Pericles

And so Aspasia, as some say, was held in high favour by Pericles because of her rare political wisdom. Socrates sometimes came to see her with his disciples, and his intimate friends brought their wives to her to hear her discourse, although she presided over a business that was any- thing but honest or even reputable, since she kept a house of young courtesans.

And Aeschines[*](Aeschines the Socratic, in a dialogue entitled Aspasia, not extant.) says that Lysicles the sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and nature, came to be the first man at Athens by living with Aspasia after the death of Pericles. And in the Menexenus of Plato, even though the first part of it be written in a sportive vein, there is, at any rate, thus much of fact, that the woman had the reputation of associating with many Athenians as a teacher of rhetoric.

However, the affection which Pericles had for Aspasia seems to have been rather of an amatory sort. For his own wife was near of kin to him, and had been wedded first to Hipponicus, to whom she bore Callias, surnamed the Rich; she bore also, as the wife of Pericles, Xanthippus and Paralus. Afterwards, since their married life was not agreeable, he legally bestowed her upon another man, with her own consent, and himself took Aspasia, and loved her exceedingly.

Twice a day, as they say, on going out and on coming in from the market-place, he would salute her with a loving kiss. But in the comedies she is styled now the New Omphale, now Deianeira, and now Hera. Cratinus[*](In his Cheirons, Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 86. ) flatly called her a prostitute in these lines:—

1. As his Hera, Aspasia was born, the child of Unnatural Lust,
2. A prostitute past shaming.

1. And my bastard, doth he live?

1. Yea, and long had been a man,
2. Had he not feared the mischief of his harlot-birth.