Possessing such freedom and enjoying such splendid opportunities for culture and intellectual advancement, it is not surprising that the hetaerae played so remarkable a role in the social and civic life of Greece, and that they were able to wield such influence over their associates, and that they often attained even the highest royal honors. Nor is it surprising to read in Plato's _Symposium_ the splendid tribute which Socrates renders to Diotima of Mantinea, when, in discussing the true nature of divine and eternal beauty, he speaks of her as his teacher. Many of the hetaerae were not only the models but also the inspirers of the most famous painters and sculptors of antiquity. Thus, Lais was the companion and inspirer of Apelles, the most noted painter of Greece, while Phryne, said to have been the most beautiful woman who ever lived, was the inspirer of the peerless Praxitiles, who, in reproducing her form, succeeded in bequeathing to the world what was undoubtedly the most lovely representation of "the human form divine" that ever came from a sculptor's chisel.[9] On account of the relations of the hetaerae, especially those of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., with the greatest men of their time, the writers of antiquity thought them of sufficient importance to preserve their history. One author has left us an account of no fewer than one hundred and thirty-five of them. But, of all those whose names have come down to us, by far the most noted, accomplished and influential was the famous Aspasia of Miletus. In many respects she was the most remarkable woman Greece ever produced. Of rare talent and culture, of extraordinary tact and finesse, of a fascinating personality combined with the grace and sensibility of her sex, together with a masculine power of intellect, "this gracious Ionian," as has well been said, "stands with Sappho on the pinnacle of Hellenic culture, each in her own field the highest feminine representative of an esthetic race."