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William Smith,
A Smaller History of Ancient Greece|
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CHAPTER IX
From the end of the Persian Wars to the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, B.C. 479-431
Page 10
Pericles seized the occasion presented by the ill success of Cimon, both to ruin that leader and to strike a fatal blow at the aristocratical party. He deprived the Areopagus of its chief functions, and left it a mere shadow of its former influence and power. He rendered the election to magistracies dependent simply upon lot, so that every citizen however poor, had an equal chance of obtaining the honours of the state. Other changes which accompanied this revolution--for such it must be called--were the institution of paid DICASTERIES or jury-courts, and the almost entire abrogation of the judicial power of the Senate of Five Hundred. It cannot be supposed that such fundamental changes were effected without violent party strife. The poet AEschylus, in the tragedy of the EUMENIDIES, in vain exerted all the powers of his genius in support of the aristocratical party and of the tottering Areopagus; his exertions on this occasion resulted only in his own flight from Athens. The same fate attended Cimon himself; and he was condemned by ostracism (B.C. 461) to a ten years' banishment. Nay, party violence even went the length of assassination. Ephialtes, who had taken the lead in the attacks upon the Areopagus, fell beneath the dagger of a Boeotian, hired by the conservative party to dispatch him.
To Chapter X : Athens in the time of Pericles
Back to the History of Ancient Greece Contents
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/history-of-ancient-greece-9-peloponnesian-war.asp?pg=10
