Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 2.djvu/188

 defence of those who feed and take care of them. An adulterer is laying siege to the household—a young man from Elis, one of the Olympian fascinators; he sends neatly folded notes every day to our master’s wife, together with faded bouquets and half-eaten apples.” Alciphron, iii, 62. The words are put into the mouth of a rapacious parasite who feels that the security of his position in the house is about to be shaken.

“I didn’t mind your kissing Cymbalium half-a-dozen times, you only disgraced yourself; but—to be always winking at Pyrallis, never to drink without lifting the cup to her, and then to whisper to the boy, when you handed it to him, not to fill it for anyone but her—that was too much! And then—to bite a piece off an apple, and when you saw that Duphilus was busy talking to Thraso, to lean forward and throw it right into her lap, without caring whether I saw it or not; and she kissed it and put it into her bosom under her girdle! It was scandalous! Why do you treat me like this?” Lucian, Dial. Hetairæ, 12. These words are spoken by another apostle of direct speech; a jealous prostitute who is furiously angry with her lover, and in no mood to mince matters in the slightest.

Aristænetus, xxv, furnishes yet another excellent illustration. The prostitute Philanis, in writing to a Rh