Athenian general and politician Cimon now returns to the Aegean and drives the Persians out of the Thracian Chersonese (Gallipoli).

The Athenian politician and general Themistocles has lived at Argos for some years, during which democracy has made headway in some parts of the Peloponnese.

Sparta then accused him of complicity in alleged intrigues with Persia.

Themistocles' alleged association with the discredited Pausanias, combined with his status as a suspected Persian sympathizer, led to a charge of treason, for which he was condemned to death in 464 BCE.

Making a sensational escape to Ephesus and thence to the Persian court, he began to learn Persian.

At the Achaemenid court, Themistocles met with Artaxerxes and received fiefs from the king in exchange for his loyalty, and retires to …

…one of them, Magnesia ad Maeandrum, a flourishing coastal city of Ionia founded by Aeolian immigrants from northern Greece.

Thasos signals changes in foreign policy alignments all over Greece.

The Thasians had appealed to Sparta for help, asking it to invade Attica, and the Spartans had secretly agreed to do so.

According to Thucydides, they would have done it had they not been detained by a massive revolt of the helots and “perioikoi,” who have taken advantage of a severe earthquake in 464-463, which has killed thousands of civilians, to occupy the strong position of Ithome in Messenia.

The great revolt, known as the Third Messenian War, threatens Spartan supremacy among the Greek states.

Archidamus II, king of Sparta from about 469, organizes the defense of Sparta and suppresses the Laconians, then turns to deal with …

…the Messenians, who have entrenched themselves at Mount Ithome and successfully resist Spartan efforts to dislodge them. (Ithome, together with the Acrocorinth, the citadel of Corinth, was described by a Hellenistic ruler as one of the “horns of the Peloponnesian ox” that a would-be conqueror must seize.)

Possibly, the occupiers of Ithome plan not only an act of secession but, in fact, an attack on the famously unravaged city of Sparta itself.

The earthquake not only shakes Spartan nerve but must also have serious demographic effects (though how long-term these are is disputed).

Mantineia sides with Sparta in 464-463 BCE during the revolt of the Messenian helots.

Back in Athens, however, Pericles and other democratic politicians charge Cimon with having been bribed not to attack the King of Macedonia (who may have been suspected of covertly helping the Thasian rebels).

This implies that Pericles advocates an aggressive policy of expansion for Athens.

Pericles, who from his late father Xanthippus may have inherited a leaning toward the people, along with landed property at Cholargus, just north of Athens, which puts him high, though not quite at the highest level, on the Athenian pyramid of wealth, had in 472 BCE paid for the production of the playwright Aeschylus' Persian trilogy.

His Alcmaeonid mother, Agariste, provided him with relationships of sharply diminishing political value and her family curse, a religious defilement that will occasionally be used against him by his enemies.

Though Cimon is acquitted, the aristocratic faction that he leads is losing influence; its support rests on the well-to-do citizens who fight as hoplites (heavy armed infantry) and who admire the conservative land power of Sparta.

Cimon, tall and handsome, open and affable in manner, and straightforward in action, is a natural leader and perhaps the best general Athens ever has.

He married twice: a woman from Arcadia, and then Isodice, of the noble Athenian family of the Alcmaeonids.

Of his six sons, three are named after the peoples of Sparta, Elis, and Thessaly, whose interests he represents at Athens.

No less determined than Pericles to maintain Athenian naval supremacy in the Aegean, Cimon differs from him in upholding the leadership of Sparta on the Greek mainland.

He is personally popular because of his victories and because he spends the wealth that these victories have brought him on the adornment of the city and the entertainment of the citizens.

However, the victories have been achieved mainly by the fleet, which is manned by the poorer Athenians, who are less well disposed toward Sparta.

The sailors, elated by their successes and beginning to feel their power, look to other leaders, Ephialtes and Pericles, who share their distrust of Sparta and promise them a larger share in the government.

A further attempt at this time to extend Athenian northern interest, the colonizing expedition sent to the Thracian town called Ennea Hodoi (“Nine Ways”), the site of the later Amphipolis, is less successful.

If silver is one coveted commodity, shipbuilding timber is another, and the desire for the latter is a large part of Athens' motive for getting a foothold in the Amphipolis region.

Ten thousand settlers are sent as colonists, but the entire force is destroyed at Drabescus.

This is probably the occasion for instituting state burial for war dead, a democratic measure that anticipates the reforms at the end of the 460s.

As the Spartans vainly endeavor in 462 BCE to reduce the mountain stronghold of Mount Ithome in Messenia, where a large force of rebellious helots (state-owned serfs) has taken refuge, they request the help of all their erstwhile allies of the Persian wars, including the Athenians.

Cimon urges compliance, comparing Athens and Sparta to a yoke of oxen working together for the good of Greece.

Ephialtes, elected general soon after 465 BCE, maintains that Sparta is Athens' rival for power and should be left to fend for herself, but Cimon's view prevails, and …

…he himself leads four thousand hoplites to Mount Ithome.

However, after an attempt to storm the place fails, the Spartans begin to wonder if they can trust the Athenians not to take the helot side and, retaining their other allies, dismisses Cimon and his contingent on suspicion of “revolutionary tendencies.”