It is recorded of her that many Athenians resorted to her lecture-room on account of her skill in the art of speaking. Not only did she teach rhetoric, philosophy, and the proper relations of the sexes, but so renowned was she for statesmanship that Pericles is said to have surrendered to her the government of Athens then at the height of its glory and renown. On this subject Plutarch remarks: “Some, indeed, say that Pericles made his court to Aspasia only on account of her wisdom and political abilities.” It has been said that the expedition against the Samians was merely to gratify Aspasia. The Milesians and Samians who had been at war were ordered to lay down their arms. When they refused to obey, Pericles, in company with Aspasia, sailed with a fleet to Samos and abolished the oligarchical form of government. Although he was offered large sums of money, he “treated the Samians in the manner he had resolved on; and having established a popular government in the island, he returned to Athens.”[241] [241] Plutarch, _Pericles_. Plutarch, quoting from Æschines, says that Lysicles, who was “of a mean, ungenerous disposition, by his intercourse with Aspasia after the death of Pericles, became the most considerable man in Athens.”[242] Notwithstanding the scandalous reports which have come down to us of this woman’s character, in view of the facts which it has been impossible for sex-prejudice to conceal, we are constrained to ask: “What manner of woman was this who was able to control statesmen, impart instruction to world-renowned philosophers, and leave a name which even bigotry, envy, and malice may not efface from the history of human events?” [242] _Ibid._