[11] It is proper to add that certain modern writers will not admit that Aspasia was ever an hetæra in the sense of being a courtesan. After Pericles had divorced his first wife, he lived with Aspasia as his second wife, to whom he was devoted and faithful until death. According to Greek law, which forbade Athenian citizens to marry foreign women, he could not be her legal husband; but, there can be no doubt that he always treated her with all the respect and affection due to a wife. His dying words: "Athens entrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me," clearly evince her nobility of character and the place she must ever have occupied in the great statesman's heart.
The most important notices in ancient writings, respecting Aspasia, are found in Plutarch's Pericles, Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates and Plato's Menexenus. Among the most valuable of modern works on the same subject is Aspasie de Milet, by L. Becq de Fouquières, Paris, 1872. Cf. also Aspasie et le Siècle de Pericles, Paris, 1862; Histoire des Deux Aspasies, by Le Comte de Bièvre, Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt's Sur l'Age de Pericles, 1877-79.
[12] Under the term music, Plato, like his contemporaries, included reading, writing, literature, mathematics, astronomy and harmony. It was opposed to gymnastic as mental to bodily training. Both music and gymnastic, however, were intended for the benefit of the soul.
[13] The Dialogues of Plato, Laws, VII, 805, Jowett's translation, New York, 1892.
[14] Op. cit., The Republic, V, 451 et seq. and 466.
[15] It was the boast of the Emperor Augustus that all his clothes were woven by his wife, sister or daughter. Suetonius, in his Lives of the Twelve Cæsars, informs us that this great master of the world filiam et neptes ita instituit ut etiam lanificio assuefaceret.
[16] This type of the old Roman schoolmaster is alluded to in the following well known verses of Martial:
"Quid tibi nobiscum est, ludi scelerate magister,
Invisum pueris virginibusque caput?
Nondum cristati rupere silentia Galli
Murmure jam saevo verberibusque tonas."
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—Lib. IX, 79.
which have been rendered as follows:
Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue,
Thou head detested by the younger crew?
Before the cock proclaims the day is near
Thy direful threats and lashes stun my ear.