underscoring his nine war trophies. Pericles, though moribund, heard them and interrupted them, pointing out that they forgot to mention his fairest and greatest title to their admiration; "for", said he, "no living Athenian ever put on mourning because of me". Pericles lived during the first two and a half years of the Peloponnesian War and, according to Thucydides, his death was a disaster for Athens, since his successors were inferior to him; they preferred to incite all the bad habits of the rabble and followed an unstable policy, endeavoring to be popular rather than useful. With these bitter comments, Thucydides not only laments the loss of a man he admired, but he also heralds the flickering of Athens' unique glory and grandeur. Pausanias (c. 150 AD) records (I.29) seeing the tomb of Pericles along a road near the Academy. Personal life 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. Assessments Pericles marked a whole era and inspired conflicting judgments about his significant decisions. The fact that he was at the same