Now a gene-proud Alcmaeonid was highly unlikely to wed a prostitute, even a high-class one. So we must assume that Aspasia was a Milesian aristocrat, or at worst belonged to a respectable family. From Pericles’ point of view she was a family friend and all the stories about her disreputable sexuality were libels put about by his enemies or were inventions of the Athenian stage.
Whatever her origin, there was something bold and out of the ordinary about Aspasia. Being a foreigner, she was free from the social restrictions placed on Athenian women and was able to lead something like a public life. She was intelligent and Plutarch pointed to the “great art and power this woman had, that allowed her to manage as she pleased the foremost statesmen of the age and even gave philosophers a theme for lengthy and high-minded debates.”
This is nothing less than the truth. Socrates knew her well and apparently recommended a wealthy friend of his to send his son to study politics under Aspasia’s guidance (perhaps here we have the twisted origin of the brothel-keeping libel). Plato has the philosopher credit her with writing Pericles’ speeches for him:
Yesterday I heard Aspasia composing a funeral oration for the fallen. For she had been told, as you were saying, that the Athenians were going to choose a speaker, and she repeated to me the sort of speech which he should deliver, partly improvising and partly from previous thought, putting together fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles spoke, but which, as I believe, she composed.
Ancient sources present her as a female Socrates who applied his celebrated technique of conversational cross-examination to her friends.
These stories may well be exaggerations and jokes, we cannot tell. But Aspasia was evidently a remarkable personality. Displays of emotion between the sexes were felt to be embarrassing and unmanly, but we know that Pericles loved her and was willing to show it to the world. It was reported that when he left for work every day in the agora and when he returned home he gave her a kiss. To an Athenian, this verged on the improper and the ridiculous. However fine Aspasia’s mind, we may guess that their relationship was fundamentally erotic and emotional.
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Another unexpected person, a three-year-old baby this time, joined the household of Pericles. This was a grandson of the Alcibiades who had married (I conjecture) into the Milesian family of Aspasia. His elder son, Cleinias, as we have seen, lost his life at Coronea in 447, leaving behind an infant orphan, called Alcibiades after his paternal grandfather. Members of the Alcmaeonid clan looked after one another when trouble struck; Pericles and his brother were appointed the boy’s guardians, and Pericles took him in and brought him up.
Little Alcibiades proved to be a handful. He was strikingly good-looking. According to Plutarch,
regarding his beauty, we need only say that it flowered at every season of his bodily growth in turn, and gave him grace and charm, alike as a boy, a youth and a man.
He was badly spoiled and became used to getting his own way. Once as a small boy he was playing knucklebones in the narrow street with some friends. Just when his turn came to make a throw, a loaded wagon approached. Alcibiades ordered the driver to stop as his dice had fallen in its path. The driver took no notice, but urged his team on. The other boys scattered out of the way, but Alcibiades threw himself down on his face in front of the horses, stretched out his body, and told the man to drive over him if he cared to. The driver lost his nerve and pulled up. Shocked bystanders ran across and grabbed the child.
As he entered his teens Alcibiades became a scandalous role model for his contemporaries. Although a reasonably conscientious student he refused point-blank to learn to play the flute. His explanation was that, unlike the lyre, it distorts the face and makes it ugly. “Leave the flute to the Thebans,” he said in a reference to a stock polis of stupid foreigners. “They don’t have the slightest idea of how to hold a conversation.”
Alcibiades was athletic, but too competitive not to cheat. When hard-pressed in wrestling he set his teeth into his opponent’s arm so hard that he nearly bit through it. The boy let go his hold and complained that he cheated because he was weak: “Alcibiades, you bite like a woman.” “No, like a lion,” came the reply.
A malicious, but not necessarily untrue, report suggests that the arrival of puberty and numerous male lovers made matters worse. He ran away from home to stay with one of his admirers. It was suggested that the town crier should announce his disappearance. Pericles stayed cool and said no. “If he’s dead, we’ll merely get the news a day sooner. If he’s alive, he’ll have lost his reputation for good.” The boy was no respecter of persons. Once he came across his guardian looking worried and asked him what the matter was. Pericles said: “I’m trying to work out how to produce a statement of public accounts.” Alcibiades replied: “You should not be bothering about how to produce such a statement—but how not to.”
Socrates took Alcibiades under his wing and introduced him to philosophy. Plain-living and ugly, he was a merciless friend. He told the young man awkward truths, unlike the flatterers who surrounded him, and constantly pointed out his moral weaknesses. Nobody had treated Alcibiades like that before and he was entranced. Socrates made no concessions and his reproaches often reduced the boy to tears.
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Handsome teenagers attracted much attention and a youth such as Alcibiades was expected to play a highly visible role in the city’s lavish festivals.
Every fourth December in the depth of winter, the priestesses of Athena and four little girls of high birth set up a loom on which a new tunic, or peplos, was to be woven—a gift for Athena, the all-wise protector of the city. They worked on it with help from some women weavers, or ergastinae. The material, a simple rectangle six and a half by five feet, was embroidered with the splendid and brave deeds of the goddess and, in particular, featured the great war of the Giants who fought Zeus and the new Olympian deities for control of the universe.
Nine months later in the heat of August the garment was ready for delivery. This was the time of the Great Panathenaea, the quadrennial festival in honor of the goddess. First, there were poetry and music contests, introduced by Pericles. Men and boys sang to the lyre and the flute. Athletic competitions, on the model of the Olympic Games, followed in the agora, where Cimon had planted plane trees to give welcome shade for spectators.
The first four days of the festival were open to foreigners, but the fifth was restricted to the ten Athenian tribes. A popular event was a male beauty contest, the euandria, in which the tribes competed for a generous prize of 100 drachmas and an ox (most victorious athletes at the games were only awarded an amphora, or large two-handled jar, filled with olive oil). Male beauty was highly prized in ancient Greece and not merely among boys and youths, but also men in the prime of life. Old men too were chosen for their handsome looks and were selected to carry an olive branch, sacred to Athena, in the ceremony that brought the Panathenaea to an end. Another team event was the Pyrrhic Dance, in which youths, naked except for helmets, shields, and unbated swords, mimicked the offensive and defensive moves of battle—and sometimes accidentally cut one another.
Nighttime festivities were held during which choirs of boys and girls sang and teams of runners competed in a torch relay race. On the following and final day, a long procession formed to carry the new tunic up to the Acropolis and clothe an ancient wooden statue of the goddess. Crowds gathered before dawn at the Double-Arched or Dipylon Gate. The peplos was conveyed in a life-sized ship, which was wheeled along at the head of the cavalcade. A long train of women carried gifts. Victors at Greece’s various games were present, and so were the winners of the male beauty contests. Leading citizens, priests and priestesses, musicians, bearded elders and army commanders holding olive branches, young cavalrymen with their horses, charioteers, metics in their scarlet cloaks who carried trays of cakes and honey as offerings, all proceeded singing hymns to Athena along the Panathenaic Way, a broad street leading from one of the city gates via the agora to the Acropolis. Ordinary citizens assembled in their demes and brought up the rear.