Naucratis also has produced some very celebrated courtesans of exceeding beauty; for instance, Doricha, whom the beautiful Sappho, as she became the mistress of her brother Charaxus, who had gone to Naucratis on some mercantile business, accuses in her poetry of having stripped Charaxus of a great deal of his property. But Herodots calls her Rhodopis, being evidently ignorant that Rhodopis and Doricha were two different people; and it was Rhodopis who dedicated those celebrated spits at Delphi, which Cratinus mentions in the following lines—
* * * *Posidippus also made this epigram on Doricha, although he had often mentioned her in his Ethiopia, and this is the epigram— [p. 952]
Here, Doricha, your bones have long been laid,Archedice also was a native of Naucratis; and she was a courtesan of great beauty. “For some how or other,” as Herodotus says, “Naucratis is in the habit of producing beautiful courtesans.”
Here is your hair, and your well-scented robe:
You who once loved the elegant Charaxus,
And quaff'd with him the morning bowl of wine.
But Sappho's pages live, and still shall live,
In which is many a mention of your name,
Which still your native Naucratis shall cherish,
As long as any ship sails down the Nile.