How do we know that prostitutes were very common/popular in Corinth around Jesus' time?
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The best English translation of the relevant statement from Strabo (Book VIII, Ch. 6, Section 20) I can find is:
And the temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it owned more than a thousand temple slaves, hetairas, whom both men and women had dedicated to the goddess. And therefore it was also on account of these women that the city was crowded with people and grew rich; for instance, the ship captains freely squandered their money, and hence the proverb, "Not for every man is the voyage to Corinth."
It is believed that the time period of which Strabo is writing is somewhere around 400 to 700 BCE, and not that of the authorship (circa 2 BCE). Further, only the richest of the temples in Corinth, that dedicated to Aphrodite, is claimed to have had so many as a thousand hetairas, or courtesans. It seems that the authors have been quite careless in their use of this reference.
Although this particular quote may be thought somewhat ambiguous on the precise nature of a hetairas work, other references both by Strabo and others are quite explicit. The full range of modern LGBT seems to have been available in addition to more traditional heterosexual activity.
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