Eis gynaikos andra: Aeschines on Women, Eros, and Politics

The chapter begins by examining a set of sources stressing the personal association between Socrates and Aspasia and seeks to reconstruct some sections of Aeschines' Aspasia from the particular vantage point of Aspasia's ‘doubles’. The general idea is that the portrayal of Aspasia that we get from the sources changes considerably depending on the other female figures with whom Aspasia is associated. In light of this, a first section of the paper is devoted to a set of mythical women – namely Omphale, Helen, Hera, and Deianeira – all associated with Aspasia by comic poets. The second and broader part of the chapter specifically tackles Aspasia’s Doppelgänger in Aeschines’ dialogue, namely Thargelia and Rhodogyne, two women-sovereigns who were compared and contrasted with the Milesian. The study aims to show that a more careful consideration of this set of female figures with which Aspasia was associated may enrich our understanding of both the main character of Aeschines’ lost dialogue and its treatment of the relationship between women, eros, and political power.