THE DICTERIADES, OR COMMON PROSt.i.tUTES OF ATHENS.

This cla.s.s approaches more nearly than any other to the prost.i.tutes of our day, the main difference being that the former were bound by law to prost.i.tute themselves when required to do so, on the payment of the fixed sum, and that they were not allowed to leave the state. Their home, as mentioned already, was properly at the port of Piraeus. An open square in front of the citadel was their usual haunt. It was surrounded with booths, where petty trade or gambling was carried on by day. At nightfall the prost.i.tutes swarmed into the square. Some were noisy and obscene; others quiet, and armed with affected modesty. When a man pa.s.sed on his way from the port to the city, the troop a.s.sailed him. If he resisted, coa.r.s.e abuse was lavished on him. If he yielded, there was the temple of Venus the Courtesan close by, and there was the wall of Themistocles, under the friendly shelter of either of which the bargain could be consummated. Were the customer nice, the great dicterion was not far distant, and a score or more of smaller rivals were even nearer at hand, as a well-known sign was there to testify.

The Dicteria were under the control of the munic.i.p.al police. The door was open night and day, a bright curtain protecting the inmates from the eye of the pa.s.ser-by; and in the better cla.s.s of establishments, a fierce dog, chained in the vestibule, served as sentinel. At the curtain sat an old woman, often a Thessalian and a pretended witch, who received the money before admitting visitors. Originally the fee was an obolus[35]--about three cents; but this attempt to regulate the value of a variable merchandise was soon abandoned. Within, at night, the sounds of music, revelry, and dancing might be constantly heard. The visitor was not kept in suspense. The curtain pa.s.sed, he was in full view of the dicteriades, standing, sitting, or lying about the room; some engaged in smoothing their blonde hair, some in conversation, some anointing themselves with perfumery. The legal principle with regard to the dicteriades appears to have been that they should conceal nothing; no doubt in contrast to the irregular prost.i.tutes, of whom something will be said presently. There was no rule, however, forbidding the wearing of garments in the dicterion, but the common practice appears to have been to dispense with them, or to wear a light scarf thrown over the person. This custom was observed by day as well as by night, and a visitor has described the girls in a large dicterion as standing in a row, in broad daylight, without any robes or covering.[36]

It seems that in later times any speculator had a right to set up a dicterion on paying the tax to the state. An Athenian forfeited his right of citizenship by so doing; but, as a popular establishment was very lucrative, avaricious men frequently embarked in the business under an a.s.sumed name. Comic writers have lashed these wretches severely. On paying the tax to the state regularly, the _p.o.r.n.o.bosceion_, or master of the house, acquired certain rights. The dicterion was an inviolable asylum, no husband being allowed to pursue his wife, or the wife her husband, or the creditor his debtor, within its walls. Public decency requires, says Demosthenes, that men shall not be exposed in houses of prost.i.tution.[37]

It was not, however, considered wholly shameful to frequent such places.

There appear to have been attached to these dicteria schools of prost.i.tution, where young women were initiated into the most disgusting practices by females who had themselves acquired them in the same manner.

Alexis vigorously describes the frauds taught in these places,[38] while there is a shocking significance in an expression of Athenaeus--"You will be well satisfied with the performance of the women in the dicteria."[39]

Besides these regular dicteriades, there were at Athens, as there have been in every large city, a number of women who exercised the calling of prost.i.tutes, without properly belonging to any of the recognized cla.s.ses.

They were sometimes called free dicteriades, sometimes she-wolves, and also cheap hetairae. Some were native Athenians who had been seduced and abandoned, and who, led by stings of conscience and idleness to pursue their career, had still an invincible repugnance to adopt the flowered robe and yellow hair of the regular courtesan. They roamed the Piraeus, and even the streets of Athens, after dark, eking out a miserable subsistence by the hardest of trades, and haunting the dark recesses of old houses or the shade of trees. Others, again, were old hetairae whose charms had faded, and who sought a scanty subsistence where they were not known, and shrank from encountering the eye of a lover where the friendly shade of night would not hide the ravages of time. Others were the servants of hotels and taverns, who were always expected to serve the caprices of visitors.

All of these led a most miserable life. Now and then we hear of one or two of them meeting a rich and inexperienced traveler, after which the heroine of the exploit naturally ascended to the rank of hetaira; but, in general, their customers were the lowest of the port people--sailors, fishermen, farm-servants. Their price was a meal, a fish, a handful of fruit, or a bottle of wine. One poor creature, who belonged to no cla.s.s in particular, but acquired some celebrity by being kept by the orator Ithatocles, was named Didrachma because she offered her favors to the public generally for two drachmas, about thirty-five cents.[40]

Perhaps the most curious fact in reference to these prost.i.tutes is the singular predominance of old women among them. It appears to have been adopted as an invariable rule for this sort of courtesans to paint their faces with a thick ointment, and it is even said that the great painters of Greece did not disdain to beguile their leisure hours by thus improving upon nature.[41] Of course, under this disguise, it was impossible to distinguish a young face from an old one. An aged prost.i.tute thus bedizened would place herself at an open window with a sprig of myrtle in her hand, with which she would beckon to people in the street. When a customer was found, a servant would open the door and conduct him in silence to the chamber of her mistress. Before entering he paid the sum demanded, when he found himself in a room lighted only by a feeble glimmer pa.s.sing through the curtain, which now hung down over the window. In such a twilight the most venerable old woman could not be distinguished from a Venus.[42]

THE AULETRIDES, OR FLUTE-PLAYERS.

Female flute-players were a common accompaniment to an Athenian banquet.

The flute, which in modern times is played by men, was rarely seen in male hands in Greece. Though the fable ascribed its invention to the G.o.d Pan, and its development to the mythical king Midas, it was monopolized at a very early period by women, who consoled themselves for the ravages it wrought in their beauty by the power of fascination it imparted among a people intensely musical. Flute-playing soon became an essential rite in the service of certain deities. Ceres was invariably worshiped to the sound of the flute. And when the Athenians had once tried the experiment of listening to flute-players after dinner, they never would dine in company without them.

Thebes appears to have been the native city of the earliest famous flute-players,[43] but before long the superior beauty of the Asiatic girls--Ionians and Phrygians--drove their Theban rivals out of the field.

Dancing was combined with flute-playing, and in this art the Asiatics bore the palm from the world. During the golden days of Greece, numbers of beautiful girls were every year imported into Athens from Miletus and the other Ionic ports in Asia Minor, just as in more modern times a similar trade was carried on between Trebizond and Constantinople.

An Athenian hired his flute-players as a modern European n.o.ble hires his band. They charged so much for their musical performances, reserving the right of accepting presents in the course of the evening. Some were singers as well as performers. At each course a new air was played, increasing in tenderness and expression as the wine circulated. It is stated that the sounds of a good flute-concert excited people to such a state of phrensy that they would take off their rings and jeweled ornaments to throw them to the performers: those who have witnessed a triumphant operatic soiree can readily believe the statement. But the fair artists did not wholly rely on their music for their success. The performer danced while she played, accompanying every note with a harmonious movement of the body. There is no doubt these dances were in the highest degree immoral and lascivious. Athenaeus tells a story of an emba.s.sy from Arcadia waiting upon King Antigonus, and being invited to dinner. After the hunger of the venerable guests was appeased, Phrygian flute-players were introduced. They were draped in semi-transparent veils, arranged with much coquetry. At the given signal they began to play and dance, balancing themselves alternately on each foot, and gradually increasing the rapidity of their movements. As the performance went on, the dancers uncovered their heads, then their busts; lastly, they threw the veils aside altogether, and stood before the wondering emba.s.sadors with only a short tunic around the loins. In this state they danced so indecently that the aged Arcadians, excited beyond control, forgot where they were, and rushed upon them. The king laughed; the courtiers were shocked at such ill-breeding, but the dancers discharged the sacred duty of hospitality.[44]

A flute-player who had achieved a success of this kind was enabled to conclude a lucrative bargain for other performances. We find allusions to fees as high as two talents (say $2500) and fifty pieces of gold,[45]

though these were evidently unusual charges. Many of the most fashionable flute-players were slaves who had been brought to Greece by speculators.

They were commonly sold by auction at the dinner-table, when their owner judged that the enthusiasm of the guests had attained the highest point.

An anecdote is told of one of the most esteemed names in Greek philosophy in reference to this strange custom. He was dining with a party of young men, when a youthful flute-player was introduced. She crept to the philosopher's feet, and seemed to shelter herself from insult under the shadow of his venerable beard; but he, a disciple of Zeno, spurned her, and burst forth into a strain of moralizing. Piqued by the affront, the girl rose, and played and danced with inimitable grace and pruriency. At the close of the performance her owner put her up to auction, and one of the first bidders was the philosopher. She was adjudged to another, however, and the white-haired sage so far forgot his principles as to engage in a fierce conflict with the victor for the possession of the prize.[46] Hand to hand battles on these occasions were common in the best society at Athens, and a flute-player in fashion made a boast of the riots she had caused.[47] Of the fortunes realized by successful artists in this line, an idea may be formed from the gorgeous presents made to the Delphian oracle by flute-players, and from the fact that the finest houses at Alexandria were inscribed with the names of famous Greek auletrides.[48]

As might be inferred from the character of their dances, the auletrides were capable of every infamy. Constantly breathing an atmosphere of debauchery, and accustomed to the daily spectacle of nudities, they naturally attained a pitch of amorous exaltation of which we, at the present day, can hardly form an idea. They kept a cherished festival in honor of Venus Peribasia, which was originally established by Cypselus of Corinth. At that ceremony all the great flute-players of Greece a.s.sembled to celebrate their calling. Men were not usually allowed to be present, a regulation prompted perhaps by modesty, as the judgment of Paris was renewed at the festival, and prizes were awarded for every description of beauty. The ceremony was often mentioned as the Callipygian games; and a sketch of a scene which took place at one of these reunions, contained in a letter from a famous flute-player, justifies the appellation. The banquet lasted from dark till dawn, with wines, perfumes, delicate viands, songs, and music. An after-scene was a dispute between two of the guests as to their respective beauty. A trial was demanded by the company, and a long and graphic account is given of the exhibition, but modern tastes will not allow us to transcribe the details.[49]

A knowledge of these scandalous scenes, it may be briefly observed, would be worse than useless, were it not that they ill.u.s.trate the life of Greek courtesans; and, being performed under the sanction of religion and the law, they throw no inconsiderable light on the real character of Greek society. Their value may be best apprehended by trying to realize what the effect would be if similar scenes occurred annually in some public edifice in our large cities, under the auspices of the police, with the approval of the clergy, and with the full knowledge of the best female society.

It has been suggested that these festivals were originated by, or gave rise to, those enormous aberrations of the Greek female mind known to the ancients as Lesbian love. There is, no doubt, grave reason to believe something of the kind. Indeed, Lucian affirms that, while avarice prompted common pleasures, taste and feeling inclined the flute-payers toward their own s.e.x. On so repulsive a theme it is unnecessary to enlarge.

Many flute-players seem to have been susceptible of lasting affections. In the remains we have of the erotic works of the Greeks, several names are mentioned as those of successful flute-players whose gains were consumed by exacting lovers. It does not appear that they often, or ever, married.

The most famous of all the flute-players was Lamia, who, after being the delight of Alexandria and of King Ptolemy for some fifteen or twenty years, was taken with the city by Demetrius of Macedon, and raised to the rank of his mistress. She was forty years of age at this time, yet her skill was such that she ruled despotically her dissolute lover, and left a memorable name in Greek history. The ancients a.s.serted that she owed her name, Lamia, which means a sort of vampire or bloodsucker, to the most loathsome depravities. Her power was so great that, when Demetrius levied a tax of some $250,000 on the city of Athens, he gave the whole to her, to buy her soap, as he said. The Athenians revenged themselves by saying that Lamia's person must be very dirty, since she needed so much soap to wash it. But they soon found it to their interest to build a temple in her honor, and deify her under the name of Venus Lamia.[50]

THE HETAIRae, OR KEPT WOMEN.

The Hetairae were by far the most important cla.s.s of women in Greece. They filled so large a place in society that virtuous females were entirely thrown into the shade, and it must have been quite possible for a chaste Athenian girl, endowed with ambition, to look up to them, and covet their splendid infamy. An Athenian matron was expected to live at home. She was not allowed to be present at the games or the theatres; she was bound, when she appeared in public, to be veiled, and to hasten whither she was going without delay; she received no education, and could not share the elevated thoughts or ideas of her husband; she had no right to claim any warmth of affection from him, though he possessed entire control over her.[51]

Now, to judge of the position into which this social system thrust the female s.e.x, one must glance at the mythology, or, to speak more correctly, at the religious faith of the Greek people. It has been conjectured that they derived their idea of Venus from the East. However this be, Venus was certainly one of the earliest G.o.ddesses to whom their homage was paid.

Solon erected opposite his dicterion a temple to Venus Pandemos, or the public Venus. In that temple were two statues: one of the G.o.ddess, the other of a nymph, Pitho, who presided over persuasion; and the att.i.tudes and execution of the statues were such that they explained the character without inscription. At this temple a festival was held on the fourth of each month, to which all the men of Athens were invited. But Venus Pandemos soon made way for newer and more barefaced rivals. Twenty temples were raised in various cities of Greece to Venus the Courtesan. In one author we find allusion made to Venus Mucheia, or the Venus of houses of ill-fame. Another celebrates Venus Castnia, or the G.o.ddess of indecency.

Others honor Venus Scotia, the patroness of darkness; and Venus Derceto, the guardian deity of street-walkers. More famous still was Venus Divaricatrix, whose surname, derived, it is said by a father of the Church, _a divaricatis cruribus_,[52] must be left in a learned tongue.

And still more renowned was Venus Callipyge, whose statue is at this day one of the choice ornaments of one of the best European collections of antiquities. It owed its charm to the marvelous beauty of the limbs, and was understood to have been designed from two Syracusan sisters, whose extraordinary symmetry in this particular had been noticed by a countryman who surprised them while bathing. All these Venuses had temples, and sacrifices, and priestesses. Their worship was naturally a.n.a.logous to their name, and consistent with their history. Their devotees were every man in Greece. Yet it was in this society, trained to such spectacles, and nurtured in such a creed, that matrons and maidens were taught to lead a life of purity, seclusion, and self-sacrifice.

The consequence was obvious. While ignorance and forcible restraint prevented the women from generally breaking loose, the men grew more and more addicted to the society of hetairae, and more liable to regard their wives as mere articles of furniture. Nor was the anomaly without effect upon the kept women. They alone of their s.e.x saw the plays of Alexander and Aristophanes; they alone had the _entree_ of the studio of Phidias and Apelles; they alone heard Socrates reason, and discussed politics with Pericles; they alone shared in the intellectual movement of Greece. No women but hetairae drove through the streets with uncovered face and gorgeous apparel. None but they mingled in the a.s.semblages of great men at the Pnyx or the Stoa. None but they could gather round them of an evening the choicest spirits of the day, and elicit, in the freedom of unrestrained intercourse, wit and wisdom, flashing fancy and burning eloquence. What wonder that the Hetairae should have filled so prominent a part in Greek society! And how small a compensation to virtuous women to know that their rivals could not stand by the altar when sacrifice was offered; could not give birth to a citizen!

There are many reasons besides these why the contest was unequal.

Tradition reported several occasions on which hetairae had rendered signal service to the state. Leaena, for instance, the mistress of Harmodius, had bitten off her tongue rather than reveal the names of her fellow-conspirators. Recollections like these more than nullified the nominal brand of the law. Again, every wise legislator saw the necessity of encouraging any form of rational intercourse, in order to arrest the startling progress which the most degrading of enormities was making in Greece. When Alcibiades was openly courted by the first philosophers and statesmen, it was virtue to applaud Aspasia. And besides, it can not be questioned, in view of the Greek memoirs we possess, that many of the leading hetairae were women of remarkable mind, as well as unusual attractions. Indeed, the leading trait in their history is their intellectuality, as contrasted with other cla.s.ses of dissolute women in antiquity.[53] That trait can be best ill.u.s.trated by referring to the lives of a few of the more celebrated hetairae.

A Milesian prost.i.tute, named Thargelia, accompanied Xerxes on his invasion of Greece. Some idea may be formed of the position in society occupied by prost.i.tutes from the fact that Xerxes employed this woman as negotiator with the court of Thessaly, just as in later times modern ministers have used d.u.c.h.esses. Thargelia married the King of Thessaly.

Fired by her success, another Milesian girl, named Aspasia, established herself at Athens. She set up a house of prost.i.tution, and peopled it with the most lovely girls of the Ionic cities. But wherein she differed from her rivals and predecessors was the prominence she gave to intellect in her establishment. She lectured publicly, among her girls and their visitors, on rhetoric and philosophy, and with such marked ability that she counted among her patrons and lovers the first men of Greece, including Socrates, Alcibiades, and Pericles. The last divorced his wife in order to marry her, and was accused of allowing her to govern Athens, then at the height of its power and prosperity. She is said to have incited the war against Samos; and the princ.i.p.al cause of that against Megara was believed to have been the rape, by citizens of Megara, of two of Aspasia's girls. What a wonderful light these facts throw on Greek society!

Enraged beyond control at her success, the virtuous women of Athens rose against her. She was publicly insulted at the theatre; was attacked in the street; and, as a last resort, was accused of impiety before the Areopagus. Pericles, then in the decline of his power, and unable to save his friends Phidias and Anaxagoras, appeared as her advocate. But on such an occasion his eloquence failed him. He could only seize his beloved wife in his arms, press her to his breast, and burst into tears in presence of the court. The appeal succeeded; possibly the judges made allowance for popular prejudice; at all events, Aspasia was acquitted and restored to society. She lived to be the delight of a flour merchant, under whose roof her lectures on philosophy were continued with undiminished success to the day of her death.[54]

Her friend, and the inheritor of her mantle, Hipparchia, led an equally remarkable life. She was an Athenian by birth, and of good family, but, having heard the Cynic Crates speak, she declared to her parents that nothing would restrain her from yielding herself to him. She kept her word, and became the philosopher's mistress, in spite of his dirt, his poverty, and his grossness. She is reported to have acquired great reputation as a practical professor of the cynic philosophy. Having engaged one day in a fierce discussion with a somewhat brutal philosopher of a rival sect, the latter, by way of answer to a question she put, violently exposed her person before the whole a.s.sembly. "Well," said she, coolly, "what does that prove?" This woman was one of the most voluminous and esteemed authors of her day.[55]

Bacchis, the mistress of the orator Hyperides, ill.u.s.trates the character of the Athenian kept woman from another point of view. She was extremely beautiful, and gifted with a sweet disposition. One of her early admirers had presented her with a necklace of enormous value. The first ladies of Athens, and even foreign women of rank, coveted the precious trinket in vain. She was in the height of her fame and charms when she heard the orator Hyperides plead. Smitten on the spot, she became his mistress, and observed a fidelity toward him which was neither usual with her cla.s.s, nor reciprocated by her lover. On one occasion, a rival announced that the price of her complaisance would be the possession of the necklace of Bacchis. The lover had the meanness to ask for it, and Bacchis gave it without a word. Again: when all Athens knew that she was the mistress of Hyperides, an officious friend came to tell her that her lover was at that moment making love to another woman. Bacchis received the announcement tranquilly. "What do you intend to do?" asked her visitor, with impetuosity. "To wait for him," was the meek answer. She died very young, and her lover partially atoned for his ill treatment by p.r.o.nouncing a splendid oration over her remains. Very few pa.s.sages in Greek literature are marked by such eloquent tenderness and genuine feeling as this fragment of Hyperides.[56]

Gnathena, and her heir and successor, Gnathenion, were famous in their day as wits; the biography of the first was written in verse by the poet Machon.[57] She began life as the mistress of the comic poet Dyphiles, but soon abandoned him to keep a sort of _table d'hote_ for the wit and fashion of Athens. The "best society" gathered around her board, and at the close of the meal she sold herself by auction. Athenaeus has chronicled a number of her witty and sarcastic sayings, adding that the grace of her elocution imparted a singular charm to every thing she said. Her protegee, Gnathenion, grew up in time to receive the mantle which age was wresting from the shoulders of Gnathena. An anecdote is preserved which throws some light upon the profits of the calling of hetairae. At the temple of Venus, Gnathena and her protegee met an old Persian satrap, richly clothed in purple, who was struck with the beauty of the latter, and demanded her price. Gnathena answered, a thousand drachmas (about two hundred dollars).

The satrap exclaimed at such extortion, and offered five hundred, observing that he would return again. "At your age," maliciously retorted Gnathena, "once is too much," and turned on her heel. In her old age it appears that Gnathena was reduced to the disgraceful calling which the Greeks termed _hippop.o.r.nos_.[58]

But the fame of these hetairae is eclipsed by that of the only two kept women who can rank with Aspasia--Lais and Phryne.

Lais was a Sicilian by birth. Like the Empress Catharine of Russia, she was taken prisoner when her native city was captured, and sold as a slave.

The painter Apelles saw her carrying water from a well, and, struck with the beauty of her figure, he bought her, and trained her in his own house.

This, again, is a striking picture. Fancy a leading modern painter deliberately training a prost.i.tute! It is to be presumed that Apelles gathered round him the best society in Greece. Lais, when her education was complete, was as remarkable for wit and information as for her matchless figure and lovely face. Her master freed her, and established her at Corinth, then in the height of its prosperity, and the largest commercial emporium of Greece.

Corinth and the Corinthian prost.i.tutes deserve particular notice. It appears that almost every house in the place was, in fact, a house of prost.i.tution. There were regular schools where the art of debauchery was taught, and frequent importations of young girls from Lesbos, Phoenicia, and the aegean Islands supplied them with pupils. Ancient erotic writers are full of allusions to the danger of visiting Corinth; the proverb, _Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum_, which most moderns have erroneously conceived to refer to Lais alone, was, in fact, an adage justified by the experience of merchants and sailors. It would be incorrect, however, to compare Corinth with modern sea-ports, where the natural demands of sailors require a cheap supply of women. The first-cla.s.s hetairae of Corinth charged as high as a talent (say $1000) for a single night's company, and $200 appears to have been no unusual fee.

For the common sailors, the commercial shrewdness of the Corinthians had established a temple to Venus, containing a thousand young slaves, who were obliged to prost.i.tute themselves for a single obolus (a cent).[59]

It was in this metropolis of prost.i.tution that Lais commenced business.

She soon rose to the first rank in her trade. Her capriciousness gave additional value to her charms. Even money could not purchase her when it was her whim not to yield. She refused $2000 from the orator Demosthenes, who had actually turned his property into money to lay it at her feet; but she yielded gratuitously to the muddy, ragged cynic Diogenes, and graciously shared the patrimony of the philosopher Aristippus. To the latter, who occupied no mean rank in Greek society, a remark was made to the effect that he ought to debar his mistress from promiscuous intercourse for his own sake. He replied phlegmatically, "Would you object to live in a house or sail in a ship because others had just preceded you in the one or the other?" Xenocrates, the disciple of Plato, resisted Lais successfully. She had made a wager that she would overcome his stoical coldness. Rushing into his house one evening in affected terror, she besought an asylum, as she said thieves had chased her. The philosopher sternly bade her fear nothing. She sat silent till Xenocrates went to bed; then, throwing off her dress, and revealing all her wonderful beauty, she placed herself at his side. He gruffly submitted to this encroachment.

Growing bolder, she threw her arms round him, caressed him, and exhausted her arts of fascination, but Xenocrates remained unmoved. "I wagered," she cried, "to rouse a man, not a statue;" and, springing from the couch, she resumed her dress and disappeared.

The people of Corinth desired to possess her statue, and, having spent her money in embellishing the city, perhaps she was ent.i.tled to this mark of respect. Myron, the sculptor, was deputed to model her charms. He was old and gray; but so fascinating was her beauty, that at his second visit he laid at her feet all the savings of his life. The haughty courtesan spurned him. He went away, placed himself in the hands of a skillful perfumer, had his hair and beard dyed, and his appearance rejuvenated.

Then he renewed his suit. "My poor friend," said Lais, with a bitter smile, "you are asking what I refused yesterday to your father."

In old age Lais had leisure to repent of her caprices. She had spent her money as fast as she made it, and she retained her calling long after her charms had vanished. Epicrates has drawn a melancholy picture of a drunken old woman wandering over the quay at Corinth, and seeking to sell for three cents what had once been considered cheap at a thousand dollars.

Such was the end of Lais.[60]

Phryne was more fortunate. She husbanded her attractions with judgment, and to the close of her long life retained her rank and her value. Her wealth was such that, when Alexander destroyed Thebes, she offered to rebuild the city at her own expense, provided the Thebans would commemorate the fact by an inscription. They refused. She had counted among her lovers the most famous men of the day, among whom were the orator Hyperides, whose successful defense of his mistress has already been mentioned; the painter Apelles, and the sculptor Praxiteles. It was to her that the latter gave his crowning work--his Cupid. He and Apelles were both privileged to admire and reproduce her nude charms, a privilege rigorously denied even to the most opulent of her lovers.

Phryne was a prodigious favorite with the Athenian people. She played a conspicuous part in the festival of Neptune and Venus. At a certain point in the ceremony she appeared on the steps of the temple at the sea-side in her usual dress, and slowly disrobed herself in the presence of the crowd.

She next advanced to the water-side, plunged into the waves, and offered sacrifice to Neptune. Returning like a sea-nymph, drying her hair from which the water dripped over her exquisite limbs, she paused for a moment before the crowd, which shouted in a phrensy of enthusiasm as the fair priestess vanished into a cell in the temple.[61]

Other famous hetairae achieved political and literary distinction. When Alexander the Great undertook his Asiatic expedition, his treasurer, Harpalus, a sort of Croesus in his way, accompanied him, surrounded by the most lovely women the court of Macedon could afford. Rewarded for his fidelity by the governorship of Babylon, and still farther enriched by the spoils of that lucrative office, Harpalus sent to Athens for the most skillful and lovely hetairae of the day. Pythionice was sent him. She was not in the bloom of youth. Some years before she had been the familiar of young Athenians of fashion; she was now the staid mistress of two brothers, sons of an opulent corn-merchant. But her talents were undeniable. She arrived at Babylon, and was installed in the palace; began to rule over the province, and governed Harpalus, it is said, with sternness and vigor. In the midst of her glory she suddenly died; poisoned, no doubt, by some one of the hundred fair ones whom she had supplanted in the governor's affections. Harpalus, inconsolable for her loss, expended a large portion of the contents of his treasury in burying her and commemorating her fame. No queen of Babylon was ever consigned to the grave with the pomp, or the show, or the ostentatious affliction which did honor to the memory of the Athenian prost.i.tute. Her tomb cost $50,000; and historians, admiring, in after ages, its splendor and its size, inquired, with mock wonder, whether the bones of a Miltiades, or a Cimon, or a Pericles lay under the pile!