[Illustration: AVE CÆSAR! IO SATURNALIA (ALMA-TADEMA)] At Athens the principle was the same, even if the gratification of lust was surrounded with a halo of poetry and sentiment which the Spartan imagination was incapable of creating. The Athenians were guilty of a strange perversion of the social instincts by placing a higher appreciation upon the charms of a certain class of lewd women that they did upon the virtuous merits of their own wives and mothers. These latter were kept in retirement and denied the highest educational advantages; while the former, the Hetairai, beautiful and brilliant courtesans, destined for the pleasure and entertainment of illustrious men, were accorded the utmost freedom, as well as all the advantages of culture in the arts and sciences. Demosthenes has classified the women of ancient Athens in this sentence: "We have Hetairai for our pleasure, concubines for the ordinary requirements of the body, and wives for the procreation of lawful issue and as confidential domestic guardians." The most renowned of the Hetairai was Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles. She was exceedingly beautiful and brilliantly accomplished. At her house in Athens, poets, philosophers, statesmen, and sculptors frequently gathered to do her honor. Pericles is said to have wept only three times in life; and one of these was when he defended Aspasia before the dicastery of Athens against the charge of impiety. Another of the Hetairai scarcely less famous than Aspasia was the celebrated Athenian courtesan, Phryne. Praxiteles, the sculptor, was one of her adorers. She, too, was tried for impiety before the dicastery. Hiperides, the Attic orator, defended her. To create a favorable impression upon the court, he bade her reveal her bosom to the judges. She did so, and was acquitted. So great was the veneration in which Phryne was held that it was considered no profanation to place her image in the sacred temple at Delphi. And so overwhelming was her beauty, that her statues were identified with the Aphrodite of Apelles and the Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles. At Eleusis, on the occasion of a national festival, she impersonated Venus by entering naked into the waves, in the presence of spectators from all the cities of Greece. She is said to have amassed such a fortune that she felt justified in offering to build the walls of Thebes. Such was the esteem in which these elegant harlots were held, that we find recorded among their patrons on the pages of Greek history the names of Pericles, Demades, Lysias, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Aristotle, Aristippus, and Epicurus. So little odium attached to the occupation of this class of women that we read that Socrates frequently paid visits to one of them named Theodota and advised her as to the best method of gaining "friends" and keeping them.[161]