Athenæus reads the latter, but the reading πόρνα δύο appears in the received text of Aristophanês. Critics differ, whether Ἀσπασίας is the genitive case singular of Ἀσπασία, or the accusative plural of the adjective ἀσπάσιος. I believe that it is the latter; but intended as a play on the word, capable of being understood either as a substantive or as an adjective—ἀσπασίας πόρνας δύο, or Ἀσπασίας πόρνας δύο. There is a similar play on the word, in a line of Kratinus, quoted by Plutarch, Periklês, c. 24. At the time, if ever, when this theft of the Megarian youth took place, Aspasia must have been the beloved mistress and companion of Periklês; and it is inconceivable that she should have kept slave-girls for hire _then_, whatever she may have done before. That reading and construction of the verse above cited, which I think the least probable of the two, has been applied by the commentators of Thucydidês to explain a line of his history, and applied in a manner which I am persuaded is erroneous. When the Lacedæmonians desired the Athenians to repeal the decree excluding the Megarians from their ports, the Athenians refused, alleging that the Megarians had appropriated some lands which were disputed between the two countries, and some which were even sacred property,—and also, that “_they had received runaway slaves from Athens_,”—καὶ ἀνδραπόδων ὑποδοχὴν τῶν ἀφισταμένων (i, 139). The Scholiast gives a perfectly just explanation of these last words—ὡς ὅτι δούλους αὐτῶν ἀποφεύγοντας ἐδέχοντο. But Wasse puts a note to the passage to this effect—“_Aspasiæ servos_, v, Athenæum, p. 570; Aristoph. Acharn. 525, et Schol.” This note of Wasse is adopted and transcribed by the three best and most recent commentators on Thucydidês,—Poppo, Göller, and Dr. Arnold. Yet, with all respect to their united authority, the supposition is neither natural, as applied to the words, nor admissible, as regards the matter of fact. Ἀνδράποδα ἀφιστάμενα mean naturally (not _Aspasiæ servos_, or more properly _servas_, for the very gender ought to have made Wasse suspect the correctness of his interpretation,—but) the runaway slaves of proprietors generally in Attica; of whom the Athenians lost so prodigious a number after the Lacedæmonian garrison was established at Dekeleia (Thucyd. vii, 28: compare i, 142; and iv, 118, about the ἀυτόμολοι). Periklês might well set forth the reception of such runaway slaves as a matter of complaint against the Megarians, and the Athenian public assembly would feel it so likewise: moreover, the Megarians are charged, not with having _stolen away_ the slaves, but with _harboring_ them (ὑποδοχὴν). But to suppose that Periklês, in defending the decree of exclusion against the Megarians, would rest the defence on the ground that some Megarian youth had run away with two girls of the _cortège_ of Aspasia, argues a strange conception both of