2. An Athenian statesman and general, son of Sophonides, or, according to Diodorus, of
Simonides, was a friend and partizan of Pericles, who is said by Plutarch to have often put
him forward as the main ostensible agent in carrying political measures when he did not choose
to appear prominently himself. (Reip. Gerend. Praec. 15; Polit. 2.12, ed. Bekk.;
Diod. l.c. ;
Pericl. 7, 9; Cic. de
Rep. 1.27.) By this measure Plutarch tells us that he introduced an unmixed democracy,
and made the city drunk with liberty; but he does not state clearly the precise powers of
which the Areiopagus was deprived, nor is it easy to decide this point, or to settle whether
it was the authority of the court or the council
that Pericles and Ephialtes assailed. (For a full discussion of the question the reader is
referred to Müller, Eumen. §§ 35-37; Wachsmuth, Hist. Ant. vol. ii. p. 75, &c. Eng. transl.; Hermann, Opusc. vol. iv. pp. 299-302, where the passages of Demosthenes [c.
Arist. p. 641] and of Lysias [de Caed. Erat. p. 94] are ably and
satisfactorily reconciled ; Thirlwall's Greece, vol. iii. pp. 23, 24 ;
Dict. of Ant. s. v. Areiopagus ; and the authors mentioned by C. F.
Hermann, Pol. Ant. § 109, note 6.) The services of Ephialtes to the
democratic cause excited the rancorous enmity of some of the oligarchs, and led to his
assassination during the night, probably in de Caed. Her. p. 137) the murderers had
not been discovered; but we learn, on the authority of Aristotle (apud Plut.
Pericl. 10), that the deed was perpetrated by one Aristodicus of Tanagra. The character
of Ephialtes, as given by ancient writers, is a high land honourable one, insomuch that he is
even classed with Aristeides for his inflexible integrity. Heracleides Ponticus tells us that
he was in the habit of throwing open his grounds to the people, and giving entertainments to
large numbers of them,--a statement which seems inconsistent with Aelian's account, possibly
more rhetorical than true, of his poverty. (Dem. 14;