Laura James - The Beauty Defense: Femmes Fatales on Trial

According to an ages-old lex non scripta, beauty alone is an affirmative defense to any criminal charge, even premeditated murder.

Some of the ancients believed that beautiful women are venomous, and early stories of the femmes fatales who live and kill among us describe them as literally poisonous. The Greek philosopher Socrates is said to have warned that a beautys kiss was deadlier than a spiders venom. What do you think you would suffer after kissing someone beautiful? Would you not immediately be a slave rather than free? asked Socrates. I counsel you whenever you see someone beautiful, to flee without looking back.

Classical literature is filled with infectious damsels and dead heroes. The betrayal of a king or hero by his mistress is, in short, a story both old and popular, writes historian Wolfgang Lederer, and many a man has actually lost his life because of it: from Samson who lost his hair and hide through Delilah, to the various victims of Mata Hari and her successors of today. The demon woman is a mythological type, and appears either as the companion of the enemy, or as the seductress of the hero; she sleeps with himor at least promises toand kills him.

Among the faded legends from that ancient time are the stories of immortals who were beautiful and terrible and who were specifically infamous for slaughtering men. They were Medusa, a great beauty before a curse made her visage fatal to men; Circe, who lived in a cave and turned men into swine; the Sirens, whose promising calls led sailors to shipwreck; the Irish goddess Anu, who lived in a cave and ate men alive; Scylla, the six-headed bitch who lived in a cave and ate sailors alive; Lilith, the night demon with a ravenous appetite for men; Kali, the Hindu goddess and slayer of men; and even Aphrodite, otherwise known as Venus. It is easy to forget that the ancient goddess of love and sex also commanded every woman on the island of Lemnos to murder her husband. According to the old stories, they obeyed her command. Cave amantem was the saying of the ancientsof her love, beware.

The Bible also regales us with accounts of toxic beauties, from Eve who tempted Adam to the alluring descendants of Eve. Judith, a beautiful widow, adorned herself with ribbons, rich perfumes, and fine jewels to seduce the enemys general Holofernes, and then she beheaded him with his own sword. Delilah bewitched and then betrayed her lover Samson to the Philistines for twelve hundred pieces of silver, becoming a wealthy woman. Salome danced for Herod and demanded the head of John the Baptist, murdering by proxy with sex appeal alone. They have served ever since as synonyms for fatally seductive women and as the muses of innumerable artists, immortalized in oil by the likes of Caravaggio, Klimt, Rubens, and so many others drawn to the junction of beauty and bloodshed.

Samson and Delilah by Peter Paul Rubens (1609). (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)

As wicked and fascinating as these legendary women have always been, the most frightening examples of the fairer sex are to be found not in old stories but in the case law. Our collective legal history teems with larger-than-life women who committed outrageous acts and whose good looks are the only explanation for the illogical outcomes of their cases.

CITY OF ATHENS VS. PHRYNE (336 BC)

First Recorded Instance of a Successful Beauty Defense

Modern historians assure us this old trial report is probably true. In Athens, Greece, twenty-four hundred years ago, Phryne, thirty-five, a famous courtisane, which we can generously translate as a woman of many lovers, was charged with impiety and put on trial. The mandatory penalty was death. The case went badly for Phryne. When it became apparent that she may lose her life, her attorney Hypereides, who was also one of her many lovers, took desperate measures. She had no other defense. He pulled off her robe under which she wore nothing and showed the judges her beauty bare. Silently pleading on behalf of all mankind, he studied the reaction of the officials to the sight of Phrynes body. Moved by her, undoubtedly experiencing