"Aspasia's Whores", an Aspirational Job Title

I tend to have a lot of opinions about everything, all of the time, and today my opinions are about Aspasia of Miletus and the slander that her contemporary historians spread about her. Aspasia of Miletus lived in Athens in approximately 450 BCE and her claim to fame was her infamous academic salon and the favour that she held with Socrates for her philosophical ideas. And I can hear you ask already, how could these obvious achievements be slandered? The usual method! Through accusations of loose sexual morals Aspasia’s efforts and clear intellectual prowess have been demeaned and dismissed.

Across ancient societies, women were shunned for displaying any form of desire or open sexual interest. I’d argue this is an interesting oxymoron considering sex was considered an area of ‘female expertise’, but of course, anything considered remotely female must be shameful. Women were frequently used as a form of chattel; owned first by their fathers - really any male relative would do, they weren’t fussy as long as a woman’s keeper had that all-important X chromosome. Then as women reached an age of sexual maturity they were practically sold to their husbands a pattern visible across history. Therefore, the role of a woman was to be a wife or daughter before any smidge of autonomy, with purity and innocence at the forefront of their desired traits. This in turn intertwined morality and purity with sexual innocence, and those who strayed outside of those constraints were treated as social outcasts.

And here is where my beloved Aspasia comes in; many historians belittled her respected academic salon because of rumours of her sexual proclivities, 'the assertively intelligent Aspasia has been interpreted as self-indulgent, licentious, immoral'. She was dubbed immoral because of her supposedly loose sexual morals and because she lived with Pericles but never married him. Her speculated role as a courtesan combined with her gender meant that ‘Aspasia’s popular salon, is often accredited to Pericles instead of to his female companion’. And here the Mathilda Effect pops up again. The Mathilda effect is defined as the erasure of female achievements in comparison to men’s, and in certain cases, the work is then accredited to men. The term was first applied to science but has now spread to other areas such as the arts and literature, and I would argue entirely defines arguments surrounding Aspasia’s salon.

Furthermore, it could be argued - due to the lack of substantial and accurate knowledge of Aspasia - that the attempt to dub her a whore was motivated by male desire to reduce her power within society due to her connection to Pericles. Pericles was dubbed the ‘first citizen of Athens’ a reflection of his prevalence in Athenian politics and wider society, therefore his tie to Aspasia was sneered at and her importance has been so greatly belittled. Male historians of the period allowed their accounts of her life to become coloured with bias implementing one of my favourite phenomena: defining women with sexuality as a defining characteristic. Comparatively, when men and sex are discussed simultaneously, sexuality is used as a verb simply an action that men can take, an activity that they dabble in, rather than one that defines them and taints their character. This idea is spread to the women that surrounded Aspasia, as those who attended her salon were nicknamed ‘Aspasia’s whores’ - I would argue a good pub quiz team name but less what I would want to be referred to in history books…

However, Plutarch does admit that ‘Aspasia, was held in high favour by Pericles because of her rare political wisdom. Socrates sometimes came to see her with his disciples’ suggesting that she managed to escape the narrow path laid out for her as a woman in Ancient Greece despite the accusations and shame hurled at her. As time has modern historians such as Sandi Toksvig have started to question the role that Aspasia held in Athenian society ‘You cannot read a word about her without the descriptions of ‘prostitute’ or ‘courtesan’’. Toksvig suggests that the label of harlot and prostitute is a male attempt to lessen her achievements and intelligence due to the shame surrounding the idea of open female sexuality and desire. Across the ancient world as soon as a woman was deemed ‘impure’ she became ‘used goods’ and was therefore no longer desired as a wife meaning that fathers could no longer sell them as breeding stock; Aspasia is a clear example of this.

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Bibliography

Aristophanes, Acharnians. 425 BCE., quoted in Beavers, E. L., ‘Greek and Roman Materials - Aspasia’

Glenn, C. 1994. Sex, Lies, and Manuscript: Refiguring Aspasia in the History of Rhetoric. College Composition and Communication

Plutarch. 200AD Plutarch’s Lives

Toksvig, Sandi. 2020. Toksvig’s Almanac 2021. Orion