Novelist Karen Essex remembers when she first encountered the name Aspasia, a courtesan in ancient Greece, while wading through a copy of Plutarch in graduate school.
"Plutarch suddenly starts talking about Aspasia as Pericles' mistress," she said, mentioning the Athenian leader. Aspasia "had the respect of the most intelligent men in an Athens in which women weren't even citizens and were completely sequestered. It was very titillating, and just a tease, because Plutarch mentions her, and that's it."
Where Plutarch kept mum, Essex has filled in the blanks.
Her fourth historical novel, "Stealing Athena," expounds on the weight of the past, the power of art and the strength of women who exercised free will even when they had the fewest rights. But "Stealing Athena" seems uniquely relevant, as historical novels gain popularity and powerful women are again very much in the public eye.
"Stealing Athena" parallels the lives of Aspasia and Mary Elgin. Aspasia witnesses the Parthenon being built; Mary watches it being taken down by her husband, Lord Elgin, who, in a still contested move, lugged the marbles that now bear his name back to England. Both women flout traditional roles and both suffer for it.
"Women made virtually no progress from ancient Greece to post-Enlightenment England," Essex said over steak at the restaurant Fraiche.
Essex isn't so convinced of women's progress in post-millennial America, either.
"There's this resurgence now of the discussion about whether women should work or not if they have a child," Essex said. "I don't know about you, but I've been through two graduate programs and I have to feed myself and support my daughter. There's been a real shortage of men who want to give me money."
Back to school
Essex made it through an interdisciplinary program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, before which she had been working as a film executive in L.A., where she'd moved to pursue costume design.
After realizing that she'd "forgotten to be a writer," Essex got a master's in fine arts from Goddard College in Vermont in 1999 and sold her thesis to Warner Books. Now she splits her time between writing novels and scripts in Studio City.
That thesis became "Kleopatra," the first in a two-novel series that rounded out the seductress of popular memory, depicting her as an intelligent, fierce ruler rather than a conqueror of powerful men.
