ABSTRACT
Just as the names and nicknames of courtesans attracted scholarly interest in the Hellenistic period, so, too, their witticisms were circulated in anecdotal and poetic compilations such as the Chreiae of Machon, excerpted at Book 13 of the Deipnosophistae. Athenaeus excerpts and develops the witticisms of hetaeras more fully than any other aspect of their representation in Book 13. Allusions to their speech and to their rejoinders portray them as having a literary sensibility exceeded only by the sophists at Athenaeus' table. Myrtilus strengthens the identification of the courtesan with classical Athenian culture, already observed in the Atticizing of their names, and thus analogizes her to the sophist as a purveyor of Attic paideia. This chapter finally discusses the relationship of philosophers and courtesans. Athenaeus makes use of a well-established tradition, and a popular sophistic paradox, that linked philosophers and courtesans, beginning in fourth-century Athens with the Socratic dialogues of Xenophon and Plato's Menexenus.
