Ancient Greece is known to have been extremely patriarchal, especially Athens. Women were supposedly forbidden from participating in the intellectual life of the city.

Yet, Aspasia of Miletus is a well-documented philosopher and teacher who lived in Athens at the same time as Socrates and may have had a profound influence on his teachings.

Read on to learn more about this remarkable woman.

Aspasia was highly educated

Aspasia of Miletus was born sometime between 470 and 460 B.C.E. She was not born in Athens. Instead, she is said to have been born in the city of Miletus in what is now modern-day Turkey.

This was the famous Ionian peninsula, which had the reputation of producing many great philosophers. The mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, Thales, also came from Miletus more than a century before Aspasia was born.

Aspasia came from a wealthy family, and apparently, women and girls could receive an education in Miletus.

She moved to Athens around 450 B.C.E. when she was about 20 years-old.

She became the consort of Pericles

Pericles, a leading politician in Athens, took a liking to Aspasia, and she became his companion around 445 B.C.E.

It is unclear whether Pericles and Aspasia were legally married. In 451 B.C.E., this same Pericles introduced a law that precluded the sons of non-Athenian wives from becoming Athenian citizens.

Pericles was twice her age at the time and had two children from a previous marriage. His own law might have made it difficult to formally marry Aspasia even if he wanted to.

Pericles’ relationship with Aspasia was ridiculed by contemporary comics who called her a prostitute or a concubine.

There was a class of female entertainers at the time known as hetairai, who were often well educated as well as financially independent. While some modern scholars have suggested that Aspasia was a hetairai, there is no contemporaneous evidence that this was the case. Instead, those who derided her gave her a more ordinary status of a harlot.

Her true status in this respect is unknown and will probably never be known. On the other hand, her intellectual achievements are well documented, and in and of themselves, they would have taken her beyond what was considered acceptable for a woman of Athens at that time.

She may have taught Socrates

In Plato’s Menexenus, Socrates states plainly that he was taught rhetoric by Aspasia. He also says that Pericles was taught by Aspasia as well and that she probably wrote the famous Funeral Oration Pericles delivered at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War.

Several other ancient authors also attested to Aspasia’s connection to Socrates, including Philostratus, Plutarch, and Xenophon.

In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates claims to know all about Love, saying that a woman named Diotima of Mantinea instructed him on this subject and on many others.

Diotima’s teaching about Love was quite deep and profound. It becomes the basis for the idea of Platonic love and may even be the basis for Plato’s teachings on Perfect Form.

We do not know who Diotima was. Some later writers have dismissed her as fiction. Some, however, believe that she was actually Aspasia of Miletus.

Her son became the heir of Pericles

Pericles’ two legitimate sons died during the Plague of Athens in 429 B.C.E. He also died during this plague, but before he did, the Athenians changed the citizenship law that he proposed in 451 B.C.E. This allowed his son by Aspasia, Pericles the Younger to inherit.

According to Plutarch, after Pericles’ death, Aspasia became the companion of an Athenian general, Lysicles, and had another son.

After this, nothing more is known about Aspasia or what happened to her not even the time or manner of her death.