Aspasia

Aspasia is an ancient woman the modern classroom tends to neglect. Despite not being born a Greek (Aspasia was from Miletus in Asia Minor) she is one of the most famously loved women from Ancient Athens. Aspasia was a well known hetaera, renowned for charming the elite men of the city around 430BC. She is now remembered as being the courtesan who won the heart of Pericles, the acclaimed general from the Golden Age of Athens.

No doubt a bunch of you are wondering what in the world a hetaera is after reading that opening paragraph. To put it extremely simply: a hetaera is an educated “mistress”, more like an escort. These women were usually reserved for the elite, offering men company at dinner parties and social events. Aspasia was by far the most famous of these women that we have on record, however according to Plutarch, Aspasia took her successful business model of how-to-be-a-hetaera from another woman called Thargelia (*). After seeing Thargelia be so successful as a foreigner in Athens, Aspasia decided to replicate her moves in order to also gain the attention of important men.

Clearly this worked considering everyone who was ANYONE knew Aspasia! The icon pops up in two major works: Plutarch’s “Lives” and Plato’s “Menexenus”. Within these two works are also references to additional texts within which Aspasia was referenced, but alas, overtime those have been lost. Both surviving works detail Aspasia as clever primarily, but also as having incredible political expertise due to her educated conversations with the elite politicians of Athens.

In Plato’s “Menexenus”, Socrates claims she was the mastermind behind Pericles’ great speeches. Not only this, but Socrates also claims that Aspasia would go to him for advice relating to each speech, and only after this would she give them to Pericles to read. This is a wonderful little anecdote, suggesting that Aspasia (a hetaera) and Socrates (the greatest western philosopher to have ever lived) were mates! Another point to note in this text is that fact that Aspasia needed no introduction. As the men speak about this phenomenal woman for a few lines, Menexenus interjects “But you mean Aspasia, no doubt” (235e), clarifying the subject for the dialogue’s audience. The idea that this woman was so famous among the elite is astonishing in of itself, but further that she is known for her brains is truly a feat. Menexenus even stresses this to (in an albeit sexist way, but so was the way of the ancient world) saying “Aspasia, but your account, deserves to be congratulated if she is really capable of composing such a speech like that, woman though she is” (249d).

Turning to Plutarch’s writing, the historian focuses on Aspasia’s influence on statesman, Pericles. According to his work “Lives”, Plutarch emphasises just how in love the famous general was with this intelligent hetaera (Pericles, 24). A little later in the same section, we are told that Pericles was so taken by Aspasia that he separated from his wife so that he could be with her. The cutest quote has to be when Plutarch tells us Pericles “used to greet [Aspasia] with a kiss” whenever he’d see her. We need you guys to remember that this was NOT the norm in Ancient Greece — one did not marry someone, or even date them, because they loved the person! To build off that mention of marriage, though: unfortunately Pericles couldn’t legally marry Aspasia. A few years prior, a law had passed which stated that an Athenian citizen was not permitted to marry a non-athenian citizen. A number of people suggest it’s possible that Pericles may have broken the law and married the hetaera in secret, however we have no evidence for this (but we’d like to believe it really did happen because !!!!!!)

The last not we’ll make here is an odd — yet funny — inclusion by Plutarch. In the final paragraph of section twenty four, Plutarch writes “it is said that Aspasia became so famous and well know that even Cyrus (the one who fought the Persian king for the sovereignty of Persia) changed the name of his favourite concubine from Milto to Aspasia”. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how truly admired this woman was.

For more information on Aspasia, you can check out the following sources:
Plato’s Menexenus (we used Perseus.Tufts, a free online source which includes both the original greek and it’s English translation)
Plutarch’s Lives (this text can be found in two separate additions, however can also be read as a single book. It’s up to you, just flip to the chapter in the Greek section on Pericles to find Aspasia).