Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/358

 position as the leader of Athenian society during his tenure of power, an important page is devoted in all histories of Greece; and it appears that even matrons were permitted to frequent her salon in order to improve themselves mentally by listening to the elevated discourses held there. Socrates visited Theodote for the purpose of augmenting his sociological insight, and Xenophon has included an account of his debate with her in his memoirs of that father of philosophers. Leontium was a conspicuous figure in the garden of Epicurus, where he convened his disciples; and she penned a treatise against the Peripatetics, which deserved the commendation of Cicero. Scarcely, indeed, can a man of note in this age, whether potentate, orator, philosopher, or poet, be found whose name does not occur in anecdote

composed as many as 135 lives, and Apollodorus exceeded even this number. The gist of their writings, however, seems to have been preserved by Athenaeus in his thirteenth book; and among the moderns, Jacobs has attempted to reconstruct all the principal biographies; Attische Museum, 1798-1805. The accounts of them are almost wholly made up of anecdotes as to their witty remarks and rejoinders. But at least one modern author has written biographies of courtesans; see Devaux-Mousk, Fleurs du Persil, Paris, 1887 (with portraits and autographs).]
 * [Footnote: Athens, but their works are lost; Athenaeus, xiii, 21, 46. The first-*named