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Herodotus (Hdt.).
Aristotle (Aristot. Ath. Pol.).
Aristotle (Aristot. Pol.).
 
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Athens.

When Cleisthenes reformed the government of Athens shortly after 508 BCE (source for date: OCD³), he replaced the traditional four tribes of Athens with ten new tribes (Hdt. 5.96) and increased membership in the Council to 500 citizens, fifty from each tribe (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 21.2-4; Aristot. Pol. 1319b19-27).

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Aristotle (Aristot. Ath. Pol.).

In 501 or 500 BCE, when Hermocreon was archon, Cleisthenes instituted the so-called “Bouleutic Oath”, the oath that every citizen swore upon beginning his service on the Council (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 22.2; source for date, P.J. Rhodes, Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia [Oxford, 1993] 262). Aristotle says that the oath instituted at this time was the same one “which they swear even now [that is, in Aristotle’s time, the middle of the 4th century BCE — CWB]” (ὃν ἔτι καὶ νῦν ὀμνύουσιν) (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 22.2).

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Aristotle (Aristot. Ath. Pol.).

According to Aristotle, Ephialtes brought about a reform of the Court of the Areopagus by denouncing the Court before the Council of 500 (τῆς βουλῆς τῶν πεντακοσίων) and the Assembly (ἐν τῷ δήμῳ) (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 25.4): “First he made away with many of the members of the Council of the Aeropagus by bringing legal proceedings against them about their acts of administration; then in the archonship of Conon he stripped the Areopagus of all its added powers which made it the safeguard of the constitution, and assigned some of them to the Five Hundred and others to the People and to the jury-courts” (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 25.2). The archonship of Conon was the year 462/1 (source for date: P.J. Rhodes, Aristotle: the Athenian Constitution [Penguin, 1984] 69).

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Aristotle (Aristot. Ath. Pol.).

Aristotle is not very clear as to what he means when he says that the Areopagus lost “all its added powers which made it the safeguard of the constitution” (ἅπαντα περιεῖλε τὰ ἐπίθετα δι᾽ ὧν ἦν ἡ τῆς πολιτείας φυλακή) (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 25.2), and that that power was given to the Council and the Courts. No ancient source, in fact, lists the powers that the Council acquired after the reforms of Ephialtes, but it is possible to make some educated guesses.

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Plutarch (Plut. Sol.).
Antiphon (Antiph. 6).

We know that the original Council, as Solon set it up, existed “to deliberate before the People, and nothing was to be brought before the Assembly without an initial resolution of the Council” (οὓς προβουλεύειν ἔταξε τοῦ δήμου καὶ μηδὲν ἐᾶν ἀπροβούλευτον εἰς ἐκκλησίαν εἰσφέρεσθαι) (Plut. Sol. 19.1). This is the Council’s “probouleutic” function, the function of “planning beforehand.” In the fourth century, on the other hand, we see that the Council functioned like a court of law or a court of inquiry under certain circumstances, conducting trials of state prosecution (εἰσαγγελίαι) and conducting audits of public officials (δοκιμασίαι)—these functions are described with citations to the ancient evidence elsewhere in this article and the article on the institution of the Council, but several 5th century examples of the Council conducting state prosecutions (εἰσαγγελίαι) appear in a speech by Antiphon from 412 BCE (Antiph. 6.35; Antiph. 6.49).

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Aristotle (Aristot. Ath. Pol.).

Since Aristotle says that the authority to “safeguard the laws” passed from the Areopagus to the Council and the Courts with the reforms of Ephialtes (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 25.2), and since the authority to conduct state prosecutions and audits must have been granted to the Council at some point, we might suppose that these judicial functions were added to the Council’s probouleutic function in 462/1 BCE.

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Aristotle (Aristot. Pol.).
Aristotle (Aristot. Ath. Pol.).
 
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Athens.

Aristotle connects this event to a newfound feeling of power among the common people of Athens following the Persian Wars, when the less wealthy citizens by serving in the navy had saved the city. He makes the connection between naval victories and the reform of the Court of the Areopagus explicitly in his Politics (Aristot. Pol. 1274a). Also, by 462 BCE, when Ephialtes made his reforms, the archons (the future members of the Court of the Areopagus) were chosen by lot, not by vote (Aristot. Ath. Pol. 22.5). It is possible that this change made the institution seem less prestigious, and thus worthy of holding fewer powers [This interesting suggestion is from P.J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1993) — CWB].

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Athens.

Aristotle maintains that the Areopagus lost power as Athens became more democratic, while Rhodes suggests that the Areopagus lost power as it became, itself, less aristocratic. There is no reason why both of these causes could not have influenced the Athenians’ willingness to shift power from the Areopagus to the Council, but the ancient theory of Aristotle and the modern theory of Rhodes offer a convincing symmetry.

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