He was the son of Hipponicus and an unnamed woman (she later married Pericles[1]), an Alcmaeonid and the third member of one of the most distinguished Athenian families to bear the name of Callias.
He is a character in several Socratic dialogues: Plato's Protagoras and Xenophon's Symposium are set at his house, and he featured in Aeschines of Sphettus's lost Aspasia.
Callias' family was unusually wealthy: the major part of their fortune came from the leasing of large numbers of slaves to the state-owned silver mines of Laurium.
[2] In 400 BC, he was involved in an attempt to destroy the career of the Attic orator, Andocides, by charging him with profanity in having placed a supplicatory bough on the altar of the temple at Eleusis during the celebration of the Mysteries.
"[7] The scene of Xenophon's Symposium, and also that of Plato's Protagoras, is set at Callias' house during a banquet hosted by him for his beloved Autolykos in honour of a victory gained by the handsome young man in the pentathlon at the Panathenaic Games.