Note 11 — Chapter I
Reading edition
It is proper to add that certain modern writers will not admit that Aspasia was ever an hetæra in the sense of being a courtesan. After Pericles had divorced his first wife, he lived with Aspasia as his second wife, to whom he was devoted and faithful until death. According to Greek law, which forbade Athenian citizens to marry foreign women, he could not be her legal husband; but, there can be no doubt that he always treated her with all the respect and affection due to a wife. His dying words: "Athens entrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me," clearly evince her nobility of character and the place she must ever have occupied in the great statesman's heart.
The most important notices in ancient writings, respecting Aspasia, are found in Plutarch's Pericles, Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates and Plato's Menexenus. Among the most valuable of modern works on the same subject is Aspasie de Milet, by L. Becq de Fouquières, Paris, 1872. Cf. also Aspasie et le Siècle de Pericles, Paris, 1862; Histoire des Deux Aspasies, by Le Comte de Bièvre, Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt's Sur l'Age de Pericles, 1877-79.