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Updated: May 8, 2025
By a goat path known to the Greeks only, it was possible not only to cross the mountains, but also to come down upon the small Greek force guarding the Pass of Thermopylæ. His offer as guide was accepted. Ephialtes, true to his promise, if not to his country, led the Persian Immortals along this narrow way.
Leonidas, who could not imagine that any one of the Greeks would be base enough to sell his country and honor for gold, had placed only a few of the allies at this spot. The Immortals followed Ephialtes, easily cut these few men down, and came unperceived behind the Spartan troops.
But when he afterwards was sent out to war, the multitude broke loose, as it were, and overthrew all the ancient laws and customs they had hitherto observed, and, chiefly at the instigation of Ephialtes, withdrew the cognizance of almost all causes from the Areopagus; so that all jurisdiction now being transferred to them, the government was reduced to a perfect democracy, and this by the help of Pericles, who was already powerful, and had pronounced in favor of the common people.
And of this number we are told Ephialtes made one, who broke the power of the council of Areopagus, giving the people, according to Plato's expression, so copious and so strong a draught of liberty, that, growing wild and unruly, like an unmanageable horse, it, as the comic poets say, " got beyond all keeping in, Champing at Euboea, and among the islands leaping in."
Look not for a greatness that may find its parallel in this man or that; a Tityus, an Otus, an Ephialtes there may have been; but here is a portent and a marvel greater far than they. You are to hear a voice that puts to silence all others, as the trumpet the flute, as the cicala the bee, as the choir the tuning-fork.
These are the most complete that I have for the moment. I reckoned on the Black Psen, or Psen atratus, whose series are pretty long; it is a pity that they are nearly always greatly interfered with by a parasite called Ephialtes mediator. "The Life of the Fly": chapter 2.
At length a traitor Ephialtes told Xerxes of a path across the mountains by which Leonidas could be taken in the rear. Learning from deserters and fugitives that he had been betrayed, Leonidas dismissed the main body, himself advancing into the open. After winning immortal glory he and his men were destroyed and the way to Greece lay open to the invader.
"After her I saw Iphimedeia wife of Aloeus who boasted the embrace of Neptune. She bore two sons Otus and Ephialtes, but both were short lived. They were the finest children that were ever born in this world, and the best looking, Orion only excepted; for at nine years old they were nine fathoms high, and measured nine cubits round the chest.
One of these friends is said to have been Ephialtes, who destroyed the power of the Council of the Areopagus, "pouring out," as Plato, the comic poet, said, "a full and unmixed draught of liberty for the citizens," under the influence of which the poets of the time said that the Athenian people
His name was not rendered odious to them by party proscriptions or the memory of actual sufferings. He himself had recalled their idol Cimon and in the measures that had humbled the Areopagus, so discreetly had he played his part, or so fortunately subordinate had been his co-operation, that the wrath of the aristocrats had fallen only on Ephialtes.
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