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Thargelia carefully wrestles a calfskin slipper on to her dainty foot. ‘I like the sound of this Autolycus character,’ she remarks. ‘Even if he’s not intellectual enough for this symposium.’
Aspasia regards her young protégée carefully. Thargelia knows that one reason Aspasia likes her is because she was herself mentored by an older hetaira of that same name. Apart from anything else, Aspasia learned a lot from the original Thargelia’s mistakes. The older Thargelia married fourteen times in all, which is the Athenian matrimonial record. Aspasia herself has been married twice.
There was Lysicles the wool-trader, killed in Caria while collecting taxes from recalcitrant Athenian subjects. Before that was Pericles, leader of Athens until the plague killed him during the war with the Spartans. Actually, ‘married’ is a bit strong, because as an Athenian from one of the city’s top families, Pericles could not marry a foreigner (Aspasia originally hails from Miletus).
Nevertheless, Pericles found Aspasia sufficiently friendly and welcoming (which is what the name ‘Aspasia’ means) that he divorced his previous wife and lived with Aspasia in unmarried bliss. While Pericles was running Athens, many suspected that the hidden hand of Aspasia was running Pericles. Even now it is believed that Aspasia controls the city more than the current Archons.
Milesian Aspasia, model of wisdom. Admired by the admirable ‘Olympian’ [Pericles]. Political knowledge and insight, shrewdness and perspicacity [were hers].
LUCIAN PORTRAIT STUDIES 27
Cratinus calls her ‘a prostitute past shaming’.
PLUTARCH LIFE OF PERICLES 24
This would not surprise young Thargelia, who will provide companionship to top Athenian philosophers and politicians at a symposium tonight. She was hand-picked for the job by Aspasia, and carefully briefed on the personalities and quirks of all present. Tomorrow she will report in detail who said what to whom, which friendships seem strong and which social alliances are fraying.
‘Don’t worry about Autolycus,’ Aspasia brusquely informs her protégée.
Thargelia’s target for tonight is to be Nicoratus, the son of Nicias. Nicias and Alcibiades are currently the two top politicians in Athens. Aspasia keeps close tabs on Alcibiades through her friendship with Socrates. This is easy enough, as Alcibiades regards Socrates as a sort of father-confessor. Discovering what Nicias is thinking is harder. The old politician is both shrewd and suspicious. But suitably prompted, his drunk and randy son might provide some insights. That’s why Thargelia has the task of keeping company with him tonight.
‘But Autolycus sounds divine. Can’t I have him instead?’ complains Thargelia.
‘No. Concentrate on Nicoratus.’
It’s true that Autolycus may be something of an oaf. He gets lost in a sentence with more than one minor clause, and his idea of wit is pouring wine on someone’s crotch. For all his physical charms, Thargelia concedes that she would be wasted on him. Anyway, it would annoy Callias. He’s hosting this event ostensibly to honour Autolycus’ success in the Olympic pentathlon. But really Callias wants Autolycus for himself, and he won’t appreciate competition.
Aspasia passes a garment from the rack. She has obviously chosen that peplos with care. It is yellow, with high slits up the thigh and cut nicely to show off Thargelia’s bust without being obvious about it. A symposium girl should dress attractively, but look neat, not cheap.
Be subtle, Aspasia has warned. Nicoratus should think he is the chooser, not the chosen. He likes clever women, but clever in a good way. She can’t talk too much, and should keep looking at her victim until he gets the hint. She is to nibble daintily at food, instead of stuffing her cheeks like a packrat.
There is to be no making fun of playwrights this time – though Thargelia believes she would have plenty of material were she so inclined. (Her problem with playwrights came at a recent symposium where Thargelia had poured a kylix of wine for the playwright Aristarchus. When Aristarchus remarked that the wine was well chilled, the smiling girl replied, ‘Oh, I dipped it in one of your love scenes.’ Amusing perhaps, but Thargelia’s lack of self-restraint had permanently lost her a well-paying lover.20)
Callias will need Autolycus amenable if he’s to get his way, so expect unwatered wine. Aspasia tells Thargelia to sip – not gulp. Even being tipsy takes you off your game, and a drunk woman at a symposium is not appreciated.21
Thargelia has taken all Aspasia’s advice without resentment. She’ll suffer criticism all day as the price for getting personally coached by Aspasia. Athenian wits say that Aspasia is a better teacher than Socrates. Aspasia trained Pericles, while the prize pupil of Socrates is the abominable Critias.22
‘How are things with Messenaon?’ enquires Aspasia while Thargelia gets dressed.
The courtesan pauses with a brooch half-clasped at the shoulder. She suspects that Aspasia well knows how things go with her on-again, off-again lover, but is making conversation to pass the time.
‘Well, if a hetaira’s house could be maintained on tears, I’d be doing well. Every time I say I’m leaving him I get tears in abundance. But this job takes money, clothes and jewellery. Would it be too much to have a maidservant take care of my basic needs? I don’t have a family estate at Myrrhinus, the Attic village where the wretched Messenaon owns property, and I don’t own a share in a silver mine. My life runs on offerings from my halfwit admirers.’
All she receives from Messenaon is a set of earrings, a necklace and a tunic from Tarentum that she is embarrassed to be seen in. She believes that if she demanded a serious present from him, he would accuse her of plotting to set fire to the dockyards or some other serious breach of the laws, just to get shot of her.23
A HARPIST AND HER MIDDLE-AGED ADMIRER
A stable of lovers is one of the things that differentiates a hetaira from a prostitute. Athenian women can’t be hetairas because the men feel this thins the pool of available wives, but there’s no stigma in the profession itself. Even the common prostitute (porne) is despised not for taking money for sex – which the Athenians regard as a perfectly legitimate transaction – but for having a regular employer in her pimp or madame.
In Athens, a regular job with a single employer makes one barely a step above a slave. A slave looks to one man for food, housing and clothing. It is hardly different when one man instead supplies the money with which food, housing and clothing are purchased. Ideally, a free man lives on his resources – investments or family property. Failing that, he or she leverages skills or physical attributes in the marketplace. Socrates receives gifts from students in return for intellectual stimulation. No one thinks less of Thargelia because she supplies stimulation of a more physical nature.
Once, when a moralistic individual criticized a hetaira for ruining the morals of young men, she coolly replied, ‘Does it matter whether they are corrupted by a hetaira, a politician or a philosopher?’ Young men like female company (most young men – those inclined towards their own gender find plenty of takers among their elders) and, since an aristocratic Athenian male marries only in his thirties, until then his choices are prostitutes, hetairas or celibacy.
And even older, married men like to keep company with hetairas. They are an important component of Athenian social life. As both Messenaon and Thargelia are well aware, however, there’s a tension between the hetaira and her lovers. On the one side, as in any free market, there’s the danger of competition. If his company and gifts don’t measure up, or someone better makes her schedule too crowded, a hetaira will ditch a man without a second’s hesitation.
The hetaira’s ideal beau is young, good-looking, lavishly and unfailingly generous, intelligent and good-tempered. Sadly the species has been hunted to extinction, so hetairas compete viciously for any man with just two of the above qualities. They know that if they are not constantly charming and interesting, then these men will desert them for someone who is. The free market is not slavery, but no one claims it is nice either.
Thargelia puts on the peplos and poses prettily for Aspasia. Having received her mentor’s approval, she sits and begins to apply makeup. Aspasia steps behind her to dress her hair. Persian girls are dark, so Greek girls like to sport blonde hair. Left to itself, Thargelia’s hair is naturally a sort of muddy brown – but it has not been left to itself for quite a while. Thargelia regularly soaks her tresses in vinegar to bleach them, then exposes her hair to the noon sun to draw out the colour. This is tricky, because the sun also makes hair dry and brittle, and no proper courtesan has anything but porcelain-pale skin. Thargelia gets around this with olive oil shampoos and shading her face under a broad-brimmed hat with the top cut off.
Now she dips a little brush into a pot containing a mix of honey, olive oil and charcoal, and starts to add eye shadow. Not too much, because she will whiten her face with lead powder and wants to look alluring. Some girls end up with faces looking like skulls.
‘How does Nicoratus like eyebrows?’ she enquires, never doubting that Aspasia will know.
‘Separate,’ comes the crisp reply. Thargelia is pleased. She dislikes the fashion for monobrows, where girls not naturally so blessed use cosmetics to join their eyebrows to a single line above their noses. She bites into a cloth saturated with red pigment to stain her lips, and then critically examines the result in a hand mirror. (This type of hand mirror with its typical cross-guard has since become the symbol for ‘female’, just as the hoplite’s shield and spear symbolize ‘male’.)24
Thargelia is wondering why Aspasia has not chosen to use one of her own girls tonight. Of course, Aspasia would deny that she has any girls. Yet it’s an open secret in Athens that, through proxies, Aspasia runs one of the best brothels in town. Aristophanes once announced this publicly in a play where ‘two harlots were kidnapped from Aspasia’s bawdy house’.25
Thargelia fishes for an answer, ‘I mean I’m flattered that you trust me.’
Aspasia never pauses in braiding Thargelia’s hair. ‘You remind me of me when I was younger, my dear. Not just pretty, but intelligent and enterprising. A girl who plans for the future, to have an income even when her lovers and her looks are gone.’
Thargelia stiffens with shock. She tells herself, Aspasia doesn’t know. She can’t know. Thargelia has been so careful.
Aspasia cheerfully continues to prepare Thargelia for the evening. Reaching into an open box she selects some bangles which she fits to the girl’s wrist. As she does so, she continues in light, gossipy tones.
She tells Thargelia of a new sorceress, operating from the Scambonidae district. ‘Very effective, they tell me, though of course I don’t believe rumours. It’s what a hetaira might do, even if she had some time free in the mornings. Perhaps she takes discreet lessons from that woman who lives out by Keremeikos.’ The woman is supposed to be a witch, though no one has ever proven anything.
At the mention of Keremeikos, Thargelia’s hand has jerked violently, sending a smear of makeup across her cheek. Aspasia tuts as she helps to repair the damage. If she notices that Thargelia’s hand is trembling slightly, her mentor gives no sign of it. She continues chattily.
‘Taking lessons from that magissa is no bad idea, though I would think she depends too much on mind-altering pharmaceuticals and neglects good old-fashioned people-management. And she overcharges for henbane. You can get it yourself, you know, in the pastures out by Ceriadae. There’s a farmer there called Aelion. Tell him I sent you.
‘But don’t use the henbane for sorcery. That would be bad, very bad. There are so many laws against it.’
Both women know that if the identity of the Scambonidae sorceress is revealed, those many laws demand the woman should be arrested, tortured and painfully executed.
Gloomily, Thargelia realizes why Aspasia has chosen her for the job of fishing for delicate information at the symposium, and why she will probably be carrying out similar tasks in the future. Aspasia needs someone whom she can trust with her life. And from now on, Thargelia’s life is in Aspasia’s hands.
Aspasia
The widow of Pericles was a remarkable woman. As a non-Athenian she was free from the domestic servitude to which Athenian men sentenced their wives. She was involved in public life, through her husbands and on her own account. She was also suspected of playing a larger role behind the scenes.
How Aspasia ended up in Athens is uncertain, though later classical writers gave her the ‘kidnapped from Miletus, enslaved in Caria, captured and sold in Athens’ backstory that has here been passed to the slave-girl character of Chryseis in ‘The slaves get playful’. Regrettably, all the information we have about Aspasia comes from sources biased one way or another.
‘So! It’s just as well neither of us is into sorcery,’ exclaims Aspasia brightly. ‘Now you were asking why I trust you with the job of fishing at the symposium for such delicate information? Instinct. I took one look at you and thought, “I like this girl. I feel I could trust her with her life.” Are you ready to go?’
