[1197] Ibid., iii, 33. Plutarch (De Mul. Virt.), has collected twenty-seven instances of the notable doings of women, and Polyaenus (Stratagemata, viii) has repeated most of them, and added almost as many more. The latter record extends up to about 170.
[1198] Herodotus, i, 199. This applies to Babylon and Cyprus, but there were several other places, and the custom was carried by the Semites as far west as Sicca Veneria, in Numidia, N. Africa; Valerius Max., ii, 6 (15). See the commentators on the passage of Herodotus; Strabo, XVI, i, 20, etc. At all times the simplicity of devout females was liable to be abused, several instances of which are recounted. For example, an ancient rite ordained that a Phrygian damsel should on the eve of her marriage bathe in the Scamander, whilst invoking the river-god to accept her virginity. In this custom on one occasion a youth of the neighbourhood found his opportunity. Hearing of the nuptials of a young lady who was socially unapproachable to him, but of whom he had long been enamoured, he bedizened himself with reeds and water-flowers and posted himself in a recess to await her coming. On her entering the water he came forward thus in the guise of the divinity she was supposed to meet, and the guileless maid permitted him to embrace her without resistance, devoutly unconscious of anything being wrong. Subsequently, as she was walking in the bridal procession, her eyes fell upon him among the spectators, whereupon she made him a profound obeisance and pointed him out to those who accompanied her as the genius of the sacred stream; Aeschines, Epist., 10. This was an isolated and comparatively blameless case, but later on some of the semi-Christian charlatans managed such matters wholesale; see the account of Marcus in Irenaeus, i, 13.
[1199] Strabo, VIII, vi, 20
[1200] Athenaeus, xiii, 25. St. Augustine was of the same opinion: “Aufer meretrices de rebus humanis, turbaveris omnia libidinibus”; De Ordine, ii, 4 (in Migne, i, 1000).
[1201] Athenaeus, xiii, 46. Nicarete of Megara is noted as being a disciple of Stilpo of the same town, a philosopher who achieved a great and lasting reputation; ibid., 70; Diogenes Laert. in Vita, “A wife is legally countenanced in sulking and keeping to the house, but a hetaira knows that it is only by her social talents that she can attach friends to herself”; Athenaeus, xiii, 7.
[1202] The names of these biographers are preserved, viz., Aristophanes of Byzantium, Apollodorus, Antiphanes, Ammonius, and Gorgias of Athens, but their works are lost; Athenaeus, xiii, 21, 46. The first-named composed as many as 135 lives, and Apollodorus exceeded even this number. The gist of their writings, however, seems to have been preserved by Athenaeus in his thirteenth book; and among the moderns, Jacobs has attempted to reconstruct all the principal biographies; Attische Museum, 1798-1805. The accounts of them are almost wholly made up of anecdotes as to their witty remarks and rejoinders. But at least one modern author has written biographies of courtesans; see Devaux-Mousk, Fleurs du Persil, Paris, 1887 (with portraits and autographs).
[1203] Plutarch, Pericles, etc. At the same time it was not beneath her to become a procuress, and it is said that all Greece was supplied with girls by her agency. It was even maintained that the immediate cause of the Pelopennesian war was the abduction of one of these girls imported from Megara; Athenaeus, xiii, 25; Plutarch, loc. cit. Parallels to Aspasia are not altogether wanting in very recent times. Thus of Cora Pearl (née Crouch, of Plymouth) we read: “For some time she excited the greatest interest among all classes of Parisian society, and ladies imitated her dress and manners”; Dict. Nat. Biog., sb. nom.
[1204] Memorabilia, iii, 11.
[1205] Diogenes Laert., Epicurus; Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i, 33; see an imaginary letter of hers in Alciphron, ii, 2.
[1206] Athenaeus, xiii, 37, 38, 56. Timotheus, when it was thrown in his teeth that his mother was a prostitute, replied that he was very much obliged to her for making him the son of Conon. The son of Pericles by Aspasia was legitimated and became a general.