musicians or dancers at the banquets of the men,
and as they developed into womanhood they entered upon their careers as
regular courtesans. Often they were hired out for a considerable time;
or if a good purchaser presented himself, they were sold outright, and
lived as the kept mistress of a single lover. From him they usually
obtained their freedom, in time, either as a mark of favor, or as the
readiest means of ridding himself of a burden when the lover had wearied
of the hetaera's charm.

Slave girls who obtained their freedom belonged to the third and most
numerous hetaera class; they lived on a fully independent footing, and
conducted their business on their own account. This class attached
themselves especially to young and inexperienced men, preferably to
youths who were still under parental control. They frequented the
schools of rhetoricians and philosophers and the studios of artists, and
sought in every way possible to make themselves interesting and
indispensable to men. The _jeunesse doree_ of the day found in
association with these young and beautiful and independent damsels their
especial delight. At the banquets and drinking bouts of the young men,
they were invited to take part; and the gay and frivolous youths would
assemble in numbers at their houses, or take them on pleasure trips in
the suburbs of the city, and would frequently engage in serenades and
torchlight processions in their honor. Such a life was full of pitfalls
for the young men, and they frequently brought down on themselves the
rage of parents for their intercourse with these sirens. The avarice and
greed of women of this class was such that they led their lovers into
every form of deceit to obtain for them money and presents. To purloin
and sell a mother's jewels and to contract debts in a father's name were
frequent devices to which youths resorted whose parents kept a tight
hold on the purse strings. These heroines of the demi-monde also sought
to draw their lovers away from serious pursuits. Lucian, in his
_Dialogues of Courtesans_, recounts an interesting conversation between
two hetaerae, Chelidonion [Little Swallow] and Drosis [Dewdrop], about a
youth whom his father had suddenly checked in his wild career and placed
in the hands of a wise and artful tutor, to the end that he might be
drawn away from his wild associations and given instruction in
philosophy.

The fourth and most elevated hetaera class was that of freeborn wom