Aspasia - Personal and Judicial Attacks

Personal and Judicial Attacks

Pericles, Aspasia and their friends were not immune from attack, as preeminence in democratic Athens was not equivalent to absolute rule. Her relationship with Pericles and her subsequent political influence aroused many reactions. Donald Kagan, a Yale historian, believes that Aspasia was particularly unpopular in the years immediately following the Samian War. In 440 BC, Samos was at war with Miletus over Priene, an ancient city of Ionia in the foot-hills of Mycale. Worsted in the war, the Milesians came to Athens to plead their case against the Samians. When the Athenians ordered the two sides to stop fighting and submit the case to arbitration at Athens, the Samians refused. In response, Pericles passed a decree dispatching an expedition to Samos. The campaign proved to be difficult and the Athenians had to endure heavy casualties before Samos was defeated. According to Plutarch, it was thought that Aspasia, who came from Miletus, was responsible for the Samian War, and that Pericles had decided against and attacked Samos to gratify her.

Before the eruption of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC–404 BC), Pericles, some of his closest associates and Aspasia faced a series of personal and legal attacks. Aspasia, in particular, was accused of corrupting the women of Athens in order to satisfy Pericles' perversions. According to Plutarch, she was put on trial for impiety, with the comic poet Hermippus as prosecutor. All these accusations were probably nothing more than unproven slanders, but the whole experience was bitter for the Athenian leader. Although Aspasia was acquitted thanks to a rare emotional outburst of Pericles, his friend, Phidias, died in prison. Another friend of his, Anaxagoras, was attacked by the ecclesia (the Athenian Assembly) for his religious beliefs. According to Kagan it is possible that Aspasia's trial and acquittal were late inventions, "in which real slanders, suspicions and ribald jokes were converted into an imaginary lawsuit". Anthony J. Podlecki, Professor of Classics at the University of British Columbia, asserts that Plutarch or his source possibly misunderstood a scene in some comedy. Kagan argues that even if we believe these stories, Aspasia was unharmed with or without the help of Pericles.

In The Acharnians, Aristophanes blames Aspasia for the Peloponnesian War. He claims that the Megarian decree of Pericles, which excluded Megara from trade with Athens or its allies, was retaliation for prostitutes being kidnapped from the house of Aspasia by Megarians. Aristophanes' portrayal of Aspasia as responsible, from personal motives, for the outbreak of the war with Sparta may reflect memory of the earlier episode involving Miletus and Samos. Plutarch reports also the taunting comments of other comic poets, such as Eupolis and Cratinus. According to Podlecki, Douris appears to have propounded the view that Aspasia instigated both the Samian and Peloponnesian Wars.

Aspasia was labeled the "New Omphale", "Deianira", "Hera" and "Helen". Further attacks on Pericles' relationship with Aspasia are reported by Athenaeus. Even Pericles' own son, Xanthippus, who had political ambitions, did not hesitate to slander his father about his domestic affairs.