Aspasia of Miletus

Aspasia was Pericles' partner and the most discussed woman in classical Athens. Born in Miletus around 470 BC, she came to Athens as a metic — a resident foreigner — probably in her twenties, and as a non-citizen woman she was free of the seclusion that governed the lives of Athenian wives. She lived with Pericles from about 445 BC after he divorced his wife, and bore him a son. They could not marry: Pericles' own citizenship law of 451 BC, restricting citizenship to those with two Athenian parents, made the union legally impossible and their son illegitimate. The assembly later voted an exemption so that the boy could be enrolled, after Pericles' legitimate sons died of plague. She was famous for her conversation. Plato's Menexenus has Socrates claim she taught him rhetoric and composed a funeral oration, which is probably a joke and indicates that the claim was plausible enough to be funny. Xenophon and Aeschines also wrote about her, and Athenian intellectuals visited her. The comic poets attacked her relentlessly, calling her a brothel keeper and blaming her for starting both the Samian War and the Peloponnesian War through influence on Pericles — the standard method of attacking a politician through the woman beside him. She was reportedly prosecuted for impiety, with Pericles weeping at the trial to secure her acquittal, though the account is late and doubtful. Whether she was a hetaira is disputed and rests largely on the comedians. She survived Pericles, who died of plague in 429 BC.

• Lived: 470 BCE – 400 BCE
• Nationality: Greek
• Roles: intellectual