Aspasia

This article is about Aspasia, the Greek woman. For the city in São Paulo state, Brazil, see Aspásia.

File:Aspasia.jpg

Portrait of Aspasia based on a marble herm in the Vatican Museums inscribed with Aspasia's name at the base. Discovered in 1777, this marble herm is a Roman copy of a fifth century B.C.E. original and may represent Aspasia's funerary stele.

Aspasia (c.470 B.C.E.–c.400 B.C.E., Greek: Ἀσπασία) was a renowned woman in ancient Greece, famous for her romantic involvement with the Athenian statesman Pericles. She was born in the city of Miletus in Asia Minor, but at some point she travelled to Athens, where she spent the rest of her life. After Pericles' death, she was allegedly involved with Lysicles, another Athenian statesman and general. She had a son with Pericles, Pericles the Younger, who was elected general and was executed after the Battle of Arginusae.

Aspasia appears in the philosophical writings of Plato and other philosophers and is regarded by modern scholars as an exceptional person who distinguished herself due to her political influence and intellectual charisma. However, almost nothing is certain about her life. While ancient writers report that Aspasia was a brothel keeper and a harlot, many of these were comic poets who intended to ridicule Pericles and the war rather than document anything factual about Aspasia, and their accounts are disputed. Some researchers question even the assessment that she was a hetaera, or courtesan.^[α]

Origin and early years

Aspasia was born in the Ionian Greek colony of Miletus (in the modern Aydın Province, Turkey) and her father's name was Axiochus. She was a free woman, not a Carian prisoner-of-war turned slave as some ancient sources claim.^[β] She must have belonged to a wealthy family, because her parents could afford an education for their daughter.

The circumstances that took her to Athens are not known. The discovery of a fourth-century grave inscription that mentions the names of Axiochus and Aspasius has led historian Peter J. Bicknell to attempt a reconstruction of Aspasia's family background and Athenian connections. His theory connects her to Alcibiades II of Scambonidae, who was ostracized from Athens in 460 B.C.E. and may have spent his exile in Miletus. Bicknell conjectures that, following his exile, the elder Alcibiades went to Miletus, where he married the daughter of a certain Axiochus. Alcibiades apparently returned to Athens with his new wife and her younger sister, Aspasia. Bicknell argues that the first child of this marriage was named Axiochus (uncle of the famous Alcibiades) and the second Aspasios. He also maintains that Pericles met Aspasia through his close connections with Alcibiades's household.

Life in Athens

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904): Socrates seeking Alcibiades in the house of Aspasia, 1861

According to the disputed statements of the ancient writers and some modern scholars, in Athens Aspasia became a hetaera and probably ran a brothel.^[α] Hetaerae were professional high-class entertainers, as well as [courtesan]]s. Besides developing physical beauty, they differed from most Athenian women in being educated (often to a high standard, as in Aspasia's case), having independence, and paying taxes. They were the nearest thing perhaps to liberated women; and Aspasia, who became a vivid figure in Athenian society, was probably an obvious example. According to Plutarch, Aspasia was compared to the famous Thargelia, another renowned Ionian hetaera of ancient times.

Being a foreigner and possibly a hetaera, Aspasia was freed from the legal restraints that traditionally confined married women to their homes and, thereby, she was allowed to participate in the public life of the city. She became the mistress of the statesman Pericles in the early 440s and, after he divorced his first wife (c. 445 B.C.E.), began to live with him, although her marital status remains disputed.^[γ] Their son, Pericles the Younger, must have been born by 440 B.C.E. Aspasia would have to have been quite young, if she were able to bear a child to Lysicles c. 428 B.C.E.

In social circles, Aspasia was noted for her ability as a conversationalist and adviser rather than merely an object of physical beauty. According to Plutarch, their house became an intellectual centre in Athens, attracting the most prominent writers and thinkers, including the philosopher Socrates. The biographer writes that, despite her immoral life, Athenians used to bring their wives to hear her converse.^[δ]

Personal and judicial attacks

Pericles, Aspasia and their friends were not immune from attack, as preeminence in democratic Athens was not equivalent to absolute rule. Her relationship with Pericles and her subsequent political influence aroused many reactions. Donald Kagan, a Yale historian, believes that Aspasia was particularly unpopular in the years immediately following the Samian War. In 440 B.C.E., Samos was at war with Miletus over Priene, an ancient city of Ionia in the foot-hills of Mycale. Worsted in the war, the Milesians came to Athens to plead their case against the Samians. When the Athenians ordered the two sides to stop fighting and submit the case to arbitration at Athens, the Samians refused. In response, Pericles passed a decree dispatching an expedition to Samos. The campaign proved to be difficult and the Athenians had to endure heavy casualties before Samos was defeated. According to Plutarch, it was thought that Aspasia, who came from Miletus, was responsible for the Samian War, and that Pericles had decided against and attacked Samos to gratify her.

"Thus far the evil was not serious and we were the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to Megara and carry off the courtesan Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three whores Greece is set ablaze. Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his Olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to roll, upset Greece and passed an edict, which ran like the song, That the Megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent."

From Aristophanes' comedic play, The Acharnians (523-533)

Before the eruption of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.E.–404 B.C.E.), Pericles, some of his closest associates and Aspasia faced a series of personal and legal attacks. Aspasia, in particular, was accused of corrupting the women of Athens in order to satisfy Pericles' perversions.^[ε] According to Plutarch, she was put on trial for impiety, with the comic poet Hermippus as prosecutor.^[στ] All these accusations were probably nothing more than unproven slanders, but the whole experience was bitter for the Athenian leader. Although Aspasia was acquitted thanks to a rare emotional outburst of Pericles,^[ζ] his friend, Phidias, died in prison. Another friend of his, Anaxagoras, was attacked by the ecclesia (the Athenian Assembly) for his religious beliefs. According to Kagan it is possible that Aspasia's trial and acqittal were or late inventions, "in which real slanders, suspicions and ribald jokes were converted into an imaginary lawsuit". Anthony J. Podlecki, Professor of Classics at the University of British Columbia, asserts that Plutarch or his source possibly misunderstood a scene in some comedy. Kagan argues that even if we believe these stories, Aspasia was unharmed with or without the help of Pericles.

In The Acharnians, Aristophanes blames Aspasia for the Peloponnesian War. He claims that Megarian decree of Pericles, which excluded Megara from trade with Athens or its allies, was retaliation for prostitutes being kidnapped from the house of Aspasia by Megarians. Aristophanes' portrayal of Aspasia as responsible, from personal motives, for the outbreak of the war with Sparta may reflect memory of the earlier episode involving Miletus and Samos. Plutarch reports also the taunting comments of other comic poets, such as Eupolis and Cratinus. According to Podlecki, Douris appears to have propounded the view that Aspasia instigated both the Samian and Peloponnesian War.

Aspasia was labeled the "New Omphale",^[η] "Deianira",^[η] "Hera"^[θ] and "Helen".^[ι] Further attacks on Pericles' relationship with Aspasia are reported by Athenaeus. Even Pericles's own son, Xanthippus, who had political ambitions, did not hesitate to slander his father about his domestic affairs.

Later years and death

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Bust of Pericles, Altes Museum (Old Museum), Berlin

In 429 B.C.E., Pericles witnessed the death of his sister and of both his legitimate sons from his first wife, Xanthippus and his beloved Paralus, in the Plague of Athens. With his morale undermined, he burst into tears, and not even Aspasia's companionship could console him. Just before his death, the Athenians allowed a change in the citizenship law of 451 B.C.E. that made his half-Athenian son with Aspasia, Pericles the Younger, a citizen and legitimate heir, a decision all the more striking in considering that Pericles himself had proposed the law confining citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides. Pericles died of the disease in the autumn of 429 B.C.E.

Plutarch cites Aeschines Socraticus, who wrote a dialogue on Aspasia (now lost), to the effect that after Pericles's death Aspasia lived with Lysicles, an Athenian general and democratic leader, with whom she had another son; and that she made him the first man at Athens.^[β] Lysicles was killed in action in 428 B.C.E. With Lysicles' death the contemporaneous record ends. It is unknown, for example, if she were alive when her son, Pericles, was elected general or when he was executed after the Battle of Arginusae. The time of her death that most historians give (c. 401 B.C.E.-400 B.C.E.) is based on the assessment that Aspasia died before the execution of Socrates in 399 B.C.E., a chronology which is implied in the structure of Aeschines' Aspasia.

References in philosophical works

Ancient philosophical works

Aspasia appears in the philosophical writings of Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes. Some scholars argue that Plato was impressed by her intelligence and wit and based his character Diotima in Symposium on her, while others suggest that Diotima was in fact a historical figure. According to Charles Kahn, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, Diotima is in many respects Plato's response to Aeschines' Aspasia.

"Now, since it is thought that he proceeded thus against the Samians to gratify Aspasia, this may be a fitting place to raise the query what great art or power this woman had, that she managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length.."

Plutarch, Pericles, XXIV

In Menexenus, Plato satirizes Aspasia's relationship with Pericles, and quotes Socrates as claiming ironically that she was a trainer of many orators. Socrates' intention is to cast aspersions on Pericles' rhetorical fame, claiming, also ironically, that, since the Athenian statesman was educated by Aspasia, he would be superior in rhetoric to someone educated by Antiphon. He also attributes authorship of the Funeral Oration to Aspasia and attacks his contemporaries' veneration of Pericles. Kahn maintains that Plato has taken from Aeschines the motif of Aspasia as teacher of rhetoric for Pericles and Socrates. Plato's Aspasia and Aristophanes' Lysistrata are two apparent exceptions to the rule of women's incapacity as orators, though these fictional characters tell us nothing about the actual status of women in Athens. As Martha L. Rose, Professor of History at Truman State University, explains "only in comedy do dogs litigate, birds govern, or women declaim".

Xenophon mentions Aspasia twice in his Socratic writings: in Memorabilia and in Oeconomicus. In both cases her advice is recommended to Critobulus by Socrates. In Memorabilia Socrates quotes Aspasia as saying that the matchmaker should report truthfully on the good characteristics of the man. In Oeconomicus Socrates defers to Aspasia as more knowledgeable about household management and the economic partnership between husband and wife.

Painting of Hector Leroux (1682 - 1740), which portrays Pericles and Aspasia, admiring the gigantic statue of Athena in Phidias' studio.

Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes each named a Socratic dialogue after Aspasia (though neither survives except in fragments). Our major sources for Aeschines Socraticus' Aspasia are Athenaeus, Plutarch, and Cicero. In the dialogue, Socrates recommends that Callias send his son Hipponicus to Aspasia for instructions. When Callias recoils at the notion of a female teacher, Socrates notes that Aspasia had favorably influenced Pericles and, after his death, Lysicles. In a section of the dialogue, preserved in Latin by Cicero, Aspasia figures as a "female Socrates", counseling first Xenophon's wife and then Xenophon himself (the Xenophon in question is not the famous historian) about acquiring virtue through self-knowledge. Aeschines presents Aspasia as a teacher and inspirer of excellence, connecting these virtues with her status as hetaira. According to Kahn every single episode in Aeschines' Aspasia is not only fictitious but incredible.

Of Antisthenes' Aspasia only two or three quotations are extant. This dialogue contains much slander, but also anecdotes pertaining to Pericles' biography. Antisthenes appears to have attacked not only Aspasia, but the entire family of Pericles, including his sons. The philosopher believes that the great statesman chose the life of pleasure over virtue. Thus, Aspasia is presented as the personification of the life of sexual indulgence.

Modern literature

Painting of Marie Bouliard, which potrays Aspasia, 1794

Aspasia appears in several significant works of modern literature. Her romantic attachment with Pericles has inspired some of the most famous novelists and poets of the last centuries. In particular the romanticists of the 19th century and the historical novelists of the 20th century found in their story an inexhaustible source of inspiration. In 1835 Lydia Child, an American abolitionist, novelist, and journalist published Philothea, a classical romance set in the days of Pericles and Aspasia. This book is regarded as the most successful and elaborate of the author's productions, because the female characters and, especially, Aspasia, are portrayed with great beaty and delicacy.

In 1836 Walter Savage Landor, an English writer and poet, published Pericles and Aspasia, one of his most famous books. Pericles and Aspasia is a rendering of classical Athens through a series of imaginary letters, which contain numerous poems. The letters are frequently unfaithful to actual history but attempt to capture the spirit of the Age of Pericles. Robert Hamerling is another novelist and poet, who was inspired by Aspasia's personality. In 1876 he published his novel Aspasia, a book about the manners and morals of the Age of Pericles and a work of cultural and historical interest. Giacomo Leopardi, an Italian poet influenced by the movement of romanticism, published a group of five poems known as the circle of Aspasia. These Leopardi poems were inspired by his painful experience of desperate and unrequited love for a woman named Fanny Targioni Tozzetti. Leopardi called this woman Aspasia, after the companion of Pericles.

In 1918 novelist and playwright George Cram Cook produced his first full-length play, The Athenian Women, which portrays Aspasia leading a strike for peace. Cook combined an anti-war theme with a Greek setting. American writer Gertrude Atherton in The Immortal Marriage (1927) treats the story of Pericles and Aspasia and illustrates the period of the Samian War, the Peloponnesian War and the plague.

Fame and assessments

Aspasia's name is closely connected with Pericles's glory and fame. Plutarch accepts her as a significant figure both politically and intellectually and expresses his admiration for a woman who "managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length". The biographer says that Aspasia became so renowned that even Cyrus the Younger, who went to war with the King Artaxerxes II of Persia, gave her name to one of his concubines, who before was called Milto. After Cyrus had fallen in battle, this woman was carried captive to the King and acquired a great influence with him. Lucian calls Aspasia a "model of wisdom", "the admired of the admirable Olympian" and lauds "her political knowledge and insight, her shrewdness and penetration". A syriac text, according to which Aspasia composed a speech and instructed a man to read it for her in the courts, confirms Aspasia's rhetorical fame. Aspasia is said by Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, to have been "clever with regards to words," a sophist, and to have taught rhetoric.

"Next I have to depict Wisdom; and here I shall have occasion for many models, most of them ancient; one comes, like the lady herself, from Ionia. The artists shall be Aeschines and Socrates his master, most realistic of painters, for their heart was in their work. We could choose no better model of wisdom than Milesian Aspasia, the admired of the admirable 'Olympian'; her political knowledge and insight, her shrewdness and penetration, shall all be transferred to our canvas in their perfect measure. Aspasia, however, is only preserved to us in miniature: our proportions must be those of a colossus."

Lucian, A Portrait-Study, XVII

On the basis of such assessments, researchers, such as Cheryl Glenn, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, argue that seems to have been the only woman in classical Greece to have distinguished herself in the public sphere and must have influenced Pericles in the composition of his speeches. Some scholars believe that Aspasia opened an academy for young women of good families or even invented the Socratic method. Robert W. Wallace, Professor of classics at Northwestern University, underscores, however, that "we cannot accept as historical the joke that Aspasia taught Pericles how to speak and hence was a master rhetorician or philosopher". According to Wallace, the intellectual role Aspasia was given by Plato may have derived from comedy. Kagan describes Aspasia as "a beautiful, independent, brilliantly witty young woman capable of holding her own in conversation with the best minds in Greece and of discussing and illuminating any kind of question with her husband". Roger Just, a classicist and Professor of social anthropology at the University of Kent, believes that Aspasia was an exceptional figure, but her example alone is enough to underline the fact that any woman who was to become the intellectual and social equal of a man would have to be a hetaira. According to Sr. Prudence Allen, a philospher and seminary professor, Aspasia moved the potential of women to become philosophers one step forward from the poetic inspirations of Sappho.

Historicity of her life

The main problem remains, as Jona Lendering points out: most of the things we know about Aspasia are based on mere hypothesis. Thucydides does not mention her; our only sources are the untrustworthy representations and speculations recorded by men in literature and philosophy, who did not care at all about Aspasia as a historical character. Therefore, in the figure of Aspasia, we get a range of contradictory portrayals; she is either a good wife like Theano or some combination of courtesan and prostitute like Thargelia. This is the reason modern scholars express their scepticism about the historicity of Aspasia's life.

According to Wallace, "for us Aspasia herself possesses and can possess almost no historical reality". Hence, Madeleine M. Henry, Professor of Classics at Iowa State University, maintains that "biographical anecdotes that arose in antiquity about Aspasia are wildly colorful, almost completely unverifiable, and still alive and well in the twentieth century". She finally concludes that "it is possible to map only the barest possibilities for [Aspasia's] life". According to Charles W. Fornara and Loren J. Samons II, Professors of Classics and history, "it may well be, for all we know, that the real Aspasia was more than a match for her fictional counterpart".

See also

• Ancient philosophy
• Prostitution in Ancient Greece
• Timeline of Ancient Greece

Notes

α. Henry regards as a slander the reports of ancient writers and comic poets that Aspasia was a brothel keeper and a harlot. Henry believes that these comic sallies were to ridicule Athens' leadership and were based on the fact that, by his own citizenship law, Pericles was prevented from marrying Aspasia and so had to live with her in an unmarried state. For these reasons historian Nicole Loraux questions even the testimony of ancient writers that Aspasia was a hetaera or a courtesan. Fornara and Samons also dιsmiss the fifth-century tradition that Aspasia was a harlot and managed houses of ill-repute.

β. According to Debra Nails, Professor of philosophy at Michigan State University, if Aspasia was not a free woman, the decree to legitimize her son with Pericles and the later marriage to Lysicles would almost certainly have been impossible.

γ. Fornara and Samons take the position that Pericles married Aspasia, but his citizenship law declared her to be an invalid mate. Wallace argues that, in marrying Aspasia, if he married her, Pericles was continuing a distinguished Athenian aristocratic tradition of marrying well-connected foreigners. Henry believes that Pericles was prevented by his own citizenship law from marrying Aspasia and so had to live with her in an unmarried state. On the basis of a comic passage Henry maintains that Aspasia was probably a pallake, namely a concubine. According to historian William Smith, Aspasia's relation with Pericles was "analogous to the left-handed marriages of modern princes". Historian Arnold W. Gomme underscores that "his contemporaries spoke of Pericles as married to Aspasia".

δ. According to Kahn, stories, such as Socrates' visits to Aspasia along with his friends' wives and Lysicles' connection with Aspasia, are not likely to be historical. He believes that Aeschines was indifferent to the historicity of his Athenian stories and that these stories must have been invented at a time, when the date of Lysicles' death had been forgotten, but his occupation still remembered.

ε. Kagan estimates that, if the trial of Aspasia happened, "we have better reason to believe that it happened in 438 than at any other time".

στ. According to James F. McGlew, Professor at Iowa State University, it is not very likely that the charge against Aspasia was made by Hermippus. He believes that "Plutarch or his sources have confused the law courts and theater".

ζ. Athenaeus quotes Antisthenes saying that Pericles pleaded for her against charges of impiety, weeping "more tears than when his life and property were endangered".

η. Omphale and Deianira were respectively the Lydian queen who owned Heracles as a slave for a year and his long-suffering wife. Athenian dramatists took an interest in Omphale from the middle of the fifth century. The comedians parodied Pericles for resembling a Heracles under the control of an Omphale-like Aspasia. Aspasia was called "Omphale" in the Kheirones of Cratinus or the Philoi of Eupolis.

θ. Αs wife of the "Olympian" Pericles. Ancient Greek writers call Pericles "Olympian", because he was "thundering and lightening and exciting Greece" and carrying the weapons of Zeus when orating.

ι. Cratinus (in Dionysalexandros) assimilates Pericles and Aspasia to the "outlaw" figures of Paris and Helen; just as Paris caused a war with Spartan Menelaus over his desire for Helen, so Pericles, influenced by the foreign Aspasia, involved Athens in a war with Sparta. Eupolis also called Aspasia Helen in the Prospaltoi.

Aspasia (c. 470 B.C.E. –c. 400 B.C.E. Greek: Ἀσπασία) was a renowned woman in ancient Greece, famous for her romantic involvement with the Athenian statesman Pericles. She was born in the city of Miletus in Asia Minor, and around 450 B.C.E. traveled to Athens, where she spent the rest of her life. After Pericles' death, she was allegedly involved with Lysicles, another Athenian statesman and general. She had a son with Pericles, Pericles the Younger, who was elected general and was executed after a naval disaster at the Battle of Arginusae.

Aspasia appears in the philosophical writings of Plato and other philosophers and is regarded by modern scholars as an exceptional person who distinguished herself due to her political influence and intellectual charisma. Most of what is known about her comes from the comments of ancient philosophers and writers, some of whom were comic poets who wished to disparage Pericles, rather than from any factual accounts. Some researchers question even the assessment that she was a hetaera]], or courtesan. Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes

Origin

Aspasia was born around 470 B.C.E. in the Ionian Greek colony of Miletus (in the modern Aydın Province, Turkey). Her father's name was Axiochus. She was a free woman, not a Carian prisoner-of-war turned slave as some ancient sources claim. She must have belonged to a wealthy family, because her parents could afford an education for their daughter.

The circumstances that took her to Athens are not known. The discovery of a fourth-century grave inscription that mentions the names of Axiochus and Aspasius has led historian Peter J. Bicknell to attempt a reconstruction of Aspasia's family background and Athenian connections. His theory connects her to Alcibiades II of Scambonidae, who was ostracized from Athens in 460 B.C.E. and may have spent his exile in Miletus. Bicknell conjectures that, following his exile, the elder Alcibiades went to Miletus, where he married the daughter of a certain Axiochus. Alcibiades apparently returned to Athens with his new wife and her younger sister, Aspasia. Bicknell argues that the first child of this marriage was named Axiochus (uncle of the famous Alcibiades) and the second Aspasios. He also maintains that Pericles met Aspasia through his close connections with Alcibiades's household.

Life in Athens

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904): Socrates seeking Alcibiades in the house of Aspasia, 1861

According to the disputed statements of the ancient writers and some modern scholars, in Athens Aspasia became a hetaera and may have run a brothel. Hetaerae were professional entertainers of upper class men, as well as courtesans. They differed from most Athenian women in being well educated, having independence, and paying taxes. They were the nearest thing perhaps to liberated women. ; According to Plutarch, Aspasia was compared to the famous Thargelia, another renowned Ionian hetaera of ancient times. And so Aspasia, as some say, was held in high favour by Pericles because of her rare political wisdom. Socrates sometimes came to see her with his disciples, and his intimate friends brought their wives to her to hear her discourse, although she presided over a business that was any- thing but honest or even reputable, since she kept a house of young courtesans. [4] And Aeschines2 says that Lysicles the sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and nature, came to be the first man at Athens by living with Aspasia after the death of Pericles. And in the “Menexenus” of Plato, even though the first part of it be written in a sportive vein, there is, at any rate, thus much of fact, that the woman had the reputation of associating with many Athenians as a teacher of rhetoric. [5] However, the affection which Pericles had for Aspasia seems to have been rather of an amatory sort. For his own wife was near of kin to him, and had been wedded first to Hipponicus, to whom she bore Callias, surnamed the Rich; she bore also, as the wife of Pericles, Xanthippus and Paralus. Afterwards, since their married life was not agreeable, he legally bestowed her upon another man, with her own consent, and himself took Aspasia, and loved her exceedingly. [6] Twice a day, as they say, on going out and on coming in from the market-place, he would salute her with a loving kiss. But in the comedies she is styled now the New Omphale, now Deianeira, and now Hera. Cratinus flatly called her a prostitute in these lines:— 7] So renowned and celebrated did Aspasia become, they say, that even Cyrus, the one who went to war with the Great King for the sovereignty of the Persians, gave the name of Aspasia to that one of his concubines whom he loved best, who before was called Milto. She was a Phocaean by birth, daughter of one Hermotimus, and, after Cyrus had fallen in battle, was carried captive to the King,3 and acquired the greatest influence with him. These things coming to my recollection as I write, it were perhaps unnatural to reject and pass them by.

(Plutarch, Pericles, XXIV)

Being a foreigner and possibly a hetaera, Aspasia was freed from the legal restraints that traditionally confined married women to their homes and could therefore participate in the public life of the city. After the statesman Pericles divorced his first wife (c. 445 B.C.E.), Aspasia began to live with him, although her marital status remains disputedTheir son, Pericles the Younger, was probably born before 440 B.C.E. because it is reported that she later bore another child to to Lysicles around 428 b.c.e.. 239</ref>

Aspasia was noted for her ability as a conversationalist and adviser rather than merely an object of physical beauty. According to Plutarch, their house became an intellectual centre in Athens, attracting the most prominent writers and thinkers, including the philosopher Socrates. The biographer writes that Athenians used to bring their wives to hear her discourses.

Personal and Judicial Attacks

Aspasia’s relationship with Pericles and her consequent political influence aroused public reaction against her. In 440 B.C.E., Samos was at war with Miletus over Priene, an ancient city of Ionia in the foot-hills of Mycale. The Milesians came to Athens to plead their case against the Samians, but when the Athenians ordered the two sides to stop fighting and submit the case to arbitration at Athens, the Samians refused. In response, Pericles passed a decree dispatching an expedition to Samos. The campaign proved to be difficult and the Athenians endured heavy casualties before Samos was defeated. According to Plutarch, it was thought that Aspasia, who came from Miletus, was responsible for the Samian War, and that Pericles had decided against and attacked Samos to gratify her.

"Thus far the evil was not serious and we were the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to Megara and carry off the courtesan Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three whores Greece is set ablaze. Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his Olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to roll, upset Greece and passed an edict, which ran like the song, That the Megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent."

From Aristophanes' comedic play, The Acharnians (523-533)

Before the eruption of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.E. - 404 B.C.E.). Pericles, some of his closest associates and Aspasia faced a series of personal and legal attacks. Aspasia, in particular, was accused of corrupting the women of Athens in order to satisfy Pericles' perversions. According to Plutarch, she was put on trial for impiety, with the comic poet Hermippus as prosecutor. All these accusations were probably unproven slanders, but the experience was bitter for the Athenian leader. Although Aspasia was acquitted thanks to a rare emotional outburst of Pericles, his friend, Phidias, died in prison. Another friend of his, Anaxagoras, was attacked by the Ecclesia (the Athenian Assembly) for his religious beliefs. It is possible that Plutarch’s account of Aspasia's trial and acqittal was a historical invention based on earlier slanders and ribald comedies.

In his play, The Acharnians, Aristophanes blames Aspasia for the Peloponnesian War, claiming that the Megarian decree of Pericles, which excluded Megara from trade with Athens or its allies, was retaliation for prostitutes being kidnapped from the house of Aspasia by Megarians. Plutarch also reports the slurs of other comic poets, such as Eupolis and Cratinus. Douris appears to have propounded the view that Aspasia instigated both the Samian and Peloponnesian War. Aspasia was labeled the "New Omphale," "Deianira," , "Hera" and "Helen." (Omphale and Deianira were respectively the Lydian queen who owned Heracles as a slave for a year and his long-suffering wife. The comedians parodied Pericles for resembling a Heracles under the control of an Omphale-like Aspasia.) Further attacks on Pericles' relationship with Aspasia are reported by Athenaeus. Pericles's own son, Xanthippus, who had political ambitions, did not hesitate to slander his father over his domestic affairs.

Later Years and Death

File:PICT4534.JPG

Bust of Pericles, Altes Museum (Old Museum), Berlin

The return of soldiers from the battle front brought the plague to Athens. In 429 B.C.E., Pericles witnessed the death of his sister and of both his legitimate sons from his first wife, Xanthippus and his beloved Paralus, from the disease. With his morale undermined, he burst into tears, and not even Aspasia could console him. Just before his death, the Athenians allowed a change in the citizenship law of 451 B.C.E. that made his half-Athenian son with Aspasia, Pericles the Younger, a citizen and legitimate heir. Pericles himself had proposed the law in 451 B.C.E. confining citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides, to prevent aristocratic families from forming alliances with other cities . Pericles died in the autumn of 429 b.c.e..

Plutarch cites a dialogue by Aeschines Socraticus (now lost), to the effect that after Pericles's death Aspasia lived with Lysicles, an Athenian general and democratic leader, with whom she had another son; and that she helped him rise to a high position in Athens. Lysicles was killed in action in 428 B.C.E., and after his death there is no further record of Aspasia. The date given by most historians for her death (c. 401 B.C.E. - 400 B.C.E.) is based on the assessment that Aspasia died before the execution of Socrates in 399 B.C.E., a chronology which is implied in the structure of Aeschines' Aspasia.

References in Philosophical Works

Ancient Philosophical Works

Aspasia appears in the philosophical writings of Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes. Some scholars suggest that Plato was impressed by her intelligence and wit and based his character Diotima in Symposium on her, while others believe that Diotima was in fact a historical figure. According to Charles Kahn, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, Diotima is in many respects Plato's response to Aeschines' Aspasia.

"Now, since it is thought that he proceeded thus against the Samians to gratify Aspasia, this may be a fitting place to raise the query what great art or power this woman had, that she managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length.."

Plutarch, Pericles, XXIV

In Menexenus, Plato satirizes Aspasia's relationship with Pericles, and quotes Socrates as claiming that she trained many orators. Socrates' intention is to cast aspersions on Pericles' rhetorical fame, claiming, that, since the Athenian statesman was educated by Aspasia, he would be superior in rhetoric to someone educated by Antiphon. He also attributes authorship of Pericles’ Funeral Oration to Aspasia and attacks his contemporaries' veneration of Pericles. Kahn maintains that Plato has taken from Aeschines the motif of Aspasia as teacher of rhetoric for Pericles and Socrates.

Xenophon mentions Aspasia twice in his Socratic writings,: in Memorabilia and in Oeconomicus. In both cases her advice is recommended to Critobulus by Socrates. In Memorabilia Socrates quotes Aspasia as saying that the matchmaker should report truthfully on the good characteristics of the man. In Oeconomicus Socrates defers to Aspasia as being the one more knowledgeable about household management and the economic partnership between husband and wife.

Painting of Hector Leroux (1682 - 1740), which portrays Pericles and Aspasia, admiring the gigantic statue of Athena in Phidias' studio.

Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes each named a Socratic dialogue after Aspasia (though neither survives except in fragments). Our major sources for Aeschines Socraticus' Aspasia are Athenaeus, Plutarch, and Cicero. In the dialogue, Socrates recommends that Callias send his son Hipponicus to Aspasia for instructions. When Callias recoils at the notion of a female teacher, Socrates notes that Aspasia had favorably influenced Pericles and, after his death, Lysicles. In a section of the dialogue, preserved in Latin by Cicero, Aspasia figures as a "female Socrates," counseling first Xenophon's wife and then Xenophon (not the famous historian Xenophon) himself about acquiring virtue through self-knowledge. Aeschines presents Aspasia as a teacher and inspirer of excellence, connecting these virtues with her status as hetaira.

Of Antisthenes' Aspasia only two or three quotations are extant. This dialogue contains both aspersions and anecdotes about Pericles. Antisthenes appears to have attacked not only Aspasia, but the entire family of Pericles, including his sons. The philosopher believes that the great statesman chose the life of pleasure over virtue, presenting Aspasia as the personification of a life of self-indulgence.

Modern Literature

Painting of Marie Bouliard, which potrays Aspasia, 1794

Aspasia appears in several significant works of modern literature. Her romantic attachment with Pericles particularly inspired the romanticists of the nineteenth century and the historical novelists of the twentieth century. In 1835 Lydia Child, an American abolitionist, novelist, and journalist published Philothea, a classical romance set in the days of Pericles and Aspasia. This book is regarded as her most successful and elaborate because the female characters, and especially Aspasia, are portrayed with beauty and delicacy. In 1836 Walter Savage Landor, an English writer and poet, published Pericles and Aspasia, a rendering of classical Athens through a series of imaginary letters, which contain numerous poems. The letters are frequently unfaithful to actual history but attempt to capture the spirit of the Age of Pericles. In 1876 Robert Hamerling published his novel Aspasia, a book about the manners and morals of the Age of Pericles and a work of cultural and historical interest. Giacomo Leopardi, an Italian poet influenced by the movement of romanticism, published a group of five poems known as the circle of Aspasia. The poems were inspired by his painful experience of desperate and unrequited love for a woman named Fanny Targioni Tozzetti, whom he called “Aspasia” after the companion of Pericles.

In 1918 novelist and playwright George Cram Cook produced his first full-length play, The Athenian Women, portraying Aspasia leading a strike for peace. American writer Gertrude Atherton in The Immortal Marriage (1927) recreates the story of Pericles and Aspasia, and illustrates the period of the Samian War, the Peloponnesian War and the plague.

Significance

Historically, Aspasia's name is closely associated with Pericles's glory and fame. Her reputation as a philosopher and rhetorician is mostly anecdotal, as are the details about her personal life. Some scholars suggest that Plato derived his portrayal of Aspasia as an intellectual from earlier Greek comedies, and that his remarks that she trained Pericles and Socrates in oratory should not be construed as historical fact. Whether the stories about Aspasia are fact or legend, no other woman achieved the same stature in ancient Greek history or literature. She is regarded by modern scholars as an exceptional person who distinguished herself due to her political influence and intellectual charisma.

Although Athenian women were not accorded the same social and civic status as men, most Greek philosophers regarded women as being equally capable of developing the intellect and cultivating the soul. An ideal society required the participation of both enlightened men and enlightened women. Women did not participate in the public schools, but if a woman was educated at home, as Aspasia was, she was respected for her accomplishments. Scholars have concluded that Aspasia was almost certainly a hetaera because of the freedom and authority with which she moved about in society.

Plutarch (46 – 127 C.E.) accepts her as a significant figure both politically and intellectually and expresses his admiration for a woman who "managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length". The biographer says that Aspasia became so renowned that Cyrus the Younger, who went to war with the King Artaxerxes II of Persia, gave her name to one of his concubines, who before had been called Milto. (After Cyrus had fallen in battle, this woman was carried captive to the King and acquired a great influence with him.) Lucian calls Aspasia a "model of wisdom", "the admired of the admirable Olympian" and lauds "her political knowledge and insight, her shrewdness and penetration.” (Lucian, A Portrait Study, XVII.) A syriac text, according to which Aspasia composed a speech and instructed a man to read it for her in the courts, confirms Aspasia's reputation as a rhetorician. Aspasia is said by Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, to have been "clever with regards to words," a sophist, and to have taught rhetoric. {| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5" | style="text-align: left;" | "Next I have to depict Wisdom; and here I shall have occasion for many models, most of them ancient; one comes, like the lady herself, from Ionia. The artists shall be Aeschines and Socrates his master, most realistic of painters, for their heart was in their work. We could choose no better model of wisdom than Milesian Aspasia, the admired of the admirable 'Olympian'; her political knowledge and insight, her shrewdness and penetration, shall all be transferred to our canvas in their perfect measure. Aspasia, however, is only preserved to us in miniature: our proportions must be those of a colossus." |- | style="text-align: left;" | Lucian, A Portrait-Study, XVII |}

See also

• Ancient philosophy
• Prostitution in Ancient Greece
• Timeline of Ancient Greece

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Primary sources (Greeks and Romans)

• Aristophanes, Acharnians. See original text in Perseus program.
• Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae. Translated by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center.
• Cicero, De Inventione, I. See original text in the Latin Library.
• Diodorus Siculus, Library, XII. See original text in Perseus program.
• Lucian, A Portrait Study. Translated in sacred-texts
• Plato, Menexenus. See original text in Perseus program.
• Plutarch, Pericles. See original text in Perseus program.
• Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, I and III. See original text in Perseus program.
• Xenophon, Memorabilia. See original text in Perseus program.
• Xenophon, Oeconomicus. Transated by H.G. Dakyns.

Secondary sources

• Adams, Henry Gardiner (1857). A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography. Groombridge. 
• Allen, Prudence (1997). "The Pluralists: Aspasia", The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C.E. - A.D. 1250. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0-802-84270-4. 
• Arkins, Brian (1994). Sexuality in Fifth-Century Athens. "Classics Ireland" 1.
• "Aspasia". Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2002).
• Bicknell, Peter J. (1982). Axiochus Alkibiadou, Aspasia and Aspasios. "L'Antiquité Classique" 51 (No.3): 240-250.
• Bolansée, Schepens, Theys, Engels (1989). "Antisthenes of Athens", Die Fragmente Der Griechischen Historiker: A. Biography. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 9-00411-094-1. 
• Margaret, Brose (2005). "Ugo Foscolo and Giacomo Leopardi", A Companion to European Romanticism edited by Michael Ferber. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-40511-039-2. 
• Duyckinck, G.L., Duyckinc, E.A. (1856). Cyclopedia of American Literature. 
• Fornara Charles W., Loren J. Samons II (1991). Athens from Cleisthenes to Pericles. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
• Glenn, Cheryl (1997). "Locating Aspasia on the Rhetorical Map", Listening to Their Voices. Univ of South Carolina Press. ISBN 1-57003-172-X. 
• Glenn, Cheryl (1994). Sex, Lies, and Manuscript: Refiguring Aspasia in the History of Rhetoric. "Composition and Communication" 45 (No.4): 180-199.
• Gomme, Arnold W. (1977). "The Position of Women in Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centurie BC", Essays in Greek History & Literature. Ayer Publishing. ISBN 0-83690-481-8. 
• Anderson, D.D. (2001). "The Origins and Development of the Literature of the Midwest", Dictionary of Midwestern Literature: Volume One: The Authors by Philip A Greasley. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-25333-609-0. 
• Jarratt, Susan, Onq, Rory (1995). "Aspasia: Rhetoric, Gender, and Colonial Ideology", Reclaiming Rhetorica edited by Andrea A. Lunsford. Berkeley: Pittsburgh: University of Pitsburgh Press. ISBN 0-76619-484-1. 
• MacDonald Alden, Raymond (2005). "Walter Savage Landor", Readings in English Prose of the Nineteenth Century. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0-82295-553-9. 
• Henri, Madeleine M. (1995). Prisoner of History. Aspasia of Miletus and her Biographical Tradition. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-195-08712-7. 
• Kagan, Donald (1991). Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy. The Free Press. ISBN 0-684-86395-2. 
• Kagan, Donald (1989). "Athenian Politics on the Eve of the War", The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-801-49556-3. 
• Kahn, Charles H. (1997). "Antisthenes", Plato and the Socratic Dialogue. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-64830-0. 
• Kahn, Charles H. (1994). "Aeschines on Socratic Eros", The Socratic Movement edited by Paul A. Vander Waerdt. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-801-49903-8. 
• Just, Roger (1991). "Personal Relationships", Women in Athenian Law and Life. Routledge (UK). ISBN 0-415-05841-4. 
• Loraux, Nicole (2003). "Aspasie, l'étrangère, l'intellectuelle", La Grèce au Féminin (in French). Belles Lettres. ISBN 2-251-38048-5. 
• McClure, Laura (1999). "The City of Words: Speech in the Athenian Polis", Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-69101-730-1. 
• McGlew, James F. (2002). "Exposing Hypocrisie: Pericles and Cratinus' Dionysalexandros", Citizens on Stage: Comedy and Political Culture in the Athenian Democracy. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-47211-285-6. 
• Monoson, Sara (2002). "Plato's Opposition to the Veneration of Pericles", Plato's Democratic Entanglements. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 0-691-04366-3. 
• Nails, Debra (2000). The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-872-20564-9. 
• Ostwald, M. (1992). "Athens as a Cultural Center", The Cambridge Ancient History edited by David M. Lewis, John Boardman, J. K. Davies, M. Ostwald (Volume V). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-52123-347-X. 
• Paparrigopoulos, Konstantinos (-Karolidis, Pavlos)(1925), History of the Hellenic Nation (Volume Ab). Eleftheroudakis (in Greek).
• Podlecki, A.J. (1997). Perikles and His Circle. Routledge (UK). ISBN 0-415-06794-4. 
• Powell, Anton (1995). "Athens' Pretty Face: Anti-feminine Rhetoric and Fifth-century Controversy over the Parthenon", The Greek World. Routledge (UK). ISBN 0-41506-031-1. 
• Rose, Martha L. (2003). "Demosthenes' Stutter: Overcoming Impairment", The Staff of Oedipus. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-47211-339-9. 
• Rothwell, Kenneth Sprague (1990). "Critical Problems in the Ecclesiazusae", Politics and Persuasion in Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 9-00409-185-8. 
• Smith, William (1855). "Death and Character of Pericles", A History of Greece. R. B. Collins. 
• Southall, Aidan (1999). "Greece and Rome", The City in Time and Space. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78432-8. 
• Stadter, Philip A. (1989). A Commentary on Plutarch's Pericles. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1861-5. 
• Sykoutris, Ioannis (1934). Symposium (Introduction and Comments) -in Greek. Estia. 
• Taylor, A. E. (2001). "Minor Socratic Dialogues: Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Menexenus", Plato: The Man and His Work. Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 0-48641-605-4. 
• Taylor, Joan E. (2004). "Greece and Rome", Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19925-961-5. 
• Wider, Kathleen (1986). Women philosophers in the Ancient Greek World: Donning the Mantle. "Hypatia" 1 (No.1): 21-62.

Further reading

• Atherton, Gertrude (2004). The Immortal Marriage. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 1-41791-559-5. 
• Becq de Fouquières, Louis (1872). Aspasie de Milet (in French). Didier. 
• Hamerling, Louis (1893). Aspasia: a Romance of Art and Love in Ancient Hellas. Geo. Gottsberger Peck. 
• Savage Landor, Walter (2004). Pericles And Aspasia. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0-76618-958-9. 

External links

Biographical Aspasia of Athens. Brainard, Jennifer. Retrieved September 10, 2006. Aspasia. Britannica, 11th Edition. Retrieved September 13, 2006. Aspasia. Encyclopædia Romana. Retrieved September 10, 2006. Aspasia of Miletus - Prisoner of History, by Madeleine Henry. Gill, N.S.. Retrieved September 10, 2006. Aspasia of Miletus. Lendering, Jona. Retrieved September 10, 2006. Aspasia of Miletus. O'Grady, Patricia. Retrieved September 10, 2006.

Miscellaneous Aspasia in Greek Comedy. Gill, N.S.. Retrieved September 10, 2006. Aspasia, the Ancient Philosopher and Teacher of Athens. Gill, N.S.. Retrieved September 10, 2006. Thoughts on Aspasia and Diotima. Ratliff, Clancy. Retrieved September 10, 2006.

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