In the narratives about Ancient Greece, the dominant roles are played by men - politicians, philosophers, military commanders, and artists. However, there were also some forceful female figures, such as Gorgo the Queen of Sparta, and Diotima of Mantinea. According to Herodotus, Gorgo started to play in the international political arena at the tender age of eight when she stopped her father, King Cleomenes I, from taking the bribe from Aristagoras of Miletus. Diotima, on the other hand, was a prophetess and philosopher who played a significant role in Plato's Symposium, where her suggestions gave the origins of the idea of Platonic love. Occasionally, the role of women in Ancient Greece was less visible but still critical, as can be seen in the case of Aspasia of Miletus, the companion of the famous Athenian statesman, Pericles. In fact, Aspasia's role provides crucial insight to the understanding of the position of women in Ancient Greece. As Madeleine M. Henry stated poignantly, "To ask questions about Aspasia's life is to ask questions about half of humanity."

Aspasia, born around 470 BCE, is a fascinating figure but unfortunately not much is known about her earliest years in Miletus. Despite her apparent fame that inspired some of the most famous novelists and poets of the last centuries, such as the romanticists of the 19th century and the historical novelists of the 20th century, not that much is certain about her life. As the historian Jona Lendering put it: "Although the philosopher Aeschines, a pupil of Socrates, wrote a dialogue that was titled Aspasia (now lost), no author has ever written about Aspasia herself. If she is mentioned, it's because she was the wife of Pericles. She is, in fact, a historical unperson." This harsh judgement does not offer much hope for discovering the secrets of Aspasia, but hopefully some relevant traces of her activities can be found, making her a historical person back again.

The Milesian origins of Aspasia not only inspired ancient authors but also were the motivation for many modern scholars with the aim of uncovering some details of her youth and her arrival to Athens at some point. The basic facts are simple, as confirmed by Plutarch: she was born in Miletus and her father was called Axiochus. It is also widely accepted that her family was wealthy, as her parents could pay for the excellent education that she received. Moreover, the name by which she is remembered - Aspasia - means "the desired one" and, as such, was likely not her given name.

It is not known under what circumstances she moved to Athens. Historian Peter K. Bicknell made an attempt to reconstruct her family background and the relations they had with Athens on the basis of a 4th-century grave inscription. It was discovered in Piraeus and depicts a woman called Eukleia. She is seated and stretches out her hand to her bearded husband Aspasius on the right. Between them stands a younger man, their son Aischines, while their daughters, mentioned by the inscription as Sostrate and Aspasia are not depicted. The important point is that this stele is the first known evidence of an Athenian bearer of the name Aspasius, the masculine counterpart of Aspasia.

The significant step in Bicknell's deduction is related to Aspasia of Miletus, her role as Pericles' wife or lover, and the most important dates of her life. Bicknell analysed the ancient sources and reached the conclusion that their relationship lasted many years and only finished with Pericles' death in 429/8 BCE. It started, most probably, directly after Pericles divorced the mother of his two elder sons, i.e. around 451 BCE. Finally, if Aspasia later had a son with Lysicles, around 428 BCE, it means that she cannot have been born very much earlier than 470 BCE.

Another mysterious issue is related to the circumstances that led Aspasia to leave Miletus and arrive to Athens. Bicknell reconstructed the events that led to Aspasia's arrival at Athens as follows. Around 460 BCE, Alcibiades the Elder was ostracized from Athens and may have spent his exile in Miletus, most possibly having divorced his previous wife. There, he married the daughter of a certain Axiochus, a Milesian aristocrat.

Bicknell suggests that the departure of Alcibiades the Elder from Miletus was caused by the political upheavals in the city around 455 BCE. Bicknell also speculates that the aristocratic Axiochus, father of Aspasia, died as the result of the unrest and Alcibiades, loyal to Athens, was forced to flee from Miletus, taking not only his new wife and young children, but also her younger sister, Aspasia. This group of people possibly stayed on one of the islands near Miletus, and maybe even returned to this city for a short time, but Alcibiades' period of ostracism expired in the spring of 450 BCE, and they all arrived to Athens.

It is easy to conclude that Aspasia, brought to Athens by Alcibiades the Elder, quickly made acquaintance with Pericles through the family connections. All the above speculations seem to be partly confirmed by the statement of Thucydides, who recorded that the famous Alcibiades was a friend of the leading men at Miletus. This fact would indicate a tradition of cordial relations between Alcibiades' family and the prominent Milesians, initiated by the marriage of his grandfather.

The only ancient historian to discuss Aspasia in a longer manner was Plutarch, but she was also mentioned several times in Athenian comedies, where she is described as a harlot and a brothel keeper with great influence on her husband's policy. She is also blamed, directly and indirectly, for two wars. First, the playwright Duris of Samos made her responsible for the Athenian attack on Samos in 440 BCE, as reported by the second-century CE lexicographer Harpocration. Then, in 425 BCE, Aristophanes parodied the prologue of Herodotus's Histories and suggested that the Archidamian War, the first part of the prolonged military conflict known as the Peloponnesian War, had broken out because a group of Megarians had taken away two girls from Aspasia's brothel: "But now some young drunkards go to Megara and carry off the harlot Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three whores Greece is set ablaze."

Aristophanes also claimed that the Megarian decree of Pericles, which excluded Megara from trade with Athens or its allies, was retaliation for prostitutes being kidnapped from the house of Aspasia. However, as the preeminent Athenian historian, Thucydides, wrote in his History of the Peloponnesian War, "The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable." There was no need for Aspasia's actions, as the hostility between Athens and Sparta had been growing stronger and stronger over the years. As a matter, of fact, the period of nearly fifty years that preceded the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War had been marked by the development of Athens as a major power in the Mediterranean world, expanding from the initial alliance of the Delian League.

Let us try to separate facts from gossip. Aspasia’s Milesian origins were confirmed by Plutarch, not in an unbiased manner but as a way to use her eastern roots against her reputation, and the reputation of Pericles. Being from the eastern shores of the Aegean, Aspasia is pictured according to broadly Eastern sexual stereotypes. Plutarch even makes a parallel between the lives of Aspasia and a prostitute called Thargelia because they were both from the east and both rose to much influence by manipulating the men from Attica.

This author goes as far as implying that Aspasia had some political ties with Persia and this would not make much sense if she was from Miletus, destroyed by the Persians not too long before her birth: "That she was a Milesian by birth, daughter of one Axiochus, is generally agreed; and they say that it was in emulation of Thargelia, an Ionian woman of ancient times, that she made her onslaughts upon the most influential men. This Thargelia came to be a great beauty and was endowed with grace of manners as well as clever wits. Inasmuch as she lived on terms of intimacy with numberless Greeks, and attached all her consorts to the king of Persia, she stealthily sowed the seeds of Persian sympathy in the cities of Greece by means of these lovers of hers, who were men of the greatest power and influence."

Plutarch is rather insistent on Aspasia's Persian connections as he further emphasizes that she was admired by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger, who went to war with the King Artaxerxes II of Persia: "So renowned and celebrated did Aspasia become, they say, that even Cyrus, the one who went to war with the Great King for the sovereignty of the Persians, gave the name of Aspasia to that one of his concubines whom he loved best, who before was called Milto." This fragment demonstrates her presentation as the conformation with the Eastern stereotype of sexual immorality.

On the other hand, Plutarch accepted Aspasia 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". According to this author, her house became an intellectual centre in Athens, attracting the most prominent writers and thinkers, including the philosopher Socrates. Her influence was so significant that later on many scholars believed that Aspasia and Diotima of Mantinea were actually the same person. However, in Menexenus, Plato satirized Aspasia's relationship with Pericles using her own name, so there is no reason why he should use another name to take about her. For instance, in Menexenus, Socrates is telling a story about Aspasia writing Pericles' speeches: "Of my own wit, most likely nothing; but yesterday I heard Aspasia composing a funeral oration about these very dead. For she had been told, as you were saying, that the Athenians were going to choose a speaker, and she repeated to me the sort of speech which he should deliver, partly improvising and partly from previous thought, putting together fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles spoke, but which, as I believe, she composed."

Aspasia not only appeared in the philosophical writings of Plato, but also of Xenophon, Aeschines Socraticus, and Antisthenes. Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes even both named a Socratic dialogue after her, but unfortunately neither has survived, except in fragments. What we may learn from these fragments and later comments is, sadly, contradictory. While Socraticus presented her as female Socrates, a teacher, and inspirer of excellence, Antisthenes presented her as the personification of the life of sexual indulgence.

Aspasia's influence on Pericles is emphasized by Plutarch in the case of the Athenian war with Samos in 440 BCE: "Now, since it is thought that he proceeded thus against the Samians to gratify Aspasia, this may be a fitting place to raise the query what great art or power this woman had, that she 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." The motivation for Aspasia to convince Pericles to fight against the Samians may seem clear as she was from Miletus that had appealed for assistance in the conflict with Samos.

How was it possible for a woman from a faraway city, to become so influential in Athens? As a person from the Athenian colony, Miletus, she had a status of a metic, i.e. a foreign resident of the city who did not have citizen rights. Such non-Athenians were quite numerous in Athens in this period. The metics had to pay an additional tax and did not enjoy full political rights. Moreover, an Athenian man could not have a full marriage with a metic and their children were unable to receive full citizen rights. On the other hand, the relationship was not illegal itself.

The status of a metic was not without the advantages to Aspasia, though. As a non-Athenian, Aspasia was less bound by the traditional restraints that largely confined Athenian wives to their homes, and she appears to have taken the opportunity to participate in the public life of the city. One interpretation of Aspasia's role in Athens, although sometimes questioned, is that she became a hetaera, a kind of professional high-class prostitute. Hetaerae were renowned not only because of their beauty, but of excellent education and relative independence. They also paid taxes.

It is also unclear how and when exactly Aspasia got involved with Pericles, but it is often estimated that they first met around 445 BCE when Pericles divorced his first wife, with whom he had two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus. This woman, a close relative of Pericles as the Athenian customs dictated, was then offered to another husband, with the agreement of her male relatives. Freed for the first wife, Pericles got into the relationship with Aspasia. Their relationship was a passionate one, at least on Pericles' side, as Plutarch recounts: "[Pericles] took Aspasia, and loved her exceedingly. Twice a day, as they say, on going out and on coming in from the market-place, he would salute her with a loving kiss."

In the late 430s, before the eruption of the Peloponnesian War, the political opponents of Pericles tried to accuse him and some of his closest associates, including the philosopher Anaxagoras and sculptor Phidias, of impiety. Aspasia was also mentioned as someone acting impiously and, according to Plutarch, she was put on trial with the comic poet Hermippus as prosecutor. He accused her in the comedy of corrupting the women of Athens in order to satisfy Pericles' perversions. The situation seems rather unlikely as she was a non-Athenian woman and as such she could not be subject to legal charges of this kind. Even if the trial did take place, she was freed from the charges. The accusations against her were probably nothing more than unproven slanders, but the whole experience must have been very bitter for Pericles.

The other associates of Pericles were not as lucky as Aspasia and Pericles was forced to send his former tutor, Anaxagoras, to Lampsacus for his own safety after the Athenians began to blame him for offending the gods. Phidias was accused of stealing gold intended for the Parthenon's statue of Athena and impiously portraying himself and Pericles on the shield of the statue. His fate was tragic as Plutarch records that Phidias was imprisoned and died in jail, a terrible end of the life of one of the most talented artists of Ancient Greece.

Getting back to Pericles and Aspasia, they had a son, Pericles the Younger. His status as the Athenian was uncertain because of the law introduced by Pericles senior himself in 451, prohibiting citizenship to children of non-Athenian mothers. However, as the older two sons of Pericles both died during the plague of 429 BCE, it is understandable that he was willing to change the laws to have a legitimate heir. Thus, amazingly, Pericles junior was admitted to Athenian citizenship as the Athenians allowed a change in the citizenship law made by his father. Shortly afterwards, in the autumn of 429 BCE, also Pericles senior died of plague. His and Aspasia's son later made a political career, and served as a public treasurer and strategos.

What happened with Aspasia after her husband's death? Plutarch, citing Aeschines Socraticus, states that Aspasia later lived with Lysicles, an Athenian general, with whom she had another son, Poristes. However, Lysicles was killed very soon, in action on an expedition to levy subsidies from allies in 428 BCE. His death marks the end of the contemporaneous record concerning Aspasia, so we do not know when she died. Some historians suggest the date of her death to around 400 BCE, but only on the basis of the assumption that Aspasia died shortly before the execution of Socrates in 399 BCE.

As we have seen, Aspasia had a very interesting life, influenced some major political decisions of the Athenians, and inspired ancient artists and modern scholars alike. Quite an achievement for a "historical unperson".

Bibliography:

1. Herodotus, The Histories, Book 5, Chapter 51
2. Plato, Symposium, 210a–212b
3. Madeleine M. Henry, Prisoner of History. Aspasia of Miletus and her Biographical Tradition, 1995
4. Jona Lendering, https://www.livius.org/articles/person/aspasia/
5. Plutarch, The Life of Pericles, Chapter 24
6. Peter K. Bicknell, Axiochos Alkibiadou, Aspasia and Aspasios, in: L'antiquité Classique, 1982
7. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 8, Chapter 17
8. Paul Chrystal, Reportage from Ancient Greece and Rome, 2020
9. Aristophanes, The Acharnians, lines 523–533
10. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 1, Chapter 23
11. Plato, Menexenus