To Pierre Louys, as it was to the Greeks, love is the most virtuous of human sentiments. His famous story of the courtesan of Alexandria is as unashamedly voluptuous as it is true to the period of antiquity in which it occurs. When Aphrodite was first published a storm of wrath was whipped up by the guardians of morality. Today Aphrodite is accepted by discriminating readers on its own merits as a novel of sensuous beauty, written in a rapturous prose, without shame and without sin.