She was the daughter of one Axiochus, and was born and reared in Miletus, the most pleasure-loving and artistic of the cities of Asia Minor. The story of her childhood and youth is a closed book, but we know that she was carefully trained in rhetoric, music, and the fine arts, and became the possessor of every feminine accomplishment. Her preceptress is said to have been the celebrated Thargelia, also of Miletus, who exerted her power for the Great King during the Persian War and finally married one of the kings in Thessaly. How Aspasia was drawn to Athens is not known, but the most probable theory is that she settled there as a young and brilliant teacher of rhetoric, following the precedent established by Anaxagoras in philosophy and by Protagoras and other men in rhetoric, who found in Athens the most profitable field for the exercise of their talents. Here Aspasia gathered about her all the learned and accomplished men of Athens. She was no mere creature of pleasure, who ministered to luxury and lust; but by her beauty and culture she sought to draw to her the first men of the town, that she might learn of them as they of her. "Nor was it long before it was recognized that she enchained the souls of men by no mere arts of deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and richly endowed nature, with a perfect sense of the beautiful, and hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time, the treasures of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman, surrounded by the grace of her womanhood, a phenomenon which all men looked upon with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with irresistible grace on politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most serious Athenians, even such men as Socrates, sought her out in order to listen to her conversation." There could be nothing more natural than that when Pericles and Aspasia met the soul of each should discover in the other its affinity, Pericles was married to an Athenian kinswoman, but they did not find conjugal life altogether congenial, and by mutual agreement their marriage ties were dissolved and Pericles found for his wife another husband. He then took Aspasia to his home and called her his wife. They could not wed, for she was a foreigner, and their union in consequence lacked civil sanction; yet it was a real marriage in all but in name, based on the truest and tenderest affection, and dissolved only by death.