Aspasia

Aspasia (Greek: Ἀσπασία c. 470–c. 400 BC) was an influential woman in Ancient Greece, who according to Plutarch attracted the most prominent writers and thinkers of the time, including Socrates, to her salon, which became an intellectual centre in Athens. Aspasia was a metic and although she spent most of her adult life in Greece, few details of her life are fully known. Although some accounts credit Aspasia as a distinguished rhetorician and philosopher, there also exist ancient depictions of Aspasia as a brothel keeper and a hetaera. Aspasia is mentioned in the writings of Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophon and others. The hypothetical nature of conclusions reached about Aspasia, based on relatively scant and contradictory information, have led to this range of contradictory portrayals from intellectual luminary to courtesan. For this reason modern scholars express scepticism about the historicity of Aspasia's life, the consensus being that so much is unverifiable, and so little can be known, as to render Aspasia void of much historical reality. Aspasia's role in history provides crucial insight to the understanding of the women of ancient Greece. Very little is known about women from her time period. One scholar stated that, "To ask questions about Aspasia's life is to ask questions about half of humanity."