Ephialtes

From Section 25. "Such was the way in which the people earned their livelihood. The supremacy of the Areopagus lasted for about seventeen years after the Persian wars, although gradually declining. But as the strength of the masses increased, Ephialtes, son of Sophonides, a man with a reputation for incorruptibility and public virtue, who had become the leader of the people, made an attack upon that Council. First of all he ruined many of its members by bringing actions against them with reference to their administration. Then, in the archonship of Conon, he stripped the Council of all the acquired prerogatives from which it derived its guardianship of the constitution, and assigned some of them to the Council of Five Hundred, and others to the Assembly and the law-courts."

From Section 28. "After the overthrow of the tyrants there was Cleisthenes, a member of the house of the Alcmeonidae; and he had no rival opposed to him after the expulsion of the party of Isagoras. After this Xanthippus was the leader of the people, and Miltiades of the upper class. Then came Themistocles and Aristides, and after them Ephialtes as leader of the people, and Cimon son of Miltiades of the wealthier class. Pericles followed as leader of the people, and Thucydides, who was connected by marriage with Cimon, of the opposition. After the death of Pericles, Nicias, who subsequently fell in Sicily, appeared as leader of the aristocracy, and Cleon son of Cleaenetus of the people."
Ath. Pol., translated by Sir Frederic G. Kenyon

While democracy is generally dated to Cleisthenes' reforms, Ephialtes reformed the Areopagus, which was composed of archons who had come from the two highest levels of Athenian society. We don't know what powers it had before Ephialtes, and we don't know what Ephialtes left it with, but he didn't abolish it. Our information on its surviving powers comes from the middle of the 4th century B.C.

The Ath. Pol. is the earliest account we have of the reforms of Ephialtes. At the least, the Areopagus was left with jurisdiction over homicides.

• _{"The Role of Ephialtes in the Rise of Athenian Democracy," by Lesley Ann Jones; Classical Antiquity, (1987), pp. 53-76}
• _{"Ephialtes the Moderate?" by. L. Marr; Greece & Rome, (1993), pp. 11-19.}