Aspasia, a Chiaroscuro Figure: Between Literary Fantasies and the Spotlight of Epigraphical Illumination
What is known for certain about the real Aspasia? The literary texts provide very little. Only her name and her patronymic seem to be cited with a degree of certainty: “That she was a Milesian by birth, daughter of one Axiochus, is generally agreed” (Pericles, 24.2). All the rest is largely a matter of fiction and fantasy; now a whore, now a mistress of rhetoric, she is an inexhaustible source of anecdotes that share but one feature in common: namely, their unverifiability. The name of Aspasia serves above all as a screen on to which all the masculine fantasies surrounding a woman from the East could be projected: she is lascivious, refined, and manipulative.54
The figure of Aspasia, a prisoner of history written by men, turns out to be totally indefinable.55 This vagueness is conveyed by all the different descriptions in which the ancient authors have paraded her. The comic poet Cratinus calls her a concubine (pallakē) in the following, hardly flattering lines: “And Sodom [Katapugosunē] then fathered [for Cronos] this Hera-Aspasia, the bitch-eyed concubine [pallakē].”56 Eupolis settles for “prostitute” (pornē),57 while Plutarch reminds us that she “presided over a business that was anything but honest or even reputable, since she kept a house of young courtesans [paidiskas hetairousas]” (Pericles, 24.3).58 Diodorus Periegetes claims, on the contrary, that she was Pericles’ legitimate wife.59 Now a concubine, now a prostitute, now a courtesan, now a procuress, now a wife: Aspasia oscillates between different statuses that are by no means all equivalent, as Apollodorus carefully points out in his speech Against Neaera (§ 122). How can we possibly decide? And besides, why should we decide between all these different views?
What we can at least do is try to establish a few objective facts upon which to reflect. Aspasia, a native of Miletus, must have met Pericles before 437, since their son, Pericles the Younger, was a stratēgos in 406 at the time of the battle of Arginusae; to be elected to such a magistracy a man had to be at least thirty years old. She was probably living in Athens even before the war against Samos broke out, if, that is, we can place any credit in Plutarch’s account.
There is an inscription that may throw new light on this most shadowy file of documentation. Peter Bicknell has suggested connecting Aspasia’s history with an Attic funerary inscription of the fourth century B.C. This mentions the names Aspasius and Axiochus—not to be found anywhere else in our documentation (IG II2 7349).60 The text makes it possible to reconstruct Aspasia’s family background in a manner that is, if not beyond question, at least plausible. According to Bicknell, Aspasia, although a foreigner, belonged to a powerful Athenian oikos. His theory is that it all started with the ostracism of the elder Alcibiades, in about 460. When banished from Athens, he went off to Miletus, in Ionia, where he married the daughter of a Milesian aristocrat by the name of Axiochus, by whom he had two children, Aspasius and Axiochus, before 451, and the law then passed on citizenship. When his ostracism at last ended, he finally returned to Athens, bringing with him, in his train, not only his wife and children but also his wife’s sister, the beautiful Aspasia, whom Pericles met as a result of the close links that connected him to Alcibiades’ family. According to Bicknell’s reconstruction then, Aspasia, when she first met Pericles, was a young unmarried woman, descended from the Milesian elite, who enjoyed the protection of a powerful Athenian household. Quite apart from its intrinsic interest, this reconstruction has the merit of underlining a fundamental feature of the figure of Aspasia: Pericles’ beloved did not fall into any of the habitual preconceived categories by which Athenians identified the status of women. The figure of Aspasia confused them all: a foreigner in the city, she was nevertheless connected with an Athenian family very much in the public eye; so when she was taken for Pericles’ concubine or even his legitimate wife, her very existence defied classification within the preestablished categories of Athenian males.
Perhaps it was precisely the uncertainty surrounding her status that explains the contradictory assessments of her position. As now a whore, now a teacher of rhetoric, she was impossible to categorize socially, in a precise manner. So, just as the Europeans were to do in the case of the “free women” of the nineteenth century, the Athenians tended to interpret that relative liberty as sexual license, as if (relative) social liberty was inevitably to be associated with moral libertinism.
That is what, ultimately, may lie at the root of the aggression that Aspasia attracted and concentrated upon herself and that, according to some ancient sources, found expression in an accusation of impiety in the lawcourts. Even if that supposed trial is just a fiction, it nevertheless, tellingly enough, raises the question of religious tolerance in Pericles’ Athens.
CHAPTER 8
Pericles and the City Gods
Nothing was more alien to the Greeks than the notion of a separation between Church and State. In Athens, the community provided a tight framework for religious manifestations while, symmetrically, religion was deeply embedded in civic life.1 Within this context, participation in the rituals was an action highly political—in the broadest sense of the term.
In the first place, religious practices shaped in the citizens a sense of belonging. When, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the herald Cleocritus urged the Athenians to seek reconciliation after having torn one another apart, he appealed to the memory of that shared experience: “we have shared with you in the most solemn rites and sacrifices and the most splendid festivals, we have been companions in the dance and schoolmates and comrades in arms and we have braved many dangers with you both by land and by sea.”2 Every bit as much as warfare, religious festivals bonded the civic community together around practices and values shared in common.
Second, to manifest one’s piety also had a more specific political meaning, one that, this time, played on individual distinction rather than collective solidarity. To celebrate a cult or to dedicate offerings was a way of distinguishing oneself personally—as politicians were well aware. However, to make a show of too great a proximity to the gods was risky: excessive piety, in the same way as a detachment that was too manifest, might be regarded by the Athenians as a lack of moderation. It was all a matter of balance.
To analyze Pericles’ relations with the gods, one has to position oneself at the intersection of the general and the particular, where what was personal and what was shared by the whole community came together. On the one hand, the career of the stratēgos will illuminate the Athenians’ collective relationship to all that was divine. As a reelected stratēgos and a persuasive orator, Pericles was the spokesman of a civic religion that was undergoing a mutation. He was implicated in a policy of making constant offerings and of launching huge architectural religious works not only on the Acropolis but also throughout Attica; and, furthermore, he was engaged in such activities at a time when the city was introducing profound changes into its religious account of its origins—that is, autochthony—within a context of strained diplomatic relations.
On the other hand, the ancient sources made it possible to glimpse the personal relations that Pericles had developed with the gods. These were relations of proximity in the first place: he was sometimes depicted as a protégé of Athena, but in Attic comedies he was also assimilated to Zeus, in an analogy that was in no way flattering. But then, there were also relations that emphasized distance: some philosophical accounts presented him as a man close to the sophists or even as a freethinker. And, finally, there were relations involving irreverence: some later—and untrustworthy—sources made much of several trials for impiety in which those close to him were involved, and this raises the question of religious tolerance in fifth-century Athens and, in particular, how far individuals enjoyed freedom of thought when faced with the civic community.
A SPOKESMAN FOR THE CIVIC RELIGION: COLLECTIVE RELATIONS WITH THE GODS
In Athens, the city regulated religious expression down to the smallest details. The Assembly concerned itself wi
th sacred affairs at regular intervals, and it was the Assembly that fixed the salaries of certain priests and priestesses and was also empowered to accept new cults.3 Symptomatic of this overall civic control was the fact that the gods’ money could sometimes spill over into the community coffers. Between 441 and 439 B.C., the city borrowed funds from the treasury of Athena in order to cope with the expenses incurred in the long conflict with Samos.4 And in the speech that he delivered on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles himself presented, as a financial reserve, the heap of offerings that had accumulated on the Acropolis, at the same time accepting responsibility for restoring to the goddess the sum borrowed, once the hostilities came to an end.5
At the same time, though, religious rituals were ensconced at the very heart of the democratic institutional framework. When meetings took place in the Assembly, debates never began until the Pnyx had been purified by a sacrifice and the herald had pronounced blessings and curses too. On the tribunes, orators always had to wear a wreath, as did participants in a sacrifice. As for the juries in popular lawcourts, they pronounced a solemn oath, swearing by Zeus, Poseidon, and Demeter to give their verdict in accordance with the city laws.
Religion and Politics: A Festive Democracy
As a magistrate, Pericles participated fully in this rich and intense civic religion. The presence of Athenian magistrates was required at numerous rituals. At the opening ceremony of the Great Dionysia, the ten stratēgoi all offered libations. They played a prominent part in the Panathenaea procession and were presented with the portions that were reserved for them from the first sacrifice in honour of Athena.6 We even know that in the fourth century they were responsible for no fewer than eight sacrifices a year.
In his capacity as a stratēgos, Pericles was thus an actor in an intensely festive democracy. In his funeral speech of 431, he acknowledges this fact: “We have a succession of competitions and religious festivals throughout the year.”7 Although it delighted the democrats, this plethora of religious celebrations aroused hostility among the oligarchs. In a violent pamphlet composed between 430 and 415, the anonymous author of The Constitution of the Athenians—known as the Old Oligarch—regarded it all as specifically Athenian and typical of a debased mode of government. According to this author, the increasing number of festivals caused serious institutional problems, constantly interrupting the handling of important affairs:
Objections are raised against the Athenians because it is sometimes not possible for a person, though he sit about for a year, to negotiate with the council or the assembly. This happens at Athens for no other reason than that, owing to the quantity of business, they are not able to deal with all persons before sending them away. For how could they do this? First of all they have to hold more festivals than any other Greek city (and when these are going on it is even less possible for any of the city’s affairs to be transacted).8
Although it may be true that, placed end to end, the Athenian festivals occupied no less than one-third of the year, this was, to say the least, an exaggerated way of putting the matter. Only the major celebrations, such as the Great Dionysia and the Panathenaea involved the whole community and led to the suspension of institutional business.
More serious still, according to this ferocious opponent of democracy, these festivals were designed simply to redistribute public wealth to the most poverty-stricken of the citizens. “The Athenian populace realizes that it is impossible for each of the poor to offer sacrifices, to give lavish feasts, to set up shrines and to manage a city that will be beautiful and great, and yet the populace has discovered how to have sacrifices, shrines, banquets and temples. The city sacrifices at public expense many victims, but it is the people who enjoy the feasts and to whom the victims are allotted.”9
In his view, the sole purpose of the religious festivals was to allow the people to indulge themselves whenever possible, at the expense of the city—that is to say, the wealthiest citizens.
According to his detractors, Pericles’ actions simply aggravated this state of affairs. Plutarch tells us that the stratēgos increased the number of religious banquets and entertainments in order to curry favor with his fellow-citizens: “At this time, therefore, particularly, Pericles gave the reins to the people and made his policy one of pleasing them [pros kharin], ever devising some sort of a pageant in the town for the masses, or a public meal [hestiasin], or a procession ‘amusing them like children with delights in which the Muses played their part.’”10 Echoing a tradition hostile to the stratēgos, as it does, the preceding description is clearly much exaggerated if one bears in mind that no religious festival was created on Pericles’ initiative except, possibly, the one in honor of Bendis, a deity of Thracian origin.11
The fact nevertheless remains that the stratēgos did reorganize certain celebrations. He is said to have introduced a music competition into the already extremely crammed festive ritual calendar, at the time of the Panathenaea, adding a whole day to this, the most important of all the Athenian festivals.12 But even this addition should be viewed with circumspection; in all probability, Pericles simply reorganized an earlier musical competition, moving it into the Odeon and possibly giving it official status.13 However, even if the action of the stratēgos was more limited than Plutarch suggests, it does testify to a real desire to democratize mousikē, the culture of the Muses that was in principle reserved for the Athenian elite.
However, the oligarchs’ attacks focused less on the festivals supposedly instituted by Pericles than on the program of constructions in which they were to take place. On this score, they criticized him for acting in the manner of a munificent tyrant.
Great Works in the Service of the Gods
The architectural program of the “great works” is closely associated with the name of Pericles. The impetus for this ambitious policy of monumental building is well known: in 448, the stratēgos convened a congress of the Greek cities of Europe and Asia, to discuss the issues of the temples destroyed by the Persians, the sacrifices due to the gods, freedom of navigation, and peace. It was in the aftermath of the Persian Wars that they had vowed not to reconstruct those devastated sanctuaries, so as to preserve forever the memory of the impiety of the Persians.14 In less than twenty years, numerous building sites were set up and, in many cases, completed. As well as a total remodeling of the Acropolis, a number of sanctuaries underwent more or less spectacular transformations: in eastern Attica, the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron was given a double portico; and in the west, a new initiation hall (telesterion) was inaugurated at Eleusis.15 Meanwhile, a number of medium-sized temples were constructed throughout the territory in honor of a variety of deities: Poseidon was honored at Sunium, in the south; Nemesis at Rhamnous and Ares at Acharnae, in the north; Athena at Pallene in central Attica; and, finally, Hephaestus in the town of Athens itself, on the hill overlooking the Agora. All these finely wrought buildings with clearly similar stylistic features were probably executed by the same architect.16 In this way, in the space of twenty years the whole of Attica was affected by this epidemic of monuments.17
At this point, a historian is faced with two questions. First, what was Pericles’ precise role in this transformation of the Athenian religious landscape? It is a question that calls for a nuanced reply. Far from acting as an all-powerful demiurge, the stratēgos was, in reality, simply one of many actors involved in this architectural metamorphosis. Strictly speaking, only the Parthenon, the statue of Athena Parthenos, the Propylaea, the Odeon, and the Telesterion at Eleusis can be credited to him.18
Next, did all this involve a radical break from earlier building practices? In those few operations of his, Pericles conformed to an already well-established tradition: a few years earlier, his rival, Cimon, had launched the construction of a great public sanctuary in the Agora, the Theseum, after having the bones of its founder brought back from the island of Skyros19 with great pomp and ceremony. However, two major novelties characterized this Periclean moment. In the first pl
ace, the very scope of the operation was unmatched, with so many building sites being set up simultaneously throughout the territory; and furthermore, the new buildings testified as much to the city’s domination over its allies as to the Athenians’ piety toward their gods. Between 450–440, Athenian imperialism took to expressing itself in religious terms. As early as 450, Athens forced the cities belonging to the Delian League to take part, every four years, in the Great Panathenaea held in honor of Athena, bringing with them a heifer and a panoply as offerings to the goddess.20 Then, in the 440s, the city confirmed its religious hold even beyond Attica, insisting on the construction of a number of sanctuaries of Athena on land seized from the allies, as is testified by several boundary markers discovered in Aegina, Chalcis, Cos, and Samos.21
Although Athena, the guardian goddess of the whole community, was the principal beneficiary of these grandiose building sites, marginal deities in the Greek pantheon were also honored. In this respect, Hephaestus was particularly favored, for he received a magnificent temple in the Agora, ensconced at the very heart of the Athenian democratic system. Nor was this choice at all fortuitous, for it should be understood in the light of the great story about autochthony and the origins of Athens, which was being reconstructed in this same period.
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