HETÆRÆ.
With a vile harlot ([Greek: pornê]), but with a companion ([Greek: hetaira]).
Is she not one of pure and simple manners?
B. At all events, by Jove, she's beautiful.
30. But that systematic debaucher of youths of yours, is such a person as Alexis, or Antiphanes, represents him, in his Sleep—
On this account, that profligate, when supping
With us, will never eat an onion even,
Not to annoy the object of his love.
And Ephippus has spoken very well of people of that description in his Sappho, where he says—
For when one in the flower of his age
Learns to sneak into other men's abodes,
And shares of meals where he has not contributed,
He must some other mode of payment mean.
And Æschines the orator has said something of the same kind in his Speech against Timarchus.
31. But concerning courtesans, Philetærus, in his Huntress, has the following lines:—
'Tis not for nothing that where'er we go
We find a temple of Hetæra there,
But nowhere one to any wedded wife.
I know, too, that there is a festival called the Hetæridia, which is celebrated in Magnesia, not owing to the courtesans, but to another cause, which is mentioned by Hegesander in his Commentaries, who writes thus:—"The Magnesians celebrate a festival called Hetæridia; and they give this account of it: that originally Jason, the son of Æson, when he had collected the Argonauts, sacrificed to Jupiter Hetærias, and called the festival Hetæridia. And the Macedonian kings also celebrated the Hetæridia."
There is also a temple of Venus the Prostitute ([Greek: pornê]) at Abydus, as Pamphylus asserts:—"For when all the city was oppressed by slavery, the guards in the city, after a sacrifice on one occasion (as Cleanthus relates in his essays on Fables), having got intoxicated, took several courtesans; and one of these women, when she saw that the men were all fast asleep, taking the keys, got over the wall, and brought the news to the citizens of Abydus. And they, on this, immediately came in arms, and slew the guards, and made themselves masters of the walls, and recovered their freedom; and to show their gratitude to the prostitute they built a temple to Venus the Prostitute."
