Aspasia Quotes

Part of the hem floated loose. She spun around again—the fabric tightened like wool on a spindle. She breathed in fear. The boat was farther away. She swung her head around—so was the shore.

Running out the anchor line, the pirates babbled to one another, and in the tangle of their barbaric language, Aspasia listened for one word—Athens. It lit up the darkness in her mind, like the single glint her eyes fixed on above the distant gray-green hills.

Aspasia had herself fallen into very good fortune. So good that at the age of twenty years, she’d probably used up the whole life’s portion of good luck that Tyche had allotted her. To make good fortune last—for herself and the child in her womb—would be up to her.

My Aspasia. With her, he’d discovered the sweetness in life . . . and she might like to know that. He’d tell her sometime. But he knew he’d given this lovely woman what she’d wanted most, their son’s name. He leaned over to the child. “So, you’re Little Pericles.

The water far below was black in the shadow of the ship. A plank creaked. She froze. No noisy jump. It would have to be a dive. Head down into darkness. She’d never dived at night.

But  Phidias was better than most men since he made beautiful sculptures. He was even making one of her—well, he called it “Athena,” but anyone could see it looked like her.

Temples are for the gods,” Thucydides said. “No city has the hubris to put her own citizens on a temple.” Phidias promised, “The Athenians will look like gods.

Do you know the song Violet Crowned Athens?” he asked. Yellow hair like hers was rare among the Greeks. Though some people say that Helen of Troy . . .

It had happened. Thucydides, his archrival, was a general. Glaucon, from his own tribe, was a general. And Pericles was no longer a general. He was just a citizen with one vote. And an idea

Pericles let a moment pass, then another. The Spartans needed time to set in balance the risks of accepting the offer and the joys of being rich. Not as much time as he’d expected, though.

We’re not here to argue with you about the wisdom of our alliance that has kept the Persians at bay for forty years. An argument requires a measure of equality between those in the dispute and Samos is not the equal of Athens.

The softness, warmth and weight of her breast filled his palm. “I’ve imagined this for weeks,” he murmured. Thinking of her out there on the battlefield. In his tent. What more could a woman want? Quite a lot, actually.

On the Acropolis, he’d thought she’d seen too much sun for a woman but in the courtyard, under the moon, her face, neck, and arms were as pale as the moon goddess. Allowing himself to imagine it was the moon goddess leading him upward was a way of climbing to the second story.

We had old architects and were working with what we had on hand. You’ve hired this new, young architect now, and, Pericles, I’m going to build you a statue of Athena—all gold and ivory, think of that, Pericles—and taller than our city walls.” Pericles raised his eyes toward the birds.

Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.

As Aristocleia raised her cup to toast Xanthippus, her gown slipped from her shoulders, exquisite as Aphrodite’s, and flowed like the water that slid over her naked breasts when she allowed him to watch her bathe. It was wonderful to possess a gem of a woman. It made a man feel beautiful and godlike himself, briefly.

my Clodius, how little your countrymen know of the true versatility of a Pericles, of the true witcheries of an Aspasia!

Vanda (as Dunayev): I am a pagan. I am a Greek. I love the ancients not for their pediments or their poetry, but becausein their world Venus could love Paris one day and Anchises the next. Because they're not the moderns, who live in their mind, and because they're the opposite of Christians, who live on a cross. I don't live in my mind, or on a cross. I live on this divan. In this dress. In these stockings and these shoes. I want to live the way Helen and Aspasia lived, not the twisted women of today, who are never happy and never give happiness. Who won't admit that they want love without limit. Why should I forgo any possible pleasure, abstain from any sensual experience? I'm young, I'm rich, and I'm beautiful and I shall make the most of that. I shall deny myself nothing. Thomas (as Kushemski): I certainly respect your devotion to principle. Vanda (as Dunayev): I don't need your respect, excuse me. I'll take happiness. My happiness, not society's happiness. I will love a man who pleases me, and please a man who makes me happy--but only as long as he makes me happy, not a moment longer.

Aspasia and Xantippe in one. I

Nil sub sole novum, says Solomon; amor omnibus idem, says Virgil; and Carabine mounts with Carabin into the bark at Saint-Cloud, as Aspasia embarked with Pericles upon the fleet at Samos. One last word. Do you know what Aspasia was, ladies? Although she lived at an epoch when women had, as yet, no soul, she was a soul; a soul of a rosy and purple hue, more ardent hued than fire, fresher than the dawn. Aspasia was a creature in whom two extremes of womanhood met; she was the goddess prostitute; Socrates plus Manon Lescaut. Aspasia was created in case a mistress should be needed for Prometheus.

The malicious erasure of women’s names from the historical record began two or three thousand years ago and continues into our own period. Women take as great a risk of anonymity when they merge their names with men in literary collaboration as when they merge in matrimony. The Lynds, for example, devoted equal time, thought, and effort to the writing of Middletown, but today it is Robert Lynd’s book. Dr. Mary Leakey made the important paleontological discoveries in Africa, but Dr. Louis Leakey gets all the credit. Mary Beard did a large part of the work on America in Midpassage, yet Charles Beard is the great social historian. The insidious process is now at work on Eve Curie. A recent book written for young people states that radium was discovered by Pierre Curie with the help of his assistant, Eve, who later became his wife. Aspasia wrote the famous oration to the Athenians, as Socrates knew, but in all the history books it is Pericles’ oration. Corinna taught Pindar and polished his poems for posterity; but who ever heard of Corinna? Peter Abelard got his best ideas from Heloise, his acknowledged intellectual superior, yet Abelard is the great medieval scholar and philosopher. Mary Sidney probably wrote Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia; Nausicaa wrote the Odyssey, as Samuel Butler proves in his book The Authoress of the Odyssey, at least to the satisfaction of this writer and of Robert Graves, who comment, “no other alternative makes much sense.

–¿De qué tenéis miedo?– pero ellas no contestaron y se limitaron a mirarla furtivamente, y Aspasia comprendió que temían darle un nombre a su terror, no fuera a acudir como ante una llamada.

The Athenian ideal, espoused in Pericles’ funeral oration20 in 431 BCE, was that women should aspire never to be talked about, either in terms of blame or praise. The greatest virtue, in other words, that an Athenian woman could aspire to was not to be registered, almost not to exist. It is a gratifying quirk of Pericles’ character that he could make this speech while living with the most famous (or perhaps notorious) woman in Athens, one mentioned by everyone from comedians to philosophers: Aspasia. Thankfully the hypocrisy of censuring women’s behaviour in general while maintaining an entirely different set of standards for the actual women you know has now died out.

The true purpose of education,” Aspasia would explain patiently to inquirers, “is not to enable a man or a woman to make money or attain high position and self-aggrandisement. It is to enlarge the soul, to widen the mind, to stimulate wonder, to give a new vision and understanding of the world, to excite the intellect, to awaken dormant faculties for the exultation of the possessor. In short, to reveal new vistas of thought and comprehension so that enjoyment of life is enhanced. An ignorant man or woman is half-blind, and does not truly hear, and so existence is narrow and limited.” She

At home in Athens, Pericles was pluralism personified. His friends were immigrants from all over the Greek world. He enjoyed gathering them together and taking them to the theater of Dionysus to see the latest exercises in free speech … like tragedies by Euripides which trashed the ancient gods and turned tradition on its head. At the leader’s side were Phidias, the sculptor, Socrates the idea-mincer, Anaxagoras the protoscientist from Clazomenae,8 and Pericles’ mate in sex, childbearing, and enterprise—not his wife, but his mistress, Aspasia, a brilliant Milesian who ran one of the world’s first intellectual salons.

Aspasia, impregnó incluso el pensamiento de Platón, que ni de lejos era un apóstol de la igualdad. De hecho, el filósofo sostuvo en uno de sus libros que, como castigo, los hombres injustos se reencarnaban en mujeres, y que por eso existía el sexo femenino. Resulta casi increíble que aquel mismo individuo, a quien leemos que nacer mujer es una condena y una expiación, escribiera estas líneas asombrosas en su República: «Ninguna ocupación en el gobierno del Estado corresponde a la mujer por ser mujer ni al hombre en cuanto hombre, sino que las dotes naturales están similarmente distribuidas entre ambos, y la mujer participa, por naturaleza, de todas las ocupaciones, lo mismo que el hombre». Aspasia es uno de los mayores misterios y ausencias de los documentos antiguos. Lo que hizo, pensó y dijo nos llega filtrado por otros. Nos dicen que se dedicó a escribir y enseñar; quiero creer que además, con su poderosa oratoria, alentó el primer movimiento de emancipación del que hay noticia.

Aspasia era una mujer con una oratoria llamativa, considerada la primera mujer filósofa.

Pero también habrá mujeres juiciosas (...) Son aquellas que no importa dónde las arroje la vida, nunca olvidan que son mujeres. Consideremos de nuevo a Aspasia. fue amada por Pericles y él la consultaba porque era hombre sensato y necesitaba prudentes consejos de una mujer. Pero ella nunca olvidó que era hembra, a diferencia de las mujeres de ahora, que n o han traído más que desgracias. Ella dio todo por Pericles y no le pidió cosas que estaban por encima de su naturaleza. Fue siempre una mujer. Pero ¿Cuántas quedas como Aspasia hoy en Roma?

SONG OF ONE OF THE GIRLS Here in my heart I am Helen; I’m Aspasia and Hero, at least. I’m Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Staël; I’m Salomé, moon of the East. Here in my soul I am Sappho; Lady Hamilton am I, as well. In me Récamier vies with Kitty O’Shea, With Dido, and Eve, and poor Nell. I’m of the glamorous ladies At whose beckoning history shook. But you are a man, and see only my pan, So I stay at home with a book.