Note 977 — Chapter VII · Corinth

Hdt. III. 48, 49; Nic. Dam. F.H.G. III. pp. 393–4; Plut. de Mal. Hdt. 22, 23 (Moral. 859–861); Diog. Laert. I. 7. 2. Hence Movers, Phoen. II. iii. 109, calls Periander a slave dealer; so also Wilisch, Gœtt. Gel. Anz. 1880, p. 1202, Jahrb. Gym. Zittau, 1901, p. 22, n. 9, who refers also to Hdt. VIII. 105 (on Panionios the Chian who in the early part of the fifth century “made his living” by mutilating boys whom “he took and sold at Sardis and Ephesus for great sums”). Wilisch infers also, ibid. p. 22, from the ἱερόδουλοι or consecrated prostitutes of the Corinthian temple of Aphrodite, an import from Asia to Corinth of female slaves: see Athen. XIII. 573; Strabo VIII. 378 and perhaps 347. This view is not necessarily contradicted by Heraclides, who declares (F.H.G. II. p. 213) that Periander drowned all the procuresses in the city (Steinmetz however reads ἀπέδυσε, stripped). Heraclides is not indeed discredited by the fact that Athenaeus X. 443a, makes not only Periander but also Cleomenes or Cleomis tyrant of Methymna dispose of loose women in this Napoleonic way. The double assignation decides neither whether the story is true or false nor which way went the borrowing. But Wilisch and Heraclides may both be right. A tyrant who traded in prostitutes might yet be most severe on unlicensed prostitution.