Among the most distinguished members of this school were Themistia, to whom Cicero refers in his speech against Pisa as a “sort of female Solon,” and Leontium, who ventured to attack Theophrastus in an essay characterized, as we are assured, by much elegance of style.[235] [235] Mayor, _Ancient Philosophy_, pp. 181, 182. No school of philosophy arose in Athens with which there was not closely connected the name of one or another of the illustrious women of the time. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, was the pupil of Crates, the companion of Hipparchia. Aspasia was the “clever preceptress of Socrates,”[236] the sage who sat for the portrait of the Stoic philosophy. According to the Stoic philosophy, the supreme end of life is virtue, _i. e._, “a life conformed to nature.” The degree of self-restraint taught by Socrates is shown in the following lines: [236] _Athenæus._ Is it not the duty of every man to consider that temperance is the foundation of every virtue, and to establish the observance of it in his mind before all things? For who, without it, can either learn anything good, or sufficiently practice it? Who, that is a slave to pleasure, is not in an ill condition both as to his body and his mind? It appears to me, by Juno, that a free man ought to pray that he may never meet with a slave of such a character, and that he who is a slave to pleasure should pray to the gods that he may find well-disposed masters; for by such means only can a man of that sort be saved.[237] [237] Xenophon, _Memorabilia of Socrates_. When the ablest statesmen and the first philosophers of Greece united in sounding the praises of Alcibiades, the genius of Aspasia commanded equal recognition. Not only did Socrates and Pericles receive instruction and inspiration from this gifted woman, but we are assured that she lectured publicly and that her “acquaintances took their wives with them to hear her discourse.”[238] Indeed “Pericles threw all Greece into confusion on account of Aspasia, not the young one, but that one who associated with the wise Socrates.”[239] [238] Plutarch, _Pericles_. [239] _Athenæus_, book xiii. It is not to be imagined that Aspasia excelled in light and amorous discourses. Her discourses, on the contrary, were not more brilliant than solid. It was believed by the most intelligent Athenians, and amongst them Socrates himself, that she composed the celebrated funeral oration pronounced by Pericles in honour of those that were slain in the Samian War.[240] [240] Plutarch, _Pericles_.