"Against Neaera" was a prosecution speech delivered by Apollodoros of Acharnae against the freedwoman Neaera. It was preserved as part of the Demosthenic corpus, though it is widely considered to be pseudo-Demosthenic, possibly written by Apollodoros himself. The speech was part of the prosecution of Neaera, a hetaera who was accused of unlawfully marrying an Athenian citizen. Though the speech claims that the case was brought for personal reasons, the date of the prosecution has led scholars to believe that it was in fact politically motivated. In common with most legal cases from ancient Athens, the outcome is unknown.
The speech is important to modern scholars as the best extant biography of a woman from the classical period of ancient Greece, the most extensive surviving source on prostitution in ancient Greece, and the source of Athenian laws on adultery and citizenship which do not otherwise survive. However, it only began to receive significant attention from scholars in the 1990s, as before that period the focus of the speech on prostitution was considered to be inappropriate.
