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Updated: May 8, 2025
For forty years he held the first place among such men as Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides; and, after the fall and banishment of Thucydides by ostracism, he united in himself for five-and-twenty years all the various offices of state, which were supposed to last only for one year; and yet during the whole of that period proved himself incorruptible by bribes.
There too was Iphimedeia, mother of the giants Otus and Ephialtes, who at nine years of age were nine fathoms in height and nine cubits in breadth. Haughty were they, and presumptuous in their youth; for they made war on the gods, and piled Ossa on Olympus, and Pelion on Ossa, that they might scale the sky. But they perished in their impiety, shot down by the bolts of Apollo's golden bow.
The Greek said that his name was Ephialtes, and that he came to inform the king that there was a secret path leading along a wild and hidden chasm in the mountains, by which he could guide a body of Persians to the summit of the hills overhanging the pass at a point below the Greek intrenchment.
This is the man whom Aristophanes ridiculed in his play as sitting by the altars as a suppliant, with a pale face and a scarlet cloak, begging for an army. We are told by Kritias that Ephialtes vigorously opposed his mission, and besought the Athenians not to assist in restoring a state which was the rival of Athens, but to let the pride of Sparta be crushed and trampled in the dust.
The path which Ephialtes was to show commenced here, and following the bed of this stream up the chasm, it at length turned to the southward through a succession of wild and trackless ravines, till it came out at last on the declivities of the mountains near the lower part of the pass, at a place where it was possible to descend to the defile below.
How, then, can one believe Idomeneus, who charges Pericles as if he had by treachery procured the murder of Ephialtes, the popular statesman, one who was his friend, and of his own party in all his political course, out of jealousy, forsooth, and envy of his great reputation?
These agreeable imaginations were varied by all the usual vagaries of a feverish dream; the air refused to bear the visionary, the water seemed to burn him the rocks felt like down pillows as he was dashed against them whatever he undertook, failed in some strange and unexpected manner and whatever attracted his attention, underwent, as he attempted to investigate it, some wild and wonderful metamorphosis, while his mind continued all the while in some degree conscious of the delusion, from which it in vain struggled to free itself by awaking; feverish symptoms all, with which those who are haunted by the night-hag, whom the learned call Ephialtes, are but too well acquainted.
Every one was astounded at the occurrence, and presently, when the Council of Five Hundred met, Ephialtes and Themistocles together proceeded to denounce the Areopagus to them. This they repeated in similar fashion in the Assembly, until they succeeded in depriving it of its power. Not long afterwards, however, Ephialtes was assassinated by Aristodicus of Tanagra.
Defeat of the Persian detachment. The Immortals called out. The Immortals advance to the charge. Valor of the Greeks. The Immortals repulsed. Treachery of Ephialtes. Joy of Xerxes. Course of the path. A Persian detachment sent up the path. The Phocæans retreat. The Greeks surrounded. Resolution of Leonidas. Leonidas dismisses the other Greeks. His noble generosity. Leonidas retains the Thebans.
Nay, how could slavish troops, dragged from home to spread the victories of an ambitious king, fight like freemen who felt that their strokes were to defend their homes and children! But on that evening a wretched man, named Ephialtes, crept into the Persian camp, and offered, for a great sum of money, to show the mountain path that would enable the enemy to take the brave defenders in the rear!
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