Aspasia of Miletus

Greek hetaera

• Born: c. 475 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Miletus, Asia Minor (now in Turkey)
• Died: After 428 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Probably Athens, Greece

Aspasia’s role as companion to the Athenian statesman Pericles made her the target of contemporary abuse and criticism. Her reputation for skill in rhetoric made her a philosophic and historical ideal of the independent, educated, influential woman.

Early Life

Aspasia (as-PAY-shih-uh) was born in the ancient Greek city of Miletus. Her father was named Axiochus; her mother’s name is unknown. Located on the southwest coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Miletus enjoyed a reputation for wealth based on extensive seaborne trade and for philosophic inquiry into the nature of the universe.

The city suffered severely in a Persian attack of 494 b.c.e. It is therefore not surprising that Miletus in 479 joined the Athenian-led league against Persia. The political and military relationship of Miletus with Athens was, however, problematic. For some years after 450, an Athenian garrison occupied the city, and toward the end (after 411) of the long-term war of Athens with Sparta, Miletus was suspected of collusion with Athens’s enemies. Nevertheless, during this same period, several Milesians left their home city to achieve prominence in Athens. Those emigrants included the city planner Hippodamus, the poet and musician Timotheus, and the most famous woman of fifth century Athens, Aspasia.

Life’s Work

The surviving ancient sources for fifth century Athenian history do not permit a connected biography of Aspasia. The most reliable sources are a few notices in contemporary Athenian comic literature and several references to Aspasia by Socrates’ pupils (including Plato). Many details are offered by the Greek biographer Plutarch in his life of Pericles in Bioi paralleloi (c. 105-115 c.e.; Parallel Lives, 1579), but that brief account was written more than five hundred years after Aspasia’s lifetime.

Aspasia must have come from Miletus to Athens before c. 450 b.c.e. She first appears in the historical record about 445, when the prominent Athenian politician and military leader Pericles divorced—under, it was asserted, amicable circumstances—the mother of his two sons. Soon thereafter, Pericles began living and appearing in public with Aspasia. Ancient sources consistently identify her as a hetaera, a Greek term literally meaning “female companion” and used of women (often of slave or freedwoman status and usually of foreign origin) who were sexual, social, and occasionally intellectual nonmarital companions of prominent Athenian men.

Because of her status as a foreign-born, intelligent, articulate companion of Pericles, Aspasia was, throughout Pericles’ later political career, consistently attacked as a malign influence on his public policies and his political and military leadership. She was, for example, viewed by Pericles’ enemies as responsible for his leadership in a war Athens fought with the island of Samos, a traditional rival of Miletus. The Athenian comic poet Aristophanes, in his play Acharnēs (425 b.c.e.; The Acharnians, 1812), which amusingly, but quite seriously, expressed the Athenian longing for a peaceful resolution to military conflicts, represented Aspasia as partially responsible for provoking the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Another Athenian comic poet, Aristophanes’ peer Cratinus, referred to Aspasia on the stage as nothing but a shameless prostitute who influenced Pericles with her sex. A third Athenian comedian, Hermippus, also abused Aspasia publicly and was said to have prosecuted her for impiety in an Athenian court; Pericles, in turn, reportedly offered in court an emotional, tearful defense of his mistress. These legal episodes, however, are almost certainly apocryphal, prompted by later generations’ overly literal readings of Hermippus’s comedies.

All these accusations simply reflect the perceived influence of a woman of independent judgment, education, intelligence, and resourcefulness. She may well have been, as were other hetaerae, the owner and operator of a brothel. She was certainly Pericles’ mistress, but other prominent Athenian men of the time also enjoyed relationships with similar “companions.” For example, Pericles’ political opponent, the great Cimon—whose own sister, Elpinice, had once been the object of Pericles’ attention—reportedly had liaisons with two hetaerae. In a later generation, the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates was reported to have had a similar woman companion.

More significant than the political abuse she attracted as Pericles’ partner is the strong tradition that Aspasia was skilled at oratorical composition, instruction, and philosophic conversation. Pericles is recorded as praising her wisdom and sense of politics. Thus, several ancient authorities imply or allege that Aspasia advised Pericles on his acclaimed public speeches (including the famous funeral oration of 430, reported in the works of Thucydides), and several sources state that she participated in philosophic argument with Socrates.

Aspasia had a son by Pericles. The son’s irregular status had been defined by Pericles’ own law denying Athenian citizenship to anyone who did not have two Athenian citizens as parents. Xanthippus, Pericles’ eldest son, with whom he was said to have had a tense relationship, died in the great plague that struck Athens in 429. Before Pericles’ death later that year, therefore, the Athenian democracy bestowed a special exemption so that his son born of Aspasia could become an Athenian citizen. Pericles the Younger, as he was called, grew to maturity and served the Athenian democracy as a general at the naval victory of Arginusae in 406 b.c.e. Soon thereafter, however, he was among the generals executed by the Athenians for having failed to rescue naval crews after the battle.

After Pericles’ death, Aspasia virtually disappears from the historical record. A single reference mentions that she became the companion of another rising politician, a man named Lysicles, who died in 428 b.c.e.

Significance

In his philosophic dialogue Menexenos (Menexenus, 1804), written 388-368 b.c.e. and therefore after the life and prominence of its characters, Plato portrayed Socrates as praising Aspasia’s literary and oratorical skills. Indeed, Plato presented Socrates as reciting a brief funeral oration claimed as Aspasia’s composition. Plato’s depiction of Aspasia in this dialogue is sarcastic—Aspasia is said to have composed speeches well, for a woman—and typical. Plato manifestly enjoyed pretending that some aspects of his master Socrates’ knowledge were derived from sources other Athenians would have thought unlikely. Thus, in his dialogue Symposion (388-368 b.c.e.; Symposium, 1701), Plato asserted that Socrates learned the philosophic basis for and logical consequences of love from Diotima, a probably fictitious woman identified as coming from a rural Greek setting. Plato’s mention of Aspasia, and the rhetorical exercise he attributed to her—along with the tradition about Aspasia maintained by other contemporaries in the circle of Socrates—turned her memory into a rhetorical commonplace: She became the ideal philosophic woman, one who could influence statesmen and converse on equal terms with philosophers.

This process of idealization began with Socrates’ students Antisthenes and Aeschines, both of whom wrote philosophic dialogues titled “Aspasia.” The process continued in Greek philosophical and rhetorical schools down through the fourth century. Aspasia’s likeness adorned Roman gardens; much later, in the nineteenth century, she became the idealized figure of an educated ancient Greek woman and was represented in numerous academic paintings and historical novels. More recently, she became a symbol of independence for the North American feminist movement; for example, Aspasia is prominently depicted in artist Judy Chicago’s multimedia work The Dinner Party (1979).

Bibliography

De Ste. Croix, G. E. M. The Origins of the Peloponnesian War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972. A scholarly, detailed, and convincing discussion of the issues that led to the Peloponnesian War. The policies and personality of Pericles are treated prominently throughout. The accusations made against Aspasia regarding her influence on Pericles are discussed in pages 235-243.

Dover, K. J. “The Freedom of the Intellectual in Greek Society.” In Greeks and Their Legacy. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1988. A critical examination of the tradition of Aspasia’s trial for impiety. Pays full attention to social context and to the ancient evidence.

Ehrenberg, Victor. The People of Aristophanes. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1974. A classic introduction to Athenian society and social history in the age of Aspasia and Pericles. Ehrenberg provides (especially in pages 177-181) a reliable, lively treatment of what is known of the hetaera in Athenian society, and he discusses throughout what the Greek comic dramatists of fifth century Athens can—and cannot—tell modern readers about the realities of Greek life.

Henry, Madeleine M. Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. The first several chapters provide a scholarly account of Aspasia, with a critical review of the evidence for reconstructing her biography. The remainder of the book is an entertaining introduction to how Aspasia has been represented by primarily male interpreters in the literary, philosophic, and pictorial traditions of Western European society.

Kebric, Robert B. Greek People. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield, 1989. A reliable account of classical Greek history presented in terms of biographical portraits. Chapter 6 offers a highly readable but very traditional perception of Aspasia as a participant in fifth century aristocratic Athenian society.

Richter, G. M. A. The Portraits of the Greeks. Revised by R. R. R. Smith. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984. Pages 99-100 show a Roman portrait of Aspasia. The accompanying discussion is an important supplement to Henry’s work.

Stadter, Philip A. Commentary on Plutarch’s Pericles. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Stadter’s commentary is a good introduction to the historical and historiographic issues surrounding Plutarch’s presentation of Pericles and Aspasia.