Phryne

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Stone carving of the head of a woman
The Kaufmann Head, a Roman copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos, for which Phryne is said to have been the model, in the Musée du Louvre

Phryne (Template:Langx,Template:Efn before 370 – after 316 BC) was an ancient Greek hetaira (courtesan). Born Mnesarete, she was from Thespiae in Boeotia, but seems to have lived most of her life in Athens. She apparently grew up poor, but became one of the richest women in Greece.

Phryne is best known for her trial for impiety, in which she was defended by the orator Hypereides. According to legend, she was acquitted after baring her breasts to the jury, though the historical accuracy of this episode is doubtful. She also modeled for the artists Apelles and Praxiteles: the Aphrodite of Knidos was said to have been based on her. Phryne was largely ignored during the Renaissance, but artistic interest in her began to grow from the end of the eighteenth century. Her trial was depicted by Jean-Léon Gérôme in the 1861 painting Phryne Before the Areopagus, which influenced many subsequent depictions of her, and according to Laura McClure made her an "international cultural icon".Template:Sfn As well as her depiction in visual arts, since the nineteenth century she has also appeared in literature, theatre, and on film.

Sources

As with other ancient Greek women, scholarship about Phryne is hindered by the fragmentary nature of the surviving sources. Many of the surviving sources were written centuries after Phryne's own time, and they were written entirely by men.Template:Sfn The most substantial contemporary source about Phryne's life was Hypereides' defence speech from her trial. In the ancient world this was a major influence on Phryne's biographical tradition, but it is now lost, except for a few fragments.Template:Sfn The surviving ancient sources about Phryne are mostly from the Roman Empire, based on earlier Greek literature.Template:Sfn The most important of these is Athenaeus, who was from Roman Egypt in the second century AD. His Deipnosophistae ("The Scholars at Dinner") is the source of the vast majority of extant ancient writings about Phryne.Template:Sfn Other authors of the first, second and third centuries AD, including Plutarch, Pausanias, and Diogenes Laertius, also tell anecdotes about Phryne.Template:Sfn

Athenaeus' main source was fourth-century comic drama.Template:Sfn By the mid-fourth century BC, Athenian comic playwrights had moved away from the mythological subjects popular in earlier periods, and more often satirised real people.Template:Sfn Phryne featured in several of these plays. In Timocles' Orestautokleides and Anaxilas' Neottis she is named in lists of hetairai, Timocles' Neaira makes a joke about her early life, and Posidippus' The Ephesian Girl describes her trial. Two other plays, Antiphanes' The Birth of Aphrodite and Alexis' The Woman from Knidos, might have alluded to her association with the artists Apelles and Praxiteles.Template:Sfn

Life

Very little is known about Phryne's life for certain. Ancient sources about her largely tell disjointed anecdotes which are difficult to piece together into a full biography,Template:Sfn and many of those stories may be invented.Template:Sfn Helen Morales writes that separating fact from fiction in accounts of Phryne's life is impossible.Template:Sfn

Phryne was from Thespiae in Boeotia.Template:Sfn She was probably born in the 370s BC,Template:Efn and was the daughter of Epicles.Template:Sfn Both Plutarch and Athenaeus say that her real name was Mnesarete.<ref name=Plutarch-DPo-14>Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis 14 (Moralia 401A).</ref><ref>Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.60 = 13.591e, citing Aristogeiton's speech against Phryne.</ref> According to Plutarch she was called Phryne because she had a pale complexion like a toad (Template:Transliteration in Greek).<ref name=Plutarch-DPo-14/> She may also have been nicknamed Saperdion, Clausigelos, and Sestus.Template:EfnTemplate:Sfn

Phryne seems to have spent most of her life in Athens.Template:Sfn She might have come there with her family following the conquest of Thespiae by Thebes in 373 BC, been born in Athens to Thespian refugees following the Theban conquest, or been brought there as a girl to take part in the sex trade, as was Neaira, another fourth-century hetaira.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn She apparently grew up poor – comic playwrights portray her picking capersTemplate:Efn – and became one of the wealthiest women in the Greek world.Template:Sfn According to Callistratus, after Alexander razed Thebes in 335, Phryne offered to pay to rebuild the walls.Template:Sfn She was also said to have dedicated a statue of herself at Delphi, and a statue of Eros to Thespiae.Template:Sfn Phryne probably lived beyond 316 BC, when Thebes was rebuilt;Template:Sfn according to Plutarch her fame meant that she could continue to charge high fees to her clients in her old age.Template:Sfn

Hetairai had a reputation in ancient literature for their wit and learning.Template:Sfn The trope of the witty hetaira derives from the Memoirs of Lynceus of Samos, a comic author of the late fourth century BC, which contained several anecdotes about the wit of the hetaira Gnathaina.Template:Sfn Several anecdotes from the Deipnosophistae relate Phryne's witticisms,Template:Sfn though the meaning of many of them is unclear.Template:Sfn

Trial

Head of a bearded man, carved from white stone. The nose is broken off.
Portrait head often identified as Hypereides. Copy of a late-4th or early 3rd-century BC Greek original.Template:Sfn

The most famous event in Phryne's life was the prosecution brought against her by Euthias.Template:Sfn Little is known of Euthias, except that he was supposedly a former lover of Phryne, and was accused of being a sycophant – a person who habitually brought prosecutions for personal gain.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The prosecution speech delivered by Euthias – which, according to Athenaeus, was composed by Anaximenes of Lampsacus on his behalf – did not survive.Template:Sfn Phryne was defended by Hypereides, a well-known and wealthy orator who had a reputation for licentiousness due to his association with hetairai. Six of the speeches attributed to him relate to hetairai, and in a surviving fragment of his defense of Phryne, he admits to being her lover.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Hypereides's defence speech survives only in fragments, though it was greatly admired in antiquity.Template:Sfn The date of the trial is uncertain.Template:Sfn If Anaximenes did compose the speech for the prosecution, it must have been before he moved to Macedon, and therefore was perhaps between 350 BC and 340 BC.Template:Sfn Alternatively, Craig Cooper argues that the trial was likely after the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, while Eleanora Cavallini suggests that it was after 335 BC.Template:Sfn

Phryne was charged with Template:Transliteration, a kind of blasphemy. An anonymous treatise on rhetoric, which summarises the case against Phryne, lists three specific accusations against her – that she held a "shameless Template:Transliteration" or ritual procession, that she introduced a new god, and that she organised unlawful thiasoi or debauched meetings.Template:Sfn The charge of introducing a new god had previously been used in the trial of Socrates; that of organising thiasoi is also known from the trial of Ninos.Template:Sfn According to Harpocration, the new god introduced by Phryne was called Isodaites; though Harpocration describes him as being "foreign", the name is GreekTemplate:Sfn and other sources consider it an epithet of Dionysus, Helios, or Pluto.Template:Sfn

Painting of a woman from behind, opening her robe to reveal her breasts to several men.
Phryne, by Template:Ill, before 1903

According to an ancient tradition, Euthias's case against Phryne was motivated by a personal quarrel rather than Phryne's alleged impiety.Template:Sfn Craig Cooper suggests that the trial of Phryne was politically motivated. He observes that Aristogeiton, to whom Athenaeus attributes a speech against Phryne, was a political enemy of Hypereides and prosecuted him for illegally introducing a decree after the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC.Template:Sfn Phryne's own provocative behaviour – for instance her offer to restore the walls of Thebes, on the condition that an inscription attributing the rebuilding to "Phryne the hetaira" be displayed – may also have partially motivated the prosecution. Konstantinos Kapparis suggests that the trial might have been seen as a response to "the uppity alien woman who did not know her place".Template:Sfn

Phryne was said to have been acquitted after the jury saw her bare breasts – Quintilian says that she was saved "not by Hypereides' pleading, but by the sight of her body".Template:Sfn Three different versions of this story survive. In Quintilian's account, along with those of Sextus Empiricus and Philodemus,Template:Efn Phryne makes the decision to expose her own breasts; while in Athenaeus's version Hypereides exposes Phryne as the climax of his speech, and in Plutarch's version Hypereides exposes her because he saw that his speech had failed to persuade the jury.Template:Sfn Christine Mitchell Havelock notes that there is separate evidence for women being brought into the courtroom to arouse the sympathy of the jury, and that in ancient Greece baring the breasts was a gesture intended to arouse compassion, so Phryne's supposed behaviour in the court is not without parallel in Greek practice.Template:Sfn Ioannis Ziogas observes that it particularly recalls Clytemnestra's plea to Orestes in Aeschylus's play The Libation Bearers, and the story of Helen appealing to Menelaus for mercy after the fall of Troy.Template:Sfn

Painting showing a man dressed in a blue robe taking away the robe of a woman, leaving her standing nude. A jury of men watch.
Phryne Before the Areopagus by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Template:Circa

However, this episode probably never happened. It was not mentioned in Posidippus's version of the trial in his comedy Ephesian Woman, quoted by Athenaeus. Ephesian Woman was produced Template:Circa, and the story of Phryne baring her breasts therefore probably postdates this.Template:Sfn In Posidippus's version, Phryne personally pleaded with each of the jurors at her trial for them to save her life, and it was this which secured her acquittal.Template:Sfn The story of Phryne baring her breasts may have been invented by the Hellenistic biographer Idomeneus of Lampsacus,Template:EfnTemplate:Sfn who wrote a treatise on Athenian demagogues.Template:Sfn Though all of the ancient accounts assume that Phryne was on trial for her life, Template:Transliteration was not necessarily punished by death; it was an Template:Transliteration, in which the jury would decide on the punishment if the accused was convicted.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

Phryne's trial is, along with those of Ninos and Theoris of Lemnos, one of three known from the fourth century in which a metic woman was accused of a religious crime. Due to her wealth and connections, hers was the only one in which the accused was acquitted.Template:Sfn A Hellenistic biographer, Hermippus of Smyrna, reports that after Phryne's acquittal, Euthias was so furious that he never spoke publicly again.<ref>FGrH 1026 F 46a, in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.59 = 13.590d.</ref> Kapparis suggests that in fact he was disenfranchised, possibly because he failed to gain one fifth of the jurors' votes and was unable to pay the subsequent fine.Template:Sfn The trial of Phryne also supposedly led to two new laws being passed governing courtroom behaviour: one forbade the accused being present while the jury considered their verdict; the other forbade lament in the courtroom.Template:Sfn

Model

Sculpture of a standing female nude, covering her vulva with one hand.
Roman marble copy of Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Knidos, for which Phryne is named as a possible model

In ancient literature, hetairai were often said to have modelled for famous artists: for instance Aristides of Thebes was said to have painted Leontion.Template:Sfn Phryne was particularly associated with the sculptor Praxiteles,Template:Sfn and reputedly the model for both him and the painter Apelles.Template:Sfn

Phryne is most famously associated with Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Knidos,Template:Sfn the first three-dimensional and monumentally sized female nude in ancient Greek art.Template:Sfn However, the historicity of this association is doubtful.Template:Sfn The only source for the connection is Athenaeus. The sixth-century rhetorician Choricius of Gaza also says that Praxiteles used her as a model for a statue of Aphrodite, though according to him it was one commissioned by the Spartans.Template:Sfn It is not mentioned by other ancient authors who discuss both Phryne and the Aphrodite of Knidos, such as the first-century AD Roman author Pliny the Elder;Template:Sfn nor is the association mentioned in Pseudo-Lucian's extensive description of the Aphrodite of Knidos, or the eleven surviving ancient epigrams about the sculpture. In the second century, the theologian and philosopher Clement of Alexandria named the model not as Phryne but Cratina.Template:Sfn

Praxiteles also produced a golden or gilt statue of Phryne which was displayed – according to Pausanias dedicated by Phryne; according to Athenaeus by the ThespiansTemplate:Sfn – in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi.Template:Sfn This may have been the first female portrait ever dedicated at Delphi; it is the only known statue of a woman alone to be dedicated before the Roman period.Template:Sfn One of Praxiteles' sculptures of Eros was said to have been inspired by his desire for Phryne;Template:Sfn this was displayed in Thespiae alongside two other sculptures by Praxiteles, one of Aphrodite and one of Phryne herself.Template:Sfn According to Pliny, Phryne was also the model for Praxiteles' sculpture of a smiling courtesan,Template:Sfn which may have originally been displayed in Athens.Template:Sfn

Like Praxiteles, Apelles used Phryne as a model for Aphrodite. According to Athenaeus, he was inspired by the sight of Phryne walking naked into the sea at Eleusis to use her as a model for his painting of Aphrodite Anadyomene (Aphrodite rising from the sea).Template:Efn This was displayed at the sanctuary of Asclepius on the Greek island of Kos before being taken to Rome by the emperor Augustus; by the first century AD it appears to have been one of Apelles' best-known works.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Reception

Template:Multiple image Phryne was largely ignored during the Renaissance, in favour of women such as Lucretia and Cleopatra, who were seen as heroic,Template:Sfn but interest in depicting her increased in the eighteenth century with the advent of Neoclassicism.Template:Sfn Early depictions of her by Angelica Kauffmann and J. M. W. Turner avoid eroticising her.Template:Sfn From the eighteenth century French artists focused on portraying Phryne as a courtesan, particularly depicting her public nudity at religious festivals or during her trial.Template:Sfn By the mid-nineteenth century artists such as Gustave Boulanger, rejecting the neoclassical aesthetic of Hellenism, painted Phryne without any reference to the ancient context as an eroticised and Orientalised nude.Template:Sfn

The most famous nineteenth century depiction of Phryne was Jean-Léon Gérôme's Phryne Before the Areopagus. This painting was controversial for showing Phryne covering her face in shame, in the same pose that Gérôme used in several paintings of slaves in Eastern slave-markets. Critics argued that Phryne should be proud rather than ashamed of her beauty, and that Gérôme's portrayal of Phryne was anachronistic.Template:Sfn Driven by this controversy, Gérôme's painting was widely reproduced and caricatured, with engravings by Léopold Flameng, a sculpture by Alexandre Falguière, and a drawing by Paul Cézanne all modelled after Gérôme's Phryne.Template:Sfn By the end of the century, Gérôme's painting of Phryne and the various works inspired by it had made her an "international cultural icon".Template:Sfn

File:Genrich Ippolitovich Semiradsky - Roma, 1889.jpg
Henryk Siemiradzki, Phryne at the Poseidonia in Eleusis, 1889

The story of Phryne bathing at Eleusis, which according to Athenaeus inspired Apelles to paint the Aphrodite Anadyomene, was also a subject for nineteenth century painters. In Britain, Frederic Leighton and Edward Burne-Jones both painted works on this theme in the 1880s, but the most famous nineteenth century painting of the subject was Henryk Siemiradzki's Phryne at the Poseidonia in Eleusis.Template:Sfn

In nineteenth century literature, Phryne appears in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Rainer Maria Rilke. In Baudelaire's "Lesbos", from Template:Lang, she is used metonymically to represent courtesans in general. In Rilke's "Template:Lang", the flamingos are compared to Phryne, as they seduce themselves – by folding their wings over their own heads – more effectively than even she could ("they seem to think / themselves seductive; that their charms surpass / a Phryne’s").Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Late nineteenth-century depictions of Phryne in other media included a waltz by Antonin d'Argenton, a shadow-theatre production by Maurice Donnay – where the scene of Phryne's trial was modelled on Gérôme's painting – and a comic opera by Camille Saint-Saëns.Template:Sfn

In the twentieth century, Phryne made the transition to cinema. In 1952 Alessandro Blasetti's "Template:Lang" ("The Trial of Phryne") adapted the story of Phryne's trial with a contemporary setting, based on a short story by Edoardo Scarfoglio. The following year, the peplum film Template:Lang ("Phryne, the Oriental Courtesan") was released. Both films depict Phryne's disrobing at her trial with an iconography influenced by Gérôme's painting.Template:Sfn A third Italian film, Template:Lang ("The Venus of Chaeronea"), focused on the story of the relationship between Phryne and Praxiteles.Template:Sfn

Notes

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References

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Works cited

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