Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / Aspasia of Miletus: The Woman Who Shaped Pericles
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've spent a lot of time on Pericles — his Funeral Oration, the Plague, the Acropolis building program. But there's someone who was right at the center of his world, and we haven't talked about her yet. Aspasia of Miletus. Luna: Aspasia — I've heard the name, but I don't actually know much about her. Lucas: She's one of the most famous women of classical Athens, which is saying something because Athenian women were supposed to be unseen and unheard. And she wasn't even Athenian — she was from Miletus, on the coast of Ionia, modern-day Turkey. She came to Athens sometime around 450 BCE, and she became the companion — some sources say wife, though Athenian law didn't recognize marriage to a foreigner — of Pericles himself. Luna: So she was a foreign woman living with the most powerful man in Athens? That must have caused talk. Lucas: Oh, it caused more than talk. She was a magnet for gossip, satire, and outright slander. The comic playwright Aristophanes blamed her for causing the Samian War — a real conflict between Athens and Samos — by meddling in politics. Plutarch says she was 'distinguished and clever' and that Pericles was completely taken with her. He apparently left his Athenian wife to be with Aspasia, and he was seen kissing her goodbye every morning — which, for a man of his stature, was considered embarrassingly public. Luna: That's quite a detail. But what did she actually do? Was she just his partner, or was she an intellectual force? Lucas: That's the big question, and the sources are tricky. Plato wrote a dialogue called 'Menexenus' where he attributes to Aspasia a funeral oration — essentially a parody of Pericles' famous speech. Plato has Socrates claim that Aspasia taught Pericles rhetoric. Now, Plato is not a reliable reporter, but the fact that he could plausibly make this claim tells us that Aspasia had a reputation as a teacher of public speaking. She also ran a salon — a gathering place for the city's leading thinkers, including Socrates himself, Phidias the sculptor, and Anaxagoras the philosopher. Luna: Wait — Socrates learned from her? I thought he learned from everyone, but I didn't know she was one of his teachers. Lucas: According to some ancient sources, yes. It's hard to separate fact from legend, but the consistent thread is that Aspasia was seen as unusually intelligent and politically savvy. And that made her dangerous in the eyes of many Athenians. In 440 BCE — right around the time of the Samian War — she was put on trial for asebeia, the charge of impiety toward the gods. Luna: A trial for impiety — that sounds like the kind of charge that could destroy someone. Lucas: Absolutely. The comic poets Aristophanes and others accused her of corrupting women and disrespecting religion. Some modern historians think the trial was really a political attack on Pericles through Aspasia — you can't directly impeach the leader, but you can go after his foreign-born partner. According to Plutarch, Pericles personally defended her in court and broke down in tears, which apparently swayed the jury to acquit her. If that story is true, it's a remarkable moment: the great statesman weeping for his companion. Luna: That really humanizes him. So she survived the trial and stayed with Pericles until his death from the plague in 429 BCE. Luna: And what happened to her after that? Lucas: After Pericles died, Aspasia apparently entered into a relationship with another Athenian leader, Lysicles, a sheep merchant who rose to prominence. Ancient writers claim that Aspasia made him a great orator — which suggests she was still seen as a teacher of rhetoric. But after Lysicles died in battle, she disappears from the historical record. We don't know when or where she died. And that's part of her story: a woman who clearly exercised real influence, but whose voice comes to us only through the writings of men who either adored or despised her. Luna: That's frustrating — she's clearly a major figure, but we can't hear her directly. Lucas: And that's one of the things we try to do on this show — not just tell the stories of the famous men, but look at the people around them who shaped events. And it's worth saying that shows like this, that dig into the margins of history, only exist because of listeners who support them. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing but it really does keep us going. A couple of dollars a month makes a genuine difference. Lucas: If you've gotten something out of our conversations about the Mediterranean world — whether it's the Pnyx or the Spartan agoge or Aspasia — you can help us keep it ad-free and independent. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — that's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Even a small amount means we can keep researching and telling these stories. Luna: Absolutely. Now, back to Aspasia — one thing I find remarkable is that she was a hetaira, which is often translated as 'courtesan' but was really a much more complex social category. Lucas: Right. Hetairai were educated, independent women who provided companionship and intellectual conversation — they were distinct from common prostitutes. They were often the only women in Athens who could participate in symposia — the drinking parties where men discussed philosophy and politics. Aspasia was the most famous hetaira of her time, and her life shows both the opportunities and the limits for women in classical Athens. She had freedom and influence that citizen wives didn't, but she could never marry an Athenian, her children couldn't be citizens, and her reputation was always at risk. Luna: So she was a kind of shadow figure — powerful but always outside the system. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why she's such a fascinating lens on Athenian democracy. The same city that invented ostracism and the ekklesia also systematically excluded women, foreigners, and slaves. Aspasia's story reminds us that democracy was always limited, and that influence often flowed through unofficial channels — through the household, through personal relationships, through the salon. Luna: Do we have any idea what her own views were? Could she have been a philosopher in her own right? Lucas: We have tantalizing hints. The Socratic tradition — Plato and Xenophon — both depict her as a skilled rhetorician. A late source, Athenaeus, quotes a work by a writer named Aeschines of Sphettos — not the orator — who wrote a dialogue called 'Aspasia' that presented her as a teacher of virtue. Unfortunately, that dialogue is lost. So we're left with fragments. But the fact that a whole dialogue could be named after her suggests she had real intellectual standing. Luna: It's a shame that text didn't survive. We might have had her actual words, or something close to them. Lucas: That's the historian's lament. So much is lost. But we do have enough to reconstruct a vivid picture: a brilliant, ambitious woman from Ionia who came to the heart of the classical world and made herself indispensable to its greatest leader. She was mocked, feared, admired, and ultimately erased — but not quite completely. And her story is a reminder that history is full of these half-seen figures, waiting to be rediscovered. Luna: I'm glad we gave her an episode. She deserves to be remembered.