英语新闻：雅典当选“最轻浮城市”

The home of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle is the "most flirtatious² city" of the modern world, a new study showed on Monday.

周一发布的一项新调查显示，苏格拉底、柏拉图和亚里士多德的故乡雅典当选为现代世界中的“最轻浮城市”。

Athens topped a "World Flirtation³（调情，挑逗） League," which ranked cities by the number of online flirtations initiated⁴ per month by the average user in each on online social networking site Badoo.com (www.badoo.com).

Moscow came second, while Rome placed 8th and Madrid 31st, Paris 38th, London 57th, Berlin 79th, and New York 89th in the study of nearly 200 cities across the world in which Badoo analyzed⁵ 12 million flirtatious contacts made during a month, with 108 million users chatting and flirting⁶ in 180 countries.

The Lonely Planet Encounter Guide to Athens author Victoria Kyriakopoulous said the results are hardly surprising as the Greek capital is a seductive（有魅力的） city, with a hedonistic（快乐主义的） lifestyle.

"Athenians love to party and they love to talk," she said. "Flirting and sexual banter（戏谑） are not just a means to an end but part of social interaction."

She said the internet is just a new means to the age-old dance of attraction and love.

"Old people flirt¹, married people flirt, now young people are simply using technology to do what Athenians have always done."

The average Badoo user in Athens initiated 25.7 online flirtations per month -- over twice as many as in Rio (12.4) Warsaw (12.1) or Prague (12.6) and far more than in Paris (20.7), London (19.0), Berlin (17.7) or New York (16.1).

Tunis, birthplace of the "Jasmine Revolution," is among three Arab cities (with Kuwait and Beirut) to make the world top 10, along with three former Soviet⁷ ones (Moscow, Kiev and Baku in Azerbaijan) and three Italian (Turin, Rome and Bari).

Plato said "Love is a serious mental disease." The great man never shared his views on online flirting but he knew something at least about offline flirting, said Simon Hardy⁸, British academic and author of "The Greeks, Eroticism and Ourselves."

He said ancient Athenians may have honed the art of flirtation at drinking parties known as symposia⁹（座谈会） , drinking parties where men flirted¹⁰ with dancing girls among other entertainment.

"It is probably fair to say that the Athenians perfected the art of flirtation in ancient times, especially at the time of symposia described by Plato."