e time has expressly said
that she was beautiful. In the museums of Europe, there are various
busts on which her name is inscribed, but they impress us rather by the
expression of earnest and deep thought, by the delicacy and distinction
of the features, than by mere beauty. Her charm lay, no doubt, rather in
her wisdom, her vivacity, her sweetness of utterance, than in perfection
of form and feature. Aspasia made the home of Pericles the first salon
that history has made known to us; and what woman ever gathered about
her a more brilliant coterie of friends? With Phidias and his group of
eminent artists, she talked of the embellishment of the Acropolis with
beautiful temples and statues; with Anaxagoras and Socrates, she
discussed the problems of philosophy and the narrow conservatism of the
Athenians; with Sophocles and Euripides, she conversed concerning the
works of the dramatists and the ideal women presented in their plays.
Herodotus, perhaps, was the inimitable story teller of this learned
circle, and the melancholy Thucydides dwelt on the dark tragedy
underlying human events; no doubt the satirical Aristophanes sometimes
attended, for the Platonic dialogues show us the social side of his
nature, and, while in his plays he scorns the philosophical set, he
found among them intellectual companionship; and the young and gay
Alcibiades was doubtless frequently present, talking with the hostess of
the latest events in the high life of the city, of betrothals and
marriages, of scandals and escapades.

One of the sons of Pericles scoffed at this circle of intellectual
lights, and made fun of their metaphysical speculations and learned
talk; but this merely indicates that such a salon was an innovation in
Athens, and, therefore, led to harsh criticism and unseemly gossip on
the part of those who could not appreciate its privileges. Music,
poetry, and wit relieved the serious discussion of politics, philosophy,
and literature. The salon of Aspasia must have been altogether decorous,
for many men broke the traditions of their fathers and brought their
wives to converse about wifely duties with the famous hetaera. She seems
to have thought earnestly and deeply on the duties and destiny of woman,
to have realized how contracted were the lives of Athenian women, and to
have wished to better their condition, AEschines, in one of his
dialogues, gives us in her conversation with Xenophon and his wife
Philesia a glimpse of her me