LYCINUS 
At first, through shame and cowardice—for that
sort of behaviour is natural to them—he remained
silent a long while and blushed and was plainly in a
sweat, but finally in a weak, effeminate voice he said
that Diocles was acting unjustly in trying to exclude
a eunuch from philosophy, in which even women had
a part; and he brought in Aspasia, Diotima, and
Thargelia Thargelia of Miletus was a famous hetaera, mistress of the Antiochus who was king of Thessaly ca. 520-510 B.c. She outlived him for thirty years, and was active in the cause of Persia at the time of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. Aeschines the Socratic wrote about her, the sophist Hippias spoke of her as beautiful and wise, and Aspasia is said to have taken her as a pattern. Diotima is the priestess of Mantinea to whom, in Plato’s Symposium, Socrates ascribes the discourse on love which he repeats.1o the company. Subsequent mention of her seems to derive from that passage, and it is possible that Plato invented her. to support his also a certain Academic
eunuch hailing from among the Pelasgians, who shortly
before our time achieved a high reputation among
the Greeks. The allusion is to Favorinus of Arles, known to us from Philostratus and especially from Aulus Gellius. Part of his treatise on exile has been recovered recently from an Egyptian papyrus and poe ished by Medea Norea and Vitelli. But if that person himself were alive
and advanced similar claims, Diocles would (he
said) have excluded him too, undismayed by his
reputation among the common sort; and he repeated
a number of humorous remarks made to the man by
Stoics and Cynics regarding his physical imperfection. Among the Cynics was Demonax; see Lucian’s Demonax, 12 and 13 (I, pp. 150 ff.).