Neaira was supposedly a prostitute who sold her body for sex; she was also, in our single source for her life, a courtesan, a concubine, or ‘that sort of woman’.1 These labels are pejorative ones, carrying the moral and social judgements of the male-authored ancient Greek sources – no prostitute from classical Greece has left us her own testimony. But we could also choose other terms for Neaira that would fit her at various points in her life: she was a child, a girl, a woman, a sex slave, a victim, a partner, a lover, an opportunist, a mother, and above all, perhaps, a survivor.2 Whilst all those labels we can apply may fit, she herself, her character and emotions, her aspirations and motivations remain elusive; some are given to us by a man, Apollodorus, who is using her story for his own ends – hardly a disinterested source. Even though we lack her own words and her physical remains, her story, shadowy as it is, is still worth exploring as a life as valuable as any other and therefore worthy of remembrance and sympathy.