Harpalus found consolation in the arms of a Greek garland-weaver named Glycera, for aught we know the poisoner of Pythionice. She, too, became Queen of Babylon, issued her decrees, held her court, submitted to be worshiped, and saw her statue of bronze, as large as life, erected in the Babylonian temples. She was a woman of a masculine mind in a feminine body. When Alexander returned from the East, breathing vengeance against faithless servants, she compelled her lover to fly with her to Attica, where she raised, by her eloquence, her money, and her address, an army of six thousand men to oppose the hero of Macedon. It is said that she purchased, at what price we know not, the silence of Demosthenes; she certainly bribed the Athenian people with large donations of corn. But she could not bribe or persuade her wretched lover to be sensible; his folly soon roused the Athenians against him, and he was exiled with his mistress. In this exile, one of his attendants cut the throat of the venerable lover, and Glycera, left a widow, returned to Athens to pursue her calling as a hetaira. She was no longer young, and needed the aid of the dealer in cosmetics; but her prestige as the ex-mistress of Babylon procured her a certain celebrity, and she soon obtained a position in the society of Athens. Out of a crowd of admirers who attached themselves to her court, she chose two to be, as the French would say, her _amants de coeur_. One was the painter Pausias; the other the comic poet Menander. The former achieved one of his most brilliant triumphs by painting the portrait of his mistress. But, whether his temper was not congenial to hers, or his rival inspired an exclusive affection, Glycera soon discarded Pausias, and became the mistress of the poet alone. Menander, we are led to believe, was a man of a harsh, crabbed disposition; the haughty Glycera was the only one whom his _boutades_ never irritated, who bore with all his ill temper. When he was successful, she heightened his joy; when his plays were ill received, and he returned from the theatre in low spirits, she consoled him, and endured the keenest affronts without murmuring. Her amiability had its reward. From being one of the most dissolute men of Athens, Menander became solidly attached and faithful to Glycera, and, so soon was her Babylonish career forgotten, she descended to posterity in the Athenian heart inseparably coupled with the dearest of their comic writers.[62]