[ a peace, the "Peace of Kallias", with the Great King after the Battle of Syedra in Pamphylia,
just after the Battle of the Eurymedon, ca. 467 B. C. See: R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire
pp. 73-77.]
Kallisthenes, however, maintains that the Persians never agreed to observe any such terms. He says that this was merely how they behaved in practice, because of the fear which the victory of the Eurymedon had implanted in them; and indeed, they kept so far away from Greece that Perikles with a squadron of fifty and Ephialtes with no more than thirty ships sailed far beyond the Chelidonian Islands without meeting anything resembling a barbarian fleet. On the other hand, the collection of Athenian Decrees by Krateros includes in its proper place a copy of the articles of this treaty, as though it had actually been concluded. It is said, too, that the Athenians built an Altar of Peace to commemorate this event and conferred high honors upon Kallias, who negotiated the treaty.
In the light of this [story of Perikles being influenced by Elpinike to bring about Kimon's recall], how are we to believe Idomeneus' charge that he arranged the assassination of the of the democratic leader Ephialtes, who was his friend, as well as his partner in his political program, out of sheer jealousy of his reputation? This is surely a poisonous accusation . . . . as for Ephialtes, the truth is that the aristocrats had good reason to fear him, since he was relentless in calling to account and prosecuting those who had in any way harmed the people, and so his enemies conspired against him and secretly arranged for him to be murdered by Aristodikos of Tanagra, according to Aristotle [Ath. pol. 25.4].
(1) For about seventeen years after the Persian Wars the constitution remained the same, under the guidance of the Areopagos, although it was gradually deteriorating. Then, with the increase of the power of the masses, Ephialtes the son of Sophonides became Leader of the People; he had a reputation for incorruptibility and justice in public life. He launched an attack on the Areopagos. (2) First, he removed many of its members on charges of administrative misconduct. Then, in the Archonship of Konon, he stripped it of all its additional powers, including the guardianship of the laws; he distributed them among the Boulé, the Ekklesia, and the dikasteria. (3) He was aided in the reforms by Themistokles, who was a member of the Areopagos, but was facing a charge of treason with Persia. Because Themistokles wanted the Areopagos to be ruined, he told Ephialtes that they were intending to arrest him, and told the Areopagos that he would lay information against certain persons who were plottiing the overthrow of the constitution. Then he took a group selected by the Areopagos to the place where Ephialtes was, ostensibly to show them a meeting of the conspirators, and talked with them seriously. Ephialtes was so alarmed when he saw this that he took refuge at an altar dressed in a suppliant's single garment. (4) Everyone was amazed at what had happened, and there followed a meeting of the Boulé, at which Ephialtes and Themistokles made accusations against the members of the Areopagos. They repeated these accusations before the Ekklesia until they succeeded in depriving them of their power.... Ephialtes also died shortly afterwards, murdered by Aristodikos of Tanagra.
. . . So Kimon was acquitted on this occasion [462 B.C.]. During the rest of his political career he succeeded in arresting and even reducing the encroachments of the people upon the prerogatives of the aristocracy, and in foiling their attempts to concentrate office and power in their own hands, but only for as long as he was in Athens. The next time that he sailed away on foreign service, the people broke loose from all control. They overthrew the established order of the constitution and the ancestral customs which they had always observed up to that moment, and following Ephialtes' lead they deprived the Council of the Areopagos of all but a few of the issues which had been under its jurisdiction. They took control of the courts of justice and transformed the city into a thoroughgoing democracy with the help of Perikles, who had now risen to power and committed himself to the cause of the people. So it was that when Kimon came home and, in his disgust at the humiliation of the once-revered Areopagos, tried to restore its judicial powers and revive the aristocratic regime of Kleisthenes, the democratic leaders combined to denounce him and tried to stir up the people against him by bringing up all the old scandals about his sister, and accusing him of pro-Spartan sympathies....
. . . the murderers of one of your own citizens, Ephialtes, have remained undiscovered to this day. It would have been unfair to his companions to require them to conjecture who his assassins were under pain of being held guilty of the murder themselves. Moreover, the murderers of Ephialtes made no attempt to get rid of the body, for fear of the accompanying risk of publicity . . . .
. . . and although really in regard of certain of these features, the Council and the election of the magistrates, Solon seems merely to have abstained from destroying institutions that existed already, he does appear to have founded the democracy by constituting the jury-courts [ dikasteria ] from all the citizens. For this he is actually blamed by some persons, as having dissolved the power of the other parts of the community by making the law-court, which was elected by lot, all-powerful. For as the law-court grew strong, men courted favor with the Demos as with a tyrant, and so brought about the present democratic politeia . And Ephialtes *and Perikles* curtailed the power of the Boulé of the Areopagos, while Perikles instituted payment for serving in the law-courts, and in this manner finally the successive leaders of the people led them on by growing stages to the present democracy. But this does not seem to have come about in accordance with the intention of Solon . . . .
[The words "and Perikles" may be an interpolation: see C. Hignett, History of the Athenian Constitution (1952) p. 197 n.3.]
nomophylakes: These are distinct from the Thesmothetai, as Philochoros says in Book VII. For the archons would go up to the Areopagos to be crowned, while the nomophylakes wore white fillets and used to sit opposite the Nine Archons in the theater and used to conduct the procession in honor of Athena. They used to compel the magistrates to observe the laws, and they sat in the Ekklesia and in the Boulé in the company of the Prohedroi, forbidding anyone from doing things against the best interest of the polis. They were seven in number, and began to sit, according to Philochoros, when Ephialtes left in the hands of the Boulé of the Areopagos only cases involving murder [ ? ta somata ].
John Paul Adams, CSUN
john.p.adams@csun.edu