Come the morning, a curious stain was visible on the statue’s thigh, bearing witness to the young man’s debauched nocturnal… activities. Overcome with shame for what he had done, the young man threw himself off a cliff into the waters below, never to be seen again. His legacy lived on though; the stain still visible years later when the second century AD satirist Lucian visited the temple and left us this story.
Unfortunately, the original masterpiece doesn’t survive. Or it hasn’t been found at least. The last mention of it came from Constantinople in the early Christian period, and in all likelihood it was destroyed in the fire of 476 AD. But many copies survive from the Roman period, giving us a perfect idea of what the original looked like. What makes the Aphrodite so significant is that it was the Greek world’s first full-scale nude statue, depicting the goddess in her naked, natural state; oozing sexuality while simultaneously retaining an aura of modesty.
It’s not just for being the inspiration behind Praxiteles’s Aphrodite that Phryne achieved immortality. Arguably the most famous moment in her long and eventful career was her trial. We don’t know when exactly it happened, nor do we know the charge brought against her. One source suggests impiety (the same charge that got Socrates executed in 399 BC) but another suggests she spoke badly of the Eleusianian Mysteries.
For one of the most important cult rituals of the ancient world, we know remarkably little about the Mysteries—you can see a pattern emerging here!)—only that it was celebrated with a ritual held every year to commemorate the abduction of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, goddess of the corn, by Hades, god of the underworld. When it comes to the details, however, we’re just as much in the dark as Persephone was on her descent into the underworld.
Whatever the charge, it was serious enough to warrant the death penalty. Fortunately for Phryne, one of the most distinguished orators of the time, Hypereides, also happened to be her lover, so that was her defence sorted. Unfortunately for Phryne, the man bringing the charges against her was Anaximenes of Lampsacus: another big name in Athenian oratory and incidentally the inventor of extemporaneous speaking.
As the trial got underway, it became ever more apparent that Phryne’s defence was wavering and that the judges were likely to return a guilty verdict. This drove her lover and protector Hypereides to extreme measures. Grabbing her robe, he yanked it from her body, bearing her breasts to the judges and leaving her standing completely naked. Her stunning beauty (combined with her abject misery and the possible divine favour granted her by the goddess Aphrodite) moved the judges to reconsider their decision, and she was acquitted.
Many have argued that this story was a later invention, intended to satirise the Athenian legal system and ridicule how sexually corrupt it had become. There are indeed a number of discrepancies between different versions of the trial, one written by a comic playwright Posidippus who makes no mention of the nudity (a detail he was unlikely to omit had it happened, given what he was writing). But whether it is true or not—and I see no reason to doubt the trial actually took place, nudity notwithstanding—should do nothing to detract from Phryne’s remarkable life.
As with so many details of Phryne’s life, we know nothing about her death. Anecdotes about her life diminished as she grew with age and her beauty waned. But those that survive paint the picture (or, perhaps more appropriately, sculpt the statue) of an exceptional, timeless woman, whose wit and liberality wouldn’t look out of place had she lived today.