Melissa is known only by a short fragment on feminine love of adornment; and Ptolemais was a specialist in music and an authority on the Pythagorean theory of music in its relation to life. Of Timycha we have a characteristic story. She lived in the time of Dionysius of Syracuse. A party of Pythagorean pilgrims, while on their way to Metapontum to celebrate certain rites, were attacked by a band of Syracusans. They at first fled; but when they saw they must pass through a field of beans, they suddenly stopped and fought till the last one was killed. The Syracusans shortly after came upon Mylias of Croton and his wife, Timycha, who, on account of her delicate condition, had been left behind by the rest of their party. They were arrested and brought before the tyrant. Dionysius promised them liberty and an escort to their destination if they would tell him why the deceased Pythagoreans refused to tread on the beans. But they refused to tell. Dionysius's curiosity was all the more excited, and he had the husband taken aside, that he might question the wife alone, feeling convinced that he could compel her to answer his question. Threatened with the torture, and fearing lest in her weakness she might be overcome, Timycha bit out her tongue rather than reveal the secrets of her order. In these Pythagorean Women, we observe the perfect blending of intellectual beauty with moral elevation. Perhaps no later age has presented a higher ideal of feminine perfection. Their system of culture taught them how to pursue at the same time the most abstruse philosophical speculations and the most insignificant duties of practical life, and the higher learning in their hands never led to a sacrifice of true womanliness. Passing from Croton to Athens, Socrates, the father of the various philosophical schools, had no female disciples, so far as we are informed; but he is credited with saying that he learned the ait of love from the priestess Diotima, and that of eloquence from Aspasia. Xenophon also recounts a lengthy conversation of Socrates with the hetsera Theodota concerning the art of winning men. His most eminent disciple, Plato, had numerous pupils of the gentler sex. Plato possessed in large measure the _ewig weibliche_, which Goethe deems an essential element in all great men. As a young man he was given to composing love poems, but the names of his youthful sweethearts are not known. His visits to Southern Italy made him sympathetic with woman's literary aspirations; and when he opened the door of the Academy to them, women flocked to his lecture room from various cities of Hellas. It was the first known instance in Athens of women engaging in philosophy.