Chapter 17

The characteristic traits of these reigning queens of the demi-monde were in almost all cases the same. The principal attributes of their characters were selfishness and greed. With all their outward good nature and apparent warmth of disposition, they were at all times "marble-hearted," cold, incapable of any noble emotion, and impervious to the stirrings of true love. There are a few exceptional cases of self-sacrificing devotion, as of Leaena, and of Timandra, who stood by Alcibiades in all his misfortune, but their exceeding rarity proves the rule. A few were of good character and were faithful to the relations which they had formed; many were merely fair and frail; while most of them descended to the lowest depths of corruption and depravity. While the deportment of those hetaerae who cultivated every womanly charm presents much that is attractive, yet their manner of life has been aptly compared to baskets of noxious weeds and garbage, covered over with roses. Extravagance, debauchery, and dissolute habits were sure to work out in time the attendant ills of wretchedness, destitution, and penury. Realizing that for them there was possible no such thing as true love and domestic happiness, they became rapacious and vindictive, cynical and ill-tempered. Nothing could be mare fearful than the pictures which the comic poets and satirists draw of some of these women; Anaxilas, for example, thus describes them as a class:

"The man whoe'er has loved a courtesan, Will say that no more lawless, worthless race Can anywhere be found: for what ferocious, Unsociable she-dragon, what Chimaera, Though it breathe fire from its mouth, what Charybdis, What three-headed Scylla, dog o' the sea, Or hydra, sphynx, or raging lioness, Or viper, or winged harpy (greedy race), Could go beyond those most accursed harlots? There is no monster greater. They alone Surpass all other evils put together."

Their outward behavior and manner were characterized by great elegance. One comic poet remarks that they took their food most delicately and not like the citizen-women, who "stuffed their cheeks and tore off the meat." Their speech, however, was unrestrained, and they delighted in indelicate witticisms and _doubles entendres_. Machon made a collection of the witty remarks of the most celebrated hetaerae, in his book of anecdotes. In Athenaeus we also have specimens of their witticisms. Sinope of AEgina was particularly famous for her coarse wit, and had many clever encounters with the brilliant men of her day. To preserve or to enhance their natural beauty, the hetaerae were given to the use of cosmetics. Eubulus, in a fragment, thus represents a citizen-woman reviling the much-hated class:

"By Jove, we are not painted with vermilion, Nor with dark mulberry juice, as you are often: And then, if in the summer you go out, Two rivulets of dark, discolored hue Flow from your eyes, and sweat drops from your jaws And makes a scarlet furrow down your neck, And the light hair which wantons o'er your face Seems gray, so thickly is it plastered o'er."

The secret mysteries of hetairism, which were celebrated chiefly by the Lesbian and Samlan hetaerae and which occasioned a hetasra literature, prepared in part by such members of the craft as Philaenis, Elephantine, Niko, and others, constitute an important aspect of our subject, which must be briefly noticed. Suffice it to say that the women of pleasure of Lesbos and Samos excelled in the invention and practice of shameful, unnatural arts, and that the lasciviousness of the Lesbian courtesans led to the loathsome form of lust known as "Lesbian love," which has become proverbial.

Plutarch expressly distinguishes from the hetaerae a class known as "emancipated women," whose preeminent virtue, however, was certainly not modesty. To this class belonged many of the flower girls, wreath weavers, painters' and sculptors' models, who earned a living by means of their good looks, though they did not follow a life of shame. The best known representative of this class was Glycera, whom Goethe has immortalized. She was a native of Sicyon, and supported herself by the sale of flower wreaths, which she knew how to make most artistically, for use at banquets, funerals, and for adornment of the door of one's sweetheart. The painter Pausias, likewise a native of Sicyon, loved her passionately and used to enter into competition with her, whether she could wreathe flowers more artistically than he himself could paint them. He painted a portrait which represented her seated with a flower wreath; it was so excellent that the Roman general Lucullus, after the Mithridatic War, when he was making a collection of statues and paintings, paid two talents for a copy.

It is not strange that many of the hetaerae, noted for their superlative beauty and for their cultivation of art and literature and the refinements of life, should attain historical celebrity and, as heroines of the demi-monde, should influence for weal or woe the destinies of Greece. We shall briefly notice important incidents in the careers of a few of the members of this prominent class.

Gnathaena, daughter of the panderess Sinope, was one of the most keen-witted and clever of Athenian hetaerae. She was noted for her happy play on words. She also devised a set of rules for the conduct of dinners and banquets, which lovers had to observe when they visited her or her daughter, Gnathaenion. In this she imitated the most cultured hosts of Athens, and exhibited a regard for social forms which throws a commendable light on the deportment of the more cultivated hetaerae. Gnathaenion, the daughter, was for some time the favorite of the comic poet Diphilus, and he had many a brilliant passage of repartee with the mother on the occasion of his visits to the daughter.

Melitta was another famous hetaerae, beloved for her beautiful figure and voice as well as for her pleasing conversation and sprightliness. As each of her lovers said, "the fair Melitta was his madness," she was also called Mania. She was one of the many favorites of Demetrius the Besieger. More celebrated, however, than Melitta as a favorite of Demetrius was the beautiful Lamia, the most renowned flute player of antiquity. She was the daughter of a prominent Athenian citizen, by name Cleanor, and, choosing to follow the independent life of a hetaerae, she made her native city the first scene of her exploits. From here she journeyed to Alexandria, where by her art and her beauty she speedily won recognition at the court of Ptolemy. Accompanying Ptolemy Soter in his naval war against Antigonus and Demetrius, she fell a prisoner into the hands of the latter. Although her youth and beauty were already on the wane, she succeeded in captivating Demetrius, who was much younger than herself, so that, as Plutarch states, he appeared to be actually her lover, while with other women he was only the object of love. Lamia ruled him completely and led him into many excesses. Thus he once compelled the Athenians to collect for him at short notice two hundred and fifty talents, and when it was finally brought to him he sent it straightway to Lamia and her companions, "for pin money," Lamia herself on one occasion exacted from the citizens an enormous sum of money to prepare a magnificent banquet for Demetrius. This banquet, because of the exorbitant expenses which it occasioned, was so extraordinarily notorious that Lycurgus of Samos wrote a book about it. On this account, a comic poet characterized Lamia as the true _Helepolis_, or city destroyer, the name of one of the most famous engines of war of Demetrius. Demetrius remained passionately enamored of her, even after her beauty had faded. As a means of flattering Demetrius, the Athenians erected altars to her, made propitiatory offerings, and celebrated her festival. The Thebans went so far as to erect a temple in her honor, and worshipped her as Aphrodite Lamia.

Pythionice, the favorite of Harpalus, the friend and confidant of Alexander the Great, partook of honors which rivalled those of Lamia. During the most brilliant period of Harpalus's career, Pythionice was summoned to Babylon, where she shared his honors and bore the title of a queen of Babylon. A letter from the historian Theopompus to Alexander is extant, in which he speaks of the passionate devotion of Harpalus to his favorite, and thus alludes to her: "To this Pythionice, a slave of the flute player Bacchis, who in turn was a slave of the hetaera Sinope, Harpalus erected two monuments, one at Athens and one at Babylon, at a cost of more than two hundred talents, which seemed cheap to that spend-thrift; and, in addition, he had a precinct and a sanctuary dedicated to her, which he named the temple and altar of Aphrodite Pythionice. She bore him a daughter, and died before the sudden change which came in his fortunes."

Another favorite of Harpalus, and later of the celebrated deformed comic poet Menander, was Glycera, the daughter of Thalassis. She was a native of Athens, and passed most of her time in the company of litterateurs and philosophers. The Megarian philosopher Stilpo once accused her, at a banquet, of misleading the youth through her seductive art. She made the reply: "Stilpo, we are in this under like condemnation. It is said of you that you impart to your pupils profitless and eristic sophisms, of me that I teach them erotic sophisms." Some of Glycera's letters to her poet lover Menander, still extant, show how warm a sympathy existed between the two, and how delicate a sentiment could characterize such a union.

One of the names of hetaerae famous in both ancient and modern times is that of Lais, which belonged to two Greek women celebrated for their extraordinary beauty, who are differentiated by being known as Lais the Elder and Lais the Younger.

The elder and indisputably more famous of the two was the daughter of that hetaera, Timandra, who remained faithful to Alcibiades in his evil fortunes. As a seven-year-old maiden, Lais was taken captive by the Athenians during the sack of her birthplace, Hyccara in Sicily, and was brought as a slave to Corinth. Here she was early initiated into the arts of gallantry and was given a thorough training in the culture of the day.

The physical charms of Lais developed into a beauty rarely witnessed. Her bosom was of such indescribable perfection that sculptors and painters took it as a model in their creations of the ideal female form. She was regarded as surpassing not only all her contemporaries, but also all the famous beauties of earlier times; and later ages regarded her as the prototype of womanly beauty, and delighted in giving lengthy and minute descriptions of her charms, as, for example, that by the sophist Aristaenetus in the first of his fifty erotic epistles.

Soon after her first appearance, Lais was talked of, was celebrated, was deified, in all Hellenic lands. It was considered good fortune, as a Greek poet expressed it, that Lais, the most beautiful of her sex, adopted the hetaera life; for were she not accessible to all, there would have been in Greece a conflict comparable only to that over Argive Helen.

The reputation of her beauty occasioned in a short time a formidable immigration to Corinth of the most wealthy and distinguished men, partly to enjoy her favor, partly to gaze in wonder at her charms, and partly to study this paragon of female beauty for imitation in works of art. From the homage that she received, and especially the wealth that was poured at her feet by her lovers, she was soon rendered so proud and selfish that she secluded herself from all except the richest. Her proud heart, however, was not entirely closed to emotions of love. She took a fancy to the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, in spite of his filth and brusqueness; and AElian tells the story of her inclination for a young athlete, Eubatas of Cyrene, who had come to Corinth for the games, leaving behind a most beautiful and beloved wife. "When Lais became acquainted with Eubatas of Cyrene," says AElian, "she was so enamored of him that she made a proposal of marriage. In order not to bring down on himself the vengeance of the powerful hetaera, he became betrothed to her, but yet continued to live a continent life. At the conclusion of the games, he had to fulfil his promise. But after he had been declared victor, in order to avoid the appearance of breaking faith with the courtesan, he had a picture of Lais painted, and took it with him to Cyrene, affirming that he had not broken his promise, but had brought Lais home with him. As a reward for his fidelity, his virtuous wife in Cyrene had a statue erected in his honor."

Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy, tried in vain to win the love of this beautiful hetaera, though, of all her lovers, he passed the most time in her society, and on her lavished considerable sums of money.

Lais gained much knowledge from intercourse with this learned philosopher, so that she ranked not only as the most beautiful, but also as one of the most brilliant women of her time. She allied herself with the Cyrenaic school, whose system of philosophy appealed to her much more naturally than did the gross system of her favorite, Diogenes, who on his side sought in every way to win the celebrated beauty to Cynicism. Lais had nothing but contempt, however, for the moral claims of philosophy. "I do not understand," she said, "what is meant by the austerity of philosophers; for they of this fine name are as much in my power as the rest of the citizens."

The charms of Lais, though so unapproachable in their bloom, yet proved transient, and pitiable was the metamorphosis which the brilliancy of the famous beauty underwent with their fading. Wealthy admirers became fewer and fewer, and finally they ceased to appear, and with them her resources failed. The once proud beauty became the plaything of every man. She sought to drown her sorrow in the wine cup--a practice altogether too common among Greek women of disreputable life. At this sad period of her career, Lais dedicated her mirror, as being an unpleasant reminder of her lost beauty, to the goddess to whose service she had devoted her life. In her later years, she followed the vile trade of a procuress.

After her death, the Corinthians remembered what a reputation it had given their city to be the abiding place of so famous a woman, and they erected to her a mausoleum at Craneion, a cypress grove near the city, on which a lioness tearing a kid in pieces symbolized the rapacity of the deceased hetaera.

Lais the Younger was a contemporary of the orator Demosthenes and the painter Apelles, and flourished nearly a century after her more celebrated namesake. She too lived at Corinth, and was famous for her beauty and her association with distinguished men. She was born out of wedlock, and the names of both her father and mother are unknown. As she grew up, a waif in the dissolute city, Apelles, the celebrated painter, is said to have been the first to have noticed her budding beauty and to have educated her. According to the prevailing tradition, Apelles saw her when, as a young girl, she was drawing water from the fountain Pirene, and was at once so captivated by her beauty that he took her with him to a banquet whither he was going. When his friends jestingly reproached him because, instead of bringing a hetaera, as was usual, he had brought a child to the feast, he rejoined: "Be not surprised. I will show her again to you before three years have passed; you can then see how beautiful and vivacious she has become."

Before this period had passed, Lais became the most celebrated hetaera of the city. Her name was on everyone's lips, in the baths, in the theatres, and on the streets and public squares. Her fame spread throughout Hellas, and the richest men of Hellas flocked to Corinth. She was surpassed in the number and prominence of her lovers only by her contemporary, Phryne of Athens.

When at the height of her triumph, this celebrated and petted hetaera, "who inflamed all Hellas with love, and for whose favors two seas contended," suddenly disappeared from the scene of her conquests. A Thessalian, by name Hippolochus, had taught her the meaning of true love. She fled with him from the company of her other lovers, and lived in honorable marriage in Thessaly. Her beauty, however, caused a sad ending to this pleasing romance. From envy and jealousy, the Thessalian women enticed her into the temple of Aphrodite and there stoned her to death. Some historians relate that she had many Thessalian lovers; this aroused the jealousy of the women, and they took her life at a festival of Aphrodite at which no men were present. After her murder, a pestilence is said to have broken out in Thessaly, which did not end until in expiation a temple had been erected to Aphrodite.

Phryne was the most beautiful woman of all antiquity. She was born at Thespiae in Boeotia, but flourished at Athens toward the latter part of the fourth century before our era. The name Phryne belongs essentially to the history of Greek art, for all her life was associated with the activities of the most eminent painters and sculptors. In her youth she was loved by the sculptor Praxiteles. Pausanias tells a story how "once when Phryne asked for the most beautiful of his works, Praxiteles, lover-like, promised to give it to her, but would not tell which he thought the most beautiful. So a servant of Phryne ran in, declaring that the sculptor's studio had caught fire, and that most, but not all, of his works had perished. Praxiteles at once ran for the door, protesting that all his labor was lost if the flames had reached the _Satyr_ and the _Love_. But Phryne bade him stay and be of good cheer, telling him that he had suffered no loss, but had only been entrapped into saying which were the most beautiful of his works. So she chose the _Love_."

Either this or a similar statue of Eros was dedicated by Phryne in Thespiae, the city of her birth. Later, Praxiteles made of her a statue of gold, which was set up at Delphi between those of two kings. She also served as his model for the celebrated Aphrodite of Cnidos, which Pliny describes as "the finest statue, not only by Praxiteles, but in the whole world." The inhabitants of Cnidos placed the image, which they believed had been made under the direct inspiration of the goddess of love herself, in a beautiful shrine surrounded by myrtle trees, so arranged that the figure might be seen from many different points of view; "and from all sides," adds Pliny, "it was equally admired." Hither came Greeks from all parts of the world merely to behold the statue and to worship at the shrine of the goddess. King Nicomedes of Bithynia, in his eagerness to possess the statue, offered to pay for it the whole public debt of the island, which was enormous; but the Cnidians preferred to suffer anything rather than give up their treasure; and with good reason, "for by that statue Praxiteles made Cnidos famous." Writers of epigrams were fond of extolling the statue; and many of the extant statues of Venus are but replicas or adaptations of this great prototype, modelled after the form of Phryne. The most celebrated copy of the Cnidian statue is in the Vatican, disfigured, however, by false drapery. The statue gives us some idea of the superlative beauty of Phryne. It is very pure, very unconscious of its charms, and captivates the beholder by its simple grace and naturalness. Lucian, the aesthetic critic, in the construction of his ideal statue selected for description the head of the Aphrodite of Cnidos. He particularly admired the finely pencilled telling him that he had suffered no loss, but had only been entrapped into saying which were the most beautiful of his works. So she chose the _Love_."

Either this or a similar statue of Eros was dedicated by Phryne in Thespiae, the city of her birth. Later, Praxiteles made of her a statue of gold, which was set up at Delphi between those of two kings. She also served as his model for the celebrated Aphrodite of Cnidos, which Pliny describes as "the finest statue, not only by Praxiteles, but in the whole world." The inhabitants of Cnidos placed the image, which they believed had been made under the direct inspiration of the goddess of love herself, in a beautiful shrine surrounded by myrtle trees, so arranged that the figure might be seen from many different points of view; "and from all sides," adds Pliny, "it was equally admired." Hither came Greeks from all parts of the world merely to behold the statue and to worship at the shrine of the goddess. King Nicomedes of Bithynia, in his eagerness to possess the statue, offered to pay for it the whole public debt of the island, which was enormous; but the Cnidians preferred to suffer anything rather than give up their treasure; and with good reason, "for by that statue Praxiteles made Cnidos famous." Writers of epigrams were fond of extolling the statue; and many of the extant statues of Venus are but replicas or adaptations of this great prototype, modelled after the form of Phryne. The most celebrated copy of the Cnidian statue is in the Vatican, disfigured, however, by false drapery. The statue gives us some idea of the superlative beauty of Phryne. It is very pure, very unconscious of its charms, and captivates the beholder by its simple grace and naturalness. Lucian, the aesthetic critic, in the construction of his ideal statue selected for description the head of the Aphrodite of Cnidos. He particularly admired the finely pencilled eyebrows and the melting gaze of the eyes, with their sweet, joyous expression.

Phryne, with a modesty one would not expect in a woman of her class, was very careful to keep her beautiful figure concealed, avoiding the public baths and having her body always enveloped in a long and graceful tunic. But on two occasions the beauty-loving Greeks had displayed to them the charms of her person. The first was at the solemn assembly at Eleusis, on the feast of the Poseidonia. Having loosened her beautiful hair and let fall her drapery, Phryne plunged into the sea in the sight of all the assembled Greeks. Apelles, the painter, transported with admiration at the sight, retired at once to his studio and transferred to canvas the mental image which was indelibly impressed upon his fancy; and the resulting picture was the _Aphrodite Anadyomene_, the most celebrated of his paintings.

The second exhibition was before the austere court of the Heliasts. Phryne had been cited to appear before the tribunal on the charge of profaning the Eleusinian mysteries, and Hyperides, the brilliant young orator, was her advocate. Failing to move the judges by his arguments, he tore the tunic from her bosom and revealed to them the perfection of her figure. The judges, beholding as it were the goddess of love incarnate, and moved by a superstitious fear, could not dare to condemn to death "a prophetess and priestess of Aphrodite." They saw and they pardoned, and, amid the applause of the people, Phryne was carried in triumph to the temple of Aphrodite. To us in this day such a scene appears highly theatrical, but Aphrodite is no longer esteemed among men, and the Greek worship of beauty is something not understood in this material age.

Phryne's life was by no means free from blame, and as the result of her popularity she acquired great riches. She is said to have offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes, which had been torn down by Alexander, on condition that she might place on them the inscription: _Alexander destroyed Thebes; but Phryne, the hetaera, rebuilt it;_ but the offer was rejected, showing that though the times were corrupt, yet shame had not altogether departed from men.