But far the greater part of the hetaerae lived alone, and every large town possessed a number of these women, who were classed in different grades according to their education. Some of them were rich women, owning large numbers of slaves; their fame spread through the whole of Greece, and their rooms were crowded by men of the first rank in politics, literature, and art; great artists vied in representing them in bronze and marble, and their fame has descended even to our own times. Among all these, the most celebrated was the older Aspasia, the friend of Pericles, a woman of the highest intellectual endowments and most cultivated taste, who attracted men rather by the power of her intellect than of her charms. Other celebrated hetaerae, such as Laïs and Phryne, owe their renown, which has descended even to the present day, chiefly to their extraordinary beauty and the numerous anecdotes current about their life and also about their greed for money, and shameless character. These hetaerae, who thus lived by themselves, were either freed women or foreigners; some of them are not unattractive characters, whose wit and grace may easily have attracted even men of note, while others were mere courtesans, covetous, superficial, and dress-loving. In order to understand the possibility of their social intercourse with men of unblemished reputation, and the fact that these girls played a part in Greek literature almost more important than that of honest women, we must bear in mind the slight education and retired life of the Greek women. Even this can hardly account for the permission granted to a hetaera like Phryne to dedicate her statue by Praxiteles at Delphi, or her venturing to bathe in the sea, completely naked, like an Aphrodite Anadyomene, in the presence of numerous admiring spectators. We can only explain this by remembering the intense Hellenic love of beauty, apart from the considerations of morality, which looked on a beautiful human body as a divine work demanding adoration, which made it possible to forget the moral weaknesses inherent in it. At Corinth, in the temple of Aphrodite, more than a thousand temple slaves (ίερόδουλοι) were maintained, who were regarded as in the service of the goddess, and this conception of love as worship was very common throughout the East. But although much was openly done in ancient times which would be concealed at the present day, it would be a mistake to suppose that the position occupied by these women was a really honourable one.