Ancient Athens was well-known for its courtesans, but did you know there was one so beautiful she inspired some of the greatest statues in the ancient world, Aphrodite of Cnidos? Who was this mysterious stunner, Phryne?

Falling for Phryne

Phryne was one of the most celebrated ladies of fourth-century B.C. Athens. Apparently, her birth name, as mentioned by Athenaeus, was “Mnesarete,” but she received her nickname, meaning “Toad,” because of her sallow complexion.


Her most infamous lover was the sculptor Praxiteles, who enjoyed taking inspiration from his lady love for his art. He also couldn’t refuse a request from Phryne, recounts Pausanias in his Description of Greece. “Phryne once asked of him the most beautiful of his works, and the story goes that lover-like he agreed to give it, but refused to say which he thought the most beautiful.”

Then, a slave rushed in, telling Prax his studio was on fire, so he went to flee, aiming to save his most precious works. In fact, “Praxiteles at once started to rush through the door, crying that his labor was all wasted if indeed the flames had caught his Satyr and his Love.” It turns out this was all an elaborate plot by Phryne to trick her boyfriend into confessing which of his statues he loved best. She took the statue of Love for herself, Pausanias reports.

But she got a lot more from him – Prax made a statue of Phryne in gold and her neighbors put it in the temple at Delphi. He also commemorated their on the base of a statue of Eros, where he inscribed:

“Praxiteles has devoted earnest care
To representing all the love he felt,
Drawing his model from his inmost heart:
I gave myself to Phryne for her wages,
And now I no more charms employ, nor arrows,
Save those of earnest glances at my love. “

But Phryne didn’t confine her affections to Praxiteles, according to Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers. She once sought refuge in the home of Xenocrates, a pupil of Plato, who wasn’t into her. He even let her in just to be nice: “he admitted her out of ordinary humanity and, there being but one small couch in the room, permitted her to share it with him.” Phryne kept trying to seduce Xenocrates, but eventually was forced to give up the ghost when it didn’t work, “telling those who inquired that he whom she quitted was not a man but a statue.”

Trial by Courtesan

Phryne is perhaps most famous for being put on trial for impiety because she allegedly introduced a new god, Isocraites, to Athens and created unlawful groups of men and woman to worship the god. Her lawyer? A man named Hypereides, who admitted he was in love with her, according to Athenaeus. Phryne was acquitted on a capital charge, “on which account [the prosecutor] Euthias was so indignant that he never instituted any prosecution afterwards, as Hermippus tells us,” gossips Athenaeus.

But the most intriguing part of her trial wasn’t the result itself – it was how Hypereides got it! When “it it was plain that the judges were about to condemn her,” says Athenaeus, he had her flash the judges.Or, to be more exact, he “brought her forth into the middle of the court, and, tearing open her tunic and displaying her naked bosom, employed all the end of his speech, with the highest oratorical art, to excite the pity of her judges by the sight of her beauty, and inspired the judges with a superstitious fear, so that they were so moved by pity as not to be able to stand the idea of condemning to death ‘a prophetess and priestess of Aphrodite.’"

It seems Phryne was so beautiful that the sight of her naked body made the judges believe she was a representative of the goddess Aphrodite, and indeed it would be sacrilegious – or impious, as the charge against Phryne went – to kill the deity’s priestess. Or maybe she was so associated with Aphrodite because her hometown, Thespiae, worshipped the goddess of love as its primary lady.

Either way, it’s an interesting portrayal of female performance in a male realm – the courtroom. The woman is portrayed as brazen in her attempts to woo the all-male jury – that’s the only way she can acquit herself, rather than proving her own innocence. Interestingly, an earlier source, the comic poet Poseidippus, portrays Phryne as only grasping the judges’ hands and pleading with them, not flashing them. Perhaps these other accounts were later, exaggerated efforts to make Phryne out as a caricature.

Beautiful Inside and Out

Despite the scandal, Phryne really was a natural beauty, says Athenaeus. Besides, she kept herself clothed most of the time, he claims, as “it was not easy to see her naked, for she used to wear a tunic which covered her whole person, and she never used the public baths.” Once, for a festival of Poseidon, she bathed in the sea nude, inspiring Apelles to create his Aphrodite Anadyomene. She was so gorgeous, according toGalen, that, when others wiped their makeup off at a banquet, they became uglier, but Phryne only became more beautiful.

Besides her looks, Phryne was known for her generosity and wealth. She offered to pay to rebuild the wall around the city of Thebes “if the Thebans would inscribe on the wall, ‘Alexander destroyed this wall, but Phryne the courtesan restored it.’” Interestingly, men kept going to see Phryne based solely on her reputation, even if they weren’t feeling up to it, claims Plutarch in his Moralia: “Although their body is in sorry state and is inclined to shirk its task, they rouse it forthwith to action, and call in licentiousness to minister to pleasure, all because of empty repute. In fact, Phryne herself, in her advancing years, said that she got a better price for her remnants because of her repute.” Whether or not that's true, she kept up her own standard of living - she was a true self-made woman!