Aspasia
- The accomplished friend of Socrates, afterwards wife of Pericles, Cic. Inv. 1, 31, 51; Quint. 5, 11, 27.—
- II The mistress of the younger Cyrus, Just. 10, 2.
(Ἀσπασία).
1. The celebrated Milesian, daughter of Axiochus, came to reside at Athens, and there gained and fixed the affections of Pericles, not more by her beauty than by her high mental accomplishments. With his wife. who was a lady of rank, and by whom he had two sons, he seems to have lived unhappily; and, having parted from her by mutual consent, he attached himself to Aspasia during the rest of his life as closely as was allowed by the law, which forbade marriage with a foreign woman under severe penalties. (Plut. Per. 24; Demosth. c. Neaer. p. 1350.) Nor can there be any doubt that she acquired over him a great ascendancy; though this perhaps comes before us in an exaggerated shape in the statements which ascribe to her influence the war with Samos on behalf of Miletus in B. C. 440, as well as the Peloponnesian war itself. (Plut. Peric. l.c.; Aristoph. Ach. 497, &c.; Schol. ad loc.; comp. Aristoph. Peace 587, &c.; Thuc. 1.115.) The connexion, indeed, of Pericles with Aspasia appears to have been a favourite subject of attack in Athenian comedy (Aristoph. Acharn. l.c.; Plut. Per. 24; Schol. ad Plat. Menex. p. 235), as also with certain writers of philosophical dialogues, between whom and the comic poets, in respect of their abusive propensities, Athenaeus remarks a strong family likeness. (Athen. 5.220; Casaub. ad loc.) Nor was their bitterness satisfied with the vent of satire; for it was Hermippus, the comic poet, who brought against Aspasia the double charge of impiety and of infamously pandering to the vices of Pericles; and it required all the personal influence of the latter with the people, and his most earnest entreaties and tears, to procure her acquittal. (Plut. Per. 32; Athen. 13.589e.; comp. Thirlwall's Greece, vol. iii. p. 87, &c., and Append. ii.) The house of Aspasia was the great centre of the highest literary and philosophical society of Athens, nor was the seclusion of the Athenian matrons so strictly preserved, but that many even of them resorted thither with their husbands for the pleasure and improvement of her conversation (Plut. Per. 24); so that the intellectual influence which she ex ercised was undoubtedly considerable, even though we reject the story of her being the preceptress of Socrates, on the probable ground of the irony of those passages in which such statement is made (Plat. Menex. pp. 235, 249; Xen. Occon. 3.14, Memor. 2.6.36; Herm. de Soc. magist. et disc. juren.; Schleiennacher's Introd. to the Menexenus); for Plato certainly was no approver of the administration of Pericles (Gorg. p. 515d. &c.), and thought perhaps that the refinement introduced by Aspasia had only added a new temptation to the licentiousness from which it was not disconnected. (Athen. 13.569f.) On the death of Pericles, Aspasia is said to have attached herself to one Lysicles, a dealer in cattle, and to have made him by her instructions a first-rate orator. (Aesch. apud Plut. Peric. 24; Schol. ad Plat. Menex. p. 235.) For an amusing account of a sophistical argument ascribed to her by Aeschines the philosopher, see Cic. de Inxent. 1.31; Quintil. Inst. Orat. 5.11. The son of Pericles by Aspasia was legitimated by a special decree of the people, and took his father's name. (Plut. Per. 37.) He was one of the six generals who were put to death after the victory at Arginusae. (Comp. Jacobs, Verm. Schriften, vol. iv. pp. 349-397.)
2. A Phocaean, daughter of Hermotimus, was carried away from her country to the seraglio of Cyrus the Younger, who so admired, not her beauty only, but her superior qualities of mind and character, that he made her his favourite wife, giving her the name of "wise." She is said to have frequently aided him with her advice, the adoption of which he never regretted; and they lived together with great mutual affection till the death of the prince at the battle of Cunaxa. She then fell into the hands of Artaxerxes, and became his wife. (Plut. Per. 24, Artax. 26; Ael. V. H. xii. l ; Xen. Anab. 1.10.2.) When Dareius, son of Artaxerxes, was appointed successor to the throne, he asked his father to surrender Aspasia to him. The request, it seems, could not be refused, as coming from the king elect; Artaxerxes, therefore, gave her up, on finding that she herself consented to the transfer; but he soon after took her away again, and made her priestess of a temple at Ecbatana, where strict celibacy was requisite; and this gave rise to that conspiracy of Dareius against his father, which was detected, and cost him his life. (Plut. Art. 27_29; Just. 10.2.) Her name is said to have been "Milto," till Cyrus called her "Aspasia " after the mistress of Pericles (Plut. Per. 24; Athen. 13.576d.); but "Milto " itself seems to have been a name expressive of the beauty of her complexion. (Ael V. N. xii. l, where we are favoured with a minute description of her appearance.) [E.E]
(Ἀσπασία). (1) A celebrated woman, a native of Miletus. She came as an adventuress to Athens, in the time of Pericles, and, by the combined charms of her person, manners, and conversation, completely won the affection and esteem of that distinguished statesman. Her station had freed her from the restraints which custom laid on the education of the Athenian matron, and she had enriched her mind with accomplishments which were rare even among men. Her acquaintance with Pericles seems to have begun while he was still united to a lady of high birth, and we can hardly doubt that it was Aspasia who first disturbed this union, although it is said to have been dissolved by mutual consent. But after parting from his wife, who had borne him two sons, Pericles attached himself to Aspasia by the most intimate relation which the laws permitted him to contract with a foreign woman; and she acquired an ascendency over him which soon became notorious, and furnished the comic poets with an inexhaustible fund of ridicule and his enemies with a ground for serious charges. The Samian War was ascribed to her interposition on behalf of her birthplace, and rumours were set afloat which represented her as ministering to the vices of Pericles by the most odious and degrading of offices. There was, perhaps, as little foundation for this report as for a similar one in which Phidias was implicated ( Pericl. 13); though among all the imputations brought against Pericles, this is that which it is the most difficult clearly to refute. But we are inclined to believe that it may have arisen from the peculiar nature of Aspasia's private circles, which, with a bold neglect of established usage, were composed not only of the most intelligent and accomplished men to be found at Athens, but also of matrons, who, it is said, were brought by their husbands to listen to her conversation. This must have been highly instructive as well as brilliant, since Plato did not hesitate to describe her as the preceptress of Socrates, and to assert in the Menexenus that she both formed the rhetoric of Pericles and composed one of his most admired harangues, the celebrated funeral oration. The innovation, which drew women of free birth and good standing into her company for such a purpose, must, even where the truth was understood, have surprised and offended many, and it was liable to the grossest misconstruction. And if her female friends were sometimes seen watching the progress of the works of Phidias, it was easy, through his intimacy with Pericles, to connect this fact with a calumny of the same kind.
There was another rumour still more dangerous, which grew out of the character of the persons who were admitted to the society of Pericles and Aspasia. No persons were more welcome at the house of Pericles than such as were distinguished by philosophical studies, and especially by the profession of new philosophical tenets. The mere presence of Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, and other celebrated men, who were known to hold doctrines very remote from the religious conceptions of the vulgar, was sufficient to make a circle in which they were familiar pass for a school of impiety. Such were the materials out of which the comic poet Hermippus formed a criminal prosecution against Aspasia. His indictment included two heads: an offence against religion, and that of corrupting Athenian women to gratify the passions of Pericles. The danger was averted; but it seems that Pericles, who pleaded her cause, found need of his most strenuous exertions to save Aspasia, and that he even descended, in her behalf, to tears and entreaties, which no similar emergency of his own could ever draw from him.
After the death of Pericles, Aspasia attached herself to a young man of obscure birth, named Lysicles, who rose through her influence in moulding his character to some of the highest employments in the Republic. (See Plut. Pericl.; Xen. Mem. ii. 6.)
(2) Daughter of Hermotimus, and a native of Phocaea in Asia Minor. She was so remarkable for her beauty that a satrap of Persia carried her off and made her a present to Cyrus the Younger. Her modest deportment soon won the affections of the prince, who lived with her as with a lawful wife. Her name at first was Milto (vermilion), which had been given her in early life on account of the brilliancy of her complexion. Cyrus, however, changed it to Aspasia, calling her thus after the mistress of Pericles. After the death of the prince she fell into the hands of Artaxerxes, who for a long time vainly sought to gain her affections. She only yielded at last to his suit through absolute necessity. When the monarch declared his son Darius his successor, the latter, as it was customary in Persia for an heir to ask a favour of him who had declared him such, requested Aspasia of his father. Aspasia was accordingly sent for, and, contrary to the king's expectation, made choice of Darius. Artaxerxes therefore gave her up, in accordance with established custom, but soon took her away again, and made her a priestess of Artemis at Ecbatana, or of the goddess whom the Persians called Anaïtis. This station required her to pass the rest of her days in chastity ( Artax.). Justin, however, says (x. 1) that Artaxerxes made her one of the priestesses of the sun.
Aspasia was the mistress of Pericles, the leader of Athens during the Classical Age. She was a hetaira, a trained and paid companion who accompanied upper-class men to the symposiums. According to some ancient sources she was skilled in rhetoric and took part in the intellectual discussions of the leading men in Athens, including Socrates. As the mistress of Pericles, she suffered attacks from his political enemies. Aspasia and Pericles had one son, who was later legitimized. After the death of Pericles she married Lysicles a man of humble birth who became a successful politician in Athens through her assistance. Factual information about Aspasia is difficult to locate in the ancient sources. Playwrights, biographers and other ancient authors use Aspasia to illustrate their views on philosophy, rhetoric and Pericles.
FamilyModern scholars agree that the basic facts of Aspasia's life as recorded by Diodoros the Athenian _lpar;FGrHist 372 F 40_rpar;, Plutarch _lpar;Plut. Per. 24.3_rpar; and the lexicographers are correct. She was born in the city of Miletus between 460-455 B.C., the daughter of Axiochus. Miletus, part of the Athenian empire, was one of the leading cities in Ionia, an area of Greek settlement located along the coast of Asia Minor.
It was probably in Ionia, before she left for Athens, that Aspasia was educated. Women in that part of the Greek world were generally given more of an education than women in Athens. As a hetaira she would have been trained in the art of conversation and of musical entertainment including singing, dancing and playing instruments.
BiographyArriving in Athens as a free immigrant around 445 B.C., Aspasia worked as a hetaira. In fact Aspasia, which meant “Gladly Welcomed,” was probably her professional name. Hetairai were much more than just high-class prostitutes. According to ancient literary sources and scenes from vase paintings, many hetairai were intelligent, beautiful, well-dressed and had fewer restrictions on their lives than the respectable, married women in Athens _lpar;Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae583f._rpar;. This description would also apply to Aspasia. As a hetaira, however, she would not have had financial security or any legal or family protection.
As the paid companion of aristocratic men Aspasia attended symposiums, drinking parties combined with political and philosophical discourse. At the symposiums she met the most influential and powerful men in Athens, including Pericles. Sometime around 445 B.C. Aspasia began to live with Pericles, who at that time was the leader of Athens. He had been divorced from his wife for five years, with whom he had two sons. According to Plutarch, it was an amiable divorce because the marriage was not a happy one _lpar;Plut. Per. 24.5_rpar;.
Plutarch relates more information about Aspasia than any other ancient author. Unfortunately, Plutarch's Livesare full of distortions and historical inaccuracies. His purpose in the Liveswas to exemplify the virtues and vices of great men, not to write history. In respect to Aspasia and Pericles he states that Pericles valued Aspasia's intelligence and political insight, but he emphasizes that Pericles' feelings for her were primarily erotic. This may be an attempt on Plutarch's part to remove the stigma from Pericles of having been overly influenced by a woman.
Plutarch describes the relationship between Aspasia and Pericles as a very happy one. He states that she was so loved by Pericles that he kissed her everyday when he left the house and again when he returned _lpar;Plut. Per. 24_rpar;. Plutarch portrays Aspasia as the influential courtesan. He writes that Aspasia was trying to emulate Thargelia, a famous Milesian courtesan whose lovers were the most powerful men in Greece. Using her influence over these men Thargelia helped win Thessaly over to the Persians at the time of Xerxes' invasion.
Plutarch blames Aspasia for Pericles' decision to start the war against Samos, a wealthy and powerful member of the empire. The Milesians and the Samians were involved in a border dispute. The Samians refused to submit the conflict to Athenian arbitration. Supposedly, Aspasia pressured Pericles to take military action against Samos _lpar;Plut. Per. 25.1_rpar;. Although it would have been natural for Aspasia to take the side of her native city, she and Pericles both must have realized that the loss of Samos to the empire would have meant the rapid end of Athenian domination of the Aegean.
The exact status of Aspasia's relationship with Pericles and her position in Pericles' household is disputed. While some say that she was his a παλλακή_lpar;concubine_rpar;, Plutarch _lpar;Plut. Per. 24_rpar; seems to imply, and Diodorus the Athenian _lpar;FGrHist 372 F 40_rpar; says, that she was his ἄκοιτις. She and Pericles had one son also named Pericles. As the mistress of Pericles' household and hostess to his friends and supporters, Aspasia participated in discussions revolving around politics and philosophy with the leading men of the Athenian empire. According to several ancient authors, Socrates respected her opinions _lpar;Plut. Per. 24.3; Xen. Ec. 3.15; Cicero, De Inventione31.51_rpar;. As a pallake she would have been outside of the legal, traditional role of an Athenian wife. Freed from the social restraints that tied married women to their homes and restricted their behavior, Aspasia was able to participate more freely in public life.
Strong evidence that Aspasia's role in Athens went beyond that of mistress to Pericles is given by Plato in the Menexenus. In this dialogue Plato has Socrates recite a funeral oration composed by Aspasia that glorifies the Athenians and their history. The Menexenusis a humorous vehicle for Plato to make a serious, but negative comment on rhetoric and popular opinion in Athens. Everything in Aspasia's speech is selected, arranged and stated by Plato in order to produce the greatest possible irony. By satirizing a speech “written” by Aspasia, Plato acknowledges her role as a leader of rhetoric in the Greek Classical Age.
In Cicero's book on rhetoric he uses as an example of the Socratic method a dialogue attributed to Aspasia by Aeschines a student of Socrates. In this dialogue Aspasia skillfully proves to a husband and wife that neither one of them will ever be truly happy with the other because they each desire the ideal spouse. Aeschines and another student of Socrates, Antisthenes, both wrote dialogues titled Aspasia. Unfortunately, only fragments of these works survive. _lpar;Diogenes Laertius, Antisthenes 6.16._rpar;
Several ancient authors state that Aspasia herself operated a house of courtesans and trained young women in the necessary skills _lpar;Plut. Per. 24.3_rpar;. Aristophanes and others refer to “Aspasia's whores” _lpar;Aristoph. Ach. 527_rpar;. Although as Pericles' pallake she was taken care of financially, Aspasia may have been preparing for her future after the death of Pericles. According to Plutarch, she was known in Athens as a teacher of rhetoric. Perhaps these women were her pupils _lpar;Plut. Per. 34_rpar;. Aspasia's hetairai would have had as patrons the elite men of Athens, especially the supporters of Pericles.
Around 438 B.C. Pericles' political enemies began attacking those close to him in court and eventually brought charges against Pericles himself. Soon Aspasia became a target. She was brought to trial on charges of impiety and of procuring free women. She was acquitted thanks to a passionate and tearful defense by Pericles _lpar;Plut. Per. 32.1-3_rpar;. Although her political wisdom was valuable to Pericles, not having an Athenian citizen as a legal wife, but rather living with a foreign hetaira in an unofficial marriage may have been a political liability for him.
In the contemporary comedy The Acharnians, Aristophanes parodies the imputations that Aspasia had undue influence on Pericles' political decisions. One of his characters blames the start of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C. on the abduction of two of Aspasia's hetairai _lpar;Aristoph. Ach. 527-530_rpar;. The joke worked because the audience knew that Aspasia had some influence on Pericles, but not enough to start a war.
The plague in Athens in 430 B.C. killed both of Pericles' sons by his first wife. This led him to ask for an exemption from the citizenship law, which he himself had enacted, for his illegimate son by Aspasia. The citizenship law decreed that only persons whose father and mother were both Athenians could be legal citizens. The people of Athens agreed to Pericles' request. His son was legitimized and made a citizen of Athens. He later became a general, but was executed in 406 B.C.
In 429 B.C. Pericles died from the plague. A year later Aspasia became involved with a sheep seller named Lysicles in another unofficial marriage. He was an uneducated man of humble birth who rose to prominence thanks to her guidance. She taught him how to speak in public and gave him the benefit of her valuable insights and personal contacts in Athenian politics _lpar;Plut. Per. 24.6; Scholia to Plato, Menexenus235E_rpar;. He was one of the new type of political leaders who came to prominence after the death of Pericles. This was probably the same group who had led the earlier attacks against Pericles and his friends, including Aspasia herself. Questions remain regarding Aspasia's decision to marry so quickly after Pericles' death. She might have been in need of a protector from Pericles' enemies. The selection of another politician as her husband might also suggest a desire to remain involved in the politics of Athens.
There is no information about Aspasia's life after this point. Although the actual extent of her influence on Athenian politics and society during Athens' most glorious period will never be certain, she did become one of the few women in the ancient Greek world to be noted and remembered. She became so famous that Cyrus, a prince of Persia, Athens' most hated enemy, gave the name Aspasia to his favorite concubine. Through the succeeding centuries ancient authors, including playwrights and biographers, used Aspasia as a well-known historical figure to illustrate their views on philosophy, politics, rhetoric, Pericles and Socrates.
The primary sources give little information about Aspasia. Plutarch relates more than the other ancient authors, but he seems almost wholly dependent on Athenian comedy and stories from the Socratic circle for his information, all of which is difficult to verify. The secondary sources tend to discuss Aspasia in relation to Pericles or Athenian politics and society.
Primary Aristophanes, The Acharnians. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae. Cicero, De Inventione. Diodoros, no. 372 F 40, in Jacoby, F. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker.Berlin and Leyden, 1923. Diogenes Laertius, Antisthenes. Harpocration, s.v. Ἀσπασία. Plato, Menexenus. Plutarch, Life of Pericles. Scholia to Plato, Menexenus. Xenophon, Economics. Secondary Bloedow, E. “Aspasia and the Mystery of the Menexenos.”, Wiener Studien.NF9, 1975, p.32-48. Bury, J. B. and Meiggs, R. A History of Greece.NY: St. Martin's, 1975. Cantarella, Eva. Pandora's Daughters. J. Hopkins Univ. Press, 1981. Davies, John. Athenian Propertied Families, 600-300 B.C.Oxford, 1971. Der Kleine Pauly.Ziegler, Konrat and Sontheimer, Walther, eds. . Stuttgart, 1964. Frost, F. “Pericles, Thucydides, son of Melesias, and Athenian Politics before the War”, Historia.1964, p.385-399. Gomme, A. “The Position of Women in Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.,” Classical Philology.20 _lpar;1925_rpar;: p.1-25. Reprinted in Gomme, A. Essays in Greek History and Literature. p.89-115. Oxford: Blackwell, 1937. Kagan, D. Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.Cornell Univ. Press, 1969. Keuls, Eva. The Reign of the Phallus.NY: Harper & Row, 1985. Lefkowitz, M. and Fant, M. Women's Life in Greece and Rome.Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1982. Oxford Classical Dictionary. N.G.L. Hammond and H.H. Scullard, eds. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1970. Pomeroy, Sarah. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves.NY: Schocken, 1975. ________ . “Selected Bibliography on Women in Antiquity,” Arethusa. v.6 no.1 Spring 1973. Real-Encyclopadie: Der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft.Pauly and Wissowa, eds. Richter, Donald. “The Position of Women in Classical Athens.” Classical Journal.67, 1971, p.1-8. Stadter, Philip A. A Commentary on Plutarch's Pericles.Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1989. Ste. Croix, G.E.M. de. Origins of the Peloponnesian War.Cornell Univ. Press, 1972. Elizabeth Lynne Beavers