Aspasia of Miletus is a powerful, influential woman. She is best known as the consort and close companion of Pericles, a great Athenian statesman. Aspasia is influential because she is a scholar and philosopher whose intellectual influence distinguishes her in Athenian culture, which treats women as second-class citizens. She is known mainly to have enormous influence over such prominent leaders and philosophers as Pericles, Plato, and Socrates. Aspasia, born in Miletus in 470 B.C.E., belongs to a wealthy family, because her parents can afford an education for her. In the early 440s, the family settles in Athens, where they become metics, which are non-Athenians living in the city. Her name means “greeting with affection” or “welcome,” …show more content…
Her life is completely bound up in that of Pericles, and yet there is ample evidence to suggest she is a woman of formidable intelligence and eloquence who influences many important writers, thinkers, and statesmen. “Enemies of Pericles make much of his relationship with Aspasia the metic and hetaira, going so far as to claim that Aspasia ‘taught Pericles how to speak,’ and is the real author of his famous Funeral Oration” (Mark 1). While this charge is not something which would trouble anyone modern-day, in ancient Greece it is a grave insult; no Athenian statesman, or any man in general, wishes it known that he is indebted to a woman for his success. “Socrates, however, seems to hold women in higher regard than most men in ancient Athens, marvelling at her eloquence and crediting her with composing the funeral oration that Pericles delivered after the first casualties of the Peloponnesian War. Furthermore, he claims that he had learned from Aspasia ‘the art of eloquence’” (Mark …show more content…
Other later writers, however, such as the rhetorician Quintilian held her in high regard, citing her as an eloquent and intelligent teacher. Lucian calls her "a woman of wisdom and understanding," while Quintilian thought enough of her work to lecture about her to his classes. In more modern times, Aspasia’s reputation has continued to be regarded highly and has undergone a dramatic and romantic renaissance. Walter Savage Landor published his popular “Pericles and Aspasia” in 1836 C.E; a work of fictional letters between the two in which Pericles, erroneously, dies in the Peloponnesian War. This work received wide acclaim which later inspired the writer Gertrude Atherton to write and publish her equally popular novel “The Immortal Marriage” in 1927 C.E., presenting a positive image of Aspasia as a strong and highly cultured woman who made Pericles the popular speaker and statesman he
Yet, despite the fact that no two women in this epic are alike, each—through her vices or virtues—helps to delineate the role of the ideal woman. Below, we will show the importance of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Clytaemestra, and Penelope in terms of the movement of the narrative and in defining social roles for the Ancient Greeks. Before we delve into the traits of individual characters, it is important to understand certain assumptions about women that prevailed in the Homeric Age. By modern standards, the Ancient Greeks would be considered a rabidly misogynistic culture. Indeed, the notoriously sour Boetian playwright Hesiod-- who wrote about fifty years before Homer-- proclaimed "Zeus who thunders on high made women to be evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil (Theogony 600).
Although Homer’s The Odyssey is a tale of Odysseus’s heroic quest to return to Ithaca, the women in it play an equal, if not more important role. The saying “behind every great man is an even greater woman” rings true throughout The Odyssey. In Ancient Greek culture, one’s glory is based off of the geras they acquire; for men that glory included women. In Penelope, Odysseus found the perfect match, both intellectually and hospitably; she is clever, cunning and faithful. Penelope, along with other mortal and immortal women such as Athena, challenge the view of women during this time because Homer presented Penelope as a strong woman rather than the submissive character she is expected to be.
Due to a lack of primary source information in relation to the abundance of secondary source material regarding Aspasia and her influence within rhetorical history, tackling the question concerning the amount of influence she held is difficult and, therefore, tackling the question of whether or not her influence was gender-related is more challenging. When grappling with the latter, a significant amount of feminist scholars provide a pool of information, as they see it, to draw from. Scholars like Cheryl Glenn and Madeleine M. Henry share opinions that Aspasia’s individual identity within and influence on the masculine dominated traditions such as rhetoric and philosophy are important to pick out regardless of the fact that her ‘voice’ is completely accounted for by secondary source information. Of course, the problem centering on wading through the scholarly texts concerning Aspasia is the inability to stray away from bias when dealing with subjective scholars analyzing ancient secondary texts, whose authors were not objective, themselves. With this being said, both the writings of recent feminist scholars and of ancient rhetoricians and philosophers cannot omit the fact that Aspasia was a foreign woman, a quality that becomes important here (Jarratt 392); however, because of the absence of primary source information directly from Aspasia, “[her] voice is muted, for she only speaks through men” (Glenn 193). Here, I will explore the notion of foreign status and gender role through the portrayal of Plato’s Menexenus, Cicero’s De Inventione, and more recent scholarly work in order to reveal the effects of a male dominated intellectual society on a woman’s intellectual voice within the rhetorical tradition.
She places in people the desire to have sexual relations and causes fear in men of the power of seduction by women. Her marriage to her husband was ignored as she had affairs with immortal and mortal men. Her infidelity in her marriage places her on the side with Greek men, rather than Greek women because only Greek men were able to cheat on their wives; not the other way around. In conclusion, the three important rules discussed in this paper that Greek women were required to obey, can be seen in the myths of the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Whether or not the Greek goddesses obeyed or did not obey these rules, their importance to the Greek culture is ever strong.
Greek women, as depicted as in their history and literature, endure many hardships and struggle to establish a meaningful status in their society. In the Odyssey, Penelope’s only role in the epic is to support Odysseus and remain loyal to him. She is at home and struggles to keep her family intact while Odysseus is away trying to return to his native land. The cultural role of women is depicted as being supportive of man and nothing more. Yet what women in ancient Greece did long ago was by far more impressive than what men did.
There isn’t enough literature from this time period from the lower and middle classes of society, and the view of women we have comes from writings of the upper class males. As much of an enigma that the women of Athens were, it is clear that “women were for the most part legal nonentities,” (O’Neal 117) that were denied any association and participation in the intellectual life of their city. The women were not involved in getting an education, and never learned to read or write. O’Neal writes, “The principal spokesmen of fifth century Athens, Pericles and Thucydides, disdained Athenian women.” (O’Neal 117) Based on their writing, and on surmountable evidence, it can be assumed that women had only two roles in Athens - a wife, or a mother. A girl was ideally married at 14 or 15 years of age, and there was necessity that the bride was a virgin, otherwise she was shamed and sold into
One can hardly deny that in Euripides’ plays women are often portrayed as weak, uncertain, and torn between what they must do and what they can bring themselves to do. Other women appear to be the root of grave evils, or simply perpetrators of heinous crimes. In a day when analysis of characters and plot had yet to be invented, it is easy to see why he might have been thought to be very much against women. However, when looking back with current understanding of what Euripides was doing at the time, armed with knowledge of plot devices and Socratic philosophy, this argument simply does not hold up. In fact, a very strong argument can be made to the opposite, that Euripides was in fact very much in support of women’s rights, and thought they were treated unfairly.
Women in ancient Greece are an interesting subject and only so much is known about the exact day to day lives of them however from what records remain it would seem that they were kept at a relatively low level on the social hierarchy. Even in Pericles ' Funeral Speech which seems to be an almost utopian discretion of aspects of Greek life Pericles himself states that “Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men whether for good or for bad.” Pericles states that the greatest of women should be the ones whom are not noticed but still preform there tasks while not catching the attention of men. Adding to this even the great philosopher Aristotle bags on the women of Greece simply by stating that ”female [souls are] inoperative” With this simple statement Aristotle makes it seem that women are somehow broken and can never live up to the same standards as men. Even Xenophon, The Economist rambles on...
Aristophane’s Lysistrata is a flawed classic filled with the power struggle between man vs. woman. It is entirely focused and written from the male perspective, in which male-privilege dominated and disregarded the women’s outlook entirely. This “classic” is full of misogynistic perspectives, and should be disregarded as a great piece in Athenian literature.
Euripides shows his views on female power through Medea. As a writer of the marginalized in society, Medea is the prime example of minorities of the age. She is a single mother, with 2 illegitimate children, in a foreign place. Despite all these disadvantages, Medea is the cleverest character in the story. Medea is a warning to the consequences that follow when society underestimates the
Athena was the Greek Goddess of many ideas, but she was famous mostly for her superior wisdom, her cunning skills in times of war, and her implausible talent for household tasks, such as weaving and pottery. She was celebrated more than any other God in ancient mythology, was the supposed inventor of countless innovations, and her figure gave reason for Greek woman to gain rights long before others of their time. The goddess of war, the guardian of Athens, and the defender of Heroes; Athena’s impact on the lives of Ancient Greeks is outstanding.
In the plays Medea and Hippolytus, both by Euripides, the female psyche is a point of focus that is not explored in many other Greek tragedies. Through these plays, we can discover the way women were viewed in Ancient Greek society as well as their concerns. We can also pay attention to how women are portrayed differently between the two plays.In Medea and Hippolytus, the women we spend the most time with are Medea and Phaedra. These women have vastly different values, but the cunning and determination they use to get their ways are not as different as one may believe.
Meyer, Jargen C. “Women in Classical Athens in the Shadow of North-West Europe or in the Light from Istanbul”. Women’s Life in Classical Athens. www.hist.uib.no/antikk/antres/Womens life.htm. Accessed: March 10, 2012
Medea and Lysistrata are two Greek literatures that depict the power which women are driven to achieve in an aim to defy gender inequality. In The Medea, Medea is battling against her husband Jason whom she hates. On the other hand, in Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the protagonist Lysistrata plotted to convince and organize the female gender to protest against the stubbornness of men. In terms of defining the purpose of these two literatures, it is apparent that Euripedes and Aristophanes created characters that demonstrate resistance against the domination of men in the society.