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ASPASIA

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Originally appearing in Volume V02, Page 766 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ASPASIA , an Athenian courtesan of the 5th See also:

century B.C., was See also:born either at See also:Miletus. or at See also:Megara, and settled in See also:Athens, where her beauty and her accomplishments gained for her a See also:great reputation. See also:Pericles, who had divorced his wife (445), made her his See also:mistress, and, after the See also:death of his two legitimate sons, procured the passing of a See also:law under which his son by her was recognized as legitimate. It was the See also:fashion, especially among the comic poets, to regard her as the adviser of Pericles in all his See also:political actions, and she is even charged with having caused the Samian and Peloponnesian See also:wars (Aristoph. Acharn. 497)• Shortly before the latter See also:war, she was accused of impiety, and nothing but the tears and entreaties of Pericles procured her acquittal. On the death of Pericles she is said to have become the mistress of one Lysicles, whom, though of ignoble See also:birth, she raised to a high position in the See also:state; but, as Lysicles died a See also:year after Pericles (428), the See also:story is unconvincing. She was the See also:chief figure in the See also:dialogue Aspasia by See also:Aeschines the Socratic, in which she was represented as criticizing the See also:manners and training of the See also:women of her See also:time (for an attempted reconstruction of the dialogue see P. Natorp in Philologus, li. p. 489, 1892); in the Menexenus (generally ascribed to See also:Plato) she is a teacher of See also:rhetoric, the instructress of See also:Socrates and Pericles, and a funeral oration in See also:honour of those Athenians who had given their lives for their See also:country (the authorship of which is attributed to Aspasia) is repeated by Socrates; See also:Xenophon (Oecon. lii. 14) also speaks of her in favourable terms, but she is not mentioned by See also:Thucydides. In opposition to this view, Wilamowitz-Mollendorff (See also:Hermes, See also:xxxv. 1900) regards her simply as a courtesan, whose See also:personality would readily, become the subject of rumour, favour-able or unfavourable.

There is a bust bearing her name in the Pio Clementino Museum in the Vatican. See Le See also:

Coi to de Bievre, See also:Les Deux Aspasies (1736) ; J. B. See also:Capefigue, Aspasie et le siecle de Pericles (1862) ; L. Becq de Fouquieres, Aspasie de Milet (1872) ; H. See also:Houssaye, Aspasie, Cleojidtre, See also:Theodora (1899) ; R. Hamerlingi,Aspasia (a See also:romance; Eng. trans. by M. J. Safford, New See also:York, 1882); J. See also:Donaldson, Woman (1907). Also PERICLES.

End of Article: ASPASIA

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