There can be no doubt that Aspasia exercised a powerful political influence during her residence in Athens. This fact is assured to us by the abuse which she received from the comic poets. They called her Hera, queen of the gods, wife of Olympian Zeus, as they named Pericles. They also called her Dejanira, wife of Hercules, and the new Omphale, whom Hercules slavishly served--all pointing at the power which she had over Pericles. Aristophanes, in his ‘Acharnians’ asserts that Pericles brought about the Peloponnesian war to take vengeance for an insult offered to Aspasia, and others affirmed that the Samian war was undertaken entirely to gratify her. These are absurd statements on the face of them, and were probably never meant to be anything else than jokes; but they render unquestionable the profound influence of Aspasia. It is probable that this influence was exercised in an effort to break down the barriers that kept the Greek city-States from each other, to create a strong Hellenic feeling, to make a compact Hellenic confederacy.[53] But whatever were the aims of her politics, it may be safely asserted that no woman ever exercised influence by more legitimate means. It was her goodness, her noble aims, her clear insight, that gave her the power. There was probably no adventitious circumstance to aid her. It is not likely that she was beautiful. I think Sappho was beautiful. The comic poets said that she was little,[54] and had a dark complexion. Littleness was incompatible with beauty in the eye of a Greek, and a dark complexion would also be against her. But all that we can gather about Sappho’s form leads to the conclusion that the comic poets traduced her in this as in other matters. Plato calls her “beautiful,” an expression which most have taken to refer to her poetic genius; but this interpretation is at least doubtful. A vase of the fifth century B.C., found in Girgenti, gives us representations of Alcæus and Sappho, and on these Sappho is taller than Alcæus, and exceedingly beautiful. We have also a portrait of Sappho on the coins of the Mytilenæans; and here again the face is exquisite in feature, and suggests a tall woman. If it has any defect, it is that it is rather masculine. At first one might hesitate to believe that it is the face of a woman, but there can be no doubt as to its beauty. On the other hand, no ancient writer speaks of Aspasia as beautiful. She is called the good, the wise, the eloquent, but never the beautiful. We have one bust bearing her name certainly not beautiful. It represents a comfortable meditative woman, but I doubt very much whether it is genuine. And I am far more inclined to believe that we have a true portrait of Aspasia in a marble bust of which there are two copies, one in the Louvre and one in Berlin. The bust evidently belongs to the best times of Greek sculpture, and, as Bernoulli in the _Archæologische Zeitung_[55] argues, can well be that of no other than Aspasia.