led him completely and led him into many excesses. Thus he once
compelled the Athenians to collect for him at short notice two hundred
and fifty talents, and when it was finally brought to him he sent it
straightway to Lamia and her companions, "for pin money," Lamia herself
on one occasion exacted from the citizens an enormous sum of money to
prepare a magnificent banquet for Demetrius. This banquet, because of
the exorbitant expenses which it occasioned, was so extraordinarily
notorious that Lycurgus of Samos wrote a book about it. On this account,
a comic poet characterized Lamia as the true _Helepolis_, or city
destroyer, the name of one of the most famous engines of war of
Demetrius. Demetrius remained passionately enamored of her, even after
her beauty had faded. As a means of flattering Demetrius, the Athenians
erected altars to her, made propitiatory offerings, and celebrated her
festival. The Thebans went so far as to erect a temple in her honor, and
worshipped her as Aphrodite Lamia.

Pythionice, the favorite of Harpalus, the friend and confidant of
Alexander the Great, partook of honors which rivalled those of Lamia.
During the most brilliant period of Harpalus's career, Pythionice was
summoned to Babylon, where she shared his honors and bore the title of a
queen of Babylon. A letter from the historian Theopompus to Alexander is
extant, in which he speaks of the passionate devotion of Harpalus to his
favorite, and thus alludes to her: "To this Pythionice, a slave of the
flute player Bacchis, who in turn was a slave of the hetaera Sinope,
Harpalus erected two monuments, one at Athens and one at Babylon, at a
cost of more than two hundred talents, which seemed cheap to that
spend-thrift; and, in addition, he had a precinct and a sanctuary
dedicated to her, which he named the temple and altar of Aphrodite
Pythionice. She bore him a daughter, and died before the sudden change
which came in his fortunes."

Another favorite of Harpalus, and later of the celebrated deformed comic
poet Menander, was Glycera, the daughter of Thalassis. She was a native
of Athens, and passed most of her time in the company of litterateurs
and philosophers. The Megarian philosopher Stilpo once accused her, at a
banquet, of misleading the youth through her seductive art. She made the
reply: "Stilpo, we are in this under like condemnation. It is said of
you that you impart to your pupils profitless and eristic sophisms, of
me that I teac