to rebuild the walls of Thebes, which had been levelled by Alexander, provided that the fact should be commemorated by a suitable inscription. The Thebans, however, were too proud to owe the restoration of their town to such a source.[1] As the result of their notoriety and the consideration accorded to them, some courtesans won the distinction of living in metal or marble; and it was remarked that, whilst no wife had been honoured by a public monument, the memory of hetairas had often been perpetuated by the statuary.[2] The reasons, however, why courtesans happened to be thus distinguished were in many instances totally dissimilar: some for actual merit, others merely through the caprice of passionate lovers, challenged the popular eye from a pedestal. Leaena was represented at Athens under the form of a tongueless lioness, because she preferred to die by the torture rather than disclose the conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogeiton against the tyrants of the day.[3] Even at Sparta the image of Cottina was a familiar object, standing beside a brazen cow which she had consecrated to Athena.[4] A sculptured tomb to Lais was set up at Corinth,[5] and a golden statue of Phryne was dedicated at Delphi,[6] to express the admiration of their
- ↑ Athenaeus, xiii, 60. Here, again, a parallel is afforded by Cora Pearl. During the war of 1870 she transformed her house into an "ambulance," where she spent her time and money to the amount of £1,000 in nursing wounded soldiers. Afterwards she claimed to be reimbursed, but £60 only was granted to her by the government; see her Mémoires, Paris, 1886. Ultimately she was expelled from Paris.
- ↑ Ibid., xiii, 7, 31.
- ↑ Ibid., xiii, 70; Polyaenus, viii, 45, etc.
- ↑ Athenaeus, xiii, 34.
- ↑ Ibid., xiii, 54. A figurative memorial, a lioness tearing a ram; Pausanias, ii, 2.
- ↑ Ibid., xiii, 59; Aelian, Var. Hist., ix, 32. Crates, the Cynic, said that it was an advertisement of the profligacy of Greece.
