What inspired The Ephialtes Affair

The Ephialtes Affair actually happened! Although not, perhaps, precisely as it occurs in the novel.

The Athenian Constitution is an ancient book about the politics of Athens and how it changed over time. The author was originally supposed to have been Aristotle, but we now know it was actually cobbled together by a couple of his students. They weren’t particularly good students, I’m afraid; the book is riddled with errors, has terribly inconsistent style, and frankly looks like the sort of thing university students today paste together the night before their essay is due. (Nice to see some things never change…) Nevertheless it remains one of the best sources we have for the early democracy at Athens because, although the students were clueless, the now lost authors that they ruthlessly plagiarized did know what they were talking about.

Quoting from the Penguin Classics edition, chapter 25 says: “…Ephialtes son of Sophonides became champion of the people, a man who appeared to be uncorrupt and upright in political matters. He attacked the Council of the Areopagus. First, he eliminated many of its members, bringing them to trial for their conduct in office. Then in the archonship of Conon he took away from the Council all the accretions which gave it its guardianship of the constitution, giving some to the Council of Five Hundred and some to the People and the jury-courts. … Ephialtes too was removed by assassination not long afterwards, through the agency of Aristodicus of Tanagra.”

So there you have it, The Ephialtes Affair! The same chapter talks about Themistocles being present when Ephialtes was beating up on the Areopagus, which is absolute rubbish, because he’d certainly been ostracized for at least 8 years by then.

Later in the same book, in chapter 35, it says: “...They took down from the Areopagus hill the laws of Ephialtes and Archestratus about the Council of the Areopagus...” Which shows a legal technician by the name of Archestratus had been assisting Ephialtes.

The Antisthenes and Archestratus Savings and Loan Company was also quite real. The adventures of Nicolaos and Diotima are set right on the birth of western civilization, so in addition to having a fun mystery, we also get to watch the beginning of all sorts of things we take for granted today, one of which is banks. Money-lending had been around for many centuries, but banking as we know it, that is, depositing money which the bank invests elsewhere or uses for loans, was invented by the Greeks in Nico’s lifetime. We know about A & A because when they retired, they left their bank to their freed slave, a fellow called Pasion, who went on to become the world’s first CEO mega-banker. Pasion’s son became embroiled in court cases, so that the history of the A & A Bank was documented in legal papers that have survived. The Greeks liked to name their firstborn sons for the paternal grandfather, so the odds are fair that Archestratus the Banker was in reality grandson to Archestratus the Legal Eagle, but a few families did pass on the same name one generation to the next, and it’s plausible (and simpler for the story) to assume that’s the case.