common strumpet): a meretrix is of a more honorable station and calling; for meretrices are so named a merendo (from earning wages) because they plied their calling only by night; prostibulu^([sic]) because they stand before the stabulum (stall) for gain both by day and night."

   a. 100 CE, Petronius, translated by W. C. Firebaugh, Satyricon, published 1922

   Of the two ritually important female categories, matrona and meretrix, it was the matrona that was held at a strict ritual distance. […] The domain of the meretrix was not held at a ritual distance. The boundary between male and female was not quite so stark when the female belonged to the category of prostitute.

   2013, Ariadne Staples, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins, Routledge, →ISBN