Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/133

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COURTESANS. indulgences; and he cohabited even with his own son's wife, as Stesimbrotus the Thasian informs us; and Stesimbrotus was a contemporary of his, and had seen him, as he tells us in his book entitled a Treatise on Themistocles, and Thucydides, and Pericles. And Antisthenes, the pupil of Socrates, tells us that Pericles, being in love with Aspasia, used to kiss her twice every day, once when he entered her house, and once when he left it. And when she was impeached for impiety, he himself spoke in her behalf, and shed more tears for her sake than he did when his own property and his own life were imperilled. Moreover, when Cimon had had an incestuous intrigue with Elpinice, his sister, who was afterwards given in marriage to Callias, and when he was banished, Pericles contrived his recal, exacting the favours of Elpinice as his recompense.

And Pythænetus, in the third book of his History of Ægina, says that Periander fell violently in love with Melissa, the daughter of Procles of Epidaurus, when he had seen her clothed in the Peloponnesian fashion (for she had on no cloak, but a single tunic only, and was acting as cupbearer to the young men,) and he married her. And Tigris of Leucadia was the mistress of Pyrrhus king of Epirus, who was the third in descent from the Pyrrhus who invaded Italy; but Olympias, the young man's mother, took her off by poison.

57. And Ulpian, as if he had got some unexpected gain, while Myrtilus was still speaking, said:—Do we say [Greek: ho tigris] in the masculine gender? for I know that Philemon says this in his play called Neæra:—

A. Just as Seleucus sent the tiger ([Greek: tên tigrin]) here,
     Which we have seen, so we in turn ought now
     To send Seleucus back a beast from here.

B. Let's send him a trigeranum;[1] for that's
     An animal not known much in those parts.

And Myrtilus said to him:—Since you interrupted us when we were making out a catalogue of women, not like the lists of Sosicrates the Phanagorite, or like the catalogue of women of Nilænetus the Samian or Abderitan (whichever was really his native country), I, digressing a little, will turn to your question, my old Phœnix. Learn, then, that Alexis, in his

  1. This probably means a large crane.