There was, for instance, Thargelia the Milesian, who was married to fourteen different husbands, so very beautiful and accomplished was she, as Hippias the Sophist says, in his book which is entitled Synagoge. But Dinon, in the fifth book of his History of Persia, and in the first part of it, says that the wife of Bagazus, who was a sister of Xerxes by the same father, (and her name was Anytis,) was the most beautiful and the most licentious of all the women in Asia. And Phylarchus, in his nineteenth book, says that Timosa, the concubine of Oxyartes, surpassed all women in beauty, and that the king of Egypt had originally sent her as a present to Statira, the wife of the king.
And Theopompus, in the fifty-sixth book of his History, speaks of Xenopithea, the mother of Lysandrides, as the most beautiful of all the women in Peloponnesus. And the Lacedæmonians put her to death, and her sister Chryse also, when Agesilaus the king, having raised a seditious tumult in the city, procured Lysandrides, who was his enemy, to be banished by the Lacedæmonians. Pantica of Cyprus was also a very beautiful woman; and she is mentioned by Phylarchus, in the tenth book of his History, where he says that when she was with Olympias, the mother of Alexander, Monimus, the son of Pythion, asked her in marriage. And, as she was a very licentious woman, Olympias said to him—"O wretched man, you are marrying with your eyes, and not with your understanding." They also say that the woman who brought back Pisistratus to assume the tyranny, clad in the semblance of Minerva the Saviour, was very beautiful, as indeed she ought to have been, seeing that she assumed the appearance of a goddess. And she was a seller of garlands; and Pisistratus afterwards gave her in marriage to Hipparchus his son, as Clidemus relates in the eighth book of his Returns, where he says—"And he also gave the woman, by name Phya, who had been in the chariot with him, in marriage to his son Hipparchus. And she was the daughter of a man named Socrates. And he took for Hippias, who succeeded him in the tyranny, the daughter of Charmus the polemarch, who was extraordinarily beautiful."
And it happened, as it is said, that Charmus was a great admirer of Hippias, and that he was the man who first erected a statue of Love in the Academy, on which there is the following inscription—
O wily Love, Charmus this altar raised
At the well-shaded bounds of her Gymnasium.
Hesiod, also, in the third book of his Melampodia, calls Chalcis in Eubœa,
Land of fair women;—
for the women there are very beautiful, as Theophrastus also asserts. And Nymphodorus, in his Voyage round Asia, says that there are nowhere more beautiful women than those in Tenedos, an island close to Troy.
PRAISE OF MODESTY.
90. I am aware, too, that on one occasion there was a contest of beauty instituted among women. And Nicias, speaking of it in his History of Arcadia, says that Cypselus instituted it, having built a city in the plain which is watered by the Alpheus; in which he established some Parrhasians, and consecrated a plot of sacred ground and an altar to Ceres of Eleusis, in whose festival it was that he had instituted this contest of beauty. And he says that the woman who gained the victory in this contest was Herodice. And even to this day this contest is continued; and the women who contend in it are called Goldbearing. And Theophrastus says that there is also a contest of beauty which takes place among the Eleans, and that the decision is come to with great care and deliberation; and that those who gain the victory receive arms as their prize, which Dionysius of Leuctra says are offered up to Minerva. And he says, too, that the victor is adorned with fillets by his friends, and goes in procession to the temple; and that a crown of myrtle is given to him (at least this is the statement of Myrsilus, in his Historical Paradoxes). "But in some places," says the same Theophrastus, "there are contests between the women in respect of modesty and good management, as there are among the barbarians; and at other places also there are contests about beauty, on the ground that this also is entitled to honour, as for instance, there are in Tenedos and Lesbos. But they say that this is the gift of chance, or of nature; but that the honour paid to modesty ought to be one of a greater degree. For that it is in consequence of modesty that beauty is beautiful; for without modesty it is apt to be subdued by intemperance."