Paralus and Xanthippus

Paralus and Xanthippus (Gr. polytonic|Πάραλος and polytonic|Ξάνθιππος) were the two legitimate sons of Pericles, Xanthippus being the older one and Paralus the younger, and hence members of the Alcmaeonid family.cite encyclopedia | last = Mason | first = Charles Peter | authorlink = | title = Paralus and Xanthippus | editor = William Smith | encyclopedia = Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology | volume = 3 | pages = 121 | publisher = Little, Brown and Company | location = Boston | year = 1867 | url = http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/2454.html ] They were educated by their father with the greatest care, but they both appear to have been of inferior capacity, which was anything but com­pensated by worth of character, although contemporary and some later writers seemed to consider Paralus to have been a somewhat more hopeful youth with more potential than his brother. Both of them had the nickname of "Blitomammas" (polytonic|Βλιτομάμμας, literally "cabbage sucker", an epithet for a slow or dim-witted person). [cite book | last = Liddell | first = Henry | authorlink = Henry Liddell | coauthors = Robert Scott | title = A Greek-English Lexicon | publisher = Oxford University Press | date = 1996 | location = Oxford | pages = 319 | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = 0-19-864226-1] Both Xanthippus and Paralus, along with their mother, fell victims to the plague in 429 BC. Pericles himself succumbed shortly thereafter. [Plutarch, "Pericles" 24, 36] [Plutarch, "de Consolat." p. 118, e.] [Plato, "First Alcibiades" p. 118, e., with the scholiast on the passage] [Plato, "Protagoras" p. 319, e.] [Athenaeus, xi. p. 505, 506]

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