Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters (Deipnosophistae) 591f · 591f
Bigger than his mother
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Posidippus, quoted by Myrtilus — τὴν ἡλιαίαν εἷλε περὶ τοῦ σώματος... καὶ τῶν δικαστῶν καθ’ ἕνα δεξιουμένη μετὰ δακρύων διέσωσε τὴν ψυχὴν μόλις.
Myrtilus — ἴστε δὲ ὅτι καὶ Δημάδης ὁ ῥήτωρ ἐξ αὐλητρίδος ἑταίρας ἐπαιδοποιήσατο Δημέαν· ὃν φρυαττόμενόν ποτε ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος ἐπεστόμισεν Ὑπερείδης εἰπών·
Hypereides — ‘ οὐ σιωπήσῃ, μειράκιον, μεῖζον τῆς μητρὸς ἔχων τὸ φύσημα;’
Myrtilus — καὶ Βίων δ’ ὁ Βορυσθενίτης φιλόσοφος ἑταίρας ἦν υἱὸς Ὀλυμπίας Λακαίνης, ὥς φησι Νικίας ὁ Νικαιεὺς ἐν ταῖς τῶν φιλοσόφων Διαδοχαῖς. Σοφοκλῆς δ’ ὁ τραγῳδιοποιὸς ἤδη
…she faced the court for her life (words are lost here), and clasping the hands of the jurors one by one, with tears, she barely saved her life.” You know too that Demades the orator fathered Demeas by a flute-girl courtesan. Once, when Demeas was swaggering on the speaker's platform, Hypereides shut him up: “Won't you be quiet, lad, with a bigger puff than your mother's?” And Bion the philosopher of Borysthenes was the son of a courtesan, Olympia the Spartan, as Nicias of Nicaea says in his Successions of the Philosophers. And Sophocles the tragic poet, already…
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The setting
The end of Posidippus' lines on the trial, then a cruel retort by Hypereides and two famous men born to courtesans. Grapevine: the retort was quoted for centuries as a model insult.
A note on this passage
Posidippus remembers the trial differently from the breast-baring story: here Phryne saves herself, going from juror to juror in tears and taking each one by the hand. A word or two is missing from Kaibel's text where the charge is named.<br><br>Hypereides' retort is a pun on the mother's trade. A flute-girl played the aulos, a double pipe that takes a great deal of breath, and her son's bluster on the speaker's platform is a bigger blast than any she could manage. The verbs around it keep up a horse image: the young man snorts like a colt, and Hypereides puts a bit in his mouth.
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