Timon turned to Bacchis:
“Why,” he asked, “should you have been so hard on the poor girl I wanted to bring with me? She was a colleague, nevertheless. If I were in your place, I should respect a poor courtesan more highly than a rich matron.”
“You are mad,” said Bacchis, without discussing the question.
“Yes, I have often noticed that those who, once in a way, venture to utter striking truths, are taken for lunatics. Paradoxes find everybody agreed.”
“Nonsense, my friend; ask your neighbours, where is the man of birth who would choose a girl without jewels as his mistress.”
“I have done it,” said Philodemos with simplicity.
And the women despised him.
“Last year,” he went on, “at the end of spring, Cicero’s exile gave me good reason to fear for my own safety, and I took a little journey. I retired lo the foot of the Alps, to a charming place named Orobia, on the borders of the little lake Clisius. It was a simple village with barely three hundred women, and one of them had become a courtesan in order to protect the virtue of the others. Her house was to be recognised by a bouquet of flowers hanging over the door, but she herself was indistinguishable from her sisters or cousins. She was ignorant of the very existence of paint, perfumes, cosmetics, transparent veils and curling-tongs. She did not know how to preserve her beauty, and depilitated herself with pitchy resin just as one pulls up weeds from a courtyard of white marble. One shudders at the thought that she walked without boots, so that it was impossible to kiss her naked feet as one kisses Faustina’s, softer than one’s hand. And yet I discovered so many charms in her that beside her brown body I forgot Rome for a whole month and blessed Tyre and Alexandria.”
Naukrates nodded approval, took a draught of wine, and said:
“The great event in love is the instant when nudity is revealed. Courtesans should know this and spare us surprises. Now, it would seem on the contrary that they devote all their efforts to disillusioning us. Is there anything more painful than a mass of hair bearing traces of the curling irons? Is there anything more disagreeable than painted cheeks that leave the marks of the cosmetics on the mouth that kisses them! Is there anything more pitiable than a pencilled eye with the charcoal half rubbed off? Strictly speaking, I can understand chaste women using these illusory devices: every woman likes to surround herself with a circle of male adorers, and the chaste ones amongst them do not run the risk of familiarities which would unmask the secrets of their physique. But that courtesans whose end and resource is the bed, should venture to show themselves less beautiful in it than in the street is really inconceivable.”