When at the height of her triumph, this celebrated and petted hetaera, "who inflamed all Hellas with love, and for whose favors two seas contended," suddenly disappeared from the scene of her conquests. A Thessalian, by name Hippolochus, had taught her the meaning of true love. She fled with him from the company of her other lovers, and lived in honorable marriage in Thessaly. Her beauty, however, caused a sad ending to this pleasing romance. From envy and jealousy, the Thessalian women enticed her into the temple of Aphrodite and there stoned her to death. Some historians relate that she had many Thessalian lovers; this aroused the jealousy of the women, and they took her life at a festival of Aphrodite at which no men were present. After her murder, a pestilence is said to have broken out in Thessaly, which did not end until in expiation a temple had been erected to Aphrodite. Phryne was the most beautiful woman of all antiquity. She was born at Thespiae in Boeotia, but flourished at Athens toward the latter part of the fourth century before our era. The name Phryne belongs essentially to the history of Greek art, for all her life was associated with the activities of the most eminent painters and sculptors. In her youth she was loved by the sculptor Praxiteles. Pausanias tells a story how "once when Phryne asked for the most beautiful of his works, Praxiteles, lover-like, promised to give it to her, but would not tell which he thought the most beautiful. So a servant of Phryne ran in, declaring that the sculptor's studio had caught fire, and that most, but not all, of his works had perished. Praxiteles at once ran for the door, protesting that all his labor was lost if the flames had reached the _Satyr_ and the _Love_. But Phryne bade him stay and be of good cheer, telling him that he had suffered no loss, but had only been entrapped into saying which were the most beautiful of his works. So she chose the _Love_."