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There in the shadow of the temple of Aphrodite she had spent her life, ever awaiting new ships and new men, hairy and obscene, brutal as satyrs, made ferocious by the abstinence of the sea, to be at last assassinated in some mariners' fight, or found the victim of hunger, dead beside some abandoned boat. "And you who are you?" Bacchis asked at last. "What is your name?"
Her mother must have been a lupa also, and she herself the result of a meeting with a mariner. The name of Bacchis, which had been given her when she was little, had been borne by many famous courtesans of Greece.
The descendants of Aletes reigned twelve generations, when the nobles converted the government into an oligarchy, under Bacchis, who greatly increased the commercial importance of the city. In 754, B.C., Corinth began to colonize, and fitted out a war fleet for the protection of commerce.
The Greek, grateful, smiled fraternally on Bacchis, with indifference, as if she were a child. Two mariners came out from among the huts, and began to stagger along the wharf. A penetrating howl, which seemed to cleave the air, sounded close to Actæon's ears. His companion, impelled by habit, with the instinct of the vendor who sees a customer in the distance, had arisen to her feet.
The litter swiftly disappeared along the city road, when suddenly Actæon became aware of hands caressing his neck. It was Bacchis, looking still more wasted and ragged in the light of day. She had one eye blackened, and bruised spots on her arms. "I could not come before," said the slave humbly. "They only let me loose a little while ago. What people! They barely gave me enough to pay Lais.
A little further you might have blessed your eyes with the sight of a young satyr who led seventeen kings his prisoners; and a Bacchis, who with her snakes hauled along no less than two and forty captains; a little faun, who carried a whole dozen of standards taken from the enemy; and goodman Bacchus on his chariot, riding to and fro fearless of danger, making much of his dear carcass, and cheerfully toping to all his merry friends.
Bacchis looked at him with eyes full of admiration, divining through his concise words a past crammed with adventures, with terrible dangers and prodigious changes of fortune. She thought of the deeds of Achilles, and of the adventurous life of Ulysses, so often heard in the verses declaimed by Greek mariners when they were drunk. The courtesan, reclining on the Greek's breast, fondled his hair.
Bacchis had not returned, and the Greek climbed up the steps and stretched out on the portico, a broad terrace paved with blue marble, over which the fluted columns supporting the pediment flung oblique bars of shadow. When Actæon awoke he felt the warmth of the sun on his face. Birds were singing in the olive trees, and he heard voices near.
I have only just met you, and still it seems to me as if I were living in a new world, and that for the first time I give heed to my surroundings." She told him the story of her life. They called her Bacchis, and she was uncertain what was her native land. No doubt she was born in some other port, for she vaguely remembered in her childhood a long voyage in a ship.
There is a Chremes in four plays who stands for an old man in three, for a youth in one; while the names Sostrata, Sophrona, Bacchis, Antipho, Hegio, Phaedria, Davus, and Dromo, all occur in more than one piece. Thus we lose that close association of a name with a character, which is a most important aid towards lively and definite recollection.
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