There is a courtesan. . . . .
(as Antiphanes says in his Clown)—
. . . who is a positive
Calamity and ruin to her keeper;
And yet he's glad at nourishing such a pest.
On which account, in the Neæra of Timocles, a man is
represented as lamenting his fate, and saying—
But I, unhappy man, who first loved Phryne
When she was but a gatherer of capers,
And was not quite as rich as now she is,—
I who such sums of money spent upon her,
Am now excluded from her doors.
And in the play entitled Orestantoclides, the same Timocles
says—
And round the wretched man old women sleep,
Nannium and Plangon, Lyca, Phryne too,
Gnathæna, Pythionica, Myrrhina,
Chrysis, Conallis, Hieroclea, and
Lapadium also.
And these courtesans are mentioned by Amphis, in his Curis,
where he says—
Wealth truly seems to me to be quite blind,
Since he ne'er ventures near this woman's doors,
But haunts Sinope, Nannium, and Lyca,
And others like them, traps of men's existence,
And in their houses sits like one amazed,
And ne'er departs.
