And also, trifling there, I lost my cloak.
And the Corinthian sophist is very fine here, explaining to his pupils that Ocimum is the name of a harlot. And a great many other plays also, you impudent fellow, derived their names from courtesans. There is the Thalassa of Diodes, the Corianno of Pherecrates, the Antea of Eunicus or Philyllus, the Thais, and the Phanion of Menander, the Opora of Alexis, the Clepsydra of Eubulus—and the woman who bore this name, had it because she used to distribute her company by the hour-glass, and to dismiss her visitors when it had run down; as Asclepiades, the son of Areas, relates in his History of Demetrius Phalereus; and he says that her proper name was Meticha.
22. There is a courtesan . . . . .
(as Antiphanes says in his Clown)—
. . . who is a positive
Calamity and ruin to her keeper;
And yet he's glad at nourishing such a pest.
On which account, in the Neæra of Timocles, a man is represented as lamenting his fate, and saying—
But I, unhappy man, who first loved Phryne
When she was but a gatherer of capers,