Tyranny, Anarkhia, and the Problems of the Boule in the Oresteia

In 462/1 B.C. the Council on the Areopagus, we are informed, was stripped of most of its political power and left primarily as a homicide court. Later in the same year Athens revoked her alliance with Sparta and formed a new alliance with Argos, Sparta's main rival in the Peloponnese. The initiative for both of these moves came from the democratic faction under the leadership of Ephialtes and Pericles. Although many of the details surrounding these events still remain unclear, there is no doubt that "party" feelings ran high. Cimon, the conservative statesman, who had supported Athens' alliance with Sparta and had upheld the authority of the Areopagus, was ostracized, and Ephialtes was assassinated. It was, to use the words of Sir Richard Livingstone, "the greatest domestic struggle that Athens was to know for sixty years.