Even more deeply was Pericles wounded by the accusation levelled at the woman he loved. This was the famous Aspasia, a native of Miletus, whose talents won for her general admiration at Athens. Pericles divorced his wife, a lady of good birth who had borne him two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, but with whom he was unhappy, and attached himself to Aspasia. With her he lived on terms of devoted affection to the end of his life, though, as she was a foreigner, their union was not a legal marriage. She enjoyed a high reputation as a teacher of rhetoric, and seems to have been the centre of a brilliant intellectual society, which included Socrates and his friends. The comic poet, Hermippus, brought her to trial on the double charge of impiety and of corrupting Athenian women for the gratification of Pericles. A decree was further carried by a religious fanatic named Diopithes, whereby all who denied the existence of the gods or discussed the nature of the heavenly bodies were to be tried as criminals. This blow was aimed directly at the aged philosopher Anaxagoras, but indirectly at his pupil Pericles as well as at Aspasia. When this decree was passed, and apparently while the trial of Aspasia was still pending, Pericles himself was called upon by a decree of the people to render an account of the money which had passed through his hands. The result is not mentioned, but we cannot doubt that the matter either was dropped or ended in an acquittal. The perfect integrity of Pericles is proved by the unimpeachable evidence of his contemporary, the historian Thucydides. Aspasia was acquitted, but not before Pericles had exerted all his eloquence in her behalf. Anaxagoras, tried on the charge of impiety, was obliged to quit the city.