Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/110

 To the fair mother of the Loves, Who dwelleth in the sky, The lovely Venus,—you do bring to us Comfort and hope in danger, that we may Hereafter, in the delicate beds of Love, Heap the long-wished-for fruits of joy, Lovely and necessary to all mortal men.

And after having begun in this manner, he proceeds to say—

But now I marvel, and wait anxiously To see what will my masters say of me, Who thus begin My scolium with this amatory preface, Willing companion of these willing damsels.

And it is plain here that the poet, while addressing the courtesans in this way, was in some doubt as to the light in which it would appear to the Corinthians; but, trusting to his own genius, he proceeds with the following verse—

We teach pure gold on a well-tried lyre.

And Alexis, in his Loving Woman, tells us that the courtesans at Corinth celebrate a festival of their own, called Aphrodisia; where he says—

The city at the time was celebrating The Aphrodisia of the courtesans: This is a different festival from that Which the free women solemnize: and then It is the custom on those days that all The courtesans should feast with us in common.

34. But at Lacedæmon (as Polemo Periegetes says, in his treatise on the Offerings at Lacedæmon,) there is a statue of a very celebrated courtesan, named Cottina, who, he tells us, consecrated a brazen cow; and Polemo's words are these:—"And the statue of Cottina the courtesan, on account of whose celebrity there is still a brothel which is called by her name, near the hill on which the temple of Bacchus stands, is a conspicuous object, well known to many of the citizens. And there is also a votive offering of hers besides that to Minerva Chalciœcos—a brazen cow, and also the before-mentioned image." And the handsome Alcibiades, of whom one of the comic poets said—

And then the delicate Alcibiades, O earth and all the gods! whom Lacedæmon Desires to catch in his adulteries,

though he was beloved by the wife of Agis, used to go and held his revels at the doors of the courtesans, leaving all the