Little is known of the facts of her life. She was the first woman who came from Miletus, the pleasure-loving city of roses, and song, and beautiful maidens. Why or how she left her home we are not told, but there is a vague tradition that her parents were dead and that she went away with the famous Thargelia, whose vigorous intellect, together with her wit and beauty, made her a political power in Thessaly and the wife of one of its kings during the Persian wars, though her personality is the faintest of shadows to-day. It is supposed that Aspasia was young, scarcely more than twenty, when she came to Athens, possibly to live with a relative; but this is only a surmise. As a foreigner, whatever her rank, she was outside the pale of good society. The high-born Athenian women looked askance at her, were jealous of her, and said wicked things about her. To be sure, the all-powerful Pericles took her to his home and called her his wife, but she was not a citizen like themselves, and could not lawfully bear his name. The relation, however, left-handed though it may have been, was a recognized and permanent one, not less regular perhaps than the morganatic marriages of royal princes to-day, which make a woman a pure and legal wife but never a queen. So rare was the devotion of the grave statesman that it was thought worthy of record, and it was a matter of gossip that he kissed Aspasia when he went out and when he came in--clearly a startling innovation among Athenian husbands. Still more astonishing was the fact that he listened to her counsel and talked with her on State affairs, which, according to their traditions, no reputable woman ought to know anything about. Plutarch tells us that some went so far as to say that he paid court to her on account of her wisdom and political sagacity. Socrates confesses his own indebtedness to her in the use of language, and says that she made many great orators. He thinks it no wonder that Pericles can speak, as he has so excellent a mistress in the art of rhetoric, one who could even write his speeches. He was himself so pleased with a funeral oration she had spoken in his presence, partly from previous thought and partly from the inspiration of the moment, that he learned it by heart. A friend to whom he repeated it was amazed that a woman could compose such a speech, and Socrates added that he might recall many more if he would not tell. This special address was such a masterpiece of wisdom and eloquence that Pericles was asked to give it every year. As he was quite able to write his own, there was no room for jealousy, even if Aspasia sometimes found in the same field a happy outlet for her fine talent and living enthusiasm.