Page:Comedies of Publius Terentius Afer (1870).djvu/13

Rh rebuilt the walls of Thebes, for the sole guerdon of her name being engraved on the walls as "Phryne the Hetaira." Pericles wedded Aspasia, and Socrates sat at her feet to learn eloquence. Plato bad his Archianassa, and Aristotle his Hepyllis.

We here tread on Athenian soil, where Terence lays the scene of his dramas, and where the lost Comedies of Menander, from whence he drew his own, had their origin. They had also a religious halo, for the girls were offered in early youth or saved by dedication to Aphrodite at Corinth and elsewhere, where there were colleges or institutions where they were instructed, and where some chosen few were rich enough to visit them to their ruin. So we find Antiphila saved (Heaut. iii. 5) by the Corinthian crone. We find Simo, in the Andria, grace unbidden the funeral rite of his neighbour Chrysis. Chremes entertains Bacchis and her train in his house, whilst with an hypocrisy past endurance he will not pronounce the word meretrix before his wife in his son's presence, poor unhappy Sostrata, whom he has rated like a slave in Act III. scene 5, and treated with utter indignity and cruelty.

Neither does there appear to have been any poverty, or want, or disease in their order, but, like good Samaritans, they appear to be rife of charitable deeds. It may be remarked, that however Homer may vituberate his Samaritan deities, Calypso and Circe, he has