To condemn the innocent for impiety is no less an act of impiety than to acquit the guilty

To condemn the innocent for impiety is no less an act of impiety than to acquit the guilty. Andocides. On the Mysteries. Speech 1. Section 32.

Image: Phryne before the Areopagus by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1861, at the Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Phyrne, a 4th century BCE Greek courtesan, lover to many Athenian elites including Praxiteles the sculptor and the orator, Hypereides, was tried for impiety. Although ancient sources do not reveal the acts leading to the charge, it may have involved the Eleusinian mysteries which she is said to have celebrated by letting down her hair and stepping naked into the sea. Hypereides defended her before the Areopagus and it is said that when it looked as if the verdict would be unfavorable (impiety was a capital offense), Hypereides disrobed Phyrne in front of the court and she was subsequently acquitted because the superstitious judges could not bring themselves to condemn "a prophetess and priestess of Aphrodite" to death.