Kitap 13
61
And I would have you all to know that Democles, the orator, became the father of Demeas, by a female flute-player who was a courtesan; and once when he, Demeas, was giving himself airs in the tribune, Hyperides stepped his mouth, saying, Will not you be silent, young man? why, you make more puffing than your mother did. And also Bion of the Borysthenes, the philosopher, was the son of a Laced$emonian courtesan named Olympia; as Nicias the Nicæan informs us in his treatise called the Successions of the Philosophers. And Sophocles the tragedian, when he was an old man, was a lover of Theoris the courtesan; and accordingly, supplicating the favour and assistance of Venus, he says— Hear me now praying, goddess, nurse of youths, And grant that this my love may scorn young men, And their most feeble fancies and embraces; And rather cling to grey-headed old men, Whose minds are vigorous, though their limbs be weak. And these verses are some of those which are at time attributed to Homer. But he mentions Theoris by name, speaking thus in one of his plain choruses:— For dear to me Theoris is. And towards the end of his life, as Hegesander says, he was a lover of the courtesan Archippa, and he left her the heiress of all his property; but as Archippa cohabited with Sophocles, though he was very old, Smicrines, her former lover, being asked by some one what Archippa was doing, said very wittily, Why, like the owls, she is sitting on the tombs.
