Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 3).djvu/134

 Pyraunus, has said [Greek: ton tigrin], using the word in the masculine gender; and these are his words:

Come, open quick the door; I have been here, Though all unseen, walking some time,—a statue, A millstone, and a seahorse, and a wall, The tiger ([Greek: ho tigris]) of Seleucus.

And I might quote other evidences of the fact, but I postpone them for the present, while I finish my catalogue, as far as it comprehends the beautiful women.

58. For Clearchus speaks thus concerning Epaminondas: "Epaminondas the Theban behaved with more dignity than these men did; but still there was a want of dignity in the way in which he was induced to waver in his sentiments in his association with women, as any one will admit who considers his conduct with the wife of Lacon." But Hyperides the orator, having driven his son Glaucippus out of his house, received into it that most extravagant courtesan Myrrhina, and kept her in the city; and he also kept Aristagora in the Piræus, and Phila at Eleusis, whom he bought for a very large sum, and then emancipated; and after that he made her his housekeeper, as Idomeneus relates. But, in his oration in defence of Phryne, Hyperides confesses that he is in love with the woman; and yet, before he had got cured of that love, he introduced the above-mentioned Myrrhina into his house.

59. Now Phryne was a native of Thespiæ; and being prosecuted by Euthias on a capital charge, she was acquitted: on which account Euthias was so indignant that he never instituted any prosecution afterwards, as Hermippus tells us. But Hyperides, when pleading Phryne's cause, as he did not succeed at all, but it was plain that the judges were about to condemn her, brought her forth into the middle of the court, and, tearing open her tunic and displaying her naked bosom, employed all the end of his speech, with the highest oratorical art, to excite the pity of her judges by the sight of her beauty, and inspired the judges with a superstitious fear, so that they were so moved by pity as not to be able to stand the idea of condemning to death "a prophetess and priestess of Venus." And when she was acquitted, a decree was drawn up in the following form: "That hereafter no orator should endeavour to excite pity on behalf of any