s at that time called Myrrhina, wearied of the life of
the _dicterion_. All the women there were slaves whom the Boeotian
beat when they allowed a customer to leave discontented. It disgusted
her to take the two oboli stipulated by the laws of Solon from those
calloused hands which wounded as they caressed, and she was nauseated by
the dirty, brutal people from all the countries in the world who came in
search of pleasure, and went away surfeited, being immediately replaced
by another and another, like an incessant surging of desires excited by
the solitude of the sea, repeating similar caprices and identical
demands.

One night she visited for the last time the temple of Venus Pandemos
raised by Solon in the great square of the Piraeus, and deposited an
obolus as her final offering before the statues of Venus and her
companion Peitho, the two divinities of the courtesans, before whom she
went many times with her lemans of the moment, before giving herself
up to them on the seashore or near the long wall constructed by
Themistocles to unite the port with Athens. Then she fled toward the
city, eager for liberty and joy, wishing to become one of those Athenian
hetaerae whose luxury and beauty she had admired from afar.

She lived like the free, poor courtesans whom the Athenian youths called
"she-wolves" on account of their howling. At first she spent whole days
without eating, but she considered herself more happy than her former
companions of the port of Phalerum, or in the district of Estiron,
slaves of the masters of the _dicteria_. Her market now was the
Cerameicus, a large district of Athens, along the wall between the gates
of the Cerameicus and the Dipylon, in which were the garden of the
Academy and the tombs of the illustrious citizens who had died for the
Republic. By day the great _hetaerae_ went or sent their slaves to see if
their names were written in charcoal on the wall of the Cerameicus. The
Athenian who desired a courtesan would write her name, with the sum
offered, and if this were to the liking of the hetaera she tarried near
the inscription until the coming of the favored proponent. In broad
daylight the great courtesans appeared there, almost nude, wearing
purple sandals, wrapped in flowered mantles, wearing crowns of fresh
roses on their hair, powdered with gold. The poets, the rhetoricians,
the artists, the distinguished citizens strolled through the green
groves of the Cerameicus or along the po