Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/143

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COURTESANS. now flying to the sea-shore, after he had revolted; and it mentions Pythionica as already dead; and Glycera, as being with Harpalus, and as being the person who encouraged the Athenians to receive presents from Harpalus. And the verses of the play are as follows:—

A. There is a pinnacle, where never birds
     Have made their nests, where the long reeds do grow;
     And on the left is the illustrious temple
     Raised to a courtesan, which Pallides
     Erected, but repenting of the deed,
     Condemn'd himself for it to banishment.
     And when some magi of the barbarians
     Saw him oppressed with the stings of conscience,
     They made him trust that they could raise again
     The soul of Pythionica.

And the author of the play calls Harpalus Pallides in this passage; but in what follows, he speaks of him by his real name, saying—

B. But I do wish to learn from you, since I
     Dwell a long way from thence, what is the fate
     At present of the land of Athens; and
     How all its people fare?

                              A. Why, when they said
     That they were slaves, they plenty had to eat,
     But now they have raw vegetables only,
     And fennel, and but little corn or meat.

B I likewise hear that Harpalus has sent them
     A quantity of corn no less than Agen,
     And has been made a citizen of Athens.
     That corn was Glycera's. But it is perhaps
     To them a pledge of ruin, not of a courtesan.

69. Naucratis also has produced some very celebrated courtesans of exceeding beauty; for instance, Doricha, whom the beautiful Sappho, as she became the mistress of her brother Charaxus, who had gone to Naucratis on some mercantile business, accuses in her poetry of having stripped Charaxus of a great deal of his property. But Herodotus calls her Rhodopis, being evidently ignorant that Rhodopis and Doricha were two different people; and it was Rhodopis who dedicated those celebrated spits at Delphi, which Cratinus mentions in the following lines—

Posidippus also made this epigram on Doricha, although he had often mentioned her in his Æthiopia, and this is the epigram—