Pericles was created in to the first generation in a position to use the new weapon of the popular vote against the old electricity of family politics. His daddy, Xanthippus, a typical member of this generation, almost certainly of a vintage family, started his political job by a dynastic marriage into the controversial family of the Alcmaeonids. His Alcmaeonid mother, Agariste, provided him with relationships of sharply diminishing political value and her family curse, a religious defilement that was sometimes used against him by his enemies.
His family's nobility and riches allowed him to fully pursue his inclination toward education. He learned music from the masters of the time (Damon or Pythocleides could have been his tutor) and he was thought to have been the first politician to feature great importance to idea.
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