μικροῦ πριάσθαι κέρματος τὴν ἡδονήν
(from whom surely and safely you may buy your pleasure for a small coin), admits of an easy explanation, if we consider that these common women are contrasted here not with the hetaerae but with the free women of the city, illicit intercourse with whom was always dangerous for the voluptuary, being punished as rape or adultery. The most telling proof is afforded by the passage of Diogenes Laertius, bk. VI. ch. 4., where he says: “When Antisthenes saw a man accused of adultery, he said to him, Unhappy man, what serious risk you might have avoided for an obol! (ὦ δυστυχὴς, πηλίκον κίνδυνον ὀβολοῦ διαφυγεῖν εδύνασο). Also the passage of Xenarchus, (Athenaeus, bk. XIII. p. 569.), is pertinent, where it is said, καὶ τῶν δ’ ἑκάστην ἐστὶν ἀδεῶς, εὐτελῶς, (and of the women each can be enjoyed without fear, cheaply). Hence too the verses of Menander (Lucian, Amor. 33.) should read,
καὶ φαρμακεῖαι, καὶ νόσων χαλεπωτάτη
φθόνος, μεθ’ οὗ ζῇ πάντα τὸν βίον γυνὴ
(and medicines, and hardest of diseases—envy, wherewith a woman dwells all her life long) and not, as the received text has it,
καὶ φαρμακεῖα, καὶ νόσοι· χαλεπώτατος
φθόνος.
(and medicine, and disease; hardest is envy).
[140] Comp. above p. 70. note 2. Harpocration, Lexicon X. rhetor.—Eustathius, Comment. on Homer’s Iliad XIX. 282., p. 1185., Quod auro gaudeat Venus, de qua est in fabula, ille quoque manifestum facit, qui tradit: Solonem Veneris vulgaris templum dedicasse e mulierum quaestu, quas coemtas prostituerat in cellis, in adolescentum gratiam, (That Venus, of whom is question in the tale, rejoices in gold, is manifest from the historian who relates, how Solon dedicated a temple of the Common (Pandemian) Venus from the gains of the women that he had bought and established in chambers as prostitutes, to gratify the young men). Comp. Boeckh, Corp. Inscript. I. p. 470.
[141] How clean and neat they were can be gathered from the fact that a certain Phanostrata got the sobriquet of Phtheiropyle (doorlouser), ἐπειδήπερ ἐπὶ τῆς θύρας ἑστῶσα ἐφθειρίζετο, (because she used to stand at the door and pick the lice off her).