ks
to these beautiful but light-minded women, who were regarded as
incarnations, as it were, of the goddess Aphrodite herself.

"'Tis not for nothing that where'er we go
We find a temple of hetaerae there,
But nowhere one to any wedded wife,"

sings one of the poets of the Anthology.

The characteristic traits of these reigning queens of the demi-monde
were in almost all cases the same. The principal attributes of their
characters were selfishness and greed. With all their outward good
nature and apparent warmth of disposition, they were at all times
"marble-hearted," cold, incapable of any noble emotion, and impervious
to the stirrings of true love. There are a few exceptional cases of
self-sacrificing devotion, as of Leaena, and of Timandra, who stood by
Alcibiades in all his misfortune, but their exceeding rarity proves the
rule. A few were of good character and were faithful to the relations
which they had formed; many were merely fair and frail; while most of
them descended to the lowest depths of corruption and depravity. While
the deportment of those hetaerae who cultivated every womanly charm
presents much that is attractive, yet their manner of life has been
aptly compared to baskets of noxious weeds and garbage, covered over
with roses. Extravagance, debauchery, and dissolute habits were sure to
work out in time the attendant ills of wretchedness, destitution, and
penury. Realizing that for them there was possible no such thing as true
love and domestic happiness, they became rapacious and vindictive,
cynical and ill-tempered. Nothing could be mare fearful than the
pictures which the comic poets and satirists draw of some of these
women; Anaxilas, for example, thus describes them as a class:

"The man whoe'er has loved a courtesan,
Will say that no more lawless, worthless race
Can anywhere be found: for what ferocious,
Unsociable she-dragon, what Chimaera,
Though it breathe fire from its mouth, what Charybdis,
What three-headed Scylla, dog o' the sea,
Or hydra, sphynx, or raging lioness,
Or viper, or winged harpy (greedy race),
Could go beyond those most accursed harlots?
There is no monster greater. They alone
Surpass all other evils put together."

Their outward behavior and manner were characterized by great elegance.
One comic poet remarks that they took their food most delicately and not
like the citizen-women, wh