Book 13
36
Aristotle also, in his Constitution of the Massilians, mentions a similar circumstance as having taken place, writing as follows:—The Phocæans in Ionia, having consulted the oracle, founded Marseilles. And Euxenus the Phocæan was connected by ties of hospitality with Nanus; this was the name of the king of that country. This Nanus was celebrating the marriage feast of his daughter, and invited Euxenus, who happened to be in the neighborhood, to the feast. And the marriage was to be conducted in this manner: —After the supper was over the damsel was to come in, and to give a goblet full of wine properly mixed to whichever of the suitors who were present she chose; and to whomsoever she gave it, he was to be the bridegroom. And the damsel coming in, whether it was by chance or whether it was for any other reason, gives the goblet to Euxenus. And the name of the maiden was Petta. And when the cup had been given in this way, and her father (thinking that she had been directed by the Deity in her giving of it) had consented that Euxenus should have her, he took her for his wife, and cohabited with her, changing her name to Aristoxena. And the family which is descended from that damsel remains in Marseilles to this day, and is known as the Protiadæ; for Protis was the name of the son of Euxenus and Aristoxena.
37
And did not Themistocles, as Idomeneus relates, harness a chariot full of courtesans and drive with them into the city when the market was full? And the courtesans were Lamia and Scione and Satyra and Nannium. And was not Themistocles himself the son of a courtesan, whose name was Abrotonum? as Amphicrates relates in his treatise on Illustrious Men— Abrotonum was but a Thracian woman, But for the weal of Greece She was the mother of the great Themistocles. But Neanthes of Cyzicus, in his third and fourth books of his History of Grecian Affairs, says that he was the son of Euterpe.
