“My friend,” said she, “we are both to blame; for you, in your turn, corrupt their minds by innumerable forms of sophistry and error. And if men be rendered unhappy, what signifies it whether a philosopher or a courtezan be the cause?” It is to her that a joke, somewhat hackneyed but seldom attributed to its real author, was originally due. A gentleman presenting her with a very small jar of wine sought to enhance its value by pretending it was sixteen years old. “Then,” replied she, “it is extremely little for its age.” Gnathena too, another member of the sisterhood, sprinkled her conversation with sparkling wit, but too redolent of the profession to be retailed. Some of her sayings, however, will bear transplantation, though they must suffer by it. To stop the mouth of a babbler who observed that he had just arrived from the Hellespont—“And yet,” she remarked, “it is clear to me that you know nothing of one of its principal cities!” “Which city is that?”—“Sigeion,”[122] (in which there appears to be a reference to the word Silence) answered Gnathena. Several noisy gallants, who being in her debt sought to terrify her by menaces, once saying they would pull her house down, and had pickaxes and mattocks ready, “I disbelieve it,” she replied, “for if you had, you would have pledged them to pay what you owe me.” A comic poet remarking to one of these ladies that the water of her cistern was delightfully cold—“It has always been so,” she replied, “since we have got into the habit of throwing your plays into it.” The repartee of Melitta to a conceited person who was said to have fled ignominiously from the field of battle is exceedingly keen. Happening to be eating of a hare which she seemed much to enjoy, our soldier, desirous of directing attention to her, inquired if she knew what was the fleetest animal in the world. “The runaway,” replied Melitta. ----- Footnote 122: Athen. xiii. 47. ----- The same taste which induces many persons of rank in our own day to marry opera dancers and actresses, in antiquity favoured the ambition of the Hetairæ, many of whom rose from their state of humiliation to be the wives of satraps and princes. This was the case with Glycera, whom after the death of Pythionica, Harpalos sent for from Athens, and domiciliated within his royal palace at Tarsos. He required her to be saluted and considered as his queen, and refused to be crowned unless in conjunction with her. Nay, he had even the hardihood to erect in the city of Rossos, a brazen statue to her, beside his own.[123] Herpyllis, one of the same sisterhood, won the heart of Aristotle, and was the mother of Nicomachos. She survived the philosopher, and was carefully provided for by his will.[124] Even Plato, whose genius and virtue are still the admiration of mankind, succumbed to the charms of Archæanassa, an Hetaira of Colophon, whose beauty, which long survived her youth, he celebrated in an epigram still extant.[125] ----- Footnote 123: