Regarded by several scholars as one of the most important women in the history of fifth-century Classical Athens, Aspasia of Miletus was a philosopher and teacher, whose intellectual influence distinguished her in the prevailing Athenian culture. However, she is something of an enigma, because there is little that can be said about her with any certainty.

Although she was depicted as a respected teacher, as well as a reputed rhetorician in ancient fourth-century Athens, in Old Comedy she was portrayed as a prostitute, involved in the sex trade and had influence over Pericles, a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. Even, nobody is sure whether Aspasia was her actual name or a professional name as she was otherwise famous as a hetaera or a top-grade courtesan, associated with the cream of the society, the rich, powerful, or noble men who provided her luxuries and status in exchange for her services for granting carnal pleasures to them.

Nevertheless, although from the twentieth century, she has been portrayed as a sexualised and sexually liberated woman, and continued to be a subject of both visual and literary artists until the present, she is also symbolised as a feminist role model who fought for women's rights in ancient Athens, but almost nothing is certainly known about her life.

After carefully going through the works of the great thinkers of ancient Greece and considering the facts from ancient Athenian history, it has been now widely accepted by the scholars that Aspasia was born, probably no earlier than 470 BC, in the Greek Anatolian city of Miletus, now a part of Turkey, which was distinguished by its literary and scientific-philosophical figures such as Thales, one of the Seven Sages of Greece.

It is also believed that she came from a wealthy, aristocratic family of Miletus, the daughter to a man named Axiochus, and was exposed to exclusive education. Later, she migrated to Athens in the mid-450s, probably motivated by the death of her father during the political turmoil in Miletus, following its secession from the Delian League, a confederacy of Greek city-states. However, in Athens, she was classified as only a resident alien, and lacked the rights of a citizen.

In those days, unlike the city of Miletus, majority of Greek women were illiterate, and to combat the situation, Aspasia set up an academy for young girls, which some say was an intellectual salon that soon became a popular for the most influential men of the day, including the famous Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Pericles, a politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. However, some others mentioned it as a brothel, because the girls in her academy were trained in the arts of dance, music, as well as rhetoric and were also trained to hold conversations with leading politicians and aristocrats about philosophy, politics, and current affairs. In reality, several contemporary Greek writers and thinkers like Xenophon, were jealous of Aspasia for her knowledge and contributions to philosophy, as well as for her fame and her enormous influence over the prominent leaders and philosophers. As a result, they spared no attempt to ridicule her in their books and writings, and branded her as a hetaira or a courtesan, and also the mistress of a brothel.

It is a fact that in those days, many hetairai in Athens were among the most highly educated women, some of whom gained considerable wealth and political power in exchange of sex, and it is also possible that Aspasia was one among them, a high-grade courtesan associated with the powerful men in Athens, who in addition to provide sex, also acted as their intellectual companionship, conversation and emotional support. It is therefore not quite unlikely that Aspasia did have a history as a sex-worker before she began her relationship with Pericles, in which she achieved some degree of power, reputation, and independence, like the famous courtesan Phryne. Nevertheless, in the case of Aspasia, the famous women philosophers in history, the claim of prostitution seems to be the attempts of later writers to discredit her out of jealousy.

In Athens, Aspasia met Pericles sometime between 452 and 441, and began a relationship with him, although it is uncertain how they met. The exact nature of their relationship is also disputed, as she was variously portrayed by ancient authors as his concubine or wife, even as his de facto wife. However, as she was not a citizen of Athens, she had to pay a tax to live in the city, and was also not allowed to marry an Athenian, although she had a son with Pericles out of wedlock, taught the men and women of the city and lived freely in her own terms. She was also considered a romantic heroine of the Golden Age of Athens for her romantic relationship with Pericles. She was pivotal in teaching Pericles his renowned art of fiery rhetoric and oration, and Pericles, in his turn, used to take Aspasia to every philosophical debate hosted by royals, where her presence in the all-male domain was considered a sacrilege, although none of the nobles dared to protest, as Pericles always fiercely attacked the Athenian practice of keeping women away from such debates.

On the other side of the story, Socrates explicitly credited Aspasia as one of the three women who taught him psychology and rhetoric which helped him to refine his method of responding to the questions with a newer question to test the depth of his opponent’s knowledge on the particular topic. He also credited Aspasia as being an epitome of an ideal wife, who theorized about ideal marital relationships. Apart from Socrates, Aristophanes, an Ancient Greek poet and comic playwright from Athens, Plato, a disciple of Socrates and an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period, considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy, even Plutarch, a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian and priest, referred to her eloquence and a woman of outstanding perspective and judgment. In addition to that, Aspasia is portrayed as an educated, skilled rhetorician, and a source of advice for marital concerns, in the dialogues by Plato, Xenophon, and Aeschines, a Greek statesman and orator in Ancient Greece. She was also designated as one of the 10 greatest Attic orators of her time. According to Plutarch, Aspasia was prosecuted by the comic poet Hermippus, the one-eyed Athenian writer of the Old Comedy, for asebeia, a criminal charge in ancient Greece impiety or godlessness, but acquitted, supposedly defended by Pericles.

Unfortunately, when plague swept through Athens in the year 429 BC, Pericles succumbed to it. After his death, Aspasia continued to live in Athens, away from the centre of power, and probably followed him around 401 BC, a couple of years before the death of Socrates, although nobody is certain about it.