previous next

And afterwards, Machon gives us the following anec- dotes:—
They say that Lais the Corinthian,
Once when she saw Euripides in a garden,
Holding a tablet and a pen attach'd to it,
Cried out to him, "Now, answer me, my poet,
What was your meaning when you wrote in your play,
'Away, you shameless doer"' And Euripides,
Amazed, and wondering at her audacity,
Said, "Why, you seem to me to be yourself
A shameless doer." And she, laughing, answer'd,
“How shameless, if my partners do not think so I”
Glycerium once received from some lover
A new Corinthian cloak with purple sleeves,
And gave it to a fuller. Afterwards,
When she thought he'd had time enough to clean it,
She sent her maidservant to fetch it back,
Giving her money, that she might pay for it.
But, said the fuller, "You must bring me first
Three measures full of oil, for want of that
Is what has hindered me from finishing."
The maid went back and told her mistress all.
“Wretch that I am!” Glycerium said, "for he
Is going to fry my cloak like any herring."
Demophoon once, the friend of Sophocles,
While a young man, fell furiously in love
With Nico, called the Goat, though she was old:
And she had earn'd this name of Goat, because
She quite devour'd once a mighty friend of hers,
Named Thallus,1 when he came to Attica
To buy some Chelidonian figs, and also
To export some honey from th' Hymettian hill.
And it is said this woman was fair to view.
And when Demophoon tried to win her over,
“A pretty thing,” said she, "that all you get
From me you may present to Sophocles."
[p. 930] Callisto once, who was nicknamed the Sow,
Was fiercely quarrelling with her own mother,
Who also was nicknamed the Crow. Gnathæna
Appeased the quarrel, and when ask'd the cause of it,
Said, "What else could it be, but that one Crow
Was finding fault with the blackness of the other "
Men say that Hippe once, the courtesan,
Had a lover named Theodotus, a man
Who at the time was prefect of the granaries
And she on one occasion late in th' evening
Came to a banquet of King Ptolemy,
And she'd been often used to drink with him
So, as she now was very late, she said,
"I'm very thirsty, papa Ptolemy,
So let the cup-bearer pour me four gills
Into a larger cup." The king replied,
"You must have it in a platter, for you seem
Already, Hippe,2 to have had plenty of hay."
A man named Morichus was courting Phryne,
The Thespian damsel. And, as she required
A mina, “'Tis a mighty sum,” said Morichus,
"Did you not yesterday charge a foreigner
Two little pieces of gold?" “Wait till I want you,”
Said she, “and I will take the same from you.”
'Tis said that Nico, who was call'd the Goat,
Once when a man named Pytho had deserted her,
And taken up with the great fat Euardis,
But after a time did send again for her,
Said to the slave who came to fetch her, "Now
That Pytho is well sated with his swine,
Does he desire to return to a goat?"

1 θάλλος means “a young twig.”

2 There is a pun here on her name,—῞ιππηmeaning a mare.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (Kaibel)
load focus Greek (Charles Burton Gulick, 1927)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: