stylistic:style_transfer
Personal life

For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.

Pericles, following Athenian custom, was first married to one of his closest relatives, with whom he had two sons, Paralus and Xanthippus, but around 445 BC, Pericles divorced his wife. He offered her to another husband, with the agreement of her male relatives. The name of his first wife is not known; the only information about her is that she was the wife of Hipponicus, before being married to Pericles, and the mother of Callias from this first marriage.

After Pericles divorced his wife, he had a long-term relationship with Aspasia of Miletus, with whom he had a son, Pericles the Younger. While Aspasia was held in high regard by many of Athens' socialites, her status as a non-Athenian led many to attack their relationship. Even Pericles' son, Xanthippus, who had political ambitions, did not hesitate to slander his father. Nonetheless, such objections did not greatly undermine the popularity of the couple and Pericles readily fought back against accusations that his relationship with Aspasia was corrupting of Athenian society.

His sister and both his legitimate sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, died during the Plague of Athens. Just before his death, the Athenians allowed a change in the law of 451 BC that made his half-Athenian son with Aspasia, Pericles the Younger, a citizen, and legitimate heir, a striking decision considering that Pericles himself had proposed the law confining citizenship to those of Athenian parentage on both sides.