Born: 470 BC (circa), Turkey
Died: 400 BC (circa)
Country most active: Greece
Also known as: Ἀσπασία
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Aspasia, a Milesian woman who fixed her residence at Athens, during the “golden age” of Greece, about 450 B.C. By her great eloquence, political and literary ability and personal fascination, she at once obtained a commanding position among the leaders of the state, and gained the affections of Pericles, the ruler of Athens, so far that he separated from his wife and made Aspasia his consort in private life as well as in political affairs. The fact that the laws of Athens conferred no rights upon foreign women, and allowed no legitimate marriage with them, has given rise to the impression that Aspasia was a courtesan. The many enemies of Pericles, especially the satirists of the time, also conveyed this idea by their attacks, but it seems to have been without foundation; she was held in universal esteem, and her union with Pericles was as close as the Athenian law allowed, and continued through his life. She is said to have instructed Pericles in oratory, and it is certain that she assisted him greatly in the government, and that her own eloquence was remarkable. Socrates and Phidias were her friends; her house was the resort of the leading statesmen and philosophers of Athens, and in many of their works her great abilities are celebrated.
After the death of Pericles, she attached herself to an Athenian named Lysicles, whom she instructed in oratory, and by her influence raised in position. Her son by Pericles took his father’s name, being legitimated by a popular decree, and became a general of high rank.
It has been said that Aspasia belonged to the hetaira, a class of women, who have been variously described by learned writers. In some respects the position of the ancient Greek hetaira or “free woman,” was analogous to that of the Japanese geisha. For the Greeks, the name hetaira meant friend or companion, and the woman to whom the name was applied held an honorable position. The hetaira “were almost the only Greek women,” says Donaldson, “who exhibited what was best and noblest in women’s nature.” This fact renders it more intelligible why a woman of such intellectual distinction as Aspasia should have been a hetaira. Gomperz in Greek Thinkers, says: “It would be exceedingly strange if three authors—Plato, Xenophon and Aeschines—had agreed in fictitiously enduing the companion of Pericles with what we might very reasonably have expected her to possess —a highly cultivated mind and intellectual influence.” Havelock Ellis adds: “It is even possible that the movement for woman’s right which, as we dimly divine through the pages of Aristophanes, took place in Athens in the fourth century B.C., was led by hetaira.” According to Ivo Bruns “the most certain information which we possess concerning Aspasia bears a strong resemblance to the picture which Euripides and Aristophanes present to us of the leaders of the woman movement.” It may perhaps be thought by some that this movement represented on a higher plane that spirit of revolt and aspiration, which Simmel finds to mark the intellectual and artistic activity of those who are unclassed or dubiously classed in the social hierarchy. Ninon de I’Endos was not strictly a courtesan, but she was a pioneer in the assertion of woman’s rights. As Schurtz has put it: “The cheerful, skillful and artistically accomplished hetaira frequently stands as an ideal figure in opposition to the intellectually uncultivated wife banished to the interior of the house. The Japanese geishas, Chinese flower-girls, and Indian bayaderas, all show some not unnoble features, the breath of a free artistic existence.” Hamerling’s semi-historical romance, “Aspasia,” gives us an interesting picture of Athenian life in her time.
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
The most famous of Greek women whose genius inspired the admiration of the eminent philosophers of her epoch. Aspasia possessed the highest culture of her day. Pericles, the ruler of the Athenians during the golden age of Greek learning, fell in love with her; popular gossip gave to her the credit for the glory of Pericles’ reign. Those possessing the best intellects of Athens met at her house. It is said that she trained Socrates in the art of eloquence and that in exchange, he taught her philosophy. According to Plato, pupil of Socrates, the renowned funeral oration given by Pericles in memory of the fallen warrior, during the Peloponnesian war, was inspired by Aspasia. Her renown was so great that a medal of Hermes with her image was coined in her honor, the greatest testimony conferred on illustrious men. Once when she was accused by her enemies, of impiety, Pericles, bathed in tears, pleaded with the judges for her acquittal. The innovation which brought matrons as well as men to listen to her conversation was the first instance in Athens whereby the custom of restraint in the education of women was broken.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
Of Miletus, and daughter of Axiochus, lived principally at Athens. She gained the affections of Pericles, who, according to Plutarch divorced his first wife, with her own consent, in order to marry Aspasia. We are told little of her beauty, but much of her mental powers and cultivation. In eloquence, she surpassed all her contemporaries. She was the friend, and, according to Plato, the instructress of Socrates, who gives her the high praise of “having made many good orators, and one eminent over all the Greeks, Pericles, the son of Xanthippus.” On this and similar authority we learn, that Pericles was indebted to Aspasia for much of his high mental cultivation. The Athenians used often to bring their wives to hear her converse, notwithstanding what was said of her immoral life. She is accused of having excited, from motives of personal resentment, the war of Peloponnesus; yet, calamitous as that conflict proved to Greece, Aspasia inflicted on the country still more incurable evils. Her example and instructions formed a school at Athens, by which her dangerous profession was reduced to a system.
Aspasia, on occasion of the check of the Athenian army, came herself into the assembly of the people, and pronounced an oration, inciting them to rally and redeem their cause; her speech was followed to be far more eloquent than those of Gorgias, and other famous orators who spoke on the same conjuncture.
Hermippus, a comic poet, prosecuted Aspasia for impiety, which seems to have consisted in disputing the existence of their imaginary gods, and introducing new opinions about celestial appearances. But she was acquitted, though contrary to the law, by means of Pericles, who is said to have shed tears in his application for mercy in her behalf.
It should not be omitted that some modern writers have maintained opinions on the life of Aspasia very different from those popularly entertained. They say, the woman whom Socrates respected, the woman who for years was the bosom counsellor of so eminent a man as Pericles, never could have been devoid of personal purity; vice palls; vice may please by charms of exterior, but never could keep up mental enthusiasm such as Aspasia certainly excited and retained with Pericles. They suggest that aspersions were thrown upon her character by Aristophanes, to wound Pericles through her bosom but that the friend, the adviser, the sympathize companion of the man who has been called Princeps Gracia, was not a courtezan.
Pericles died at the age of seventy, B. C. 429; and after this we hear nothing of Aspasia, excepting that she transferred her affections to Lysicles, a grazier, who, in consequence of her influence, became, for a time, one of the leading men in Athens.