There surely were other reforms. Certain features of the later democracy appeared after the rule of Cleisthenes but were in place by the Peloponnesian War; it is plausible to argue that they were introduced at this time, though there is a risk of circularity in characterizing Ephialtes as a comprehensive reformer by reference to strictly unattributed and undated changes. Thus, sortition for the Council of Five Hundred is not likely to have been earlier than 487, when the archonship ceased to be elective; but Athens imposed sortition for a comparable though smaller council on Ionian Erythrae in 453, surely not before there was sortition for the Council at Athens itself. Similarly, there is evidence for jury pay for the 460s (or less probably for the 450s), which makes it plausible to date Council pay, attested by 411, to the mid-century period also.
Taken together the Ephialtic reforms look like the result of careful thinking by particular individuals with a definite democratic philosophy. A case, however, can be made for seeing them all as part of a 30-year process, with a central action-filled phase, rather than as a single event. After all, the Areopagus was affected indirectly by the changes in the archonship in 487, though the archonship was formally opened to the zeugitai (the hoplite class) only in 457. But despite the great increase in work for the big popular juries and the granting to the courts of the right (which may go back to Ephialtes) to quash or uphold allegedly unconstitutional proposals, it is not likely that then or at any other time Athenians saw themselves as conferring sovereignty on the people’s courts at the expense of the Assembly. The implied psychological distinction between juries of Athenians and political gatherings of the same Athenians is not a plausible one. The rejection of Cimon
Some of these changes were perhaps already in the air when the Spartans dismissed Cimon and his Athenians at Ithome. Cimon’s absence seems to have given Ephialtes and Pericles their chance: the main Areopagus reform was passed at this time, and in 461 Cimon was ostracized. This rejection of Cimon, however, was a personal matter: he should not be seen as a “conservative” opponent of a reform that gave more power to the people and especially to the thetic class, which manned the fleet. For one thing, Cimon’s victory at the Battle of the Eurymedon River was primarily a naval victory; for another, it was the Sparta-loving Cimon and his hoplites who were dismissed by the Spartans from Ithome for their subversive tendencies.
Most important of all, there is the general point that the interests of hoplites and thētes, now as at other normal times, coincided; both were denied the chance of standing for the archonship before 457 (the hoplites were admitted to it in that year). On the whole, it is the top two “Solonian” groups, the pentakosiomedimnoi and the cavalry class who were bracketed together on the one hand (as by Thucydides in one military context), while the zeugitai and thētes tended to be bracketed together on the other. No built-in class cleavage existed between the hoplite or zeugite class and the thētes, and attempts to exploit one, by advocating or offering a “hoplite franchise,” were short-lived failures. Cimon then should not be seen as champion of “conservative” hoplites against “radical” thētes; that view is wrong because the interests of hoplites and thētes were indissolubly linked. Athenian expansion Friction between Athens and Corinth
Athens’s two new alliances, with Argos and Thessaly, were provocative (surely not just defensive), but they did not create direct danger of war. Far more serious was the friction at this time between Athens and Corinth. Corinth had made no move to help Sparta, as far as is known, at the time of the Ithome disaster but seems to have pursued expansionist goals of its own in the Peloponnese, perhaps at Argos’s expense. Now that Athens and Argos were allied, this indirectly tended to damage Corinth’s hitherto good relations with Athens. (Corinth had fought well at Salamis, as even Herodotus was aware, though very different stories were circulating on this topic after 460.) More relevant than this was Athens’s ready reception of a third ally, Megara; like the Argives, the Megarians had also felt pressure from Corinth (one hears of a boundary dispute and a local war) and turned to Athens. That was the cause and beginning of the “violent hatred” between Corinth and Athens, which produced what modern scholars call the First Peloponnesian War.
The First Peloponnesian War (460–446) should probably be seen as essentially a conflict between Athens and Corinth, with occasional interventions by Sparta. Modern disagreement centres on the reasons why Sparta did not play a role: one line of explanation is purely military, invoking the difficulty of invading Attica while the mountains above Megara were policed by Athens; the other and more plausible view is that Sparta simply lacked the will to act consistently. Spartan inactivity should in any case not be exaggerated. There is a pattern to its interventions, which suggests that in this period, as at others, the “central Greek” lobby at Sparta, the closest thing to an identifiably imperialistic group to be found there, could sometimes prevail. The subjugation of Aegina
The first battle of the war, at Halieis in the Gulf of Argolis, was a Corinthian victory, but the next battle, at Cecryphalea (modern Angistrion), went Athens’s way (459). Aegina, which was attacked and besieged in the same year, was reduced in the following year and forced to pay tribute, though some vague undertaking about autonomy may have been made; the alternative is to suppose a special clause about Aeginetan autonomy, or even a general autonomy clause, in the peace of 446, which ended the war.
The alleged Athenian infringement of the autonomy of Aegina was one of the secondary causes of the main Peloponnesian War. In the meantime, the subjugation of Aegina, a great city of the Archaic age, whose proud Dorianism and traditions of seafaring and hospitality are stressed in lines of great beauty by Pindar in his Nemean Odes and elsewhere, was an event of cardinal importance. The pretense that Athens was merely leading a voluntary association of willing Ionian cities in need of protection could hardly survive the reduction of Aegina. The scale of Athenian ambition
The real scale of Athenian ambitions is shown by four other developments of this period. First, Athens undertook a great and disastrous expedition to Egypt (460–454), in ostensible continuance of the fight against Persia. Egypt, however, had always been a rich and desirable Persian satrapy, exploited by absentee Persian landowners; and thus an economic motive for Athens cannot be excluded. Second, Athens made an alliance (almost certainly in 457) with an inland half-Greek Sicilian city, Segesta. That alliance prepared the ground for a more tangible western policy in the 440s. Third, Athens now built the Long Walls connecting it to Piraeus and thus the sea and enabling Athens to depend for the future on the produce of its empire if absolutely necessary. The walls, however, should not be thought of as purely defensive in view of the constant connection made by Thucydides between walls and dynamic sea power. Fourth, Athens made an alliance (the inscription is strictly undatable) with the Delphic Amphictyony in the middle of the century. That alliance must be connected with the Athenian alliance made with Thessaly in 461, because Thessaly controlled a majority of Amphictyonic votes (always a reason why other states or rulers, like Philip of Macedon in the next century, were anxious to have a controlling interest in Thessaly).
It is interesting that Athens should thus extend its religious propaganda to include the sanctuary of Apollo of Delphi (Apollo Pythios) as well as that of Apollo of Delos. The oracle was always a distinct entity from the sanctuary, but it cannot be accidental that about now the oracle, normally favourable to Sparta during that period and conspicuously so in 431, declared Athens an “eagle in the clouds for all time.”