Ancient Romans Aspasia of Miletus

Meet Aspasia of Miletus (d. about 400 BCE), a philosopher whose life illustrates that no matter how important and interesting a person’s ideas are, if no one records them, their impact fades. Certainly the most important female philosopher from the Ancient Greek past, Aspasia’s actual intellectual contributions are unknown to us. What we know is that she commanded the attention — and alternatingly respect and derision — of male commentators from her lifetime and centuries after her death.

Moving to Athens around 450 BCE, Aspasia became the lover of the leader Pericles. A later writer named Plutarch claimed that she had “rare political wisdom” and that she “had the reputation of being associated with a whole succession of Athenians, who came to her to learn rhetoric”. One author claimed she made important developments to the art of understanding known as the Socratic Method, although the source is unreliable.

A great deal of Ancient sources report about Aspasia with vitriol, calling her a _hetera_, which was a term for a woman trained in the arts of seduction. Like people who critisized Yoko Ono’s relationship with John Lennon, Aspasia was blamed for making Pericles do stupid things — getting Athens into debilitating political conflict with neighboring states, or making him into an uxorious and fawning leader. (Plutarch thought it excessive that Pericles would greet Aspasia with a kiss — in public! — twice a day.).

Because the tiny in-group of Ancient philosophers discounted Aspasia’s intellectual contributions, we have no evidence of what she actually thought. And that is to the detriment of all philosophers who came after her.