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so, when peace was made in the archonship of Phrasicleides,That is, in 371 B.C. and the battle was fought at LeuctraLeuctra was a town in Boeotia. In this battle the Thebans under Epameinondas broke the power of Sparta. The date was 371 B.C. between the Thebans and the Lacedaemonians, this man Stephanus, having at the time come to Megara and having put up at Neaera’s house, as at the house of a courtesan, and having had intercourse with her, she told him all that had taken place and her brutal treatment by Phrynion. She gave him besides all that she had brought away from Phrynion’s house, and as she was eager to live at Athens, but was afraid of Phrynion because she had wronged him and he was bitter against her, and she knew he was a man of violent and reckless temper, she took Stephanus here for her patron.Every resident alien in Athens was required to have some citizen as his προστάτης, or patron.
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He on his part encouraged her there in Megara with confident words, boastfully asserting that if Phrynion should lay hands on her he would have cause to rue it, whereas he himself would keep her as his wife and would introduce the sons whom she then had to his clansmen as being his own, and would make them citizens; and he promised that no one in the world should harm her. So he brought her with him from Megara to Athens, and with her her three children, Proxenus and Ariston and a daughter whom they now call Phano.