The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [76]
Although some cry ‘There is no direct evidence’ for all of this, for Aspasia’s active participation in the intellectual life of Athens (other than her confident appearance with Socrates in literature in Plato’s Dialogues),24 in male-dominated European societies to date there has never yet been one that did not sponsor talented, charismatic, intelligent women in private salons. In the courts of the Goths, the Caliphs, the Byzantines, the Carolingians, the Medici, the Rus, the Ottomans – they are always there. Aristotle remarks, with the sneer you expect to hear in his voice when it comes to women, ‘Everyone honours the wise … [T]he Mytilenaeans [honour] Sappho, though she was a woman.’25 Aspasia might have been a trophy, a performing monkey even, but it is more likely than not that she was there, not just in Pericles’ bed, but articulate and at his side.26
So now, in around 440 BC, picture the scene. In sharp-witted Pericles’ halls there is a new perfume. Hetairas (high-class, often educated female consorts) in saffron-dyed, almost see-through drapes, some with faces whitened with white-lead and then rouged, cross in doorways. Aspasia, now Pericles’ common-law wife, joins her husband as host. She is still a young woman, he is in his mid-fifties. Most Athenian wives are expected to absent themselves when male guests appear. If on occasion a wife is unfortunate enough to open a door when a man arrives unannounced she can, quite properly, be branded a scarlet woman, a tart.27 But Aspasia’s degraded, ‘foreign’ status has become her cloak of invisibility. She can go places, do things that citizen Athenian Greek women would never experience; she can say things that they would never be able to say.28
Not only does it seem that Aspasia has a voice, but we are given to understand that she speaks with the most exciting men of the day: Anaxagoras, Damon, Alcibiades and Socrates. She brings a new slant to the men’s proceedings. When Socrates (via Plato in the Republic)29 suggests that women are capable of virtue, it is perhaps Aspasia’s example that he holds to the fore. He also quotes Pericles’ consort on the topic of matchmakers and reliability, the value of telling the truth.30
The good matchmaker is an expert at joining people together – by giving true reports of their good qualities, but refusing to sing their praises falsely.31
While many of the key writers of the day – Xenophon, Aristotle, Hippocrates – scarcely acknowledged the existence of women, and if they did, mentioned them only in a suspicious or negative light, Socrates (if we can take some of Plato’s scenarios at face value) seems to have been genuinely open to the possibility that women just might have something interesting to say. Plato’s Aspasia, for instance, emphasises the emotional nature, the erotic nature of politics.32 However much Plato employs Aspasia as a handy construct to get across his own message, read between the lines and it seems apparent that Socrates was indeed fascinated by her and her emotional view of the world. Aspasia arrived in Athens living off her wits. When she had nothing, she had to utilise charis – charm, an ability to click with those around her. Given what we know of Socrates’ enquiring mind, his interest in Aspasia is in character. Offered a fresh furrow, a new (female) perspective on things, a different kind of life experience, he is more than happy to plough.
There’s nothing like investigation. I will introduce Aspasia to you, and she will explain the whole matter [of good wives] to you with more knowledge than I possess.33