Discover Aspasia of Miletus, influential intellectual and companion of Pericles, a major female figure of Classical Athens in the 5th century BCE.
Table of Contents
Prologue — The Last Night of Pericles
Athens is suffocating. Beneath a sky veiled with dust, the city groans, ravaged by the plague. This brutal and blind scourge takes citizens and slaves alike, without distinction. Temples are filled with silent prayers, streets deserted by fear. Democracy, in crisis, staggers.
In a secluded house, a man is dying. Pericles, strategist and architect of Athens' Golden Age, is dying, isolated, abandoned by luck and politics. At his bedside stands a woman who never had the right of citizenship but who marked his reign: Aspasia of Miletus. She closes his eyelids, without tears. She knows mourning will bring her neither recognition nor a place in the books. And yet, she is there, at the heart of History.
A Foreign Woman in Athens
Aspasia was born in Miletus, an Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor. In Miletus, women often had access to a more advanced education than in Athens. It was perhaps this more flexible cultural background that trained her in the art of speech, philosophy, and rhetoric.
Upon arriving in Athens — probably in her youth — Aspasia became a metoikos, that is, a foreign woman legally residing in the city but without the rights of citizenship. As both a woman and a foreigner, she had neither civic rights nor public recognition. But she quickly stood out.
She opened a salon — a kind of early intellectual circle — where philosophers, artists, and politicians came to exchange ideas. Among her regular visitors were Socrates, Anaxagoras, and other major figures of the Athenian intelligentsia. She gained an exceptional reputation for a woman in this patriarchal society: that of a brilliant speaker, a free thinker, capable of holding her own against the greatest minds of her time.
A Free Woman... Therefore Suspicious?
Very quickly, Aspasia’s freedom of speech and mind made her a target. The Athenians, unaccustomed to seeing an educated woman speak in public, placed her in an ambiguous category: that of the hetaerae.
In Athenian society, a hetaera was not a prostitute in the vulgar sense of the term. She was a free woman, generally a foreigner, cultured, able to converse with men, host salons, attend banquets, and live off such company. She was different from the pornai, the street prostitutes strictly overseen by brothels.
Aspasia shared several traits with the hetaerae: she was independent, visible in public spaces, and mingled with male political and intellectual circles. That alone was enough for some to classify her among them — sometimes with admiration, sometimes with contempt. Comic playwrights like Aristophanes depicted her as a provocative and sultry figure. Others even accused her of corrupting Athenian women by inciting them to independence.
But this label was based less on verified facts than on social fantasies. There is no evidence that Aspasia ever worked as a courtesan in the strict sense. The term "hetaera" mainly reflects the unease she provoked: in a society where women were meant to remain in the shadows, she dared to think, speak, debate — and that alone was enough to make her seem dangerous.
Aspasia and Pericles: An Uncommon Union
It was in the early 440s BCE that Aspasia entered the life of Pericles. As the leading strategist of Athenian democracy and a widower, he was then at the height of his influence. Their relationship shocked public opinion. Not only was Aspasia a foreigner, but she was also perceived as a courtesan — which, in the eyes of the Athenian aristocracy, made this union all the more scandalous.
Against all social norms, Pericles chose to live with her publicly. He left his household and moved into Aspasia’s. They had a son, Pericles the Younger, whom he had exceptionally recognized as a citizen through a special decree — an extraordinary measure that showed the deep attachment he had for her.
Aspasia was not content to be merely his companion. She played an active role in his political career. Several ancient sources, notably Plutarch, state that she helped him draft his speeches or develop his ideas. Her intellectual influence was so acknowledged that some attributed to her a role in Pericles’ foreign policy — notably in the conflict with Samos. As a Milesian, Aspasia had cultural ties with this island, a rival to Athens, which fueled suspicions.
A Free Woman... Therefore Suspicious?
Very quickly, Aspasia’s freedom of speech and mind made her a target. The Athenians, unaccustomed to seeing an educated woman speak in public, placed her in an ambiguous category: that of the hetaerae.
In Athenian society, a hetaera was not a prostitute in the vulgar sense of the term. She was a free woman, generally a foreigner, cultured, able to converse with men, host salons, attend banquets, and live off such company. She was different from the pornai, the street prostitutes strictly overseen by brothels.
Aspasia shared several traits with the hetaerae: she was independent, visible in public spaces, and mingled with male political and intellectual circles. That alone was enough for some to classify her among them — sometimes with admiration, sometimes with contempt. Comic playwrights like Aristophanes depicted her as a provocative and sultry figure. Others even accused her of corrupting Athenian women by inciting them to independence.
But this label was based less on verified facts than on social fantasies. There is no evidence that Aspasia ever worked as a courtesan in the strict sense. The term "hetaera" mainly reflects the unease she provoked: in a society where women were meant to remain in the shadows, she dared to think, speak, debate — and that alone was enough to make her seem dangerous.
Aspasia and Pericles: An Uncommon Union
It was in the early 440s BCE that Aspasia entered the life of Pericles. As the leading strategist of Athenian democracy and a widower, he was then at the height of his influence. Their relationship shocked public opinion. Not only was Aspasia a foreigner, but she was also perceived as a courtesan — which, in the eyes of the Athenian aristocracy, made this union all the more scandalous.
Against all social norms, Pericles chose to live with her publicly. He left his household and moved into Aspasia’s. They had a son, Pericles the Younger, whom he had exceptionally recognized as a citizen through a special decree — an extraordinary measure that showed the deep attachment he had for her.
Aspasia was not content to be merely his companion. She played an active role in his political career. Several ancient sources, notably Plutarch, state that she helped him draft his speeches or develop his ideas. Her intellectual influence was so acknowledged that some attributed to her a role in Pericles’ foreign policy — notably in the conflict with Samos. As a Milesian, Aspasia had cultural ties with this island, a rival to Athens, which fueled suspicions.
A Woman Judged in the Public Square
In 438 BCE, a scandal erupted: Aspasia was accused of impiety and even pimping, notably by the comic poet Hermippus. This kind of trial was common in Athens against disruptive figures, and behind these accusations, Pericles was also targeted.
According to some ancient authors, he allegedly defended her in person, with tears in his eyes. Thanks to his intervention, Aspasia was reportedly acquitted. This trial reveals how much influence she had gained in public life, to the point of becoming a major political issue. To her enemies, she symbolized a subversive, foreign, intellectual femininity — and thus, a threat.
An Intellectual in Plato's Dialogues
Aspasia even appears in philosophical literature. In Plato’s Menexenus, Socrates claims — not without irony — that the funeral oration he recites was taught to him by Aspasia herself. Plato plays on ambiguity here, blending satire and homage. But this passage confirms one thing: Aspasia was associated with rhetoric and the art of speech, to the point of being featured in major Greek philosophical texts.
Even though Plato does not name her as a philosopher, her inclusion in a Socratic dialogue testifies to the role she played in the Athenian intellectual imagination.
After Pericles, the Shadow Then Oblivion
After Pericles' death in 429 BCE, Athens entered a period of deep instability. The Peloponnesian War against Sparta, which began in 431, intensified. The death of its emblematic strategist weakened the morale of the city, already ravaged by the plague. Democratic institutions, under strain, wavered between rival factions, populism, and violence.
Aspasia then lost her most powerful protector. She vanished for a time from the sources, but Plutarch reports that she later lived with Lysicles, a merchant turned politician, probably from the popular class. Aspasia is said to have contributed to his political rise by teaching him the art of speech and persuasion. Together, they reportedly had a son. This second partnership shows that Aspasia did not retreat from public life but continued, discreetly, to exert influence in political spheres.
Lysicles did not share Pericles’ fate. A strategist for a day, he was killed during a military expedition. Then silence fell definitively upon Aspasia. No source recounts her final years. We do not know when or how she died. But her memory would endure through the centuries.
A Major Feminist Figure of Ancient History?
Aspasia did not write. She did not vote. She never spoke at the Assembly. And yet, she left her mark on the most emblematic democracy of Antiquity. She did so through thought, influence, conversation. In a city where women were to be invisible, she was seen. Where they were to remain silent, she was heard.
In many respects, she can be considered one of the first great female intellectual figures in Western history. Not as an activist — the very concept of feminism is anachronistic — but as a living example of intellectual and social emancipation in a society that forbade it to women.
By existing as she did, Aspasia created a breach in the patriarchal Greek order. Her life, her boldness, her mind, inspired respect and hatred, admiration and mockery. What Greek women could not be — citizens, philosophers, speakers — Aspasia embodied by circumventing the rules. She did not break them; she shifted them.
Today, she is being rediscovered as a symbol of intellectual freedom. Not as a perfect heroine, but as a real woman, rooted in the tensions of her time, and who, without weapons or title, claimed a form of power that few men themselves could boast of achieving.
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The illustrations were generated using artificial intelligence to support the historical narrative and enhance immersion. They were created by the author and are the property of Echoes of Antiquity. Any reproduction requires prior authorization by email.
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