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as a man, Elpinice is handsome in a ravaged way—my informant is Democritus, who at the age of eighteen regards anyone with so much as a single gray hair as an unlawful fugitive from the tomb. She speaks with that soft Ionian accent which I like as much as I dislike the hard Dorian accent. But I learned my Greek from an Ionian mother.
    “I am a scandal. I know it. I can’t help it. I dine with men. Unattended. Unashamed. Like a Milesian companion—except I’m not musical.” Hereabouts, the elegant prostitutes are called companions.
    Although women have few rights in any Greek city, there are barbarous anomalies. The first time that I attended the games in one of the Ionian Greek cities of Asia Minor, I was startled to note that although the unmarried girls were encouraged to attend the games and examine potential husbands in the nude, the married ladies were forbidden to watch, on the no doubt sensible ground that any alternative to a lawful husband must not be viewed. In conservative Athens, wives and maidens are seldom allowed to leave their quarters, much less attend games. Except for Elpinice.
    I could hear the great lady as she settled herself—like a man—on a couch instead of sitting modestly in a chair or on a stool, the way Greek ladies are supposed to do on those rare occasions when they dine with men. But Elpinice ignores custom. She does as she pleases and no one dares complain ... to her face. As sister of Cimon, wife of Callias, aunt of Thucydides, she is the greatest lady in Athens. She is often tactless, and seldom bothers to disguise the contempt she has for Callias, who admires her inordinately.
    I can never decide whether or not Callias is stupid. I daresay it takes a kind of cleverness to make money with or without a treasure found in a ditch. But his shrewdness in business matters is undone by his silliness in all other aspects of life. When his cousin the noble, the honest, the selfless (for an Athenian) statesman Aristides was living in poverty, Callias was much criticized for not helping him and his family.
    When Callias realized that he was getting a reputation for meanness, he begged Aristides to tell the assembly how often he had refused to take money from Callias. The noble Aristides told the assembly exactly what Callias wanted him to say. Callias thanked him, and gave him no money. As a result Callias is now regarded not only as a miser but as a perfect hypocrite. Aristides is known as the just. I am not sure why. There are great blanks in my knowledge of this city and its political history.
    Last night one blank was promptly filled by Elpinice. “ She has had a son. Early this morning. He is delighted.” She and he pronounced with a certain emphasis always mean the companion Aspasia and her lover, General Pericles.
    The conservative Callias was much amused. “Then the boy will have to be sold into slavery. That’s the law.”
    “That is not the law,” said Anaxagoras. “The boy is freeborn because his parents are freeborn.”
    “Not according to that new law Pericles got the assembly to vote for. The law’s very clear. If your mother is foreign. Or your father is foreign. I mean Athenian ...” Callias was muddled.
    Anaxagoras set him right. “To be a citizen of Athens, both parents must be Athenian. Since Aspasia is a Milesian by birth, her son by Pericles can never be a citizen or hold office. But he is not a slave, any more than his mother is—or the rest of us foreigners.”
    “You’re right. Callias is wrong.” Elpinice is brisk and to the point. She reminds me of Xerxes’ mother, the old Queen Atossa. “Even so, I take some pleasure in the fact that it was Pericles who forced that law through the assembly. Now his own law will forever exclude his own son from citizenship.”
    “But Pericles has other sons. By his lawful wife.” Callias still resents deeply, or so he maintains, the fact that many years ago the wife of his eldest son left her husband in order to