In seeking for an explanation of the exalted character of Aspasia, we have something more than a hint in the fact that she is reported to have “trod in the steps of Thargelia,” a woman who by her exceeding brilliancy had gained the sovereignty of Thessaly. Indeed, we have found a key to the entire situation when we learn that this Thargelia, in whose steps Aspasia trod, “was descended from the ancient Ionians,”[243] a people who, originally worshipped the female principle, and who still preserved the customs peculiar to the matriarchal system, under which it will be remembered women, as aliens, did not follow the fathers of their children to their homes. So soon as these facts are understood, we are not in the least surprised to learn that Aspasia discountenanced the institution of marriage as it existed in Athens. Neither is it remarkable, when we remember that the underlying principles involved in the philosophy which she taught were justice and equity, that she should be found using her great influence, as in the case of the Milesians and Samians, in substituting democracies in the place of oligarchies; nor that, in an age when women had come to be regarded simply as the tools and slaves of men, she should be found teaching the dignity of womanhood to her own sex, and the principles of equality to males. [243] Plutarch, _Pericles_. According to Xenophon, Aspasia’s efforts were to a great extent directed to the duties of husbands and wives; indeed, her foremost object seems to have been to educate Athenian women. During the Periclean age the position of women was one of the leading topics discussed in Athens. Socrates says to his companions that he has been of the opinion “of a long time that the female sex are nothing inferior to ours, excepting only in strength of body or perhaps steadiness of judgment.”[244] The coarse picture painted by Aristophanes, of women with beards going in male attire to the agora, “to seize the administration of the state so as to do the state some good,”[245] although a vulgar attempt to ridicule the female philosophers of Athens, furnishes something more than a hint of the fact that the ideas subsequently set forth in Plato’s _Republic_ had been openly discussed by the philosophers of the Periclean age. [244] Xenophon, _Banquet_. [245] _Ecclesiazusæ._ That the word hetairai was originally employed in no mean or compromising sense is plain, since Sappho uses it in the sense of “female companion (ἑταίρα) of the same rank and the same interests.” We are assured that these women were able to preserve a friendship “free from trickery.” Of them even “Cynulcus does not venture to speak ill.”[246] They “of all women are the only ones who have derived their name from friendship or from that goddess who is named by the Athenians Venus Hetæra.”[247] [246] _Athenæus_, xiii. [247] _Ibid._