when the expedition failed, Cimon
was ostracized, and that then Ephialtes defeated the Areopagus, and also
made a change in foreign policy by making alliances with Sparta's
enemies, Argos and Thessaly. This hypothesis alone explains the absence
of any account of a third struggle between Cimon and Ephialtes over the
Areopagus. The chronology would thus be: ostracism of Cimon, spring,
461; fall of the Areopagus and reversal of Philo-Laconian policy,
summer, 461.

A more difficult question is involved in the date of Cimon's return from
ostracism. The ordinary account says that he was recalled after the
battle of Tanagra (457) to negotiate the Five Years' Truce (451 or 450).
To ignore the unexplained interval of six or seven years is an
uncritical expedient, which, however, has been adopted by many writers.
Some maintaining that Cimon did return soon after 457, say that the
truce which he arranged was really the four months' truce recorded by
Diodorus (only). To this there are two main objections: (1) if Cimon
returned in 457, why does the evidence of antiquity connect his return
specifically with the truce of 451? and (2) why does he after 457
disappear for six years and return again to negotiate the Five
Years'Truce and to command the expedition to Cyprus? It seems much more
likely that he returned in 451, at the very time when Athens returned to
his old policy of friendship with Sparta and war in the East against
Persia (i.e. the Cyprus expedition). Thus it would appear that from 453
onwards there was a recrudescence of conservative influence, and that
for four years (453-449) Pericles was not master in Athens (see
PERICLES); this theory is corroborated by the fact that Pericles, in the
alarm caused by the Egyptian failure of 454, was induced to remove the
Delian treasury to Athens and to abandon his anti-Spartan policy of land
empire.

Cimon died in Cyprus before the walls of Citium (449), and was buried in
Athens. Later Attic orators speak in glowing terms of a "Peace" between
Athens and Persia, which is sometimes connected with the name of Cimon
and sometimes with that of one Callias. If any such peace was concluded,
it cannot have been soon after the battle of the Eurymedon as Plutarch
assumes. It can have been only after Cimon's death and the evacuation of
Cyprus (_i.e. c._ 448). It is only in this form that the view has been
maintained logically in modern times. Apart from the fact that the peace
is ignored by T