Aspasia of Miletus

Abstract

Aspasia, who died circa 401 B.C., is known as a rhetorician and a member of the Periclean philosophic circle. Her reputation as a philosopher has been memorialized by Plato, who makes her Epitaphia the subject of Socrates' conversation in the Menexenus. She is also memorialized in a fresco over the portal of the University of Athens in Greece, shown in the company of Socrates, Phidias, the sculptor (with chisel in hand) whose gold and ivory statue of Athena was dedicated on the Acropolis in 438, B.C.,1 Sophocles, the playwrite, Pericles, the general of the Peloponnesian Wars (and Aspasia's spouse), Plato, as a young man (who was born after Pericles died), Antisthenes, (who lived 444--365 B.C.), Anaxagoras, (who lived 500--428 B.C.), a youthful Alcibiades, (450--404 B.C.), Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, (completed 438 B.C.),2 Polygnotus, and Archimedes (who lived 287--212 B.C.). Clearly, some of the figures represented in the fresco could not have been present simultaneously, and some, notably, Archimedes, could not ever have been part of Aspasia's famous salon. Despite, or perhaps because of her public participation in Greek intellectual life, she was tried for impiety and acquitted after Pericles came to her public defense.