Quick questions on Pericles' family background and rise to prominence: HSC Ancient History

Pericles' father, Xanthippus, was a leading Athenian of the early fifth century. He had prosecuted Miltiades after the failed Paros expedition (489 BC) and was himself ostracised around 484 BC, only to be recalled under the general amnesty of 480 BC as Xerxes invaded. In 479 BC Xanthippus commanded the Athenian contingent at the battle of Mycale, the victory on the Ionian coast that, with Plataea, ended the Persian invasion, and he went on to besiege and take Sestos.

The Alcmaeonid inheritance was not all advantage. The family carried a hereditary religious pollution known as the agos, or "curse of the Alcmaeonids." Its origin lay in the Cylonian affair (traditionally c. 632 BC), when Cylon, a nobleman and Olympic victor, attempted to seize the Acropolis and make himself tyrant.

The ancient council of the Areopagus, made up of former archons and long a bastion of aristocratic influence, had accumulated a supervisory or "guardian" role over the constitution. The radical democrat Ephialtes led a movement to strip it of these "acquired" political powers, transferring them to the democratic organs: the Council of 500, the Assembly (ekklesia) and the popular courts (the Heliaia). The reform was carried while the conservative leader Cimon was absent in Messenia, where he had taken an Athenian hoplite force to help Sparta suppress the helot revolt at Ithome.

Cimon's pro-Spartan policy was humiliated when the suspicious Spartans dismissed his relief force. His opponents, Pericles among them, exploited the debacle, and Cimon was ostracised in 461 BC, removing the leading conservative from Athens for ten years.

Soon after his reforms, Ephialtes was murdered. Aristotle (Ath.Pol. 25) reports the culprit as Aristodicus of Tanagra.

With Cimon exiled and Ephialtes dead, the democratic movement needed a new head. Pericles, already Ephialtes' partner and armed with an impeccable democratic pedigree, stepped into the vacancy. His later introduction of pay for jurors (Aristotle, Ath.Pol.