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 prostitutes, without properly belonging to any of the recognized classes. They were sometimes called free dicteriades, sometimes she-wolves, and also cheap hetairæ. 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 Piræus, 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 hetairæ 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 class 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 prostitutes 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 prostitute 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 passing 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.