and distinguished, as also the most selfish and proud, representatives
of the hetaera class. Through their beauty and the outward splendor of
their station they posed as veritable priestesses of Aphrodite, while
through their intellectual brilliancy and their social charms they
exercised a great influence over the daily life of the Athenians.
To this class belonged the celebrated "daughters of the people," for
whose favor the most prominent and dignified men of the State became
suppliants. As Propertius sang of Lais, they could literally boast that
"all Hellas lay before their doors." Among these hetaerae we see the high
life of the day on a most brilliant scale. Their dwellings were most
sumptuous in their appointments; the walls were painted in frescoes,
pieces of statuary and rich tapestries embellished their apartments,
while the grounds about their houses were laid off with flower beds and
beautiful fountains. Their apparel was of the richest fabrics and was
made up in the most fashionable styles. They possessed numberless jewels
and ornaments of enormous value. They never appeared in public without
an imposing cortege of female slaves and eunuchs. Much of the etiquette
of the courts of princes was maintained in their establishments.
To keep up this elaborate state, they sold their favors at almost
shameless prices. Thus the elder Lais, Gnathaena, and Phryne were
celebrated for their incredible demands. There is a story that the
orator Demosthenes made a trip to Corinth and paid ten thousand drachmae
for a single evening with the younger Lais. As has been intimated,
Corinth possessed the most voluptuous, Athens the most highly cultivated
hetaerae. The excessive charges of "the Corinthian maiden" gave occasion
for the proverb: "Not every man can journey to Corinth." Not only the
celebrated beauties made such exorbitant demands, but even the ordinary
courtesans asked prices which forbade to men of moderate means
intercourse with them.
Beauty and wealth were the factors which determined the social status of
the hetaerae, and with the fading of beauty and the squandering of their
gains many celebrated hetaerae fell from the highest to the lowest
station.
The principal classification of the queens of the demi-monde, however,
was into "domestic" and "learned" hetaerae. The former attracted chiefly
by their beauty and their social grace; the latter, by their native wit,
their vivacity, and their intellectual endowments. These gifted women
entered into intimate relations with the philosophers and rhetoricians
of the day; they visited the lecture halls, devoted themselves to
earnest study, and carried on their prostitution under the protection of
philosophy. They allied themselves with the various philosophical
schools, and by their manner of bestowing their favors sought to advance
the interests of the sect they espoused.
They found, too, in the pursuit of philosophy the justification of their
calling. The hetaerae of the Academy claimed that they were merely putting
into practice Plato's doctrine of the community of women. The followers
of the Cyrenaic school, with its doctrine of moderation in the pursuit
of pleasure, maintained that they carried out the maxims of Aristippus
in their pursuit of the joys of love. The female adherents of the
Cynics, or "the Bitches," as they were called, sought to surpass one
another in taking the beasts as models of imitation. The Dialecticians
found in their system the widest range for feminine cleverness of
speech, and defended hetairism with the greatest subtlety and the most
ingenious sophism. The feminine Epicureans saw in the teachings of their
school, with its doctrine of friendship and of the broadest cultivation
of the sensibilities, the fullest justification for the pursuit of
sexual enjoyment, and they sought to illustrate the greatest
voluptuousness and refinement in their methods of gratifying animal
passion.
The hetaerae of the various schools surpassed the men in their imitation
of the jargon and the manners of the leading lights of their systems.
Many of the philosophers yielded themselves readily to the seductions of
their beautiful and clever adherents; yet there were some choice spirits
who deplored the demoralizing tendencies which hetairism brought into
serious pursuits, and protested in no uncertain language.
These philosopher-hetaerae were indisputably the most interesting
phenomenon in the social life of ancient times, to which the later Greek
world and modern times afford no adequate parallel. They were present
always at theatrical exhibitions and on all public occasions when
respectable women remained at home. They took an absorbing interest in
politics and in all public affairs; they discussed with the citizens the
burning questions of the day; they criticised the acts of statesmen, the
speeches of orators, the dramas of the poets, the productions of
painters and sculptors. They exerted, in a word, an enormous influence
for good or ill on the social and political life of the day; while they
themselves had the consciousness of a mission to perform in having in
their hands the real power of their sex.
Almost every great man in Athens had his "companion," usually in
addition to a lawful wife. Plato had Archeanassa, to whom he wrote
sonnets; but we know not what were her attractions. "For dear to me
Theoris is," sings Sophocles; and we should like to know more of
Archippa, to whom he left his fortune. Aristotle had his Herpyllis, and
the eloquent Isocrates his Metaneira. Speusippus, Plato's successor,
found a "companion" in Lasthenia, and Epicurus in Leontium. It is
difficult to believe that all these for whom the learned men of the day
showed such regard were vicious women; in fact, some of them are
described as noble and high-minded.
"She was a citizen, without a guardian
Or any near relations, and her manner
Pure, and on virtue's strictest model form'd,
A genuine mistress [Greek: heraira]: for the rest of the crew
Bring into disrepute, by their vile manner,
A name which in itself has nothing wrong."
But if the careers of the learned hetaerae were influential, they did not
equal in brilliancy and power those of the more celebrated domestic
hetaerae. The vastness of the influence of this latter class is best shown
by naming the prominent rulers of various periods who were under the
domination of their "companions." We have in an earlier chapter called
attention to the work of Thargelia in moulding Persian sentiment before
the invasions of Darius and Xerxes, and to the influence of Aspasia
during the Periclean Age. Many later hetaerae played prominent roles in
the courts of princes and kings, and not infrequently enjoyed royal
honors, Leaena, Myrrhine, and Lamia were favorites of Demetrius the
Besieger, and the latter shared with him all except the throne. Thais,
for a time beloved of Alexander the Great, and at whose nod he set fire
to the palace of the Persian kings, later bore two sons and a daughter
to Ptolemy Soter, the first Macedonian king of Egypt. Pythionice and
Glycera were in high favor at the court of Harpalus. Hieronymus of
Syracuse elevated a beautiful prostitute named Pytho from the bawdy
house to his palace and throne. Ptolemy Philadelphus was celebrated for
the number of his mistresses, among them being a Didyma, a Blistyche, a
Stratonice, a Myrtion. Ptolemy Philopator was under the degrading
influence of an Agathoclea, daughter of the procuress Oenanthe, both of
whom, in the trenchant phrase of Plutarch, trod diadems under their feet
and were finally murdered by the Alexandrian mob.
Some hetaerae inspired such regard that they were honored with public
monuments. The first instance of this in Athens was in the case of
Leaena, who, after the murder of the tyrant Hipparchus, bit out her
tongue rather than reveal the accomplices of her lover, Aristogiton. The
Athenians at this early date felt a reluctance to erect a statue
representing a hetaera, but they placed on the Acropolis a bronze lioness
to commemorate perpetually the name of Leaena, and to preserve the memory
of her noble deed. In honor of Phryne there was a marble statue at
Thespian sculptured by Praxiteles, as well as another of gold at Delphi.
In Sparta, in her degenerate days, there was a monument to the
celebrated hetaera Cottine. There were also famous statues of Lais,
Glycera, Pythionice, Neaera, Clino, Blistyche, Stratonice, and other
women of pleasure. To Lamia, the renowned flute player, and to her
rival, Leaena of Corinth, favorites of Demetrius the Besieger, the
servile Athenians erected temples, in which they were revered as
goddesses. There was also in Athens a most beautiful and costly tomb in
honor of Pythionice, erected by the Macedonian governor Harpalus,
described by Pausanias as "the best worth seeing of all ancient tombs."
Such are instances of the tributes offered by the beauty-loving Greeks
to these beautiful but light-minded women, who were regarded as
incarnations, as it were, of the goddess Aphrodite herself.
"'Tis not for nothing that where'er we go
We find a temple of hetaerae there,
But nowhere one to any wedded wife,"
sings one of the poets of the Anthology.
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.