Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / Aspasia of Miletus: The Woman Behind Pericles
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've spent a lot of episodes in the Agora, the courts, the Assembly — all the male spaces where Athenian democracy did its thing. But there was one woman who floated through those rooms, at least at the edges, and she left a mark that still sparks arguments today. Luna: Are you talking about Aspasia? Lucas: Exactly. Aspasia of Miletus. She was the partner of Pericles, the great statesman of Athens' golden age. But she was way more than a shadow figure. Ancient sources — Plato, Plutarch, even the comic poets — treat her as a real intellectual force, someone who could hold her own with the best minds in the city. Lucas: What's tricky is that she left no writings, and everything we know about her comes from men who had their own axes to grind. So we're dealing with a double lens: first, what she actually did, and second, how the Athenians chose to remember her. Luna: So let's start with who she was. Where did she come from, and how did she end up in Athens? Lucas: She was born in Miletus, a Greek city on the coast of Asia Minor, probably around 470 BCE. Miletus was a wealthy, cultured place — home to philosophers like Thales and Anaximander. So she may have grown up with an unusual education for a woman, which would explain her later reputation. Lucas: She moved to Athens, and that's where it gets complicated. She wasn't a citizen — she was a metic, a resident foreigner. And she was likely a hetaera, which is not exactly a courtesan but not a wife either. Hetaerae were educated companions who participated in symposia and intellectual circles, unlike citizen women who were largely confined to the home. Luna: So she had a freedom that Athenian citizen women didn't. Lucas: Yes, but it came with a cost. She had no legal rights, no protection, and her status made her vulnerable. She met Pericles around 450 BCE, and they became partners in a very public way. Pericles was married, but he divorced his wife and moved in with Aspasia. That was scandalous enough, but he also treated her as an intellectual equal. Lucas: Plutarch, writing centuries later, says that Pericles visited her every day, and that when he left for the Assembly in the morning, he would kiss her goodbye. That might sound sweet, but it was also a political liability — his enemies weaponized their relationship to attack him. Luna: What did they actually say about her? Lucas: The comic poets had a field day. Aristophanes and his contemporaries mocked her as a manipulative foreign woman who supposedly controlled Pericles. In one play, she's blamed for starting the Samian War because Pericles was supposedly angry over a brothel dispute involving Aspasia. It's clearly slander, but it shows how she was perceived as a behind the scenes power. Lucas: There's also a famous trial in which Aspasia was accused of asebeia, impiety, a serious charge that could carry the death penalty. Pericles spoke in her defense, and according to one source, he broke down in tears — which saved her. But the whole episode suggests that she was a target precisely because of her connection to him. Luna: So she wasn't just a bystander — she was an active player in Athenian politics, even if indirectly. Lucas: Absolutely. And her influence might have gone even deeper. Plato wrote a dialogue called the Menexenus, where Socrates gives a funeral oration that he says was actually written by Aspasia. In it, she supposedly composed the famous speech Pericles delivered for the war dead. Now, Plato is being playful — he often puts ideas in the mouths of fictional characters — but he clearly thought it plausible that Aspasia could write such a powerful piece. Lucas: And Plutarch, who was no fan of hers, still acknowledges that she was sought after for her rhetorical skill. He says Socrates himself brought his students to her to learn how to speak. So we have a woman who is credited with shaping the words of Athens' greatest orator and teaching its most famous philosopher. Luna: That's remarkable. How much can we actually trust those sources, though? Lucas: Good question. The problem is that every mention of Aspasia is filtered through a male author with a particular agenda. The comic poets wanted to mock Pericles, so they made her a manipulative seductress. The philosophers wanted to explore the nature of rhetoric and gender, so they used her as a symbol. Even Plato and Plutarch are writing centuries after her death, and they're using her as a rhetorical device. Lucas: But there's a core of historical reality we can hold onto. She really did live with Pericles, she really was a metic, and she really was known for her intelligence. The fact that she appears in so many different genres — comedy, philosophy, biography — suggests that she was a notable figure beyond just being Pericles' partner. Lucas: And that's part of why she's so fascinating: she's a woman who broke through the silences of ancient history. We have almost no voices of women from classical Athens, yet Aspasia's name keeps surfacing. That's unusual. Luna: So what happened to her after Pericles died? Lucas: Pericles died in 429 BCE, during the plague that we talked about in an earlier episode. Aspasia disappears from the historical record for a while. But later sources suggest she took up with another politician, Lysicles, who was a more minor figure. According to Aeschines of Sphettus, a follower of Socrates, she actually made Lysicles into a great orator — which again shows her reputation as a teacher of rhetoric. Lucas: After that, we lose track of her. She probably died around 400 BCE, but we don't know where or how. Her tomb is unknown. So her personal story ends in silence, but her legacy continues. Luna: It's striking how much she was both celebrated and vilified. A woman who embodies the contradictions of Athenian democracy. Lucas: Exactly. Athens was a city that prided itself on free speech and rational debate, but it excluded women from almost every sphere of public life. Citizen women couldn't vote, couldn't own property, couldn't even go out alone. Yet here was this foreign woman, a hetaera, who managed to influence the most powerful man in the city and converse with the greatest thinkers of her time. Lucas: That's a paradox that still grabs people. She's become a symbol of women's potential in a world that tried to silence them, and also a reminder of how fragile that potential could be. Luna: I was reading that some modern scholars even question whether she was a hetaera at all. Maybe that was just a smear. Lucas: You're right — it's debated. Some argue that the label of hetaera was a way to disparage her because she lived openly with Pericles without being a wife. Others point out that hetaerae weren't necessarily prostitutes; they were elite companions who had more education and freedom. Either way, it was a status that put her outside the norms of respectable citizen women. Lucas: And that's what made her both powerful and vulnerable. She could move in circles that citizen women couldn't, but she had no legal protection. If Pericles hadn't intervened, she could have been exiled or even executed. Luna: There's also the question of her son. Pericles had another son legally, but he had a son with Aspasia that he had to get citizenship for, right? Lucas: Yes, that's a great point. Pericles had passed a law in 451 BCE restricting citizenship to people with two citizen parents. But he himself had a son, also named Pericles, with Aspasia — who was a metic. So that son was not a citizen by law. When Pericles' legitimate sons died in the plague, he had to ask the Assembly for a special exception to make his son with Aspasia a citizen. They granted it, but it was a huge political humiliation — the man who had championed that citizenship law had to beg for an exception for his own family. Lucas: It shows how intertwined his personal and public life were, and how Aspasia's status cast a long shadow over both. Luna: It must have been a very precarious position to be in. Lucas: Definitely. And here's a thought: we've been talking about how Aspasia influenced Pericles and Socrates, but we should also remember that she is one of the few ancient women we can name who had any kind of intellectual legacy. That's partly because she was an exception, but also because she was so closely tied to powerful men that they couldn't ignore her. Lucas: It's a reminder that history isn't just about the famous men we study — it's also about the people who stood behind them, shaped them, and even challenged them. Aspasia might not have written a single word we can read, but her ideas, if we trust a few ancient sources, echoed through the speeches of Pericles and the dialogues of Plato. Lucas: We do a deep dive like this every week because we're passionate about these stories. And sometimes we get messages from listeners asking how we manage to make so many episodes without ads. The honest answer is that a handful of people chip in a few dollars a month through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that literally covers the costs of research, editing, and hosting. Luna: It's true. We don't have a big studio or a corporate sponsor. It's just the two of us and a lot of coffee. Lucas: So if this show has brought you into the past in a new way, and you want to keep it going ad-free, there's a link in the show notes. No pressure — we're just grateful you're here. Lucas: But let's get back to Aspasia, because there's one more layer I want to explore. We've talked about her as a lover, a teacher, a subject of scandal. But what about the bigger question: what does her life tell us about Athenian democracy? Here was a system that celebrated rational argument and the exchange of ideas, yet it was built on the exclusion of women, slaves, and foreigners. Aspasia was a foreigner and a woman, and she still managed to participate in that intellectual world — but only by breaking every rule of respectability. Luna: So she was a living contradiction of the city's ideals. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why she continues to fascinate us. She's a mirror for the contradictions of ancient Athens, and also a challenge to us to think about who gets to be in the history books. Her story is a reminder that the past is full of people who didn't fit the neat categories we like to impose. Lucas: I think that's a good place to leave it. Next time, maybe we'll look at another outsider who shook up the city — or maybe we'll go back to the battlefield. Either way, thanks for walking with us through the streets of classical Athens.