Aspasia (120? – 540? CE)
Cited by A A, Book 16, for gynecological remedies and practices, more often
than S. She cites H C, A 5.31 (apud Aëtios 16.18
[Zervos 1901: 21–22]; cf. 16.99 [pp. 147–148]), employs gentian (cf. G) in an abor-
tifacient (16.18), and may cite A (16.94 [p. 141]: of Bithunia? Pharmakio ̄n?),
providing a terminus post quem. That So ̄ranos (usually careful to cite predecessors) nowhere
mentions her suggests a later terminus. Her care of the gravida (16.12 [p. 12]) and advice
on abortives (16.18) resemble the corresponding sections of So ̄ranos Gyn. (1.46 and 1.64– 65
[CMG 4, pp. 32–34, 47–49; CUF v. 1, pp. 43–46, 62–65]), whereas she intervenes less in
difficult births (16.15 [p. 16] contrasted with So ̄ranos Gyn. 4.7–8 [CMG 4, pp. 136–139; CUF
v. 4, pp. 11–16]), but more in cases of tilted womb (16.73 [pp. 112–115] contrasted with
So ̄ranos Gyn. 3.50 [CMG 4, pp. 127–128; CUF v. 3, pp. 54–55]). Since she also advises on
the care of the woman after embryotomy (16.25 [p. 36]), whereas So ̄ranos focuses on the
embryotomy itself (Gyn. 4.9–13 [CMG 4, pp. 140–144; CUF v. 4, pp. 16–22]), she seems on
the whole to evince greater care for the mother than did So ̄ranos. Her prescriptions for
various uterine disorders (corresponding to lost sections of So ̄ranos, Gyn.), 16.94 and
99 (above), plus 102 (p. 150), 104 (pp. 151–152), and 108 (p. 155), offer a variety of relatively
simple recipes, plus venesection and some radical surgeries. Her unapologetic stance on
abortives and embryotomy might suggest a date before Constantine (or Theodosius I), but
Aëtios likely cites her as an authority for his actual practice, and not merely out of antiquarian
interest, showing that although officially condemned, such procedures continued to be
employed by women and their gynecologists and midwives.
H. Fasbender, Geschichte der Geburtshülfe (1906) 58–61; Parker (1997) 138 (#54).
PTK
Aspasios (Perip.) (ca 100 – 130 CE)
Aristotelian commentator. G studied in Pergamon with one of his students, when the
student had returned home after a long sojourn elsewhere – either from Aspasios’ school, or
some other city where the student had been active as a teacher. Wherever Aspasios was
active, he was not simply an instructor at a local Peripatetic school. It is certain that
Aspasios’ commentaries were standard works, but the evidence we have about them only
gives us a glimpse of the state of the textual tradition of the Aristotelian corpus in the 2nd c.
CE, not about Aspasios’ positions. Gale ̄n took Aspasios’ (and A’) commentaries as
his starting point when writing his more extensive (lost) commentary on the Categories, and
later interpreters – H, A A, even P and
B – had access to, and used one or another of Aspasios’ commentaries.
References in later authors attest that Aspasios wrote commentaries on the Categories, the
De interpretatione, the Physics, the De sensu, and the Metaphysics. In one instance, Alexander of
Aphrodisias refers to Aspasios’ interpretation of a passage of the De caelo, about which he
learnt from his teacher, Herminos – apparently this was not part of a commentary to which
Alexander had access. Only the commentary on Books I–IV and VII–VIII of the
Nicomachean Ethics is extant (CAG 19.1).
Moraux 2 (1984) 226–293; Gottschalk (1987) 1156–1158.
István Bodnár
ASPASIOS (PERIP.)