Self-portrait Marie Bouliard, as Aspasia, 1794.
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][8][9] Hetaerae were professional high-class entertainers, as well as courtesans. 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.[10][11]They were the nearest thing perhaps to liberated women; and Aspasia, who became a vivid figure in Athenian society, was probably an obvious example.[10][12] According to Plutarch, Aspasia was compared to the famous Thargelia, another renowned Ionian hetaera of ancient times.[13]
Being a foreigner and possibly a hetaera, Aspasia was free of the legal restraints that traditionally confined married women to their homes, and thereby was allowed to participate in the public life of the city. She became the mistress of the statesman Pericles in the early 440s. After he divorced his first wife (c. 445 BC), Aspasia began to live with him, although her marital status remains disputed.[γ][14] Their son, Pericles the Younger, must have been born by 440 BC. Aspasia would have to have been quite young, if she were able to bear a child to Lysicles c. 428 BC.[15]
In social circles, Aspasia was noted for her ability as a conversationalist and adviser rather than merely an object of physical beauty.[9]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, Athenian men would bring their wives to hear her converse.[δ][13][16]
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.[35][43] Aeschines presents Aspasia as a teacher and inspirer of excellence, connecting these virtues with her status as hetaira.[44] According to Kahn, every single episode in Aeschines' Aspasia is not only fictitious but incredible.[45]
Of Antisthenes' Aspasia only two or three quotations are extant.[1] This dialogue contains much slander, but also anecdotes pertaining to Pericles' biography.[46] 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.[47] Thus, Aspasia is presented as the personification of the life of sexual indulgence.[44]
Aspasia's name is closely connected with Pericles' glory and fame.[54] 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".[13] 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.[13] Lucian calls Aspasia a "model of wisdom", "the admired of the admirable Olympian" and lauds "her political knowledge and insight, her shrewdness and penetration".[55] 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.[56] Aspasia is said by the Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, to have been "clever with regards to words," a sophist, and to have taught rhetoric.[57]
"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 Pennsylvania State University, argue that Aspasia 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.[58] Some scholars believe that Aspasia opened an academy for young women of good families or even invented the Socratic method.[58][59] However, Robert W. Wallace, Professor of classics at Northwestern University, underscores 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.[5] 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".[60] 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 hetaera.[9] According to Sr. Prudence Allen, a philosopher and seminary professor, Aspasia moved the potential of women to become philosophers one step forward from the poetic inspirations of Sappho.[36]
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