(παλλακή, παλλακίς). A concubine.

The παλλακή or παλλακίς occupied at Athens a kind of middle rank between the wife and the harlot (ἑταίρα). Demosthenes defines the position of each by saying that the harlot ministers to pleasure only, the concubine serves, while the wife is for the purpose of bearing children and acting as the faithful steward of her husband's goods (c. Neaer. 122, p. 1386). Thus Antiphon speaks of the παλλακή of Philoneos as following him to the sacrifice, and also waiting upon him and his guest at table. If her person were violated by force, the same penalty was exigible from the ravisher as if the offence had been committed upon an Attic matron; and a man surprised by the quasi-husband in the act of criminal intercourse with his παλλακή, might be slain by him on the spot, as in the parallel case. (See Adulterium.) It does not, however, appear very clearly from what political classes concubines were chiefly selected, as cohabitation with a foreign (ξένη) woman was strictly forbidden by law, and the provisions made by the State for virgins of Attic families must, in most cases, have prevented their sinking to this condition. Sometimes, certainly, where there were several destitute female orphans, this might take place, as the next of kin was not obliged to provide for more than one; and we may also conceive the same to have occurred with respect to the daughters of families so poor as to be unable to supply a dowry. The dowry, in fact, seems to have been a decisive criterion as to whether the connection between a male and a female Athenian, in a state of cohabitation, amounted to a marriage. If no dowry had been given, the child of such union would be illegitimate; if, on the contrary, a dowry had been given, or a proper instrument executed in acknowledgment of its receipt, the woman was fully entitled to all conjugal rights. It does not appear that the slave who was taken to her master's bed acquired any political rights in consequence; the concubine mentioned by Antiphon is treated as a slave by her master, and after his death undergoes a servile punishment.