" When Peter Aretine's Lucretia came first to Rome, and that the fame of her beauty, ad urbanarum deliciarum sectatores venerat, nemo non ad videndam eam, &c. was spread abroad, they came in (as they say) thick and threefold to see her, and hovered about her gates, as they did of old to Lais of Corinth, and Phryne of Thebes, Ad cujus jacuit Graecia tota fores, "at whose gates lay all Greece."

One letter (i. 6) is interesting as containing the first allusion found in literature to the familiar story of Phryne before the judges, which is more fully told in Athenaeus.

At the same time, he takes delight in presenting problematical characters, and he finds pleasure, for example, in emphasizing the lovable qualities of a Musarion, a Lais, and a Phryne without regard to womanly chastity, and in exalting their practical wisdom above the scholastic wisdom of the philosophers.