Neither the date of her birth nor her death is known for certain. She remained in history as one of the smartest and most brilliant hetaeras. She began her career in this field in Miletus, the homeland of fairy-tale myths and courtesans. Her philosopher father named Axiochus, seeing the beauty the gods endowed his daughter with, decided that such a beauty could not bring happiness to one person, her destiny was to bring pleasure to all humanity. Therefore, he gave her a solid education, corresponding to her great, in his opinion, destiny in this world. According to the poets, Aspasia (or Aspasia) was kidnapped as a child and taken to Megara or Corinth. Here she grew up as a slave of her captors, who tried to corrupt her. An attractive and intelligent girl managed to charm a rich Athenian, who bought her, and she found herself free. According to other sources, Aspasia, before arriving in Athens, did not leave Miletus, where she led the life of a courtesan. But the easy affairs soon got boring - my heart longed for real (and preferably great!) love. In search of one, Aspasia moved to Athens, the unofficial capital of Hellas. By this time she had saved enough money, so she and several friends bought a house and organized a rhetoric school. Many researchers insist that it was an ordinary brothel - albeit of the highest class, where Aspasia taught girls history, philosophy, politics, as well as the art of love. “Every woman,” said the hetaera, “should be free to choose a husband, and not to marry someone assigned to her by her parents or guardians; the husband is obliged to educate his wife and allow her to express her thoughts.” Soon, Aspasia’s “school” became perhaps the most popular place in Athens. Famous philosophers came to chat with a beautiful and extraordinary woman, with her intelligent beauties: Zeno, Protagoras. The physician Hippocrates and the brilliant sculptor Phidias became regulars in the house of this hetaera. In Athens they started talking about how the wise soul of Pythagoras settled in the beautiful body of a woman. Socrates, a young man with an ardent soul, fell in love with Aspasia and did not leave her one step, and later, when he became a famous philosopher, he emphasized that he owed this to Aspasia. After listening to the enthusiastic reviews of Socrates’ friend, the ruler of the city, Pericles, decided to take a look at the courtesan-philosopher It was probably love at first sight... He turned forty - the age of an experienced warrior. He had the strength of a man attractive and enjoyed the reputation of the best ruler in the history of Athens. Aspasia was beautiful, as befits a ruler’s girlfriend, and smart, as befits an adviser to a leader... Her salon moved to the house of Pericles. The strategist himself, shortly before this (according to other sources, only after meeting Aspasia) divorced his wife and, caring about her future, gave her a dowry and remarried her, leaving her sons with him. For the first time in the history of ancient Greece, philosophers and politicians listened to advice women and followed them. Moreover: the ruler allowed his mistress to make political decisions, she composed speeches for his speeches in the national assembly and accompanied her lover even on military campaigns. Contemporaries and descendants, as many researchers note, had ambivalent assessments of such “abnormality.” status. Thus, the poet Cratinus was sure: “Debauchery created Juno for Pericles - Aspasia, his protector with the eyes of a dog.” And some historians are generally inclined to believe that the hetaera came to Athens with the sole purpose of conquering Pericles, this “most worthy of the Hellenes” about whom she had heard so much... The law of Athens did not allow marriage with a foreigner. And the child of the hetaera, born five years after the start of their relationship, was considered illegitimate for a long time... Only when both eldest sons of Pericles died from the plague, the child of the concubine was recognized as the heir. Aspasia quickly achieved the respect worthy of the wife of a ruler, while maintaining the freedom that she could use only hetaeras. She did not shy away from feasts, she organized them herself, being the soul and center of entertainment... Moreover, she allowed herself receive visitors even in the absence of her husband, entertained them with conversation, treated them to wine, which, according to Athenian customs, was completely unacceptable. Many argued that the Milesian hetaera turned the ruler’s home into a house of debauchery. Beautiful girls were certainly present at philosophical feasts for very specific purposes. As for the military campaigns in which the faithful friend accompanied her husband and benefactor, she did not do it alone: she was certainly followed by a train of courtesans from her school, and the women made good money pleasing men starved without love. In the end, the people's assembly accused friend of Pericles in pimping and corruption of young girls. Aspasia appeared in court. It is unknown how it would have ended if Pericles himself had not acted as a defender. Great the ruler was crying! “He would not have shed so many tears if it were about his own life,” Aeschylus noted, not without irony. The tears of the brave commander and statesman so impressed the judges that they agreed to recognize the innocence of the hetaera. But despite this, in the endless series of comedic plays that appeared, she continued to be ridiculed as a dissolute and corrupt woman. After the trial, Aspasia resigned herself to the traditional role of a reclusive wife for pious matrons. Perhaps, alone with Pericles, she continued to discuss state issues and even gave the ruler advice, but noisy philosophical feasts were no longer held in their house. History has conveyed this fact to this day. When Socrates was asked, half-jokingly and half-seriously, how to raise a good wife, he answered without a shadow of a doubt: “Aspasia will tell you much better about this!” Like any exemplary wife, she forgave her husband momentary weaknesses, after which he still returned to her - a great expert in inciting love passions. “What great art or power did she possess if she subjugated the leaders in the first place, and even philosophers talked a lot about her as an extraordinary woman,” wrote Plutarch. —Nevertheless, it is obvious that Pericles’s affection for Aspasia was based rather on passionate love. They say that when leaving home and returning from the square, he greeted her and kissed her every day.” Pericles and Aspasia lived together for twenty years. And then a terrible epidemic struck Athens from the East, which killed many Athenians. She did not bypass the house of Pericles. Gone from his life sister, both sons from her first marriage died. Then it was the turn of the ruler himself... After the death of her husband, Aspasia immediately got married - or rather, went into the care of a certain cattle dealer who had once been her student, Lysicles, deciding with her own hands to make him a great personality. Thanks to her pedagogical efforts, the former cattle trader turned into an excellent speaker who gained widespread popularity in Athens. A year later he was already elected strategist, and a few months later he died in one of the battles... Aspasia also survived the death of another strategist - Pericles the Younger, his own son, who defeated the Spartans in the naval battle of the Arginus Islands. But, alas, his ungrateful fellow citizens executed him along with other strategists simply because not all the corpses The Athenians who died in this battle were caught from the raging waves and buried in the ground. They say that soon after this his mother also passed away...