In time, Aspasia found herself a new partner. His name was Lysicles, a self-made man from a very different social background to Pericles, but who seems to have shared the great leader's radical democratic credentials. Aspasia it seems, remained a politically progressive woman to the last.

Twenty-three years after his father's death, the younger Pericles, was elected general in 406 BC. Sadly it was his grave misfortune to be one of the leaders of a major naval fiasco in which the Athenians defeated the Spartans only to be caught in bad weather. Forced to flee home, two thousand sailors who had fallen overboard during the battle were lost. The popular assembly responded by putting the commanders on trial, and despite the protests of the philosopher Socrates, executing every one of them.

History doesn't record if his mother was still alive at the time; but she would have been in her sixties if she had survived the many hardships of the long Peloponnesian War. Her son's early death would have been a tragic end to an otherwise inspirational and unconventional life.