omen of all antiquity; and
her ascendency as one of the foremost of her sex is due to the fact that
she is the only woman whose name appears in the brilliant galaxy of the
Periclean age and that the greatest leaders in that coterie of great men
were glad to acknowledge their indebtedness to her for Instruction and
inspiration. She is the only woman prominent in the life of Athens of
whom much is known to us, and she has won for herself a place altogether
unique in the history of Greek womanhood.

She was the daughter of one Axiochus, and was born and reared in
Miletus, the most pleasure-loving and artistic of the cities of Asia
Minor. The story of her childhood and youth is a closed book, but we
know that she was carefully trained in rhetoric, music, and the fine
arts, and became the possessor of every feminine accomplishment. Her
preceptress is said to have been the celebrated Thargelia, also of
Miletus, who exerted her power for the Great King during the Persian War
and finally married one of the kings in Thessaly. How Aspasia was drawn
to Athens is not known, but the most probable theory is that she settled
there as a young and brilliant teacher of rhetoric, following the
precedent established by Anaxagoras in philosophy and by Protagoras and
other men in rhetoric, who found in Athens the most profitable field for
the exercise of their talents. Here Aspasia gathered about her all the
learned and accomplished men of Athens. She was no mere creature of
pleasure, who ministered to luxury and lust; but by her beauty and
culture she sought to draw to her the first men of the town, that she
might learn of them as they of her. "Nor was it long before it was
recognized that she enchained the souls of men by no mere arts of
deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and
richly endowed nature, with a perfect sense of the beautiful, and hers a
harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time, the treasures
of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman, surrounded
by the grace of her womanhood, a phenomenon which all men looked upon
with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with irresistible grace on
politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most serious Athenians, even
such men as Socrates, sought her out in order to listen to her
conversation."

There could be nothing more natural than that when Pericles and Aspasia
met the soul of each should discover in the other its affinity,