Ephialtes (
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
: ,
Ephialtēs) was an ancient
AthenianAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
politician and an early leader of the
democraticAthenian democracy was developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 500 BC. Athens was one of the very first known democracies...
movement there. In the late 460s BC, he oversaw reforms that diminished the power of the
AreopagusThe Areopagus or Areios Pagos is the 'Rock of Ares', north-west of the Acropolis, which in classical times functioned as the high Court of Appeal for criminal and civil cases in Athens. Ares was supposed to have been tried here by the gods for the murder of Poseidon's son Alirrothios...
, a traditional bastion of conservatism, and which are considered by many modern historians to mark the beginning of the "radical democracy" for which Athens would become famous. Ephialtes, however, would not live to participate in this new form of government for long.
Ephialtes (
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
: ,
Ephialtēs) was an ancient
AthenianAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
politician and an early leader of the
democraticAthenian democracy was developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 500 BC. Athens was one of the very first known democracies...
movement there. In the late 460s BC, he oversaw reforms that diminished the power of the
AreopagusThe Areopagus or Areios Pagos is the 'Rock of Ares', north-west of the Acropolis, which in classical times functioned as the high Court of Appeal for criminal and civil cases in Athens. Ares was supposed to have been tried here by the gods for the murder of Poseidon's son Alirrothios...
, a traditional bastion of conservatism, and which are considered by many modern historians to mark the beginning of the "radical democracy" for which Athens would become famous. Ephialtes, however, would not live to participate in this new form of government for long. In 461 BC, he was assassinated at the instigation of resentful oligarchs, and the political leadership of Athens passed to his deputy,
PericlesPericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...
.
Early actions
Ephialtes first appears in the historical record as the
strategosStrategos, plural strategoi is used in Greek to mean "general". In the Hellenistic and Byzantine Empires the term was also used to describe a military governor...
commanding an Athenian fleet in the
Aegean seaThe Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...
in 465 BC. Then, in August of 463 BC, he led the campaign to refuse
SpartaSparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the River Eurotas in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From c. 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars...
's request for military assistance in putting down a helot revolt. Cimon, the leading Athenian politician of the time, was strongly pro-Spartan and advocated for sending assistance, arguing that "ought not to suffer Greece to be lamed, nor their own city to be deprived of her yoke-fellow." Ephialtes, meanwhile, argued that Sparta and Athens were natural rivals, and that Athens should rejoice at Sparta's misfortune rather than help the other city recover. Cimon, however, was victorious in the debate, and set out for Sparta with 4,000
hopliteA hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek City-states. They were primarily armed as spear-men and fought in a phalanx formation. The word hoplite A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek City-states. They were primarily armed as spear-men and fought in a phalanx formation....
s.
Attack on the Areopagus
At about this time, Ephialtes and his political allies began attacking the
AreopagusThe Areopagus or Areios Pagos is the 'Rock of Ares', north-west of the Acropolis, which in classical times functioned as the high Court of Appeal for criminal and civil cases in Athens. Ares was supposed to have been tried here by the gods for the murder of Poseidon's son Alirrothios...
, a council composed of former
archonArchon is a Greek word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy and anarchy.- Ancient Greece :In the early literary period of...
s which was a traditionally conservative force. According to
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
and some modern historians, Athens had, since about 478 BC, been governed under an informal "
Areopagite constitutionThe Areopagite constitution is the modern name for a period in ancient Athens described by Aristotle in his Constitution of the Athenians. According to that work, the Athenian political scene was dominated, between the ostracism of Themistocles in the late 470s BC and the reforms of Ephialtes in...
", under the leadership of Cimon. Ephialtes began his campaign against this body by prosecuting certain members for maladministration. Having thus weakened the prestige of the council, Ephialtes proposed and passed in the ekklesia, or popular assembly, a sweeping series of reforms which divided up the powers traditionally wielded by the Areopagus among the democratic council of the
BouleIn the cities of ancient Greece, the boule was a council of citizens appointed to run daily affairs of the city...
, the ekklesia itself, and the popular courts. Some historians have argued that Cimon and his hoplites were still in the Peloponnese at the time of this proposal, while others have argued that the proposal followed his return. Those who place the proposals during Cimon's absence suggest that he attempted to overturn them on his return, while those who believe he was present at the proposal believe that he opposed them in the initial debate. All agree that his resistance was doomed to failure by the fact that his hoplite force had just been rudely dismissed by the Spartans, an action which demolished the political standing of Cimon and other pro-Spartan Athenians.
Death and legacy
The success of Ephialtes' reforms was rapidly followed by the
ostracismOstracism was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which a prominent citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the victim, ostracism was often used pre-emptively...
of Cimon, which left Ephialtes and his faction firmly in control of the state, although the fully fledged Athenian democracy of later years was not yet fully established; Ephialtes' reforms appear to have been only the first step in the democratic party's program. Ephialtes, however, would not live to see the further development of this new form of government; In 461 BC, he was assassinated by one Aristodicus of Tanagra as part of an oligarchic plot; his political ally
PericlesPericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...
would go on to complete the governmental transformation and lead Athens for several decades.