but little society for each other. Even husbands were, in
Sparta, limited as to the time and duration of the visits made to their
wives.

That women in ancient Greece did not enjoy that delicate consideration
which other refined nations accord to their sex, may be inferred from
the inferiority of the apartments allotted to them. The famous Helen is
said to have had her chamber in the attic; and Penelope, the queen of
Ulysses, descended from hers by a ladder.

GRECIAN COURTEZANS.

The rank which the courtezans enjoyed, even in the brightest ages of
Greece, and particularly at Athens, is one of the greatest singularities
in the manners of any people. By what circumstances could that order of
women, who debase at once their own sex and ours--in a country where the
women were possessed of modesty, and the men of sentiment, arrive at
distinction, and sometimes even at the highest degree of reputation and
consequence? Several reasons may be assigned for that phenomenon in
society.

In Greece, the courtezans were in some measure connected with the
religion of the country. The Goddess of Beauty had her altars; and she
was supposed to protect prostitution, which was to her a species of
worship. The people invoked Venus in times of danger; and, after a
battle, they thought they had done honor to Miltiades and Themistocles,
because the Laises and the Glyceras of the age had chaunted hymns to
their Goddess.

The courtezans were likewise connected with religion, by means of the
arts. Their persons afforded models for statues, which were afterwards
adored in the temples. Phryne served as a model to Praxiteles, for his
Venus of Cnidus. During the feasts of Neptune, near Eleusis, Apelles
having seen the same courtezan on the sea-shore, without any other veil
than her loose and flowing hair, was so much struck with her appearance,
that he borrowed from it the idea of his Venus rising from the waves.

They were, therefore connected with statuary and painting, as they
furnished the practisers of those arts with the means of embellishing
their works.

The greater part of them were skilled in music; and, as that art was
attended with higher effects in Greece than it ever was in any other
country, it must have possessed, in their hands, an irresistible charm.

Every one knows how enthusiastic the Greeks were of beauty. They adored
it in the temples. They admired it in the principal works of art. They
studied it in the exercises a