rticos adorned with statues,
chatting with the courtesans, having to rack their brains to keep even
with their repartee.

When night came on an irruption of wretched, ragged women filled the
promenade, dispersing among the tombs of the renowned dead. It consisted
of the dregs of Athenian gayety which lived in liberty under cover of
the darkness--old courtesans who, trusting in the night, came out to
conquer bread in the same place where in other times they had reigned
with the power of beauty; fugitive _dicteriadai_, slave women who had
run away from their owners for a few hours, and women of the plebs
seeking alleviation of their poverty. Hiding behind the tombs, among the
clumps of laurels, they remained as motionless as sphinxes, and scarcely
did the steps of a man disturb the silence of the Cerameicus, than from
all sides arose faint howls calling to the new arrival. Frequently they
fled in mad race on recognizing the official whose duty it was to
collect the _pornikontelos_, a tax imposed by Solon upon the courtesans
and one which constituted the largest revenue of Athens. At midnight the
passer-by crossing the Cerameicus on his return from a banquet, would
hear around him the rustle and whispering of an invisible world which
seemed to sweep over the turf and the gleaming sand. The poets jestingly
averred that the ghosts of the great departed were groaning in their
capacious tombs.

Thus Myrrhina lived until she was fifteen, spending the night in the
Cerameicus and the day in the hut of an old woman of Thessaly who, in
common with all her countrywomen enjoyed great fame as a witch, and
assisted at births as well as sold love-philters, and retouched the
faces of those who were fading.

Innumerable things the little _lupa_ learned at the side of the old
woman, bony and ugly as a Parca! She helped her grind the white lead
which, mixed with isinglass, filled the wrinkles of the face; she
prepared the bean flour to anoint the breasts and abdomen, to make the
skin tight and elastic; she filled little flasks with antimony to give
brilliancy to the eyes; she made a liquid preparation of carmine for
coloring with light touches the paste-filled wrinkles, and she listened
with profound attention to the wise counsels with which the old woman
instructed her pupils, so that they might show off their particular
charms to the best advantage and hide their defects. The old Thessalian
advised the girls with plump bodies to use co