ABSTRACT
Ephialtes' reforms are not mentioned by Thoukydides, but the sequence in which he narrates events makes it clear (,immediately after [Kimon and his forces} returned' from their mission to help the Spartans) that, as part of the general upheaval which involved Kimon's ostracism, the Athenians 'abrogated the alliance which they had had with the Spartans because of the Persian threat, and became allies of the Argives, who were the Spartans' enemies; and an alliance was sealed and oaths exchanged between both parties and the Thessalians' (1.102.4). This was a momentous change in Athenian foreign relations, for which the ground had perhaps been prepared by Themistokles in the late 470s. 1 Although the fruits of these alliances seem (so far as we are able to judge) not to have been very substantial,2 their significance lay mainly in the political message Athens was sending out to the rest of Greece: the old 'special relationship' with Sparta was finished; Athens had new - and powerful, as well as anti-Spartan - friends in the Peloponnese. Kimon's enemies went out of their way to emphasize his proSpartan leanings: at Per. 9.5, Perikles is reported as charging him with being 'pro-Sparta and anti-demos'.3 In the late 460s it cannot have been a political advantage to have had even a hint of pro-Spartan leanings, let alone the fairly close connections the tradition attests for Kimon. The deep-seated feelings against Sparta (present just below the surface, if Herodotos can be believed, already in 480) were whipped up in the Assembly, and the Athenians' sense of grievance must have been intense at the affront they had suffered when they had themselves responded so readily to the Spartans' appeal for help.
