Glory and the Lightning — Taylor Caldwell

Aspasia was born to danger. Before her birth, her father had announced his intention of abandoning the child to die, should it be a girl. Hidden away and trained as a courtesan, Aspasia was educated in the arts of seduction in the exotic world of Persian harems. But when fate and her own sensuous beauty brought her to the bed of Pericles, ruler of Athens, Aspasia became not only his lover, but his confidant -- a woman whose brilliance placed her in the precarious center of Athenian life at the height of the glory that was Greece.