Marble
herm in the
Vatican Museums inscribed with Aspasia's name at the base. Discovered in 1777, this marble herm is a Roman copy of a 5th-century BC original and may represent Aspasia's
funerary stele.
Aspasia (/æˈspeɪziə/ or /æˈspeɪʒə/; Ancient Greek: Ἀσπασία; ca. 470 BC[1][2]–ca. 400 BC)[1][3] was a Milesian woman who was famous for her involvement with the Athenian statesman Pericles.[4] Very little is known about the details of her life. She spent most of her adult life in Athens, and she may have influenced Pericles and Athenian politics. She is mentioned in the writings of Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophon, and other authors of the day.
Ancient writers also reported that Aspasia was a brothel keeper and a harlot, although these accounts are disputed by modern scholars, on the grounds that many of the writers were comic poets concerned with defaming Pericles.[5] Some researchers question even the historical tradition that she was a hetaera, or courtesan, and have suggested that she may actually have been married to Pericles.[α] Aspasia had a son by Pericles, Pericles the Younger, who later became a general in the Athenian military and was executed after the Battle of Arginusae. She is believed to have become the courtesan of Lysicles, another Athenian statesman and general, following the death of Pericles the Elder.
Aspasia was born in the Ionian Greek city of Miletus (in the modern province of Aydın, Turkey). Little is known about her family except that her father's name was Axiochus, although it is evident that she must have belonged to a wealthy family, for only the well-to-do could have afforded the excellent education that she received. Some ancient sources claim that she was a Carian prisoner-of-war turned slave; these statements are generally regarded as false.[β][6]
It is not known under what circumstances she first traveled to Athens. The discovery of a 4th-century grave inscription that mentions the names of Axiochus and Aspasius has led historian Peter K. Bicknell to attempt a reconstruction of Aspasia's family background and Athenian connections. His theory connects her to Alcibiades II of Scambonidae (grandfather of the famous Alcibiades), who was ostracized from Athens in 460 BC and may have spent his exile in Miletus.[1] Bicknell conjectures that, following his exile, the elder Alcibiades went to Miletus, where he married the daughter of a certain Axiochus. Alcibiades apparently returned to Athens with his new wife and her younger sister, Aspasia. Bicknell argues that the first child of this marriage was named Axiochus (uncle of the famous Alcibiades) and the second Aspasios. He also maintains that Pericles met Aspasia through his close connections with Alcibiades's household.[7]
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904):
Socrates seeking Alcibiades in the house of Aspasia, 1861.
According to the disputed statements of the ancient writers and some modern scholars, in Athens Aspasia became a hetaera and probably ran a brothel.[α][8][9] Hetaerae were professional high-class entertainers, as well as courtesans. Besides developing physical beauty, they differed from most Athenian women in being educated (often to a high standard, as in Aspasia's case), having independence, and paying taxes.[10][11] They were the nearest thing perhaps to liberated women; and Aspasia, who became a vivid figure in Athenian society, was probably an obvious example.[10][12] According to Plutarch, Aspasia was compared to the famous Thargelia, another renowned Ionian hetaera of ancient times.[13]
Being a foreigner and possibly a hetaera, Aspasia was free of the legal restraints that traditionally confined married women to their homes, and thereby was allowed to participate in the public life of the city. She became the mistress of the statesman Pericles in the early 440s. After he divorced his first wife (c. 445 BC), Aspasia began to live with him, although her marital status remains disputed.[γ][14] Their son, Pericles the Younger, must have been born by 440 BC. Aspasia would have to have been quite young, if she were able to bear a child to Lysicles c. 428 BC.[15]
In social circles, Aspasia was noted for her ability as a conversationalist and adviser rather than merely an object of physical beauty.[9] According to Plutarch, their house became an intellectual centre in Athens, attracting the most prominent writers and thinkers, including the philosopher Socrates. The biographer writes that, despite her immoral life, Athenian men would bring their wives to hear her converse.[δ][13][16]
Pericles, Aspasia and their friends were not immune from attack, as preeminence in democratic Athens was not equivalent to absolute rule.[17] Her relationship with Pericles and her subsequent political influence aroused many reactions. Donald Kagan, a Yale historian, believes that Aspasia was particularly unpopular in the years immediately following the Samian War.[18] In 440 BC, Samos was at war with Miletus over Priene, an ancient city of Ionia in the foot-hills of Mycale. Worsted in the war, the Milesians came to Athens to plead their case against the Samians.[19] When the Athenians ordered the two sides to stop fighting and submit the case to arbitration at Athens, the Samians refused. In response, Pericles passed a decree dispatching an expedition to Samos.[20] The campaign proved to be difficult and the Athenians had to endure heavy casualties before Samos was defeated. According to Plutarch, it was thought that Aspasia, who came from Miletus, was responsible for the Samian War, and that Pericles had decided against and attacked Samos to gratify her.[13]
| "Thus far the evil was not serious and we were the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to Megara and carry off the courtesan 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. Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his Olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to roll, upset Greece and passed an edict, which ran like the song, That the Megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent." |
| From Aristophanes' comedic play, The Acharnians (523–533) |
Before the eruption of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC–404 BC), Pericles, some of his closest associates and Aspasia faced a series of personal and legal attacks. Aspasia, in particular, was accused of corrupting the women of Athens in order to satisfy Pericles' perversions.[ε] According to Plutarch, she was put on trial for impiety, with the comic poet Hermippus as prosecutor.[στ][21] All these accusations were probably nothing more than unproven slanders, but the whole experience was bitter for the Athenian leader. Although Aspasia was acquitted thanks to a rare emotional outburst of Pericles,[ζ] his friend, Phidias, died in prison. Another friend of his, Anaxagoras, was attacked by the ecclesia (the Athenian Assembly) for his religious beliefs.[22] According to Kagan it is possible that Aspasia's trial and acquittal were late inventions, "in which real slanders, suspicions and ribald jokes were converted into an imaginary lawsuit".[18] Anthony J. Podlecki, Professor of Classics at the University of British Columbia, asserts that Plutarch or his source possibly misunderstood a scene in some comedy.[23] Kagan argues that even if we believe these stories, Aspasia was unharmed with or without the help of Pericles.[24]
In The Acharnians, Aristophanes blames Aspasia for the Peloponnesian War. He claims 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 by Megarians.[8] Aristophanes' portrayal of Aspasia as responsible, from personal motives, for the outbreak of the war with Sparta may reflect memory of the earlier episode involving Miletus and Samos.[25] Plutarch reports also the taunting comments of other comic poets, such as Eupolis and Cratinus.[13] According to Podlecki, Douris appears to have propounded the view that Aspasia instigated both the Samian and Peloponnesian Wars.[26]
Aspasia was labeled the "New Omphale",[η] "Deianira",[η] "Hera"[θ] and "Helen".[ι][27] Further attacks on Pericles' relationship with Aspasia are reported by Athenaeus.[28] Even Pericles' own son, Xanthippus, who had political ambitions, did not hesitate to slander his father about his domestic affairs.[22]
In 429 BC during the Plague of Athens, Pericles witnessed the death of his sister and of both his legitimate sons, Paralus and Xanthippus, from his first wife. With his morale undermined, he burst into tears, and not even Aspasia's companionship could console him. Just before his death, the Athenians allowed a change in the citizenship law of 451 BC that made his half-Athenian son with Aspasia, Pericles the Younger, a citizen and legitimate heir,[29] a decision all the more striking in considering that Pericles himself had proposed the law confining citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides.[30] Pericles died of the plague in the autumn of 429 BC.
Plutarch cites Aeschines Socraticus, who wrote a dialogue on Aspasia (now lost), to the effect that after Pericles's death Aspasia lived with Lysicles, an Athenian general and democratic leader, with whom she had another son; and that she made him the first man at Athens.[β][13] Lysicles was killed in action in 428 BC.[31][32] With Lysicles' death the contemporaneous record ends.[16] It is unknown, for example, if she was alive when her son, Pericles, was elected general or when he was executed after the Battle of Arginusae. The time of her death that most historians give (c. 401 BC-400 BC) is based on the assessment that Aspasia died before the execution of Socrates in 399 BC, a chronology which is implied in the structure of Aeschines' Aspasia.[1][3]
Aspasia appears in the philosophical writings of Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes. Some scholars argue that Plato was impressed by her intelligence and wit and based his character Diotima in the Symposium on her, while others suggest that Diotima was in fact a historical figure.[33][34] According to Charles Kahn, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, Diotima is in many respects Plato's response to Aeschines' Aspasia.[35]
| "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." |
| Plutarch, Pericles, XXIV |
In Menexenus, Plato satirizes Aspasia's relationship with Pericles,[36] and quotes Socrates as claiming ironically that she was a trainer of many orators. Socrates' intention is to cast aspersions on Pericles' rhetorical fame, claiming, also ironically, that since the Athenian statesman was educated by Aspasia, he would be superior in rhetoric to someone educated by Antiphon.[37] He also attributes authorship of the Funeral Oration to Aspasia and attacks his contemporaries' veneration of Pericles.[38] Kahn maintains that Plato has taken from Aeschines the motif of Aspasia as teacher of rhetoric for Pericles and Socrates.[35] Plato's Aspasia and Aristophanes' Lysistrata are two apparent exceptions to the rule of women's incapacity as orators, though these fictional characters tell us nothing about the actual status of women in Athens.[39] As Martha L. Rose, Professor of History at Truman State University, explains, "only in comedy do dogs litigate, birds govern, or women declaim".[40]
Xenophon mentions Aspasia twice in his Socratic writings: in Memorabilia and in Oeconomicus. In both cases her advice is recommended to Critobulus by Socrates. In Memorabilia Socrates quotes Aspasia as saying that the matchmaker should report truthfully on the good characteristics of the man.[41] In Oeconomicus Socrates defers to Aspasia as more knowledgeable about household management and the economic partnership between husband and wife.[42]
Painting of Hector Leroux (1682–1740), which portrays Pericles and Aspasia admiring the gigantic statue of Athena in
Phidias' studio
Aeschines Socraticus and Antisthenes each named a Socratic dialogue after Aspasia (though neither survives except in fragments). Our major sources for Aeschines Socraticus' Aspasia are Athenaeus, Plutarch, and Cicero. In the dialogue, Socrates recommends that Callias send his son Hipponicus to Aspasia for instructions. When Callias recoils at the notion of a female teacher, Socrates notes that Aspasia had favorably influenced Pericles and, after his death, Lysicles. In a section of the dialogue, preserved in Latin by Cicero, Aspasia figures as a "female Socrates", counseling first Xenophon's wife and then Xenophon himself (the Xenophon in question is not the famous historian) about acquiring virtue through self-knowledge.[35][43] Aeschines presents Aspasia as a teacher and inspirer of excellence, connecting these virtues with her status as hetaira.[44] According to Kahn, every single episode in Aeschines' Aspasia is not only fictitious but incredible.[45]
Of Antisthenes' Aspasia only two or three quotations are extant.[1] This dialogue contains much slander, but also anecdotes pertaining to Pericles' biography.[46] Antisthenes appears to have attacked not only Aspasia, but the entire family of Pericles, including his sons. The philosopher believes that the great statesman chose the life of pleasure over virtue.[47] Thus, Aspasia is presented as the personification of the life of sexual indulgence.[44]
Aspasia appears in several significant works of modern literature. Her romantic attachment with Pericles has inspired some of the most famous novelists and poets of the last centuries. In particular the romanticists of the 19th century and the historical novelists of the 20th century found in their story an inexhaustible source of inspiration. In 1835 Lydia Maria Child, an American abolitionist, novelist, and journalist, published Philothea, a classical romance set in the days of Pericles and Aspasia. This book is regarded as the most successful and elaborate of the author's productions, because the female characters, especially Aspasia, are portrayed with great beauty and delicacy.[48]
In 1836, Walter Savage Landor, an English writer and poet, published Pericles and Aspasia, one of his most famous books. Pericles and Aspasia is a rendering of classical Athens through a series of imaginary letters, which contain numerous poems. The letters are frequently unfaithful to actual history but attempt to capture the spirit of the Age of Pericles.[49] Robert Hamerling is another novelist and poet who was inspired by Aspasia's personality. In 1876 he published his novel Aspasia, a book about the manners and morals of the Age of Pericles and a work of cultural and historical interest. Giacomo Leopardi, an Italian poet influenced by the movement of romanticism, published a group of five poems known as the circle of Aspasia. These Leopardi poems were inspired by his painful experience of desperate and unrequited love for a woman named Fanny Targioni Tozzetti. Leopardi called this person Aspasia, after the companion of Pericles.[50]
In 1918, novelist and playwright George Cram Cook produced his first full-length play, The Athenian Women, which portrays Aspasia leading a strike for peace.[51] Cook combined an anti-war theme with a Greek setting.[52] American writer Gertrude Atherton in The Immortal Marriage (1927) treats the story of Pericles and Aspasia and illustrates the period of the Samian War, the Peloponnesian War and the Plague of Athens. Taylor Caldwell's Glory and the Lightning (1974) is another novel that portrays the historical relationship of Aspasia and Pericles.[53] In 2011, an Italian writer, Daniela Mazzon, published the biographical essay "Aspasia maestra e amante di Pericle" and in 2012 she produced the drama in ancient style "Desiderata Aspasia. Rapsodia mediterannea".
Aspasia's name is closely connected with Pericles' glory and fame.[54] Plutarch accepts her as 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".[13] The biographer says that Aspasia became so renowned that even Cyrus the Younger, who went to war with the King Artaxerxes II of Persia, gave her name to one of his concubines, who before was called Milto. After Cyrus had fallen in battle, this woman was carried captive to the King and acquired a great influence with him.[13] Lucian calls Aspasia a "model of wisdom", "the admired of the admirable Olympian" and lauds "her political knowledge and insight, her shrewdness and penetration".[55] A Syriac text, according to which Aspasia composed a speech and instructed a man to read it for her in the courts, confirms Aspasia's rhetorical fame.[56] Aspasia is said by the Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, to have been "clever with regards to words," a sophist, and to have taught rhetoric.[57]
| "Next I have to depict Wisdom; and here I shall have occasion for many models, most of them ancient; one comes, like the lady herself, from Ionia. The artists shall be Aeschines and Socrates his master, most realistic of painters, for their heart was in their work. We could choose no better model of wisdom than Milesian Aspasia, the admired of the admirable 'Olympian'; her political knowledge and insight, her shrewdness and penetration, shall all be transferred to our canvas in their perfect measure. Aspasia, however, is only preserved to us in miniature: our proportions must be those of a colossus." |
| Lucian, A Portrait-Study, XVII |
On the basis of such assessments, researchers such as Cheryl Glenn, Professor at the Pennsylvania State University, argue that Aspasia seems to have been the only woman in classical Greece to have distinguished herself in the public sphere and must have influenced Pericles in the composition of his speeches.[58] Some scholars believe that Aspasia opened an academy for young women of good families or even invented the Socratic method.[58][59] However, Robert W. Wallace, Professor of classics at Northwestern University, underscores that "we cannot accept as historical the joke that Aspasia taught Pericles how to speak and hence was a master rhetorician or philosopher". According to Wallace, the intellectual role Aspasia was given by Plato may have derived from comedy.[5] Kagan describes Aspasia as "a beautiful, independent, brilliantly witty young woman capable of holding her own in conversation with the best minds in Greece and of discussing and illuminating any kind of question with her husband".[60] Roger Just, a classicist and Professor of social anthropology at the University of Kent, believes that Aspasia was an exceptional figure, but her example alone is enough to underline the fact that any woman who was to become the intellectual and social equal of a man would have to be a hetaera.[9] According to Sr. Prudence Allen, a philosopher and seminary professor, Aspasia moved the potential of women to become philosophers one step forward from the poetic inspirations of Sappho.[36]
The main problem remains, as Jona Lendering points out,[61] that most of the things we know about Aspasia are based on mere hypothesis. Thucydides does not mention her; our only sources are the untrustworthy representations and speculations recorded by men in literature and philosophy, who did not care at all about Aspasia as a historical character.[5][39] Therefore, in the figure of Aspasia, we get a range of contradictory portrayals; she is either a good wife like Theano or some combination of courtesan and prostitute like Thargelia.[62] This is the reason modern scholars express their scepticism about the historicity of Aspasia's life.[5]
According to Wallace, "for us Aspasia herself possesses and can possess almost no historical reality".[5] Hence, Madeleine M. Henry, Professor of Classics at Iowa State University, maintains that "biographical anecdotes that arose in antiquity about Aspasia are wildly colorful, almost completely unverifiable, and still alive and well in the twentieth century". She finally concludes that "it is possible to map only the barest possibilities for [Aspasia's] life".[63] According to Charles W. Fornara and Loren J. Samons II, Professors of Classics and history, "it may well be, for all we know, that the real Aspasia was more than a match for her fictional counterpart".[27]
α. ^ Henry regards as a slander the reports of ancient writers and comic poets that Aspasia was a brothel keeper and a harlot. Henry believes that these comic sallies were to ridicule Athens' leadership and were based on the fact that, by his own citizenship law, Pericles was prevented from marrying Aspasia and so had to live with her in an unmarried state.[64] For these reasons historian Nicole Loraux questions even the testimony of ancient writers that Aspasia was a hetaera or a courtesan.[65] Fornara and Samons also dismiss the 5th-century tradition that Aspasia was a harlot and managed houses of ill-repute.[27]
β. ^ According to Debra Nails, Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University, if Aspasia was not a free woman, the decree to legitimize her son with Pericles and the later marriage to Lysicles (Nails assumes that Aspasia and Lysicles were married) would almost certainly have been impossible.[1]
γ. ^ Fornara and Samons take the position that Pericles married Aspasia, but his citizenship law declared her to be an invalid mate.[27] Wallace argues that, in marrying Aspasia, if he married her, Pericles was continuing a distinguished Athenian aristocratic tradition of marrying well-connected foreigners.[5] Henry believes that Pericles was prevented by his own citizenship law from marrying Aspasia and so had to live with her in an unmarried state.[64] On the basis of a comic passage Henry maintains that Aspasia was probably a pallake, namely a concubine.[66] According to historian William Smith, Aspasia's relation with Pericles was "analogous to the left-handed marriages of modern princes".[67] Historian Arnold W. Gomme underscores that "his contemporaries spoke of Pericles as married to Aspasia".[68]
δ. ^ According to Kahn, stories such as Socrates' visits to Aspasia, along with his friends' wives and Lysicles' connection with Aspasia, are not likely to be historical. He believes that Aeschines was indifferent to the historicity of his Athenian stories and that these stories must have been invented at a time when the date of Lysicles' death had been forgotten, but his occupation still remembered.[44]
ε. ^ Kagan estimates that, if the trial of Aspasia happened, "we have better reason to believe that it happened in 438 than at any other time".[18]
στ. ^ According to James F. McGlew, Professor at Iowa State University, it is not very likely that the charge against Aspasia was made by Hermippus. He believes that "Plutarch or his sources have confused the law courts and theater".[69]
ζ. ^ Athenaeus quotes Antisthenes saying that Pericles pleaded for her against charges of impiety, weeping "more tears than when his life and property were endangered".[70]
η. ^ Omphale and Deianira were respectively the Lydian queen who owned Heracles as a slave for a year and his long-suffering wife. Athenian dramatists took an interest in Omphale from the middle of the 5th century. The comedians parodied Pericles for resembling a Heracles under the control of an Omphale-like Aspasia.[71] Aspasia was called "Omphale" in the Kheirones of Cratinus or the Philoi of Eupolis.[25]
θ. ^ Αs wife of the "Olympian" Pericles.[71] Ancient Greek writers call Pericles "Olympian", because he was "thundering and lightening and exciting Greece" and carrying the weapons of Zeus when orating.[72]
ι. ^ Cratinus (in Dionysalexandros) assimilates Pericles and Aspasia to the "outlaw" figures of Paris and Helen; just as Paris caused a war with Spartan Menelaus over his desire for Helen, so Pericles, influenced by the foreign Aspasia, involved Athens in a war with Sparta.[73] Eupolis also called Aspasia Helen in the Prospaltoi.[71]
- ^ a b c d e f D. Nails, The People of Plato, 58–59
- ^ P. O'Grady, Aspasia of Miletus
- ^ a b A.E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and his Work, 41
- ^ S. Monoson, Plato's Democratic Entanglements, 195
- ^ a b c d e f R.W. Wallace, Review of Henry's book
- ^ J. Lendering, Aspasia of Miletus
- ^ P.J. Bicknell, Axiochus Alkibiadou, Aspasia and Aspasios, 240–250
- ^ a b Aristophanes, Acharnians, 523-527
- ^ a b c R. Just,Women in Athenian Law and Life",144
- ^ a b "Aspasia". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2002.
- ^ A. Southall, The City in Time and Space, 63
- ^ B. Arkins,Sexuality in Fifth-Century Athens
- ^ a b c d e f g Plutarch, Pericles, XXIV
- ^ M. Ostwald, Athens as a Cultural Center, 310
- ^ P.A. Stadter, A Commentary on Plutarch's Pericles, 239
- ^ a b H.G. Adams, A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography, 75–76
- ^ Fornara-Samons, Athens from Cleisthenes to Pericles, 31
- ^ a b c D. Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 197
- ^ Thucydides, I, 115
- ^ Plutarch, Pericles, XXV
- ^ Plutarch, Pericles, XXXII
- ^ a b Plutarch, Pericles, XXXVI
- ^ A.J. Podlecki, Pericles and his Circle, 33
- ^ D. Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 201
- ^ a b A. Powell, The Greek World, 259–261
- ^ A.J. Podlecki, Pericles and his Circle, 126
- ^ a b c d Fornara-Samons, Athens from Cleisthenes to Pericles, 162–166
- ^ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 533c-d
- ^ Plutarch, Pericles, XXXVII
- ^ W. Smith, A History of Greece, 271
- ^ Thucydides, III, 19
- ^ For year of death, see OCD "Aspasia"
- ^ K. Wider, "Women philosophers in the Ancient Greek World", 21–62
- ^ I. Sykoutris, Symposium (Introduction and Comments), 152–153
- ^ a b c C.H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 26–27
- ^ a b P. Allen, The Concept of Woman, 29–30
- ^ Plato, Menexenus, 236a
- ^ S. Monoson, Plato's Democratic Entanglements, 182–186
- ^ a b K. Rothwell, Politics & Persuasion in Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae, 22
- ^ M.L. Rose, The Staff of Oedipus, 62
- ^ Xenophon, Memorabilia, 2, 6.36
- ^ Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 3.14
- ^ Cicero, De Inventione, I, 51–53
- ^ a b c C.H. Kahn, Aeschines on Socratic Eros, 96–99
- ^ C.H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 34
- ^ Bolansée-Schepens-Theys-Engels, Biographie, 104
- ^ C.H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 9
- ^ E.A. Duyckinc-G.L. Duyckinck, Cyclopedia of American Literature, 198
- ^ R. MacDonald Alden, Readings in English Prose, 195
- ^ M. Brose, A Companion to European Romanticism, 271
- ^ D.D. Anderson, The Literature of the Midwest, 120
- ^ M Noe, Analysis of the Midwestern Character
- ^ L.A. Tritle, The Peloponnesian War, 199
- ^ K. Paparrigopoulos, Ab, 220
- ^ Lucian, A Portrait Study, XVII
- ^ L. McClure, Spoken like a Woman, 20
- ^ Suda, article Aspasia
- ^ a b C. Glenn, Remapping Rhetorical Territory , 180–199
- ^ Jarratt-Onq, Aspasia: Rhetoric, Gender, and Colonial Ideology, 9–24
- ^ D.Kagan, Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy, 182
- ^ Aspasia of Miletus at livius.org
- ^ J.E. Taylor, Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria, 187
- ^ M. Henry, Prisoner of History, 3, 10, 127–128
- ^ a b M. Henry, Prisoner of History, 138–139
- ^ N. Loraux, Aspasie, l'étrangère, l'intellectuelle, 133–164
- ^ M. Henry, Prisoner of History, 21
- ^ W. Smith, A History of Greece, 261
- ^ A. W. Gomme, Essays in Greek History & Literature, 104
- ^ J.F. McGlew, Citizens on Stage, 53
- ^ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, XIII, 589
- ^ a b c P.A. Stadter, A Commentary on Plutarch's Pericles, 240
- ^ Aristophanes, Acharnians, 528–531 and Diodorus, XII, 40
- ^ M. Padilla, Labor's Love Lost: Ponos and Eros in the Trachiniae
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- Mazzon, Daniela, Aspasia maestra e amante di Pericle, EdizioniAnordest, 2011 (in Italian) EAN9788896742280
- Mazzon, Daniela, Desiderata Aspasia. Rapsodia mediterranea, one-act drama, 2012 (in Italian)
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- Hamerling, Louis (1893). Aspasia: a Romance of Art and Love in Ancient Hellas. Geo. Gottsberger Peck.
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- Biographical
- "Aspasia of Athens". Brainard, Jennifer. http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/philosophy/Aspasia.html. Retrieved August 14, 2007.
 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aspasia". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. - "Aspasia". Encyclopædia Romana. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/hetairai/aspasia.html. Retrieved September 10, 2006.
- "Aspasia of Miletus - Prisoner of History, by Madeleine Henry". Gill, N.S.. http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/philosophers/a/Aspasia.htm. Retrieved September 10, 2006.
- "Aspasia of Miletus". Lendering, Jona. http://www.livius.org/as-at/aspasia/aspasia.html. Retrieved September 10, 2006.
- "Aspasia of Miletus". O'Grady, Patricia. http://home.vicnet.net.au/~hwaa/artemis4.html. Retrieved September 10, 2006.
- "Aspasia, from PBS's "The Greeks"". The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization on PBS. http://www.pbs.org/empires/thegreeks/htmlver/characters/f_aspasia.html. Retrieved November 1, 2006.
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- Miscellaneous
- "Aspasia:International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History". "Aspasia is an international peer-reviewed yearbook that brings out the best scholarship in the field of interdisciplinary women's and gender history focused on – and produced in – Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe." - quoted from the journal website. http://www.berghahnbooks.com/journals/asp/. Retrieved October 1, 2008.
- "Aspasia in Greek Comedy". Gill, N.S.. http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa032498b.htm. Retrieved September 10, 2006.
- "Aspasia, the Ancient Philosopher and Teacher of Athens". Gill, N.S.. http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa032498c.htm. Retrieved September 10, 2006.
- "Thoughts on Aspasia and Diotima". Ratliff, Clancy. http://culturecat.net/node/129. Retrieved September 10, 2006.
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| Persondata |
| Name |
Aspasia |
| Alternative names |
|
| Short description |
Milesian woman, involved with Athenian statesman Pericles |
| Date of birth |
470 BC |
| Place of birth |
Miletus |
| Date of death |
400 BC |
| Place of death |
Probably Athens |
