Aspasia

Aspasia (; ; after 428 BC) was a metic woman in Classical Athens. Born in Miletus, she moved to Athens and began a relationship with the statesman Pericles, with whom she had a son, Pericles the Younger. According to the traditional historical narrative, she worked as a courtesan and was tried for asebeia (impiety), though modern scholars have questioned the factual basis for either of these claims, which both derive from ancient comedy. Though Aspasia is one of the best-attested women from the Greco-Roman world, and the most important woman in the history of fifth-century Athens, almost nothing is certain about her life. Aspasia was portrayed in Old Comedy as a prostitute and madam, and in ancient philosophy as a teacher and rhetorician. She has continued to be a subject of both visual and literary artists until the present. From the twentieth century, she has been portrayed as both a sexualised and sexually liberated woman, and as a feminist role model fighting for women's rights in ancient Athens. Sources Aspasia was an important figure – and the most important woman – in the history of fifth-century Athens, and is one of the women from the Greco-Roman world with the most substantial biographical traditions. The earliest literary sources to mention Aspasia, written during her lifetime, are from Athenian comedy, and in the fourth century BC she appears in Socratic dialogues. After the fourth century, she appears only in brief mentions of complete texts, or in fragments whose full context is now lost, until the second century AD, when Plutarch wrote his Life of Pericles, the longest and most complete ancient biographical treatment of Aspasia. Modern biographies of Aspasia are dependent on Plutarch, despite his writing nearly seven centuries after her death.