“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.