From the spirit pervading the foregoing ceremonies it will be seen, that married women enjoyed at Athens numerous external tokens of respect. We must now enter the harem, and observe how they lived there. Most, perhaps, of the misapprehensions which prevail on this subject arise out of one very obvious omission,—a neglect to distinguish between the exaggeration and satire of the comic poets, much of which, in all countries, has been levelled at women, and the sober truth of history, less startling, and therefore, less palatable. To comprehend the Athenians, however, we must be content to view them as they were, with many virtues and many vices, often sinning against their women, but never as a general rule treating them harshly. Indeed, according to no despicable testimony, their errors when they erred would appear to have lain in the contrary direction.^[93]

Certainly the mistress of a family at Athens was not placed above the necessity of extending her solicitude to the government of her household, though too many even there neglected it, degenerating into the resemblance of those mawkish, insipid, useless things, without heart or head, who often in our times fill fashionable drawing-rooms, and have their reputations translated to Doctors’ Commons. Of female education I have already spoken, together with the several acts and ceremonies, which conducted an Athenian woman to the highest and most honourable station her sex can fill on earth. In this new relation she shares with her husband that domestic patriarchal sovereignty, pictures of which abound in the Scriptures. How great soever might be the establishment, she was queen of every thing within doors. All the slaves, male and female, came under her control.^[94] To every one she distributed his task, and issued her commands; and when there were no children who required her care, she might often be seen sitting in the recesses of the harem, at the loom, encircled, like an Homeric princess, by her maids,^[95] laughing, chatting, or, along with them, exercising her sweet voice in songs,^[96] those natural bursts of melody which came spontaneously to the lips of a people whose every-day speech resembled the music of the nightingale.

Xenophon, in that interesting work, the Œconomics, introduces an Athenian gentleman laying open to Socrates the internal regulations of his family. In this picture, the wife occupies an important position in the foreground. She is, indeed, the principal figure around which the various circumstances of the composition are grouped with infinite delicacy and effect. Young and beautiful she comes forth hesitating and blushing at being detected in some slight economical blunders. The husband takes her by the hand; they converse in our presence, and while the interior arrangements of a Greek house are unreservedly laid open, we discover the exact footing on which husband and wife lived at Athens, and a state of more complete confidence, of greater mutual affection, of more considerate tenderness on the one side, or feminine reliance and love on the other, it would be difficult to conceive.

Ischomachos, I admit, is to be regarded as a favourable specimen; he unites in his character the qualities of an enterprising and enlightened country gentleman, with those of a politician and orator of no mean order, and his probity as a citizen infuses an air of mingled grandeur and sweetness into his domestic manners. Describing a conversation which, soon after their marriage, took place between him and his youthful wife, he observes:—“When we had together taken a view of our possessions I remarked to her that, without her constant care and superintendence, nothing of all she had seen would greatly profit us. And taking my illustration from the science of politics, I showed that, in well-regulated states, it is not deemed sufficient that good laws are enacted, but that proper persons are chosen to be guardians of those laws, who not only reward with praise such as yield them due obedience, but visit also their infraction with punishment. Now, my love,” said I, “you must consider yourself the guardian of our domestic commonwealth, and dispose of all its resources as the commander of a garrison disposes of the soldiers under his orders. With you it entirely rests to determine respecting the conduct of every individual in the household, and, like a queen, to bestow praise and reward on the dutiful and obedient, while you keep in check the refractory by punishment and reproof. Nor should this high charge appear burdensome to you; for though the duties of your station may seem to involve deeper solicitude and necessity for greater exertion than we require even from a domestic, these greater cares are rewarded by greater enjoyments; since, whatever ability they may display in the improving or protecting of their master’s property, the measure of their advantages still depends upon his will, while you, as its joint owner, enjoy the right of applying it to whatever use you please. It follows, therefore, that as the person most interested in its preservation you should cheerfully encounter superior difficulties.”

Having listened attentively to the somewhat quaint discourse of the Economist, Socrates felt anxious, as well he might, to learn the result; for the lady, expected thus wisely “to queen it,” was as yet but fifteen. His faith, however, in womanhood was great; and Xenophon, who but reflects from a less brilliant mirror the Socratic wisdom, delivers, under the mask of Ischomachos, the mingled convictions both of the master and the pupil. The moral beauty of the dialogue, and its truth to nature, would have been lost had the lady at all shrunk from the duties of her high office. But her ambition was at once awakened. The obscurity to which, in the time of Pericles, women were, by the manners of the country, condemned, now no longer seemed desirable, and the love of fame was urged upon her as a motive to extraordinary exertions.^[97] Her reply is highly characteristic. Running, with the unerring tact of her sex, even in advance of her husband, she desired him to believe that he would have formed an extremely erroneous opinion of her character, had he for a moment supposed that the care of their common property could ever have proved burdensome to her: on the contrary, the really grievous thing would have been to require her to be neglectful of it!

Men always conceive they are complimenting a woman when they attribute to her a masculine understanding, and they thus, in fact, do place her on the highest intellectual level known to them. Socrates adopted this style of compliment in speaking of the wife of Ischomachos. And I may here remark, that we need no other proof of how differently the Athenians felt on the subject of women from the Orientals with whom they have been compared, than the mere circumstance of their conversing openly with strangers respecting their wives. In the East, a greater affront could scarcely be offered a man than to inquire about his female establishment. The most an old friend does is to say, “Is your house well?”—whereas at Athens, women formed a never-failing theme in all companies; which proves them to have been there contemplated in a different light. In fact, the sentiments of Ischomachos, every way worthy the most chivalrous people of antiquity, could only have sprung up in a society where just and exalted notions of female virtue prevailed; for, under the word “high-mindedness,” we find him grouping every refined and estimable quality which a gentlewoman can possess.

But, perhaps, the reader will not be displeased if we introduce dramatically upon the scene an Athenian married pair discussing in his presence a question closely connected with domestic happiness. There is little risk of exaggeration. The picture is by Xenophon, a writer whose subdued and sober colouring is calculated rather to diminish than otherwise the poetical features of his subject.

By Heaven! exclaimed Socrates, according to this account, your wife’s understanding must be of a highly masculine character.

Nay, but suffer me, answered the husband, to place before you a convincing proof of her high-mindedness, by showing how, on a single representation, she yielded to me on a subject extremely important.

Proceed, cried the philosopher, (who had not found Xantippe thus manageable,) proceed; for, believe me, friend, I experience much greater delight in contemplating the active virtues of a living woman, than the most exquisite female form by the pencil of Zeuxis would afford me.

Observing, said Ischomachos, that my wife sought by cosmetics^[98] and other arts of the toilette to render herself fairer and ruddier than she had issued from the hands of Nature, and that she wore high-heeled shoes in order to add to her stature,—Tell me, wife,^[99] I began, would you now esteem me to be a worthy participator of your fortunes if, concealing the true state of my affairs, I aimed at appearing richer than I am, by exhibiting to you heaps of false money, necklaces of gilded wood for gold, and wardrobes of spurious for genuine purple?

Nay, exclaimed my wife, interrupting me, put not the injurious supposition: it is what you could not be guilty of. For, were such your character I could never love you from my soul.

Well, by entering together into the bonds of marriage are we not mutually invested with a property in each other’s persons?

People say so.

They say truly: and since this is the case shall I not more sincerely evince my esteem for you by watching sedulously over my own health and well-being, and displaying to your gaze the natural hues of a manly complexion, than if, neglecting these, I presented myself with rouged cheeks, eyes encircled by paint, and my whole exterior false and hollow?

Indeed, she replied, I prefer the native colour of your cheeks to any artificial bloom, and could never gaze with so much delight into any eyes as into yours—bright and sparkling with health.

Then believe no less of me, said I; but be well persuaded that, in my judgment, there are no tints so beautiful as those with which nature has adorned your cheeks. The same rule indeed holds universally. For, even in the inferior creation, every living thing delights most in individuals of its own species. And so it is with man whom nothing so truly pleases as to behold the image of his own nature mirrored in another and a fairer form of humanity. Besides, false beauties, though they may deceive the incurious glance of strangers,^[100] must inevitably be detected by persons living always together. Women necessarily appear undisguised when first rising in the morning, before they have undergone the renovation of the toilette; and perspiration, or tears, or the waters of the bath, will even at other times float away their artificial complexions.

And what, in the name of all the gods, did she say to that? inquired Socrates.

What? replied the husband. Why, that for the future she would abjure all meretricious ornaments, and consent to appear decked with that simple grace and beauty which she owed to nature.

At Sparta married persons, as in France, occupied separate beds; but among the Athenians and in other parts of Greece a different custom prevailed. The same remark may be applied to the Heroic Ages. Odysseus and Penelope, Alcinoös and Arete, Paris and Helen, occupy the same chamber and the same couch. The women in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes appealed to this circumstance in justification of their late appearance at the female assembly held before day, and Euphiletos in the oration of Lysias on Eratosthenes’ murder, who admits us freely into the recesses of the harem, confirms this fact, except, that when the mother suckled her own child she usually slept with it in a separate bed. At Byzantium also the same practice prevailed, as we learn from a very amusing anecdote. Python an orator of that city who, like Falstaff, seems to have been somewhere about two yards in the waist, once quelled an insurrection by a jocular allusion to this part of domestic economy. “My dear fellow-citizens,” cried he to the enraged multitude, “you see how fat I am. Well! my wife is still fatter than I, yet when we agree one small bed will contain us both; but, if we once begin to quarrel, the whole house is too little to hold us.”^[101]

We have seen above how absolute was the authority of women over their household, and this authority likewise extended to their children. The father no doubt could exercise, when he chose, considerable influence; but as most of his time was spent abroad, in business or politics, the chief charge of their early education, the first training of their intellect, the first rooting of their morals and shaping of their principles devolved upon the mother.^[102] There have been writers, indeed, to whom this has seemed a circumstance to be lamented. But their judgment probably was warped by theory. In the original discipline of the mind, great attainments and experience of the world are less needed than tact to discern, and patience to apply, those minute incentives to action which women discover with a truer sagacity than we do. In this task, ever pleasing to a true mother, the aid of nurses, however, was usually obtained; nor are we, as Cramer observes, on this account to blame the Athenian ladies, so long as they did not, as in after times was too much the fashion, consider their whole duty performed when they had delivered their children to the nurse.

It will be evident from what has been said, that an Athenian lady who conscientiously discharged her duties was very little exposed to ennui. She arose in the morning with the lark, roused her slaves, distributed to all their tasks,^[103] superintended the operations of the nursery, and, on days frequently recurring, went abroad in the performance of rites specially allotted to her sex. But, one effect of democracy is to confer undue influence upon women.^[104] And this influence, where by education or otherwise they happen to be luxurious or vain, must infallibly prove pernicious to the state. At Athens, the number of this class of women, extremely limited in the beginning, augmented rapidly during the decline of the republic, and the comic poets substituting a part for the whole, invest their countrywomen generally with the qualities belonging exclusively to these.—But, the success of such writers depending generally on ingenious extravagance and exaggeration, we must be on our guard against their insinuations. Their faith in the existence of virtue, male or female, has, in all ages, if we are to judge by their works, been very lanksided. In their view, if there has been one good woman since the world began, it is as much as there has. Accordingly when these lively caricaturists describe the female demos as addicted extravagantly to wine^[105] and pawning their wardrobe to purchase it—as compelling the men by their intemperance to keep their cellars under lock and key, and still defeating them by manufacturing false ones—as forming illicit connexions, and having recourse to the boldest stratagems in furtherance of their intrigues, we must necessarily suppose them to have amused themselves at the expense of truth; though that, among the Athenians, there were examples enough of women of whom all this might be said, it would be absurd to deny.

We know that where the minds of married dames are fixed chiefly upon dress and show their anxiety has often very little reference to their husbands. And if it be their object to excite admiration out of doors, it is simply as a means to an end, which end, in too many cases, is intrigue. Proofs exist that among the Athenian ladies there were numbers whose idle lives and luxurious habits produced their natural results—loose principles and dissolute manners. The beauty of Alcibiades drew them after him in crowds,^[106] though we do not read that, like another very handsome personage in a modern republic, the son of Cleinias found it necessary to carry about a club to defend himself from their importunities. They went abroad elaborately habited and adorned merely to attract the gaze of men,^[107] and having thus sown the first seeds of intrigue, they took care to cultivate and bring them to maturity. The felicitous invention of Falstaff’s friends, which got him safe out of Ford’s house in a buck-basket, was not so new as Shakspeare, perhaps, imagined. His predecessors on the Athenian stage had already discovered stratagems equally happy among their countrywomen, whose lovers we find made their way into the harem wrapped up in straw, like carp—or crept through holes made purposely by fair hands in the eaves—or scaled the envious walls by the help of those vulgar contrivances called ladders.^[108]

The laws of Athens, however, were more modest than its women. For, from the very interference of the laws, it is evident, that the example of the Spartan ladies, who enjoyed the privilege of exposing themselves indecently, found numerous imitators among the female democracy. To repress this unbecoming taste, it was enacted, that any woman detected in the streets in indecorous deshabille^[109] should be fined a thousand drachmæ, and, to add disgrace to pecuniary considerations, the name of the offender, with the amount of the fine, was inscribed on a tablet and suspended on a certain platane tree in the Cerameicos. However, what constituted indecorous deshabille in the opinion of Philippides, who procured the enactment of the law, it might be difficult to determine. Possibly it may have consisted in the too great exposure of the bosom, for the covering of which ladies in remoter ages appear to have depended very much on their veils. Thus in the interview of Helen with Aphrodite she saw, says the poet, her beautiful neck, desire-inflaming bosom, and eyes bright with liquid splendour. Her garments concealed the rest.^[110] Now, as it was customary for ladies to appear veiled in public, the object of the law of Philippides may simply have been to enforce the observance of this ancient practice. The magistrates who presided over this very delicate part of Athenian police were denominated “Regulators of the women,”^[111] an office which Sultan Mahmood in our day took upon himself. They were chosen by the twenty from among the wealthiest and most virtuous of the citizens, and in their office resembled the Roman Censors and similar magistrates in several other states.^[112]

The evil influence of women of this description,^[113] who, as Milton expresses it, would fain at any rate ride in their coach and six, was perceived and lamented by the philosophers. To their vain and frivolous notions might be traced, in part at least, the love of power, of trifling distinctions, of unmanly pleasures, which infected the Athenians towards the decline of their republic. By them the springs of education were poisoned, and the seeds sown of those inordinate artificial desires which convulse and overthrow states. In vain did philosophers inculcate temperance and moderation, while the youth were imbued with different opinions by their mothers. The lessons of the Academy were overgrown and checked in the harem. Such dames no doubt would grieve to find their husbands content with little^[114] (as was the case with Xantippe) and not numbered with the rulers, since their consequence among their own sex was thus lessened. They would have had them keen worshipers of Mammon, eagerly squabbling and wrangling in the law-courts or the ecclesiæ, not cultivators of domestic habits or philosophical tranquillity and content: and in conversing with their sons would be careful to recommend maxims the reverse of the father’s, with all the cant familiar to women of their character.^[115]

Our review of female society at Athens would be incomplete were we to overlook the Hetairæ who exerted so powerful an influence over the morals and destinies of the state. They occupied much the same position which the same class of females still do in modern communities, cultivated in mind, polished and elegant in manners, but scarcely deserving as a body to be viewed in the light in which a very distinguished historian has placed them.^[116] Their position, however, was anomalous, resembling rather that of kings’ mistresses in modern times, whose vices are tolerated on account of their rank, than that of plebeian sinners whose deficiencies in birth and fortune exclude them from good society. There is much difficulty in rightly apprehending the notions of the ancients on the subject of these women. At first sight we are shocked to find that, during one festival, they were permitted to enter the temples in company with modest ladies. But in what Christian country are they excluded from church?^[117] Again, behold in our theatres the matron and the courtezan in the same box, while at Athens even foreign women were not suffered to approach the space set apart for the female citizens. Nevertheless, though on this point so rigid, they were in their own houses permitted occasionally to visit them^[118] and receive instructions from their lips, as in Turkish harems ladies do from the Almè.

It is not permitted here to lift the curtain from the manners of these ladies. But their position, pregnant with evil to the state through its contaminating influences on the minds of youth, must be comprehensively explained before a correct idea can be formed of the internal structure of the Athenian commonwealth, of the germs of dissolution which it concealed within its own bosom, or the premature blight which an unspiritual system of morals was mainly instrumental in producing. No doubt the question whether the existence of such a class of persons should be tolerated at all, is environed by difficulties almost insurmountable. They have always existed and therefore, perhaps, it is allowable to infer that they always will exist; but this does not seem to justify Solon for sanctioning, by legislative enactments, a modification of moral turpitude debasing to the individual, and consequently detrimental to the state. To do evil that good may come, is as much a solecism in politics as in ethics. On this point I miss the habitual wisdom of the Athenian legislator. Lycurgus himself could have enacted nothing more at variance with just principles, or more subversive of heroic sentiments.

The Hetairæ,^[119] recognised by law and scarcely proscribed by public opinion, may be said to have constituted a sort of monarchical leaven in the very heart of the republic; they shared with the sophists, whom I have already depicted, the affections of the lax ambitious youths, panting at once for pleasure and distinction, fostered expensive tastes and luxurious habits, increased consequently their aptitude to indulge in peculation, shared with the unprincipled the spoils of the state, and vigorously paved the way for the battle of Chæronea. But if their existence was hurtful to the community, so was it often full of bitterness to themselves. In youth, no doubt, when beauty breathed its spell around them, they were puffed up and intoxicated with the incense of flattery^[120]—their conversation at once sprightly and learned seemed full of charms—their houses spacious as palaces and splendidly adorned were the resort of the gay, the witty, the powerful, nay, even of the wise—for Socrates did not disdain to converse with Theodota or to imbibe the maxims of eloquence from Aspasia. But when old age came on, what were they? It then appeared, that the lively repartees and grotesque extravagancies which had pleased when proceeding from beautiful lips, seemed vapid and poor from an old woman. The wrinkles which deformed their features were equally fatal to their wisdom that flitted from their dwellings, and became domiciliated with the last beautiful importation from Ionia. Thus deserted, the most celebrated Hetairæ became a butt for the satire even of the most clownish. The wit wont to set the table in a roar scarcely served to defend them against the jests of the agora.

“How do you sell your beef?” said Laïs to a young butcher in the flesh-market.

“Three obels the Hag,” answered the coxcomb.

“And how dare you, said the faded beauty, here in Athens pretend to make use of barbarian weights?”

The word in the original signifying an old woman and a Carian weight, it suited her purpose to understand him in the latter sense.^[121]

Worshiped and slighted alternately they adopted narrow and interested principles in self-defence. Besides, generally barbarians by birth, they brought along with them from their original homes the creed best suited to their calling—“Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die.” They were often the lumber of Asia and hence known under the appellation of “strange women,” though it is very certain, that many female citizens were from time to time enrolled among their ranks, some through the pressure of adversity, others from a preference for that kind of life. Their education it must be conceded, however, was far more masculine than that of other women. They cultivated all the sciences but that of morals, and concealed their lack of modesty by the dazzling splendour of their wit. Hence among a people with whom intellect was almost everything their company was much sought after and highly valued, not habitually perhaps by statesmen, but by wits, poets, sophists, and young men of fashion.

Many of the bons mots uttered by those ladies have been preserved. One day at table Stilpo the philosopher accused Glycera of corrupting the manners of youth.

“My friend,” said she, “we are both to blame; for you, in your turn, corrupt their minds by innumerable forms of sophistry and error. And if men be rendered unhappy, what signifies it whether a philosopher or a courtezan be the cause?”

It is to her that a joke, somewhat hackneyed but seldom attributed to its real author, was originally due. A gentleman presenting her with a very small jar of wine sought to enhance its value by pretending it was sixteen years old. “Then,” replied she, “it is extremely little for its age.” Gnathena too, another member of the sisterhood, sprinkled her conversation with sparkling wit, but too redolent of the profession to be retailed. Some of her sayings, however, will bear transplantation, though they must suffer by it. To stop the mouth of a babbler who observed that he had just arrived from the Hellespont—“And yet,” she remarked, “it is clear to me that you know nothing of one of its principal cities!” “Which city is that?”—“Sigeion,”^[122] (in which there appears to be a reference to the word Silence) answered Gnathena. Several noisy gallants, who being in her debt sought to terrify her by menaces, once saying they would pull her house down, and had pickaxes and mattocks ready, “I disbelieve it,” she replied, “for if you had, you would have pledged them to pay what you owe me.” A comic poet remarking to one of these ladies that the water of her cistern was delightfully cold—“It has always been so,” she replied, “since we have got into the habit of throwing your plays into it.” The repartee of Melitta to a conceited person who was said to have fled ignominiously from the field of battle is exceedingly keen. Happening to be eating of a hare which she seemed much to enjoy, our soldier, desirous of directing attention to her, inquired if she knew what was the fleetest animal in the world. “The runaway,” replied Melitta.

The same taste which induces many persons of rank in our own day to marry opera dancers and actresses, in antiquity favoured the ambition of the Hetairæ, many of whom rose from their state of humiliation to be the wives of satraps and princes. This was the case with Glycera, whom after the death of Pythionica, Harpalos sent for from Athens, and domiciliated within his royal palace at Tarsos. He required her to be saluted and considered as his queen, and refused to be crowned unless in conjunction with her. Nay, he had even the hardihood to erect in the city of Rossos, a brazen statue to her, beside his own.^[123] Herpyllis, one of the same sisterhood, won the heart of Aristotle, and was the mother of Nicomachos. She survived the philosopher, and was carefully provided for by his will.^[124] Even Plato, whose genius and virtue are still the admiration of mankind, succumbed to the charms of Archæanassa, an Hetaira of Colophon, whose beauty, which long survived her youth, he celebrated in an epigram still extant.^[125]

Of all these ladies, however, not even excepting Phryne, or the Sicilian Laïs,^[126] Aspasia^[127] has obtained the most widely extended fame. This illustrious woman, endowed by nature with a mind still more beautiful than her beautiful form, exercised over the fortunes of Athens an influence beyond the reach of the greatest queen. Her genius, unobserved for some time, by degrees drew around her all those whom the love of letters or ambition induced to cultivate their minds. Her house became a sort of club-room, where eloquence, politics, philosophy, mixed with badinage, were daily discussed, and whither even ladies of the highest rank resorted to acquire from Aspasia those accomplishments which were already beginning to be in fashion. From her Socrates professed to have in part acquired his knowledge of rhetoric, and it is extremely probable that he could trace to the habit of conversing with one so gifted by nature, so polished by rare society, something of that exquisite facility and lightness of manner which characterize his familiar dialectics. No doubt, we may attribute something of the reputation she acquired to the desire to disparage Pericles. It was thought that by appropriating many of his harangues to her they could bring him down nearer their own level. She was, in influence and celebrity, the Madame Roland of Athens, though living in times somewhat less troubled.

The name of Phryne, though not so celebrated, is still familiar to every one, partly, perhaps, through the accusation brought against her in the court of Heliæa,^[128] by Euthios. She was a native of Thespiæ, but established at Athens, and beloved by the orator Hyperides, who undertook her defence. His pleading, it may therefore be presumed, was eloquent. Perceiving, however, he could make but little impression on the judges, he had her called into court, and, as if by accident, bared her bosom,^[129] the fairness and beauty of which heaving with anguish and terror—for it was a matter of life and death—so wrought upon the august judges that her acquittal immediately followed. The Heliasts, renowned for their upright decisions, were suspected on this occasion of undue commiseration, though the charge was probably grounded on some frivolous pretence of impiety; and, to prevent the recurrence of similar partiality in future, a decree was passed, rendering it illegal thus to extort the pity of the court, or, on any account, to introduce the accused, whether man or woman, into the presence of the judges. It was on her figure that Apelles chiefly relied in painting his Aphrodite rising from the sea, as Phryne herself rose before all Greece on the beach at Eleusis; and Praxiteles also wrought from the same model his Cnidean Aphrodite.^[130] This sculptor, who was the rival of Hyperides, and, indeed, of all Athens, in the affections of Phryne, permitted her one day to make choice for herself from two statues of his own workmanship—the Eros and the Satyr. Discovering, by a stratagem, that he himself preferred the former, she was guided by his judgment, and dedicated the winged god in a temple of her native city. In admiration of her beauty, a number of gentlemen erected, by subscription, in her honour, a golden statue at Delphi. It was the work of Praxiteles, and stood on a pillar of white marble of Pentelicos, between the statues of Archidamos, king of Sparta, and Philip, son of Amyntas. The inscription ran simply thus:—

On seeing this statue, Crates, the cynic, exclaimed, “Behold a trophy of Hellenic wantonness!”

It is not, of course, among women of this class, that we should expect to discover proofs of female truth or enduring attachment. But the human heart sometimes triumphs over adverse circumstances.^[131] History has preserved the memory of more than one act of heroism performed by an Hetaira, to show that woman doth not always put off her other virtues, though habitually trampling on the one which constitutes for her the boundary between honour and infamy.

Ptolemy, son of Philadelphos, while commanding the garrison of Ephesos, had along with him the courtezan, Irene, who, when his Thracian mercenaries rose in revolt, fled along with him to the temple of Artemis, where they fell together, sprinkling the altar with their blood.^[132] Alcibiades, too, of all his friends, found none adhere to him in his adversity but an Hetaira, who cheerfully exposed her life for his sake; and, when the assassins of Pharnabazos had achieved their task, performed, like another Antigone, the last duties over the ashes of the man she loved.^[133] Other anecdotes might be added equally honourable to their feelings and fidelity, but these will sufficiently illustrate their character and the estimation in which they were generally held.