2 A fragment of Pindar (fr. 122 Snell–Maehler) – cited by Athenaeus following his
mention of the 480 BC supplication – concerning the vow that Xenophon of
Corinth made to the Aphrodite of his city, to bring her a hundred girls if he won
the victory at Olympia.
3 The famous passage of Strabo (C378–9) on the thousand sacred slave women
controlled by the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Corinth, who helped to ruin the
shipowners.
The 480 supplication
On the eve of the battle of Salamis the Greeks were in a desperate situation. In the
hour of danger, the women of Corinth naturally fled for refuge to the sanctuary of
Aphrodite on the Acrocorinth. Plutarch simply mentions the women (gunaikes)
praying to the goddess to inspire their husbands with the desire (ero ̄s) for combat.
Athenaeus includes the supplication in a wider study of the ancient Corinthian
custom (nomimon archaion) of appealing to as great a number ofhetairaias possible
to supplicate Aphrodite when the city was in danger: he accordingly mentions their
intervention in 480 BC without breathing a word aboutgunaikes, and he cites the
treatiseOn Pindarby Chameleon of Heraclea. However, the scholiast to Pindar
speaks only ofgunaikes, in terms close to those used by Plutarch, whilst deriving
his information from Theopompus. All three texts cite the epigram composed on this
occasion, but only the scholiast attributes it to Simonides, specifying that ‘‘the elegiac
lines can still be seen today inscribed on the left-hand side as one enters the temple.’’
Plutarch and the scholiast construct a tight parallel between the warriors and their
wives, whilst passing over the courtesans in silence. Athenaeus makes no mention of
the Corinthian wives because the parallel he constructs is of another sort: the 480
supplication constitutes the counterpart at public level to the vow made by Xenophon
of Corinth at private level, to which we will come. A fragment of Alexis, also
preserved by Athenaeus (fr. 255 K-A¼Athenaeus 13.574b–c) stipulates that the
free women and the courtesans each celebrated their ownaphrodisia. One may,
accordingly, suppose that the 480 supplication was undertaken by two groups of
worshipers. Whatever the case, at no point is there mention of ‘‘sacred’’ prostitutes or
courtesans.
The ‘‘fillies’’ of Xenophon of Corinth
In Athenaeus the narrative of the 480 supplication constitutes the first panel of a
diptych, the second part of which is devoted to the private equivalent of this sort of
ritual. Thus Xenophon of Corinth, before competing at Olympia, made the vow ‘‘to
bringhetairaito the goddess should he be victorious.’’ Theskolionthat Pindar
composed to celebrate the victor was sung at the time of the symposium in the
company ofhetairai. The song is addressed first to the goddess to whom ‘‘Xenophon
led a herd of hundred fillies, for joy in having seen the realization of his prayers.’’
Then the poet addresses the young women: ‘‘Girls of numerous guests, servants of
Peitho in wealthy Corinth, you who burn the golden-yellow drops of pale incense and
whose thoughts often fly towards Aphrodite, the heavenly mother of Loves, it is to
you in your blamelessness that she grants the right, my children, to garner the fruit of
sweet youth on pleasant couches....’’Athenaeus then cites another extract in which
320 Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge