The century of Pericles actually lasted only three decades. Strictly speaking, from 461 to 429 BC. C., which was the period of this statesman's mandate that led Athens to its greatest splendor. Well, the Democratic leader lived half of that long cycle in the company of a woman who produced visceral reactions then and, in fact, still today, two and a half millennia later.
Very little is known about her. The information that has reached the present day is scarce, obscure and contradictory. Despite the enigmas and inconsistencies that cloud her biography, it emerges that Aspasia of Miletus was, by all accounts, a groundbreaking figure. She was young, beautiful, intelligent and cultured, she not only kept Pericles in love for fifteen years, she could also have captivated Socrates in his youth.
This is stated, at least, in an essay published a few months ago. Signed by an Oxford researcher, it has been vehemently refuted by his colleagues, including those from the University of Valencia. The new controversy reveals the passions that the Milesian intellectual continues to arouse, beyond her illustrious historical or hypothetical partners, a true philosopher and rhetorician in her own right.
Aspasia would have been born around 480 or 470 BC. C. in a family endowed with fortune and culture. Daughter of a sculptor, she came into the world in Miletus, a very ancient polis caria, in Ionia, Greek Asia, where women lived more freely than in other Hellenic regions. When she reached adolescence, she added to her admirable intelligence a radiant beauty. One of these characteristics, or perhaps a combination of the two, could have influenced her emigration to Athens around 450 BC. c.
She may have traveled to Attica for her lovemaking skills with an archon, a high Athenian official. Or - nothing to do with it - for being the political family of Alcibiades the Elder, grandfather of the statesman and general of the same name who fought in the Peloponnesian War.
Some authors venture that, by then, in her twenties or thirties, Aspasia was already running a brothel in Miletus, which would give the erotic theory points. Others are inclined to believe that she ran a mysterious and scientific school. That is, a circle like that of Sappho in Lesbos, the Pythagoreans in Sicily or Plato's Academy.
There could also be a third option. A mixed institution, of a sensory and sexual nature and, at the same time, esoteric and mental. As? Thanks to an occupation from Greek Antiquity that combined both facets. Loosely equivalent to the courtesans and concubines of other cultures, hetairas enjoyed a freedom of action unknown to other Greek women.
Aspasia could have been one of these highly sophisticated ladies-in-waiting. They were versed in the love arts as well as in dance, music and even rhetoric. The last thing, to be able to comment with foundation and grace on political, philosophical or other topics that arose with her distinguished clientele.
The fact is that, once in Hellas, the thinker fell at the feet of Athens, and vice versa. It had been more or less a decade since the metropolis had been governed by “the first citizen,” as Thucydides called Pericles. Head of the Delian League, his prosperous maritime empire was expanding throughout Greece, and prosperity was evident throughout the capital.
The old Acropolis saw the Parthenon, the colossal statue of Athena Promachos, fifteen meters high, and other wonders of Phidias grow day by day. Through the streets, the Agora, Mount Lycabettus with its pine forests, the rocky Pnyx and other corners of the city, it was not unusual to come across a twenty-year-old Socrates, the tragic poet Euripides, the philosopher Anaxagoras, Alcibiades the Younger and others. references of Western civilization.
The future father of the maieutic method and the author of Medea could have frequented the center that ruled Aspasia. Socrates could even have followed the path of philosophy induced by the thinker, who would have seduced him not only with her eloquence, according to her controversial recent essay. The scholar, in turn, could have perfected her rhetorical skills with Antiphon, an Attic orator and sophist, from the northern demos (town) of Ramnunte.
It was during this time of so much cultural dynamism that the learned Milesia and Pericles met. He was married to an aristocrat like himself, an Alcmaeonid, and had two sons, Xanthippus and Paralos. He, too, was approaching autumn age, while Aspasia was fifteen to twenty-five years younger.
However, they fell in love. And how. In a polis where relationships between men and women were usually limited to marriages for patrimonial convenience or sexual encounters, the strategist and the philosopher represented a rare example of romantic love and deep friendship. Also, very public.
They were seen walking and talking. They received their artist, intellectual and political friends together at evening parties until dawn. Plutarch says that Pericles kissed Aspasia every day when entering or leaving the Agora, on his way to the council, the assembly or whatever was happening that day. In other words, they wanted each other in full view of half of Athens.
Now, there, if the democratic leader was not missing something, they were ideological rivals, between pisistratidas, demagogues and other factions to the right and left of his own. Nor was a woman from outside, and perhaps a hetaira, seen favorably, who, instead of remaining secluded in the gynoecium of her house, like the decent ladies of the polis, displayed a hyperactive public agenda.
This is how the symbiotic relationship between Aspasia and Pericles, against the grain of the establishment, fueled all kinds of gossip. Some have reached the present. Among them, the Ionian intellectual was the hand that wrote some of the most acclaimed speeches of Pericles, nicknamed the Olympian precisely because of them. This was a serious grievance in ancient Athens. Not only because the leader was painted as a puppet, but also because the strings of that puppet were handled by a woman, considered inferior, without hesitation, in that society.
The power over the statesman that was attributed to Aspasia seemed to be confirmed when he divorced his first wife, around 445 BC. C. It was on excellent terms – the exes would always be good friends – but no one missed that he separated from the mother of his children, an Athenian from a good family, for a stranger of dubious behavior.
Five years later, the uncomfortable foreigner would also conceive her child, Pericles the Younger. However, she never formally married her father due to a trick of fate. Shortly before her arrival in Athens, her future partner had passed a law to please the aristocratic sector: Athenians could only marry natives of the polis.
Between one thing and another, for better and for worse, Aspasia became a celebrity. Today she is remembered, in fact, as the most relevant female figure of the classical heyday of Athens. Hence Aristophanes made jokes at her expense in her comedies. She would also be immortalized as a character by four of Socrates' most prominent disciples.
Xenophon would capture it in two books. Plato, Antisthenes and Aeschines would dedicate dialogues to him. The first, with a certain sarcasm, but calling her by her name. This makes the Milesia one of only two women individualized in the Platonic texts (the other, by the way, Diotima of Mantinea, could also be Aspasia, under her pseudonym).
The contradictions between these philosophical profiles must be highlighted. Some idealized her. Others were not at all flattering. Antisthenes, for example, in a lost work of which there are comments about her, portrayed her as a lubricious hetaira with an idle life among luxuries, a kind of socialite of the time. Aeschines, on the other hand, in another lost work of which certain notions have survived, described her as the wise teacher and main speaker of a renowned academic school.
Regarding titles written by her, contemporary sources praise above all her rhetorical work. But only attributed fragments of it are preserved, nothing direct or irrefutable. Unfortunately, there are despicable events that embittered Pericles' last years.
The Democratic leader aroused intense passions, and the political game is not always fair. Hence, sometimes, to attack this powerful man, he would hit those close to him. It happened with one of his teachers, the philosopher Anaxagoras. He was accused of impiety and sentenced to death. He managed to escape from Athens with the help of his illustrious disciple, but, exiled, he let himself die of hunger.
Phidias, the sculptor, Pericles' public works delegate and great friend, also suffered harassment. He was accused of embezzlement of funds for his interventions in the Acropolis. According to some versions, he died in prison. Aspasia, targeted by oligarchs and demagogues for multiple reasons, was not going to be an exception in the harassment of Pericles.
In addition to murmurs about his possible interference in the statesman's speeches and decisions, rumors spread about his hypothetical mediatism, that he was pro-Persian. Also, putting free women in his partner's bed for his ribald entertainment. And even instigating the Samos War in 440 BC. C., because it was convenient to his native Miletus.
None of this had major consequences. But there was a formal accusation brought against her by a comic poet. The charge was, as with Anaxagoras, for offenses against the gods. A very serious matter. It could lead to a death sentence.
Aspasia had to answer before a court made up of a thousand and a half citizens, many of whom were suspicious of her or decidedly hostile. Fortunately for her, she had a dream defender, Pericles himself. This made full use of his immense oratory talent. He even cried to free his wife from possible conviction, and it was most persuasive.
He won the case. However, he lost some of the respect that had previously been lavished upon him, and developed symptoms that today would be diagnosed as depressive. Three years later, in 429 BC. C., the plague took him away, as well as thousands of Athenians, including his two eldest sons.
The death of Pericles also left open a terrible episode that, decades later, would forever bury the city's best era. The strategos had started the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and its allies. In its course, the man with whom Aspasia had remade her life died. Lysicles, a sheep merchant whom she had raised to political and military prominence and to whom she gave a son, Poristes, was killed in action in 427 BC. C. Curiously, it was in her native region, Ionia Caria. At this point, the historical trace of Aspasia of Miletus is lost.
It is said that he could have retired to the countryside and founded a new educational center. Maybe for future hetairas. Perhaps eloquence and declamation. It is not known. The date of his death is also unknown. It is estimated, however, that it happened around the turn of the 4th century BC. C., the next to that of Pericles and the Athens that built the Parthenon.
This text is part of an article published in number 645 of the magazine Historia y Vida. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
