newsworthy56

[newsworthy56]

Phryne before the Areopagus by Jean-Léon Gérôme, c.1861

Phryne of Thespiae

"What we “know” of Phryne consists of a random collection of anecdotes, much of which resists efforts to construct a coherent biography. Most of our information comes from late second-century CE Greek writers living in the Roman Empire writing hundreds of years after her floruit, most notably the rhetorician and grammarian Athenaeus (late second/ early third cent. CE). His lengthy treatise, Dining Sophists, itself lacks an overt narrative structure, consisting rather of thousands of quotations from earlier texts, many now lost.

From these fragments, we learn that Phryne, a word meaning “Toad,” was her professional name, so-called because of her sallow complexion, but that her original name was Mnesarete, a common name for women in Athens and Attica. She was originally from Thespiae in Boeotia, a city about 80 kilometers from Athens, the daughter of a man named Epicles. Athenaeus distinguishes two Phrynes, one with the epithet Klausigelôs (“Laughing through Tears”) and the other, Saperdion (“Little Fish”), although he does not specify which one haled from Thespiae. She is further differentiated from the Phryne known as Sestos (“Swindler”), because she “fleeced” her clients.

Her childhood was spent in poverty, but eventually she amassed enormous wealth by charging a high price for her body. Phryne’s legendary riches facilitated several public benefactions. She offered to fund the rebuilding of the Theban walls after they had been destroyed by Alexander the Great, but only on the condition that the citizens inscribe the words “Alexander tore them down, but Phryne built them up them again.” Phryne made dedications to her native city, including its major tourist attraction, a statue of Eros by the sculptor Praxiteles (c. 390– 322), with whom she was erotically linked. In return, the Thespians dedicated a gilded statue of the hetaera at Delphi, also wrought by Praxiteles, and installed it between images of the king of Sparta and Philip II (Alexander’s father), with the words “Phryne, the daughter of Epicles of Thespiae” inscribed on its base. Its placement and costliness led the Cynic philosopher Crates (365– 285) to denounce it as a monument to Greek depravity. She rejected those lovers who displeased her, even when they had paid lavishly for her services, and indulged the impecunious. Phryne was a contemporary of several other famous hetaeras mentioned in comedy, including Lais, Plangon, Gnathaena, Myrrhine, and Nannion. She was further known for her caustic and coarse rejoinders made at the drinking parties of men.

Much of the discourse about Phryne, however, revolves around her exceptional beauty and public nudity, particularly in religious and legal contexts. She concealed her body when in public by wearing a close-fitted tunic and avoiding the baths, yet revealed it before all of the Greeks at two religious festivals called the Eleusinia and Posidonia. The sight of her naked body after she stripped and entered the sea inspired Apelles’ painting, Aphrodite Rising from the Sea, a prototype for Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. The pervasive association of the hetaera with the goddess informs the story that Praxiteles used Phryne as the model for his Cnidian Aphrodite, the first life-size female nude in the Western artistic tradition.

But the most shocking display of her body occurs in narratives surrounding her impiety trial, an event that made her famous from the fourth century onward according to a contemporary source, Posidippus’ (c. 315– 260 BCE) comic play, Ephesia (“Woman from Ephesis”): “Before our time, Phryne was far and away the best known courtesan there was; because even if you’re younger than that, you’ve heard about her trial.” Indicted by Euthias (dates known), she was successfully defended by the orator Hyperides (390/ 1– 322 BCE). The only thing that saved her from conviction was a clever stratagem. When the orator’s arguments appeared unpersuasive, he dramatically ripped off her upper garments, exposing her naked breasts to the jurors, a sight that induced not lust but piety: “the jurors fearful of this priestess and temple-attendant of Aphrodite, and to incline toward pity rather than the death penalty.” According to another source, she won acquittal for herself, “just barely — with her tears,” by “taking the jurors’ hands, one by one.” This is all that we “know” of Phryne, and yet it is the product of a literary tradition largely constructed hundreds of years after her death."

— Laura McClure, Phryne of Thespiae: Courtesan, Muse, and Myth

[newsworthy56]

Here's How To LEGALLY Make Your Assets Invisible From Creditors

Step 1: Stop Holding Assets In Your Personal Name

If it’s tied to your Social Security number, it’s easy to find and easier to freeze or seize in a lawsuit.

Step 2: Move Your Checking Account Into a Privacy Trust

Create a basic trust (like “The Oak Tree Trust”) and make yourself the trustee.

Use it to hold your checking account so your name doesn’t show up on asset searches.

Step 3: Use a Wyoming LLC for Savings & Investments

Wyoming doesn’t disclose ownership.

Set up a Wyoming LLC and move your brokerage, crypto, or high-value savings into it.

Still yours — just not publicly connected to you.

Step 4: Protect Your House with a Residence Trust

Transfer the deed to a trust with a nominee trustee.

You keep control, but your name disappears from the public title.

Bonus: it can protect your equity from future lawsuits.

Step 5: Use a Layered LLC Structure for Rental Properties

Own each rental in a separate LLC, all owned by one Wyoming LLC.

Tenants, creditors, and lawyers can’t trace it back to you.

Step 6: Structure Your Business for Privacy

Don’t be the listed owner.

Set up a holding company (Wyoming LLC) to own your operating company. You still control it, but your name stays off the public records.

📌 This is 100% legal. It’s what wealthy people do every day.

[newsworthy56]

Here's How To LEGALLY Make Your Assets Invisible From Creditors

Step 1: Stop Holding Assets In Your Personal Name

If it’s tied to your Social Security number, it’s easy to find and easier to freeze or seize in a lawsuit.

Step 2: Move Your Checking Account Into a Privacy Trust

Create a basic trust (like “The Oak Tree Trust”) and make yourself the trustee.

Use it to hold your checking account so your name doesn’t show up on asset searches.

Step 3: Use a Wyoming LLC for Savings & Investments

Wyoming doesn’t disclose ownership.

Set up a Wyoming LLC and move your brokerage, crypto, or high-value savings into it.

Still yours — just not publicly connected to you.

Step 4: Protect Your House with a Residence Trust

Transfer the deed to a trust with a nominee trustee.

You keep control, but your name disappears from the public title.

Bonus: it can protect your equity from future lawsuits.

Step 5: Use a Layered LLC Structure for Rental Properties

Own each rental in a separate LLC, all owned by one Wyoming LLC.

Tenants, creditors, and lawyers can’t trace it back to you.

Step 6: Structure Your Business for Privacy

Don’t be the listed owner.

Set up a holding company (Wyoming LLC) to own your operating company. You still control it, but your name stays off the public records.

📌 This is 100% legal. It’s what wealthy people do every day.

[newsworthy56]

Here's How To LEGALLY Make Your Assets Invisible From Creditors

Step 1: Stop Holding Assets In Your Personal Name

If it’s tied to your Social Security number, it’s easy to find and easier to freeze or seize in a lawsuit.

Step 2: Move Your Checking Account Into a Privacy Trust

Create a basic trust (like “The Oak Tree Trust”) and make yourself the trustee.

Use it to hold your checking account so your name doesn’t show up on asset searches.

Step 3: Use a Wyoming LLC for Savings & Investments

Wyoming doesn’t disclose ownership.

Set up a Wyoming LLC and move your brokerage, crypto, or high-value savings into it.

Still yours — just not publicly connected to you.

Step 4: Protect Your House with a Residence Trust

Transfer the deed to a trust with a nominee trustee.

You keep control, but your name disappears from the public title.

Bonus: it can protect your equity from future lawsuits.

Step 5: Use a Layered LLC Structure for Rental Properties

Own each rental in a separate LLC, all owned by one Wyoming LLC.

Tenants, creditors, and lawyers can’t trace it back to you.

Step 6: Structure Your Business for Privacy

Don’t be the listed owner.

Set up a holding company (Wyoming LLC) to own your operating company. You still control it, but your name stays off the public records.

📌 This is 100% legal. It’s what wealthy people do every day.

[newsworthy56]

Judges are the same, Trump is the outlier.

This is what you get when you elect a rapist and fraud. The Federal Injunctions are not the issue, the issue is the Kremlin wannabe in the WH.

[newsworthy56]

[newsworthy56]

This is why you don't elect rapists with dementia.

[newsworthy56]

Health care cost is a priority.

Republicans are changing the name of 500 year named Gulf of Mexico.

Republican priority is whiteness for groomed racists.

[newsworthy56]

[newsworthy56]

[newsworthy56]

“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes -all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard; into it, they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, we cease to be haunted by its remembrance. Then we become the gravediggers.” - Rod Serling

Today is the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp. 4/29/25

[newsworthy56]

The wicked fraud rapist felon is the ultimate conservative archetype: a walking perversion

[newsworthy56]

Are we clear?

Democrats, repeat this every day. Please!

[newsworthy56]

It’s almost like Carney, who has a PhD from Oxford, is a lot smarter than Trump. Go figure.

Trump makes things worse. Trump makes things more expensive. Because he is dumb.

[newsworthy56]

First Felon's EOs are pathetic. A felon rapist fraud with a vandetta? FOX settled because Dominion had the facts and could have collected billions.

Republicans, that stench is all over you.

[newsworthy56]

The groomed obey.