With the death of Pericles and the dispersion of the distinguished group that surrounded him, Aspasia disappears. There was no place at that time for talents like hers, apart from a great man’s protection. It was rumored that she afterward married a rich but obscure citizen, whom she raised by her abilities to a high position in the State, though he did not live long enough to reap much glory from it. The affair savors of the mythical, and perhaps we are safe in giving it little credence. We should like to believe that the woman who had been blessed with the love of a Pericles could never console herself with a lesser man. Of versatile gifts and endless shades of temperament, teacher, thinker, artist in words and life, critic, musician, friend of women and inspirer of men, but before all things a harmony uniting the grace and sensibility of her sex with a masculine strength of intellect, this gracious Ionian stands with Sappho on the pinnacle of Hellenic culture, each in her own field the highest feminine representative of an esthetic race. Her mission was not an ethical one, and she cannot be so judged; but against the censure of the enemies and rivals of Pericles, as well as of her own, we have abundant evidence that, in her virtues, as in her talents, she surpassed the standards of her class and time. It was not of a light-minded woman that Pericles said when dying: “Athens intrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me.” IV It is not unlikely that Aspasia had much to do with modifying the low views held regarding her sex, and with promoting the discussions of the philosophers who came after her. Socrates had her example before him when he said that the talent of women was not at all inferior to that of men, though they lacked bodily vigor and strength. Plato accorded them the same talents as men, though less in degree; indeed, he went so far as to advise a common training, as in Sparta, on the ground that gifts are diffused equally between the sexes. Aristotle is less generous to women. He accords them weaker reasoning powers, and insists upon their silent and passive obedience; but he preaches to men justice, appreciation, and the sanctity of marriage. On the whole, from our point of view, he paints a more agreeable society than Plato, in spite of the greater equality taught by the latter. The satirists were not slow to take up the matter, and Aristophanes drew a doleful picture of women donning male attire and going to the agora to reform the State, while their husbands were left to look after things at home. They start out with the idea of making everybody happy. There are to be no rich, no poor, no thefts, no slanders, no miseries. Praxagora pleads her cause with all the force and energy of the modern woman who seeks political rights, but she is less poised and goes further. The State is to be intrusted to women. They are successful managers at home and have shown their superior gifts of administration.