ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν ἢ πρὸς ἄλλον ἀπιτέον.
or that quoted in the same place from the Corinthiastes of Philetaerus:
ὡς τακερόν, ὦ Ζεῦ, καὶ μαλακὸν τὸ βλέμμ’ ἔχει.
οὐκ ἐτὸς ἑταίρας ἱερόν ἐστι πανταχοῦ,
ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ γαμετῆς οὐδαμοῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος.
But this is not all. The advantages of Hetaera-love over adultery are expounded after a fashion that cannot fail to be startling to anyone who has not formed a clear conception of what “love” meant in the Athens of Demosthenes. A striking instance of this occurs in the Nannion of Eubulus,[260] and the same idea is still further developed in the Pentathlus of Xenarchus.
As for that “love of a man for a maid,” which is, so to speak, the very essence of the love-element in later Greek literature, it is simply ignored in Middle Comedy. A girl that one is going to marry has all the disadvantages of a wife, but for one thing. While the wife in esse is, as a later writer feelingly expresses it, “an immortal necessary evil,” and, therefore, cannot be altogether escaped from, there is no need to meet troubles halfway by drawing attention to the wife in posse. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we marry; and while we do so, let us have no Alexandrian skeleton at the feast to remind us of the fatal hour. And so, if the question be asked, “What did the Middle Comedy writers think of such love?” the answer is, “They did not think of it at all.”[261]
And this will serve to introduce us to a further question, in the answer to which lies the key to the whole of this part of our subject. What is actually meant by the “love” which we hear so often expressed for these Hetaerae? The answer may be simple and brief: ornari res ipsa vetat, contenta doceri: the love of the Middle Comedy is animal passion, pure and simple; the Hetaera caters for the appetites of the time in exactly the same way, even if in a different sphere, as the cook and the fishmonger, of whom we also hear so much, both to praise and blame, in this literature.[262] Of love in the modern sense of the word, of love as distinct from lust, there is nowhere any suggestion in the writers of the Middle Comedy. This fact is so patent to anyone who is familiar with the plays of this period, that one may, perhaps, be spared the trouble of its illustration. If anyone is inclined to doubt it, let him open the third volume of Meineke’s Comic Fragments at random, and read; he will soon be satisfied.
When this is the case, it is not surprising that we find “Platonic” love held up to consistent ridicule during the time of the Middle Comedy. A sufficiently striking example of this method is the passage quoted in Athenaeus, xiii. 563 C, from the Dithyrambus of Amphis: