midnight
It consisted of the dregs of Athenian gayety which lived in liberty under cover of the darkness -- old courtesans who , trusting in the night , came out to conquer bread in the same place where in other times they had reigned with the power of beauty ; fugitive _ dicteriadai _ , slave women who had run away from their owners for a few hours , and women of the plebs seeking alleviation of their poverty . Hiding behind the tombs , among the clumps of laurels , they remained as motionless as sphinxes , and scarcely did the steps of a man disturb the silence of the Cerameicus , than from all sides arose faint howls calling to the new arrival . Frequently they fled in mad race on recognizing the official whose duty it was to collect the _ pornikontelos _ , a tax imposed by Solon upon the courtesans and one which constituted the largest revenue of Athens . At midnight the passer-by crossing the Cerameicus on his return from a banquet , would hear around him the rustle and whispering of an invisible world which seemed to sweep over the turf and the gleaming sand . The poets jestingly averred that the ghosts of the great departed were groaning in their capacious tombs . Thus Myrrhina lived until she was fifteen , spending the night in the Cerameicus and the day in the hut of an old woman of Thessaly who , in common with all her countrywomen enjoyed great fame as a witch , and assisted at births as well as sold love-philters , and retouched the faces of those who were fading . Innumerable things the little _ lupa _ learned at the side of the old woman , bony and ugly as a Parca !