Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/393

 CHAXGES AT ATHENS UNDER PERIKLES. 369 upon this same ground probably that the stationary party de- fended all the prerogatives of the senate of Areopagus, — denouncing the curtailments proposed by Ephialtes as impious and guilty innovations.! How extreme their resentment be- hardly have been revived after the expulsion of the Thirty. "Whereas, by preserving during that period its jurisdiction in cases of homicide, apart from those more extended privileges which had formerly rendered it ob- noxious, the ancient traditional respect for it was kept alive, and it was re- vived, after the fall of the Thirty, as a venerable part of the old democ- racy ; even apparently with some extension of privileges. The inferences which 0. Miiller wishes to draw, as to the facts of these times, from the Eumenides of -Sschylus, appear to me ill-supported. In order to sustain his view, that, by virtue of the proposition of Ephialtes " the Areopagus almost entirely ceased to be a high court of judicature," (sect. 36, p. 109,) he is forced to alter the chronology of the events, and to affirm that the motion of Ephialtes must have been carried subsequently to the representation of the Eumenides, though Diodorus mentions it in the year next but one before, and there is nothing to contradict him. All that we can safely infer from the veiy indistinct allusions in ^schylus, is, that he himself was full of reverence for the Areopagus, and that the season was one in which party bitterness ran so high as to render something like civil war (ifj.<pv?uov °Ap7}, v, 864) within the scope of reasonable apprehension. Probably, he may have been averse to the diminution of the privileges of the Areopagus by Ephialtes : yet even thus much is not altogether certain, inasmuch as he puts it forward prominently and specially as a tribunal for homicide, exercising this jurisdiction by inherent prescription, and con- firmed in it by the Eumenides themselves. Now when we consider that such jurisdiction was precisely the thing confirmed and left by Ephialtes to the Areopagus, we might plausibly argue that JEschylus, by enhancing the solemnity and predicting the perpetuity of the remaining privilege, in- tended to conciliate those who resented the recent innovations, and to soften the hatred between the two opposing parties. The opinion of Boeckh, O. Miiller, and Meier, respecting the with- drawal from the senate of Areopagus of the judgments on homicide, by the proposition of Ephialtes, has been discussed, and in my judgment refuted, by Forchhammer, in a valuable Dissertation, Dc Areopago non privato per Ephialten Homicidii Judiciis. Kiel, 1828. ' This is the language of those authors whom Diodorus copied (Diodor. xi, 77) — ov /if/v u-&p6uc ye dievyE tti2,lkovtol^ uvo/j.?}- fiaaiv e7rt/?a?. 6 /<evof (Ephialtes), (iPv/la ttj^ vvKrh^ uvaipe^eic, uSrjTiov Icrxe rijv rod jSiov reXevrfiv. Compare Pausanias, i, 29, 15. Plutarch (Perikles, c. 10) cites Aristotle as having mentioned the assas- sination of Ephialtes. Antipho, however, states that the assassin was never formally known or convicted (De Coede Hero. o. 68). VOL. . ] 6* 24oc.