a celebrated courtezan, daughter of Timandra, the mistress of Alcibiades, born at Hyccara in Sicily. She was carried away from her native place when Nicias the Athenian general invaded Sicily. She first began to sell her favours at Corinth for 10,000 drachmas, and the immense number of princes, noblemen, philosophers, orators, and plebeians, which courted her embraces, show how much commendation is owed to her personal charms. The expenses which attended her pleasures, gave rise to the proverb of Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum. Even Demosthenes himself visited Corinth for the sake of Lais; but when he was informed by the courtezan, that admittance to her bed was to be bought at the enormous sum of about 200l. English money, the orator departed, and observed that he would not buy repentance at so dear a price. The charms which had attracted Demosthenes to Corinth had no influence upon Xenocrates. When Lais saw the philosopher unmoved by her beauty, she visited his house herself; but there she had no reason to boast of the licentiousness or easy submission of Xenocrates. Diogenes the Cynic was one of her warmest admirers, and though filthy in his dress and manners, yet he gained her heart, and enjoyed her most unbounded favours. The sculptor Myron also solicited the favours of Lais, but he met with coldness; he, however, attributed the cause of his ill reception to the whiteness of his hair, and dyed it of a brown colour, but to no purpose: "Fool that thou art (said the courtezan) to ask what I refused yesterday to thy father." Lais ridiculed the austerity of philosophers, and laughed at the weaknesses of those who pretend to have gained a superiority over their passions, by observing that the fates and philosophers of the age were not above the rest of mankind, for she found them at her door as often as the rest of the Athenians. The success which her debaucheries met at Corinth encouraged Lais to pass into Thessaly, and more particularly to enjoy the company of a favourite youth called Hippostratus. She was however disappointed: the women of the place, jealous of her charms, and apprehensive of her corrupting the fidelity of their husbands, assassinated her in the temple of Venus, about 340 years before the Christian era. Some suppose that there were two persons of this name, a mother and her daughter.

LAY, the people as distinguished from the clergy; (see CLERGY). The lay part of his majesty's subjects is divided into three distinct states; the civil, the military, and the maritime. See CIVIL, MILITARY, and MARITIME.